William Brangham:
Back in the 1960s, Lee was a writer and editor at Marvel Comics, a company being eclipsed by the much bigger D.C. Comics, which had the sturdy franchises of Superman and Batman.
Lee was asked to come up with something, anything, to compete. His next project, done with his partner, artist Jack Kirby, was The Fantastic Four, and it was a surprise hit, particularly because its oddball characters had weird powers, could never seem to get along, and defied the superhero archetype.
This more complex hero was something Lee repeated, with great success, with his subsequent characters, like the Amazing Spider-man, the Incredible Hulk, and the Avengers series.
In a 2002 interview, at the premiere of the first "Spider-Man" movie, Lee described just how hard it was to convince his editor decades ago to approve the story line.
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