Stan Lee: the father of the modern comic-book hero

Being the 'dumbest guy in the world' when it comes to finance and business didn't stop the creator of Spiderman from conquering Hollywood.

"I'm the dumbest guy in the world when it comes to finance and business," Stan Lee told an interviewer recently, "the DUMBEST." But that hasn't stopped the man seen as the father of the modern comic-book hero from conquering Hollywood, says The Economist. It's a fairly safe bet that next year, one of the ten bestselling films at the US box office will be based on one of Lee's superheroes.

Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, X Men, Iron Man the list stretches on (see below). In fact, Lee's characters, many dreamed up when he was editor-in-chief of Marvel comics in the early 1960s, have developed such a following among a younger generation that "the cartoon superhero has partly displaced the movie star".

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