Stan Lee Profiled in the ‘The Economist’

The British magazine "The Economist" profiles legendary creator Stan Lee, and how his many creations, from Spider-Man to Iron Man to the X-Men, found new life -- in both pop culture and profits -- once movie studios were ready to do them right:

For many years his creations languished. Children gradually lost the habit of reading comics and the market fragmented into increasingly obscure and often disturbing niches. Several attempts to create films or television series failed, in part because the comic-book companies were worried about tainting their property. Screenwriters spent fully 15 years worrying away at a Spider Man storyline. In the mid-1990s Marvel declared bankruptcy. Then the special-effects engineers finally caught up with the cartoonists' visions. As Mr Lee puts it, "there is now nothing you can imagine that cannot be shown."

On the flip side, it discuses about the difficulty of continuing to produce mega-hits in any media as pop-culture becomes more and more niche-oriented, something that hasn't served comics well, at least:

And what goes for comic books also goes for television shows, computer games and other fodder for summer blockbusters. As audiences fragment, there is simply less mass content to throw into the Hollywood recycling machine.