"Stan Lee is the originator of the idea that possessing superpowers can really suck," wrote Jonathan Vankin in LA Weekly. Lee, editor and publisher at Marvel Comics for almost six decades, is considered one of the seminal influences in the development of the comic book from its lowly beginnings at the "absolute bottom of the cultural totem pole," as Lee described the industry in an interview with Kenneth Plume in IGN FilmForce, to its status as a cultural icon. Before Lee--and Marvel collaborators such as legendary artist and writer Jack Kirby and artist Steve Ditko--a typical comic book was a "brightly colored affair in which a cheerful hero, endowed with extramortal powers, merrily dueled an improbable ray-gun-wielding, saucer-flying foe from beyond the reaches of the galaxy," according to Vankin. "Said foe was unfailingly dispatched within 12 modular, six-panel pages."

At Marvel, Lee--in the company of Kirby, Ditko, and others--changed...