But even those allusions to old literary/Universal horror monsters don’t do justice to scientist Bruce Banner’s radiation-blasted alter-ego, a brute who comes out and crushes any puny humans in his path. Hyde as one of the sources for this superhero as well.

“I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the Frankenstein monster,” Lee said when asked about the inspiration behind his not-so-jolly green giant – he’s also namedropped Dr. And in a single story, everything about the way people wrote about superheroes changed. Lee brought these former astronauts down to earth in more ways than one. Fantastic, his rocky college buddy the Thing, his see-through sweetheart the Invisible Girl and her fiery brother the Human Torch – would spend part of their first issue bickering with each other and bemoaning their new powers that came courtesy of exposure to cosmic rays. “I finally came up with four characters that I thought would work well together.” (Jack Kirby disputed this origin story, which would unfortunately become a recurring motif between these two comic-book pioneers.) That quartet – the elastic-limbed Mr. “It took a few days of jotting down a million notes,” Lee is quoted as saying in Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. The story is that publisher Martin Goodman came to the writer after a golf game and demanded that he come up with a story involving a team of superheroes. From that groundbreaking first Fantastic Four issue to Lee’s mean, green late-act addition to the female superhero canon, these were the issues that helped put Marvel and Stan the Man on the map. To honor Lee after his passing at age 95, we look back at 15 comics that helped solidify his legacy as a writer, editor, publisher and the ever-lovin’ public face/personal voice behind Marvel’s evolution from comic-book company into pop juggernaut. Lee was the one who put the “human” part up front. Lots of folks told stories of superhumans fighting bad guys that played up the “super” part. But it was Lee – in close creative, if not always properly credited, collaboration with artists such as Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Gene Colan – that had the revolutionary idea of making them relatable, snippy, occasionally self-centered, neurotic, flawed.

It’s not like one Stanley Martin Lieber invented the concept of men in capes DC’s all-star stable of do-gooders had been around for decades, and Joe Simon’s Hitler-punching war hero Captain America, a hit for Timely Comics (which would eventually morph into Marvel Comics), had thrilled WWII-era kids. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Stan Lee is largely responsible for the modern superhero – and by extension, one of the architects of contemporary pop culture.

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