In an industry now rife with personalities, it might be difficult to comprehend Stan Lee's celebrity. He was effectively the face of Marvel Comics from the mid-seventies onwards, and interacted with Marvel's readership to such a degree that he ended up attaining celebrity status, even as other writers were taking the reigns on all of his books.
Lee narrated cartoons, appeared on news reports, and toured the country giving lectures at college campuses after assuming responsibility as publisher in 1972. He had what would become the first of many live action cameos in 1989's Trial of the Incredible Hulk, and has recorded several more that audiences are yet to see.
Point being, there are dozens of creators who have gained celebrity status from working in comics, but Lee was the first, and managed to maintain and increase a level of prominence few in the industry could possibly match.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
