Comic legend Stan Lee has passed away at the age of 95.
Lee played many roles. He was a comic book writer, an editor, a film producer, an actor and a publisher – and a veteran. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II from 1942 to 1945, according to the Defense Department.
Lee is best known for his work with Marvel Comics, creating comic books that include Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Thor, X-Men and Doctor Strange.
He died at Cedars Sinai Medical Center after being taken there by ambulance from his Los Angeles home, but the cause of death is still unknown, according to CNN, who cited Lee’s daughter’s attorney, Kirk Schneck.
Stan Lee, Marvel Comics visionary, dead at 95 https://t.co/Dch6yxweBr pic.twitter.com/ridRv6hKqr
— FOX2now (@FOX2now) November 12, 2018
In 1942, Lee enlisted in the Army as a lineman for the Signal Corps right after the Pearl Harbor attack.
Army Sgt.1st Class Nicholas Jones, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington said the Army soon saw that Lee had a knack for writing and changed his position to writing and creating posters.
Novelist William Saroyan and TV writers Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, who had the pleasure of meeting Lee at the Army Training Division in Astoria, Queens, also started their writing careers while in the Army.
During a comic convention, Lee was inducted into the Signal Corps Regimental Association and received an honorary membership into the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment.
This is a vide of Lee being inducted into the Signal Corps Regimental Association:
When Lee was handed a certificate for lifetime membership in the Signal Corps he said, “This is one of my proudest moments.”
Lee said that his life experiences are what he used to inspire his characters and hopes they will live on in others.
Lee graduated from high school when he was just 16 years old. He became the office assistant at Timely Comics when he was 17 years old.
In the early 1940s he became the editor of Timely Comics.
In 1961, Lee and Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four. Then, in 1962, Spiderman; and in 1963, the X-men, all of which had movies made from the characters, CNN reported.
In 2009, the Walt Disney Company bought Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion.
In 2013 Lee said, “If my publisher hadn’t said ‘let’s do superhero stories,’ I’d probably still be doing ‘A Kid Called Outlaw,’ ‘The Two-Gun Kid’ or ‘Millie the Model’ or whatever I was doing at the time.”
