In collaboration with several artists – most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko – Stan Lee co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, the Silver Surfer, The Avengers and many other fictional characters for Marvel.

He led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation during an era now referred to as The Marvel Revolution.

In 1984, Stan was awarded The National Medal of Arts by the United States Congress, the highest honour awarded to an individual artist in the United States. Previous recipients include Georgia O’Keeffe, Willem de Kooning and Bob Dylan.