Stan Lee, who dreamed up Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk and a cavalcade of other Marvel Comics superheroes that became mythic figures in pop culture with soaring success at the movie box office, died at the age of 95, his daughter said on Monday.
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As a writer and editor, Lee was key to the ascension of Marvel into a comic book titan in the 1960s when in collaboration with others he created superheroes who would enthral generations of young readers.
Lee's daughter J.C. Lee confirmed the death.
Americans were familiar with superheroes before Lee, in part thanks to the 1938 launch of Superman by Detective Comics, the company that would become DC Comics, Marvel's arch rival.
Lee was widely credited with adding a new layer of complexity and humanity to superheroes. His characters were not made of stone - even if they appeared to have been chiselled from granite. They had love and money worries and endured tragic flaws or feelings of insecurity.
"I felt it would be fun to learn a little about their private lives, about their personalities and show that they are human as well as super," Lee told NPR News in 2010.
He had help in designing the superheroes but he took full ownership of promoting them.
His creations included web-slinging teenager Spider-Man, the muscle-bound Hulk, mutant outsiders The X-Men, the close-knit Fantastic Four and the playboy-inventor Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man.
Dozens of Marvel Comics movies, with nearly all the major characters Lee created, were produced in the first decades of the 21st century, grossing over $US20 billion ($27.8 billion) at theatres worldwide, according to box office analysts.
Spider-Man is one of the most successfully licensed characters ever.
Reuters
