Stan Lee was a pillar in the comics community who created and co-created some of the most important comic book characters of all time. As a writer, editor, and publisher, he helped shape Marvel comics, and the larger comics industry, which continues to thrive on the foundation that he built. With the approach of what would have been Lee’s 100th birthday on December 28, 2022, we are celebrating Lee’s legacy in comics.

Lee grew up in New York City where he worked part-time jobs writing obituaries, press releases for the National Tuberculosis Center, delivered sandwiches, worked as an office boy, an usher at a theater, and sold subscriptions. In 1939, Lee was hired as an office assistant at Timely Comics (what would become Marvel), working in the new pulp magazine division. About two years later, Lee saw his first credited work, writing the story “Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge,” in Captain America Comics #3 (May 1941).

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had a hit with their new patriotic hero, Captain America, and they needed to bring in some freelancers to help fill the demand for new stories. Lee had been asking for a chance to write, so they gave him a short story assignment as the audition.

The two-page story filled mostly with text previewed Lee’s stylistic choices like using creative wordplay, enthusiasm, and the hero’s bravado. Captain America fought a traitor named Lou Haines, who had made threats to Colonel Stevens and the military base. Haines almost gets the better of Cap before the stalwart hero knocks him unconscious. Then on the next day, the colonel asks Steve Rogers if he heard anything in the previous night’s scuffle and Steve tells him he slept through the incident – getting a good laugh from the hero, Bucky, and the readers.

Not only was this his first published story, it was the first time Captain America used his shield as a throwing weapon. It also marked the moment when Stanley Lieber started using perhaps the most famous moniker in comics: Stan Lee.