Remembering Stan Lee through his quotes: Wisdom and wisecracks

Marvel maestro Stan Lee spent his decades-long career creating some of the most iconic comic book heroes of all time, from the Avengers to the X-Men to current box office heavyweight Black Panther.

In the process, he helped transform Marvel Comics from a 1960s upstart to a worldwide media juggernaut that reshaped the worlds of television and cinema.

“I’ve been saying this for years: People love fantasy,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1989.

Lee was generous with his time with fans as he rose from cult status among comic book buffs and catapulted into the mainstream. He became a regular on the convention circuit, readily sharing tales of his youth until his death on Monday at age 95.

Lee got his start working as a comics writer in the 1940s and shepherded the rise of Marvel Comics into a powerhouse in the ‘60s alongside artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

The affable writer had tremendous influence on the genre, adapting to the times while breathing life into relatable characters lauded for their flaws and weaknesses along with their superhuman abilities.

“When I started, I worked for a publisher [who] used to say: ‘Don’t use words of more than two syllables. Don’t worry about characterisation or dialogue. Just give me pages with a lot of action.’ And I did that for years, and then I got really sick of it,” he said in 2012. “So I started using a college-level vocabulary. I felt the reader would look it up in a dictionary, which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, or get it by osmosis,” he added. “The publisher really hated that, but it didn’t hurt the sales of the books.”

That tenacity helped him launch numerous ventures that saw him team up on projects with varied collaborators, including the Beatles’ Ringo Starr, Playboy’s Hugh Hefner and rapper RZA. In the meantime, he found his second calling as a cameo star, appearing in more than three dozen Marvel movies.

Here are a few of his memorable musings during his many interviews:

Why comic books should be taken seriously:

On the importance of flawed, real heroes:

What he got out of the convention circuit:

On going from page to screen:

On his target demographic:

On the importance of believing in yourself:

On the difference between action and violence:

On the common thread of his stories:

On all those film cameos:

On his ‘Midas touch’: