Stan Lee, the legendary comic book writer and co-creator of Marvel Comics, has died, according to multiple reports. He was 95.
Lee's daughter told TMZ that he died after being rushed Monday morning to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Kirk Schenck, an attorney for Lee's daughter, J.C. Lee, confirmed to The Associated Press that Lee died Monday.
Lee was born on Dec. 28, 1922 in New York City. He started his career in comics in 1939, according to Marvel, and helped to create several of the comic book publishe's most well-known characters, including Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor and the X-Men.
“No one has had more of an impact on my career and everything wee do at Marvel Studios than Stan Lee,” Kevin Feige, president of thee Marvel Studios film studio, wrote in a tweet Monday. “Stan leaves an extraordinary legacy that will outlive us all.”
As the top writer at Marvel Comics and later as its publisher, he revived the industry in the 1960s by offering the costumes and action craved by younger readers while insisting on sophisticated plots, college-level dialogue, satire, science fiction, even philosophy.
“He changed the way we look at heroes, and modern comics will always bear his indelible mark,” officials with Marvel rival DC Comics wrote on Twitter after news of Lee’s death broke. “His infectious enthusiasm reminded us why we all fell in loves with these stories in the first place.”
Lee considered the comic-book medium an art form and he was prolific: By some accounts, he came up with a new comic book every day for 10 years.
"It was a wonderful feeling, to watch the popularity of the characters grow and grow as these animated cartoons came out, and these video games came out, and all the adjacent things came out -- it was nice to have been a part of it all," Lee told Comic Book Resources in 2017.
“It felt wonderful, and especially because I was even a part of it -- in a lot of the video games, I'm in the game somewhere, my voice or my picture. So, I always felt as though I'm a part of what's happening with all these characters, and that's a very exciting feeling.”
Lee earned several accolades during his lifetime, including the National Medal of Arts, induction into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame.
“There will never be another Stan Lee,” actor Chris Evans, who plays Captain America in the Marvel Universe movie franchise, wrote Monday on Twitter. “For decades he provided both young and old with adventure, escape, comfort, confidence, inspiration, strength, friendship and joy. He exuded love and kindness and will leave an indelible mark on so, so, so many lives. Excelsior!”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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