NOOOOOO! :( Stan Lee has died at age 95

Lee, who began in the business in 1939 and created or co-created Black Panther, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and Ant-Man, among countless other characters, died early Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a family representative told The Hollywood Reporter.

"I used to think what I did was not very important," he told the Chicago Tribune in April 2014. "People are building bridges and engaging in medical research, and here I was doing stories about fictional people who do extraordinary, crazy things and wear costumes. But I suppose I have come to realize that entertainment is not easily dismissed."

“Stan Lee was as extraordinary as the characters he created," Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger said in a statement. "A superhero in his own right to Marvel fans around the world, Stan had the power to inspire, to entertain and to connect. The scale of his imagination was only exceeded by the size of his heart."

Today I am the bearer of some devastating news for writers, artists, as well as fanboys and fangirls across the globe and of a myriad of generations. Stan "The Man" Lee the comic creator, writer, publisher, editor, and bullpen runner of Marvel Comics, the man behind so many of our beloved heroes and heroines has passed away today November 12th, 2018.

Stan's family struggled through the Great Depression and the following era as did a large amount of the U.S. of A's population. His parents both Jewish American-immigrants in his teen years they moved to the Bronx in New York. During this period he shared a bedroom with his brother Larry, while his parents (Celia and Jack Lieber) slept on a fold out couch in the living room. This experience of economic struggle also left its mark on Stan and probably created a desire to achieve financial success and security. Lee worked many jobs during high school while dreams danced through his head of one day becoming a great American writer. Lee graduated early at the age of 16, and he immediately joined WPA Federal Theatre Project a New Deal program set as a relief fund for live artistic performances, theater, employing artists, writers, crew, and directors during a time of financial turmoil especially affecting the creative arts communities of the U.S.A.

In 1939 Stan Lee's Uncle (Robbie Solomon) hooked him up with an assistant job at Timely Comics (by the 1960's Timely transformed into Marvel Comics).

In the past few days there has been much talk about Stan "The Man" Lee and how much money he was involved in making for the cinematic Marvel Universe domestically, and yet no one has made an attempt to my knowledge of a global box office tally. I took the opportunity to do so and also spent a little time with an inflation calculator to give everyone an accurate idea of the financial magnitude of the projects Lee was a creator and/or producer on. He did not create all the characters listed or within these films but he played a significant hand in getting them off the ground and soaring into cinemas across our world for our enjoyment.

Behold The Power of Numbers!

Total Global MARVEL Box Office: 30,707,621,232.00 adjusted for inflation - 33,067,097,585.64