Stan Lee's 20 Greatest Marvel Comics Creations
From the Fantastic Four to Loki and the X-Men...
With Stan Lee’s recent passing, many fans have been turning to his back catalogue and digging out their old comics to relive Lee’s greatest stories. Though he hasn’t written for a while now, so many of the most popular Marvel characters all began life with Stan Lee.
Comics are a collaborative effort, and therefore a lot of these characters were joint creations. Often Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko worked alongside Lee as artists, though he had other collaborators too. Lee’s primary role at Marvel was writing plots, scripts, working with designers or editing final drafts. As well as starring in cameos, of course.
While he might not have physically inked many of these characters onto the page, they simply wouldn’t exist without his creative mind. In his career, he created some 300+ characters, the vast majority of whom are still around today.
His influence on comic books is huge, not just from the sheer amount of stories he contributed, but also his pioneering style. The less campy, more gritty down to Earth feel comic books have today owes a lot to Lee’s early work.
20. J. Jonah Jameson
J. Jonah Jameson was never the star of the show, but the fact he’s such a beloved character shows what a creative genius Stan Lee was. The irate newspaper editor who constantly demands pictures of Spider-Man has become the definitive figure of the angry boss trope.
He’s yet to make an appearance in the MCU, but that might be because nobody could ever hope to replace Oscar winner JK Simmons. This portrayal was so iconic he reprised it twice as a Simpsons guest star. Who knows, maybe in Far From Home we’ll see a new Jonah, or they might even invite Simmons back into the fold. Either way, he’s a Stan Lee character who deserves to live on.
His cigar-chomping, rage-filled disposition is always an amusing aside, even in a comic book and interesting and fun as Spider-Man. Jonah might not have been the character kids wanted to be when they grew up, but he’s an incredibly memorable highlight of Lee’s illustrious career. Sad thing is a lot of those kids probably did grow up to be J. Jonah Jameson. Shame.