‘Marvel’ Creator Stan Lee Has Passed Away, But He Will Live On In These Powerful Quotes

“With great power comes great responsibility.” Stan has said this many times, and of course, the words come from his character Uncle Ben in Spider-Man. When it came to Spider-Man, Stan admitted, “I never thought that Spider-Man would become the worldwide icon that he is. I just hoped the books would sell and I’d keep my job.”

Speaking about whether his character Doctor Doom was a criminal, he once said, “Now, think about this. You could walk across the street against a traffic light and get a summons for jaywalking, but you could walk up to a police officer and say ‘I want to rule the world,’ and there’s nothing he can do about it, that is not a crime. Anybody can want to rule the world.”

In 2010, Stan opened up about his feelings toward his career to The Washington Post. “I used to be embarrassed because I was just a comic-book writer while other people were building bridges or going on to medical careers,” he said. “And then I began to realize: entertainment is one of the most important things in people’s lives. Without it they might go off the deep end. I feel that if you’re able to entertain people, you’re doing a good thing.”

Of his famous appearances in his own movies, Stan said in an interview in 2006 that, “I’m a frustrated actor. My … goal is to beat Alfred Hitchcock in the number of cameos. I’m going to try to break his record.”

Stan prided himself on his virtuous life. In 2002 he said, “Someone wants to do a movie of my life now and he’s writing a script, and I said to him, ‘What the hell could you do? I’ve never been arrested, I haven’t taken drugs, I’ve had the same wife for 54 years… where’s anything of interest to people?'”

“If Shakespeare and Michelangelo were alive today, and if they decided to collaborate on a comic, Shakespeare would write the script and Michelangelo would draw it,” he said on Stan Lee: Conversations. “How could anybody say that this wouldn’t be as worthwhile an artform as anything on earth?”

“It’s geeks who really make or break a TV show or movie or video game,” he said to The Washington Post in 2010.

Stan was chock full of advice for other creators. In 2006 he said, “If you’re writing about a character, if he’s a powerful character, unless you give him vulnerability I don’t think he’ll be as interesting to the reader.”

“Everybody wants to feel that you’re writing to a certain demographic because that’s good business, but I’ve never done that … I tried to write stories that would interest me. I’d say, what would I like to read?… I don’t think you can do your best work if you’re writing for somebody else, because you never know what that somebody else really thinks or wants,” he told Brandweek in 2000.

“Comicbook should be written as one word. So from now on, I want you to remember that,” he once said in a YouTube video. “I never want to see the word comicbook written as two words. They are not funny books. They are not comic books, they are comicbooks! Remember that, or incur my wrath.”

“Never speak harshly of your enemy — when you can kick ‘im in the shins instead!” Stan wrote in the soapbox area of his Conan The Barbarian comics in 1975.

“I’m no prophet, but I’m guessing that comic books will always be strong. I don’t think anything can really beat the pure fun and pleasure of holding a magazine in your hand, reading the story on paper, being able to roll it up and put it in your pocket, reread again later, show it to a friend, carry it with you, toss it on a shelf, collect them, have a lot of magazines lined up and read them again as a series. I think young people have always loved that. I think they always will,” he told Brandweek in 2000.

“Face front, true believers!” Stan often used this line in his soapbox editorial pages, and it will surely ring in the minds of his fans for decades to come!