Who was Stan Lee and why he was famous ?

Lee was a student at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.

As a teen, he harboured dreams of becoming a famous novelist.

Lee earned money working several part-time odd jobs — including delivering sandwiches to offices in Rockefeller Center, selling newspaper subscriptions for the New York Herald Tribune, working as an office boy for a trouser manufacturer and being an usher for Broadway's Rivoli Theater

At 15, Lee entered a weekly high school essay competition sponsored by the New York Herald Tribune, called "The Biggest News of the Week Contest." He claimed to have won the contest for three consecutive weeks. According to Lee, the paper suggested he look into writing professionally, which he later claimed, "probably changed [his] life.

Lee graduated from high school early, at the age of 16. He decided against going to college, preferring to find employment and help provide for his poor family. The fear of unemployment pushed Lee to value work and earn a living above all else

As a young man, Lee is described as "agonizingly sensitive, desperate for approval and easily influenced by others

With the help of an uncle, Martin Goodman, Lee would become an office assistant at Timely Comics in 1939. There, he worked for comics legends Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, the creators of Captain America.

Simon and Kirby allowed Lieber to write a story, under the pen name Stan Lee, for Captain America Comics #3 in 1941

At age 19, he became interim editor at Timely Comics, and then became the comic book division's editor-in-chief. Timely Comics evolved into Marvel Comics in the 1960s.

Lieber told NPR in 2015 that he initially used the name Stan Lee because he thought working in comics would be a fleeting thing and he would use his real name to write a novel one day: "I realized that people had no respect for comic books at all. Most parents didn't want their children to read comics. And I was a little embarrassed to be doing the work I did, and I figured someday I'll write the Great American Novel and I don't want to ruin my possibilities by having my name disliked this way. And I became Stan Lee."

In 1956, Lee's time at Timely nearly ended when Martin Goodman, Lee's uncle and the owner of Timely, wanted to stop publishing comic books after the Comics Code was instituted and altered the type of content he could promote and sell

Lee became a member of the U.S. Army in 1942 to help with the war effort. He was originally assigned to the Signal Corps based in New Jersey, tasked with fixing communications equipment and telegraph poles.

While in the army, Lee received a transfer to the New York City-based Training Film Division where he worked as a playwright.

Lee felt invulnerable, God-like characters such as Superman were boring. Lee wanted comic books to feel real and flawed and have human emotions including anger, pride and melancholy. This idea was considered revolutionary at the time.

Lee would co-develop now-famous characters including Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and the X-Men with artist Jack Kirby.

He would also develop characters such as Doctor Strange and Daredevil with artists Steve Ditko and Bill Everett, respectively

Lee operated as the sole writer for many Marvel titles, using a scripting format he would call the Marvel Method. The process was based on quickly determining a plot with the artist, who would then create artwork to develop the story. Lee would later add dialogue to the drawn pages.

The Marvel Method allowed artists such as Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby to effectively plot and script multiple issues, with input from Lee.

In the 1950s, Lee came close to leaving the comic book industry forever after a dispute with his publisher about the dialogue he was using. "He didn't want too much dialogue; he didn't want me to worry about characterization or story — all he wanted was a lot of action," he would tell website Comic Book Resources (CBR) in 2017.

While in Tokyo in 2016, Lee told reporters that the name "Spider-Man" came about after seeing a fly crawl up a wall: "Somehow calling him 'flyman' didn't sound dramatic enough. What else could he be? Mosquito man? Then I said: Spider-Man. And it sounded so dramatic

The correct spelling of Spider-Man is with a hyphen. This was intentional, according to Lee, as he didn't want his hero to be confused with Superman at the time.

Stan Lee's 1962 debut of Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15 became a bestseller and was the fastest-selling book of the decade. After this early success, Lee and Ditko would work on an ongoing Spider-Man series. The Amazing Spider-Man launched in 1963

Lee and Kirby created the Incredible Hulk in 1962. Lee was influenced by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in creating the character. "I had been wracking my brain for days, looking for a different superhero type, something never seen before

Hulk was originally supposed to be grey. A printing error turned him into the green behemoth familiar to fans.

Lee was inspired to create Thor in 1962 by Norse mythology and a love of Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe and Alexandre Dumas.