Below, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige shares what The Man meant to him.
Thats what led to the Fantastic Four.
Then Hulk, and Spider-Man.
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Then Iron Man, and the X-Men, and everything else.
Lemme turn one of those characters into a hero.
And we got Thor, we got Odin, we got Loki, we got Hela.
Stan was a charismatic, well-spoken cheerleader for his characters and for the medium of comics in general.
Also, he was a very progressive storyteller.
He took risks, and he wrote what he believed.
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Wow, is that true, and wow, that is apparent in all the stories he told.
This was at the height of the civil rights movement, and thats astounding to me.
He really had a good heart.
He believed in the best of humanity.
He also believed in the flaws of humanity, and that the flaws could be overcome.
Stan explored intimate questions and struggles, and he had a desire for understanding identity.
Some of his lessons are unspoken.
He didnt come to set and read the scripts and review the cuts.
He came in, did a cameo that excited everybody, and would let his work speak for itself.
I went to his house to see him, and he reminisced about the cameos.
We were talking about what was coming up, always looking to the future.
Did he know that his time was running out?
In hindsight, he was slightly more wistful than Id seen him before.
He talked about the past more than I had ever heard him talk about the past.
So maybe on some level, he knew.
Youll have to leave the starring roles to the other actors.
He would show up to the movie sets game for anything.
But one thing he would always do is venture to add more lines.
He always would joke but notreallyjoke about wanting more lines, although he understood why we couldnt.
God forbid he would start to overshadow the hero.
That was something a character like Stan Lee could easily do.
