Stan Lee obituary: The genius of the superhero creator

In 1999, his Stan Lee Media venture, aimed at marrying comic-strips with the internet, went spectacularly wrong. Lee went bankrupt and his business partner landed in prison for fraud.

In 2001 though, he started a new company entitled POW! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment, which went on to develop films and TV programmes.

His half-century-year-old creations are still as enduring as ever – with X-Men, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Daredevil, Iron Man and the Avengers all given the Hollywood treatment.

Spider-Man was a huge box office hit, with the 2002 original and its 2004 sequel taking almost $1.6bn (£857m) in ticket sales around the world – before DVD and merchandise sales were counted.

More recently the three Captain America films, starring Chris Evans, took $2.24bn at the worldwide box office. Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man pulled in $2.4bn. Marvel’s appeal was unequivocal.

And fans also delighted in seeing Lee’s brief cameo appearances in almost every Marvel live-action movie.

Lee also enjoyed success with graphic novels. In 2012 he co-wrote Romeo and Juliet: The War which landed on The New York Times’ best-seller list and launched a YouTube channel, Stan Lee’s World of Heroes.

He introduced his digital graphic novel Stan Lee’s God Woke at the 2016 Comic-Con. The print version won the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards’ independent voice award.

In later years he lamented his deteriorating eyesight, which meant he could no longer read the comic books where he made his name.

He told the Radio Times, external in 2016 that he “missed reading 100%”.

And he also talked about what he considered to be the greatest superpower – luck.

He said: “Every time I go to a comic book convention, at least one fan will ask me, ‘What is the greatest superpower of all?’ I always say that luck is the greatest superpower, because if you have good luck then everything goes your way.”