This is a very interesting grandfather, he was not rich, because of a corporate infighting, he became the editor-in-chief, and then began his powerful "open life" - to create a series of anime IP, Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man and other familiar anime characters were born, and were put on the big screen, well known to global audiences.
However, there are also many people who hate him, in a series of disputes, he can always win, and even many collaborators eventually jumped to competitor companies because of disagreement.
He is Stan Lee, the veteran figure of the American comic book industry known as the "father of Marvel", who died at the age of 95 at a Hollywood medical center on November 12, local time. And the Marvel legend brought by him continues.
Editor-in-chief of the imminent commission
Many people may not remember Stan Lee's original name as Stanley Martin Lieber. Stan Lee was born on December 28, 1922, in New York, UNITED States. He wasn't the kind of kid who was born with the golden key, but because his family wasn't wealthy, Stan Lee began his career as a high school graduate at the age of 16.
And this part-time job can be said to have changed Stan Lee's life.
Stan Lee was introduced to Timely Comics as an assistant, and even in the beginning, Stan Lee was not involved in the drawing of comics at all, he was only involved in the writing of texts. At the age of 19, Stan Lee finally had the opportunity to work on a major production, the Captain America series, and although he was still a "minor character" in the work at the time, he began his comic book path, and it was at that time that Stanley Martin Lieber used the pen name Stan Lee and became his personal mark for decades to come.
However, Timely Comics Comics Company encountered a problem that many companies will have after that - internal personnel disputes, in this infighting, the original editor-in-chief took away a group of old employees, leaving timely Comics this "shell", but the business will continue, the company is not to the point of closure, so the company's founder Martin Goodman pushed Stan Lee to the position of editor-in-chief, to be exact, the temporary editor-in-chief who was in danger, after all, Stan Lee was still very young at the time. Also inexperienced. Many people still don't know whether Stan Lee volunteered to take over the stall or was "forced" to take office.
But in any case, Stan Lee, the "interim editor-in-chief", spent more than 30 years to prove his strength and the founder's unique vision. Not only did he serve as editor-in-chief for 30 years, but he also led his team to create iconic characters such as Iron Man, Spider-Man, Thor, and Black Panther. It is said that the "Excelsior", which represents transcendence and strength, is the Latin word that Stan Lee likes to add at the end of the text when he is an editor, and in fact, he has indeed achieved "transcendence, stronger".
The first financial reporter learned that Stan Lee's life counterattack experience is quite similar to Disney founder Walt Disney. Walt Disney originally created not the image of Mickey Mouse, but a rabbit called "Osvaldo", and then he also encountered the opposite of his partners, forced to reorganize the company and create the image of Mickey Mouse, but unexpectedly Mickey was very popular, and to this day is one of the hottest IP in the world, just on November 18 this year, Mickey will also usher in his 90th birthday.
Stan Lee's Timely Comics was renamed Atlas Comics in 1951 and Marvel Comics in 1961, also known today as Marvel. After that, Disney acquired and integrated "Marvel", and Marvel became one of Disney's current four major business segments.
The "Father of Marvel" who likes cameos
According to public information, from November 1961, with the assistance of partner Jack Kobe, Stan Lee created comic book characters such as "Fantastic Four", "Spider-Man", "Iron Man", "Thor", "Hulk", "X-Men", "Doctor Strange", "Super Daredevil" and so on. More than 90% of Marvel Comics' well-known characters were created by Stan Lee himself. By 1972, Stan Lee had become Marvel's chairman and publisher. Although Stan Lee works on art, his team has a very industrial workflow—they produce comics and shape superheroes "in an assembly line way." Compared with Marvel's competitor DC, which adopts the traditional way of writing the script first and then drawing the comic, Marvel directly uses "brainstorming" to determine a general framework, and then acts separately from different positions such as screenwriters and artists to improve together, and then completes the details after the editor-in-chief review, which brings great efficiency. At the same time, Marvel has also formed a very mature mechanism for managing these IPs. Therefore, although Marvel has many characters in the series, it gives people a sense of story logic and clear relationships, which is also the core competitiveness of Marvel.
Stan Lee has shaped a superhero universe, and he naturally deservedly became the "Father of Marvel."
The "Father of Marvel" has a unique hobby of making cameo roles in the films and televisions he has participated in creating. The first such attempt appeared in the 1989 film The Trial of the Invincible Hulk. Later, in the Marvel series of movies, you can often see this naughty grandfather, who is sometimes sweeping the dust for Iron Man's armor, and sometimes listening to music with headphones and letting the Marvel heroes behind him mingle together... He even made a cameo shoot for Avengers 4. The recently released "Venom: Deadly Guardians" also has a cameo appearance by Stan Lee, as a veteran guest actor, he has already guest starred in more than 30 roles, although he has never played a leading role in a movie, but Stan Lee is indeed marvel's core "number one male lead".
Angels and demons
Having created so many well-known IPs, Stan Lee, a self-made cartoonist, writer, editor, publisher and guest actor, has won numerous awards, and on January 4, 2011, the 88-year-old Stan Lee remained on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which is also a recognition of his great contribution to the cultural industry.
However, it was such an award-winning person who was involved in a series of negative events in the second half of his career.
Reports and public information indicate that Stan Lee eliminated all the opponents he thought he was at marvel in the early days, eventually even kicking founder Martin Goodman out of the company. At the same time, he took advantage of the power vacuum in the early days of the company's infighting and managed to sign a contract with the company, where 10% of the profits of the works he participated in were owned by himself — Stan Lee may have played an important role in the company, but in fact, behind every comic, every image, is the painstaking efforts of countless creators working together. This contract can be described as "no one before, no one after". Stan Lee has always intentionally or unintentionally downplayed his collaborators, and this part has always been criticized, which led many cartoonists to leave Marvel for DC that year, and many eventually went to court and lawsuits, Stan Lee almost won. After Stan Lee left Marvel, he did several times the company failed and lost all his money, the 80-year-old Stan Lee took out the contract of that year and continued to ask Marvel for money, and Marvel's lawsuit went to the Supreme Court and won, Stan Lee continued to enjoy 10% of the profits of Marvel's works.
Such an experience has led the industry to evaluate Stan Lee as "half angel, half devil".
However, these do not shake Stan Lee's status as the "father of Marvel". Stan Lee has suffered from a variety of illnesses in recent years. Lawyers for his daughter J.C Lee said stan Lee was pronounced dead at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles earlier on November 12, local time.
Marvel and its owner, Disney, said in a statement: "With a heavy heart, we express our deepest condolences to Stan Lee's daughter and brother." "We respect and remember Marvel's creators, voices, and kings... Whenever you open a Marvel comic, Stan Lee is there. "The actors of the Marvel series, including Chris Evans, Hugh Jackman, Robert Downey Jr., and Josh Brolin, among others, have expressed their condolences." Captain America," played by Chris Evans, tweeted, "There's never going to be another Stan Lee." "Iron Man" actor Robert Downey Jr. tweeted that "it's all your fault."
Marvel's business fortunes
In that year, Stan Lee launched the Marvel Universe, in this parallel universe, Iron Man, Captain America and hulk formed members of the "Avengers", and later joined Thor, Ant-Man, etc., perhaps Stan Lee at that time did not realize that this series of Marvel characters would have great commercial value in the next few decades.
Publicly available data shows that Stan Lee's comics have been printed in more than 25 different languages in more than 75 countries and territories around the world, with more than 2 billion copies. It has been adapted into more than 24 anime and television series. Even today, Disney continues to make the Marvel series of movies and set off a global boom.
Walt Disney Inc.'s second quarter of fiscal year ended March 31, 2018 shows that for the fiscal quarter, Walt Disney Corporation had revenue of $14,548 million and net profit of $2,937 million. The film business and the amusement park business became the highlights of Walt Disney's performance in the second quarter of this year. The film business was a highlight of Walt Disney's second-quarter results. Black Panther grossed $1.3 billion worldwide, and the film's box office success drove the studios to up 21% year-over-year in the second quarter; "Avengers 3: Infinity War" broke $1 billion in 11 days of release, leading North American and global box office records. Specifically, revenue from the entertainment business was $2.5 billion for the quarter, up 21 percent from the same period last year.
Previous disney data and public information show that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has launched about 20 movies, with a total box office of more than $16 billion. "Avengers 3" exceeded $1 billion at the box office in 11 days after its release in North America, breaking the record held by "Star Wars Episode VII" and exceeding 1.4 billion yuan Chinese mainland 5 days after its release. In addition, Disney Pictures accounted for 9 of the 10 highest-grossing films of all time in the U.S. premiere weekend. All nine films were released in the last 6 years. Avengers: Infinity War became the fastest film in film history to top the $1 billion box office.
According to public data, the "Marvel Fan" public account, which was founded for two years, has 130,000 fans so far, and the number of headlines read is basically around 18,000 to 25,000.
In the interview, the first financial reporter learned that Disney's business model is to create a virtual character IP, and then derive movies, musicals, peripheral goods, etc., especially the consumer goods revenue involving peripheral goods is one of the largest revenue sectors in the Disney system. In the past, Disney divided its product line into Disney series, targeting all categories and age groups; the princess series focused on the girl market. After the introduction of Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars, Disney began to pay more attention to the market for boys and adult men, you know, adult men involved in consumer goods customers have high unit prices and high profits. In these businesses, Marvel has played an indispensable role, because most of the fans who love the Marvel series are adult men, and their consumption power and unit price are very high, such as the first financial reporter once saw a Marvel "Captain America" cooperation Audi car at the Disney conference, as well as the Iron Man armor model established with the size of the real person 1:1, which are derivative consumer goods with higher profits and the continuous economic benefits of IP brought by Marvel.
Recently, the first financial reporter exclusively interviewed Kermid Rahman, vice president and general manager of consumer goods in Greater China and South Korea of Walt Disney Company, who revealed that in the past year, the Disney series of movies has covered about 180 million Chinese cinema audiences, which means that nearly 200 million Chinese have entered the cinema to watch disney series movies. Among them, the Marvel series in China's box office has accumulated up to 12 billion yuan, which has driven the growth of the consumer goods business.
"Behind every story and every movie we have, there is an emotional resonance with consumers. While bringing content to Chinese consumers, it also brings great support and growth to derivatives. Between 2014 and 2018, derivatives tripled our revenue and were very important to our overall consumer goods business. There is a big relationship between content and derivatives. Marvel's role is pivotal. Kermid Rahman said.
But Marvel's influence may be far from there.
Stan Lee once wrote: "I used to be embarrassed to be a cartoonist, and everyone else was doing big things, like building bridges or working in the pharmaceutical industry. Later, I realized that entertainment is the most important part of people's lives, and without entertainment, people may step into the abyss. I finally understood that if I have the ability to make others happy, then it is a good thing. ”
In 2014, when Stan Lee was asked in a television interview if he thought Hollywood's anime movies were saturated, he said, "I guess it's not enough." As long as we continue to create new works, then there will be new movies that continue to appear. ”
After stan Lee's death, Tesla, known as the real-life version of "Iron Man," and SpaceX's founder CEO, Musk, also took to Twitter to mourn the legendary cartoonist. He wrote: "The endless imagination of the world and the joy you have endowed with humanity will remain in this world forever." "Musk is deeply influenced by Marvel animation, Musk is not only keen on the superheroes in American comics, but also he, like Stan Lee's Iron Man, has a judgment and execution that transcends reality, and has endless dreams of human future technology.
Another tech guru who loves anime games is NVIDIA founder CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. When the first financial reporter visited Nvidia's new headquarters building in San Jose, Silicon Valley, earlier this year, he found that many of the conference rooms were named after Marvel animations. And under the leadership of Huang Jenxun, Nvidia's graphics chip GPU is giving anime a more realistic cinematic effect. Huang Jenxun used NVIDIA's latest Quadro RTX technology to render the spider-man in "Avengers 3" jumping up and spitting silk at the Siggraph conference held in Vancouver in August this year, and said: "As long as you have this GPU, you can directly render the final effect of the movie CG." ”
Tencent's goal is also to become an Asian version of the "Marvel Empire.". In 2011, Tencent bought a partial stake in Riot Games, the owner of League of Legends, and League of Legends has become the world's largest esports game. It is following Disney's model by turning its deeply rooted heroes such as "Spider-Man", "Captain America" and "Iron Man" into mobile games, handheld games and movies.
It can be said that it is precisely because of Stan Lee that there are Marvel heroes, and it is precisely because of these heroes that the story will continue, and Stan Lee will always live in people's hearts because of these stories.