Stan Lee

It feels almost too clichéd to be worth saying: whether you're naming a favorite superhero or a favorite comics monster, the Thing is no surprise for the top of either list. In fact the archetype of the monster as member of a superhero team started with him, and with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who introduced the character in Fantastic Four #1. He wasn't exactly the first superheroic monster, but he was the first one who wasn't a loner, and the first whose gruff but self-conscious demeanor contrasted with the sunnier dispositions of his non-monstrous teammates.

There's probably no superhero team that's as strongly associated with one lineup as the Fantastic Four. Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Thing, and Human Torch are a perfectly balanced quartet of heroes. The aloof one, the balanced one, the grumpy one and the impulsive one. Dad, Mom, and two uncles. The Four who were at the center of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's genre-defining run are always going to be the center of the franchise. Naturally most of this Fantastic Four fan art focuses on the original team, but a few artists do choose a different lineup. A lot of the artwork plays with their team uniforms, another factor that separates the FF from most heroes. Some artists radically re-imagine the Fantastic Four, while others just try to capture their classic spirit. And of course a few artists pick just one of the four to focus on. Most are interested in the team dynamic, which is what the FF is all about. This is the best Fantastic Four fan art.

He’s had a hand in creating some of the most beloved superheroes of all time for Marvel, but now comic-book icon Stan Lee is getting the hero treatment. 20th Century Fox has reportedly acquired the rights to Lee’s life story with the intention of turning it into a fictional action-adventure movie set in the 1970s, with Lee as a James Bond-style protagonist — now there’s a series of words you’d never conceive of stringing together.

The fact that Stan Lee is guaranteed to appear in nearly every single Marvel movie is one of those small little charms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I hope never goes away. Sure, some people probably view it as an annoying break in the fourth wall, but it also reminds audiences that we are watching a superhero comic book movie. These movies don’t need to choose between being cartoonish and deadly serious; they can be both, often at the same time, and Stan Lee always helps drive that point home.

Late last week a pretty substantial rumor surfaced suggesting that Zendaya’s secret role in Spider-Man: Homecoming is actually Mary Jane Watson. While neither Marvel nor Sony have confirmed or even responded to those rumors, it elicited an unfortunately predictable reaction from several fans who were unhappy that a woman of color would be playing a character traditionally depicted as a white redhead. James Gunn already weighed in with his thoughts, and our own Matt Singer wrote an excellent piece on the matter, and now Stan Lee himself has offered his reaction to the recent casting rumor.

On this day in 1966, Peter Parker was confronted with the eight iconic words that would change his life forever, as Stan Lee and John Romita finally introduced Mary Jane Watson as a supporting character in The Amazing Spider-Man. Whether it’s as wife, confidante, or a take no prisoners model/actress/nightclub owner, Mary Jane has been one of the most enduring and important supporting characters in comics for half a century.

On August 8, 1961, Fantastic Four #1 changed superhero comics forever, and yet it's barely a superhero comic at all. Legend has it the book was inspired by the success of rival DC's Justice League of America. That book is a superhero comic through and through, and apparently its team of heroes inspired Marvel publisher Martin Goodman to ask his top creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, to create a superhero team of their own. But while DC gathered its Justice League from their other superhero titles, Marvel was publishing no superhero books at that time. So Lee and Kirby created a team from scratch. But springing from the minds of Lee, who was by all accounts terribly burnt out on comics at the time, and Kirby, who had done everything in comics, but was then the master of monsters, Fantastic Four #1 was a weird, dark superhero book, about a weird, dark team

We've already rounded up the best events for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and we've highlighted some of the best exclusive art prints to pick up, but there's so much more at SDCC. As the biggest convention of the year, it's a great way to interact with creators and this year's event has an amazing line-up of spotlight panels on some of the best writers and artists in the business.

Things are messed up right now, so let’s talk about comfort comics. Comics as escapism. There are a lot of current and recent comics that could work for this — All-Star Superman, Lumberjanes, and Squirrel Girl come to mind — but I want to go back a little farther. Because here’s the cool thing about comics: They all used to be for kids. Which means that a lot of the classic comics, the influential ones that made the medium what it is, are also escapist fun. So when you want to read something that’s going to let you forget your problems and get lost in fantasy, you can also read something that will help you become well versed in comics canon. This is literally how I became who I am today.

He's one of the most recognizable figures in all of popular culture. He's amazing, he's spectacular. He's been the subject of countless animated and live-action adaptations, starring in everything from Saturday morning cartoons to public television educational shows to big-budget motion pictures. He's been a nebbishy student, a professional wrestler, a schoolteacher, a fugitive, a technological entrepreneur, an intrepid photographer, and an Avenger. He catches thieves just like flies, he's got radioactive blood, and he does whatever a spider can. But on June 5th, 1962, Spider-Man was simply a crazy new character vying for space on newsstands, and by any conventional measure, the odds were stacked against him.