Happy 92nd Birthday Stan Lee!

Amazing, incredible or uncanny as it might be to believe, Stan Lee turned 92 years old today. It’s pretty amazing that he’s not only still with us, but also spry enough at his age to continue making cameos in all of the Marvel movies — and not just the ones produced by Marvel Studios either.

The man born Stanley Martin Lieber really should need no introduction, but just in case you only know him from the movies, Stan Lee is the godfather of Marvel as we know it, co-creating the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk and Thor with Jack Kirby (and in a few cases, with some help from Larry Lieber and Don Heck), Spider-Man with Steve Ditko and Daredevil with Bill Everett. Without him, the fantastic world of super heroes we’ve grown to know and love across all forms of modern media simply wouldn’t exist, or at the very least, it’d be vastly smaller than it is today.

Though Lee hasn’t held a position at Marvel for many years now, his influence is still in evidence in a number of ways. He certainly hasn’t been able to leave the industry behind, continuing to dabble around the edges with video, conventions and, yes, comics through several companies he’s started.

It’s hard to even mention a contemporary creator in the same breath as Lee in terms of his overall cultural impact. The best I can do is Robert Kirkman, who has put his stamp on early 21st Century pop culture with The Walking Dead. Yet that’s only a single property, and to have the same kind of success Lee achieved, Kirkman would essentially have to come up with a half-dozen more ideas on par with TWD.

That’s simply not going to happen, which is why there won’t ever be another Stan Lee. Please join us in wishing him a happy 92nd birthday, and let’s all say an “Excelsior!” in his honor.

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