Columbia, SC (WLTX) - Stan Lee's influence in the comic book world stretches farther than Mr. Fantastic, having created characters like the X-Men, The Hulk and The Amazing Spider Man.
Lee started out at the age of 16 as an assistant at a comic publisher that grew into Marvel Comics, and later became a writer, editor and publisher.
"Stan Lee created all of these amazing characters like Thor, Fantastic Four, Black Panther," says Eric Woodard, owner of Scratch N' Spin. "I started reading comics in the third grade. The first comic book I read was X-Men #173 and it really inspired my love for reading and beyond that inspired my creativity."
Lee also inspired South Carolina's own Marvel artist Sanford Greene, who tweeted the cover of "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way" saying "the moment Stan Lee changed my life. I was 11 years old."
Roy Thomas, who worked directly with Lee at marvel comics says he was saddened by his passing after seeing him just two days ago:
"I'm sadder than I can say that Stan has died, even though I know, from my recent phone conversations with him, that he was more than ready to leave this Earth. I'm so grateful that, by sheer circumstance, I got to spend a half hour or so with him this past Saturday, less than 48 hours before he passed away. At that time, it was obvious that he lacked much of the old Stan Lee energy that everybody had got to know at conventions and in movie cameos, but when I asked him about future cameos, he expressed a real interest in making them, if he could find a way to do it without there being too much trouble. He asked me about Dann [wife of Thomas] and all the animals on our place (Dann had, at his request, sent him a DVD we made for him a couple of years ago), and got fairly animated when talking about his battles with publisher Martin Goodman over doing Spider-Man. I opined as how maybe the one important creative decision Goodman ever made was when he commissioned Stan to create a super-hero group back in 1961. Stan seemed to get a kick out of that. He posed for a couple of pictures with me, and then the last one with me and my friend and manager John Cimino, who had worked (in concert with Stan's buddy and handler Jon Bolerjack) to arrange for Stan and me to get together one more time. But I wish I could look forward to seeing him and sparring around with him again. Still, I consider myself so very lucky to have known and worked with him for so many years...one of the most important mythmakers of the 20th century."