Next Club Meeting:October 17, 2026,at the Fountaindale Public Library in Bolingbrook from 11:00 am - 5:00 pm
The Animatrix Network is an anime & manga fan club located in the Southwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. We usually meet on the third Saturday of each month (except when holidays or conventions coincide). The meetings are free and open to the public. Join us for a day filled with anime.
This site provides news, reviews, commentaries, and previews of the world of anime and everything it inspires in today's pop culture, such as live-action films, comics, music, art, and other weird things to enjoy and contemplate.
Katsuhiro Otomo, the legendary creator behind Akira, is officially returning to the anime industry after more than 12 years with the launch of a brand-new animation studio called Oval Gear. Otomo remains one of the most influential figures in anime and manga history after creating the groundbreaking Akira manga and directing its iconic anime film adaptation, which helped shape modern cyberpunk storytelling worldwide.
The newly announced studio has already sparked major excitement among fans because its branding heavily references Orbital Era, the long-awaited anime project Otomo originally announced years ago. Many viewers now believe the film could finally move forward under Oval Gear with Otomo directly leading the creative process while building a new generation of anime talent around him.
According to the studio’s official statements, Oval Gear was created not only to produce new animation projects but also to preserve and pass down Otomo’s artistic philosophy and visual storytelling style to future creators. The studio is already recruiting production staff and freelancers, signaling a major new chapter for one of anime’s most respected creators. Humans waited over a decade for this man to return, and the anime world instantly reacted like a dormant volcano waking up. Completely justified, honestly.
Akira Toriyama first achieved
mainstream recognition for creating the popular manga series Dr. Slump,
before going on to create Dragon Ball (his most notable work) and acting
as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon
Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon. Toriyama is
regarded as one of the authors who changed the history of manga, as his works
are highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many
manga artists cite as a source of inspiration.
According to sources close to
Toriyama, he planned to undergo surgery for a brain tumor in February 2024. On
March 1, 2024, Toriyama died from acute subdural hematoma, at the age of 68.
His funeral was held privately with only his family as attendees. His death was
announced by his production company Bird Studio one week later on March 8.
Tributes to Toriyama were given by One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda and
video game designer Yuji Horii, who worked with Toriyama on Dragon Quest.
Akira Toriyama was born in the city
of Kiyosu, Aichi prefecture, Japan. He drew pictures from a young age, mainly
of the animals and vehicles that he was also fond of. He related being blown
away after seeing One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), and said he was
drawn deeper into the world of illustration by hoping to draw pictures that
good. He was shocked again in elementary school when he saw the manga
collection of a classmate's older brother, and again when he saw a television
set for the first time at a neighbor's house. He cited Osamu Tezuka's Astro
Boy (1952–1968) as the original source for his interest in manga. Toriyama
has recalled that when he was in elementary school all of his classmates drew
imitating anime and manga, as a result of not having many forms of
entertainment. He believes that he began to advance above everyone else when he
started drawing pictures of his friends. Despite being engrossed with manga in
elementary school, Toriyama said he took a break from it in middle school,
probably because he became more interested in films and TV shows. When asked if
he had any formative experiences with tokusatsu entertainment, Toriyama
said he enjoyed the Ultraman TV show and Gamera series of kaiju
films.
Toriyama said it was a
"no-brainer" that he would attend a high school focused on creative
design, but admitted he was more interested in having fun with friends.
Although he still did not read much manga, he would draw one himself every once
in a while. Despite his parents' strong opposition, Toriyama was confident
about going into the work force upon graduation instead of continuing his
education. He worked at an advertising agency in Nagoya designing posters for
three years. Although Toriyama said he adapted to the job quickly, he admitted
that he was often late because he was not a "morning person" and
often got reprimanded for dressing casually, until he got sick of the
environment and quit.
Needing money after quitting his job
at the age of 23, Toriyama entered the manga industry by submitting a work to
an amateur contest in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine, which he had
randomly picked up in a coffee shop. The timing did not line up for that
contest, but another shōnen magazine, Weekly Shōnen Jump, accepted
submissions for their Newcomer Award every month. Kazuhiko Torishima, who would
become his editor, read and enjoyed Toriyama's manga, but it was not eligible
to compete because it was a parody of Star Wars instead of an original
work. Torishima sent the artist a telegram and encouraged him to keep drawing
and sending him manga. This resulted in Wonder Island, which became
Toriyama's first published work when it was published in Weekly Shōnen Jump
in 1978. It finished last place in the readers survey. Toriyama later said that
he had planned to quit manga after getting paid, but because Wonder Island 2
(1978) was also a "flop," his stubbornness would not let him and he
continued to draw failed stories for a year; claiming around 500 pages' worth,
including the published Today's Highlight Island (1979). He said he
learned a lot during this year and even had some fun. When Torishima told him
to draw a female lead character, Toriyama hesitantly created 1979's Tomato
the Cutesy Gumshoe, which had some success. Feeling encouraged, he decided
to draw another female lead and created Dr. Slump.
Torishima suggested that, as
Toriyama enjoyed kung fu films, he should create a kung fu shōnen manga.
This led to the two-part Dragon Boy, published in the August and October
1983 issues of Fresh Jump. It follows a boy, adept at martial arts, who
escorts a princess on a journey back to her home country. Dragon Boy was
well-received and evolved to become the serial Dragon Ball in 1984. But
before that, The Adventure of Tongpoo was published in Weekly Shōnen
Jump's 52nd issue of 1983 and also contained elements that would be
included in Dragon Ball.
Manga critic Jason Thompson declared
Toriyama's art influential, saying that his "extremely personal and
recognizable style" was a reason for Dragon Ball's popularity. He
points out that the popular shōnen manga of the late 1980s and early
1990s had "manly" heroes, such as City Hunter and Fist of
the North Star, whereas Dragon Ball starred the cartoonish and small
Goku, thus starting a trend that Thompson says continues to this day. Toriyama
himself said he went against the normal convention that the strongest
characters should be the largest in terms of physical size, designing many of
the series' most powerful characters with small statures. Thompson concluded
his analysis by saying that only Akira Toriyama drew like this at the time and
that Dragon Ball is "an action manga drawn by a gag manga
artist." James S. Yadao, author of The Rough Guide to Manga, points
out that an art shift does occur in the series, as the characters gradually
"lose the rounded, innocent look that [Toriyama] established in Dr.
Slump and gain sharper angles that leap off the page with their energy and
intensity."
Thompson stated in 2011 that "Dragon
Ball is by far the most influential shonen manga of the last 30 years, and
today, almost every Shōnen Jump artist lists it as one of their
favorites and lifts from it in various ways." David Brothers of
ComicsAlliance wrote that: "Like Osamu Tezuka and Jack Kirby before him,
Toriyama created a story with his own two hands that seeped deep into the
hearts of his readers, creating a love for both the cast and the medium at the
same time." In a rare 2013 interview, commenting on Dragon Ball's
global success, Toriyama admitted, "Frankly, I don't quite understand why
it happened. While the manga was being serialized, the only thing I wanted as I
kept drawing was to make Japanese boys happy." He had previously stated in
2010, "The truth is, I didn't like being a manga artist very much. It
wasn't until relatively recently that I realized it's a wonderful job."
Many artists have named Toriyama and Dragon Ball as influences,
including One Piece author Eiichiro Oda, Naruto creator Masashi
Kishimoto, Fairy Tail and Rave author Hiro Mashima, Boruto:
Naruto Next Generations illustrator Mikio Ikemoto, Venus Versus Virus
author Atsushi Suzumi, Bleach creator Tite Kubo, Black Cat author
Kentaro Yabuki, and Mr. Fullswing author Shinya Suzuki. German comic
book artist Hans Steinbach was strongly influenced by Toriyama, and Thai
cartoonist Wisut Ponnimit cited Toriyama as one of his favorite cartoonists.
Ian Jones-Quartey, a producer of the American animated series Steven
Universe, is a fan of both Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, and
uses Toriyama's vehicle designs as reference for his own. He also stated that
"We're all big Toriyama fans on [Steven Universe], which kind of
shows a bit." French director Pierre Perifel cited Toriyama and Dragon
Ball as influences on his DreamWorks Animation film The Bad Guys.
In 2008, Oricon conducted a poll of
people's favorite manga artists, with Toriyama coming in second, behind only Nana
author Ai Yazawa. He was number one among male respondents and among those over
30 years of age. They held a poll on the Mangaka that Changed the History of
Manga in 2010, mangaka being the Japanese word for a manga artist.
Toriyama came in second, after only Osamu Tezuka, due to his works being highly
influential and popular worldwide. Toriyama won the Special 40th Anniversary
Festival Award at the 2013 Angoulême International Comics Festival, honoring
his years in cartooning. He actually received the most votes for the festival's
Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême award that year, though the selection
committee chose Willem as the recipient. In a 2014 NTT Docomo poll for the manga
artist that best represents Japan, Toriyama came in third place. That same
year, entomologist Enio B. Cano named a new species of beetle, Ogyges
toriyamai, after Toriyama, and another, Ogyges mutenroshii, after
the Dragon Ball character Muten Roshi. Toriyama was decorated a Chevalier
or "Knight" of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French
government on May 30, 2019 for his contributions to the arts. He was also a
2019 nominee for entry into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame. Toriyama will be
honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2024 Tokyo Anime Awards
Festival. Due to his video game design work, IGN named Toriyama number 74 on
their list of the Top 100 Game Creators of All Time.
News of Toriyama's death caused an outpouring of grief among admirers of his works, who took to social media to express their condolences and celebrate his legacy.
LEIJI MATSUMOTO (January 25, 1938 - February 13, 2023) Famed Japanese manga and anime creator Leiji Matsumoto, whose real name was Akira Matsumoto, has died at age 85
Leiji Matsumoto was famous for his space operas such as Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999.
His style was characterized by mythological and often tragic storylines
with strong moral themes, noble heroes, feminine heroines, and a love
of strange worlds and melancholy atmosphere.
Leiji Matsumoto was born on January 25, 1938, in Kurume, Fukuoka. He was the middle child of a family of seven brothers, and, in his early childhood, Matsumoto was given a 35mm film projector by his father, and watched American cartoons during the Pacific War. During this time, he gained an interest in science fiction novels by authors Unno Juza and H. G. Wells. Matsumoto started drawing at the age of six, and began drawing manga three years later after seeing the works of Osamu Tezuka. At 18, he moved to Tokyo, to become a manga artist.
Matsumoto made his debut under his real name, Akira Matsumoto, in 1954 with Mitsubachi no bōken in the magazine Manga Shōnen.
Matsumoto had his big break with Otoko Oidon, a series that chronicled the life of a rōnin (a young man preparing for university entrance exams), in 1971. In 1972 he created the mature-themed dark comedy Western seinen series, Gun Frontier,
for Play Comic magazine, which ran from 1972 to 1975. Around the same
time he started a series of unconnected short stories set during World War II, Senjo Manga Series, which would eventually become popular under the title The Cockpit.
He was involved in Space Battleship Yamato (1974) and created the highly popular series Space Pirate Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999 (both 1977). In 1978, he was awarded the Shogakukan Manga Award for shōnen for Galaxy Express 999 and Senjo Manga Series. Animated versions of Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999 are set in the same universe, which spanned several spin offs and related series, most notably Queen Emeraldas and Queen Millennia.
Matsumoto supervised the creation of several music videos for the French house group Daft Punk, set to tracks from their album Discovery. These videos were issued end-to-end (making a full-length animated movie) on a DVD release titled Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem.
About two dozen bronze statues – each perhaps four feet tall – of characters and scenes from Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999 were erected in the downtown area of Tsuruga in 1999. Each statue includes a plaque at its base explaining the character and featuring Matsumoto's signature.
Matsumoto worked with Yoshinobu Nishizaki on Space Battleship Yamato (known outside Japan under various names, but most commonly as Star Blazers).
Matsumoto created a manga loosely based on the series, and the Yamato
makes cameo appearances (sans crew) in several of his works including
the Galaxy Express 999 manga.
A later work by Matsumoto called Great Yamato featuring an updated Yamato had to be renamed Great Galaxy due to legal issues with Nishizaki.
As of 2009, Matsumoto and Nishizaki were working on independent anime projects featuring the acclaimed Space Battleship Yamato, with the conditions that Matsumoto cannot use the name Yamato
or the plot or characters from the original, and Nishizaki cannot use
the conceptual art, character or ship designs of the original.
In August 2014, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his debut, Matsumoto launched the manga Captain Harlock ~Jigen Kōkai~ (Captain Harlock: Dimensional Voyage), illustrated by Kōichi Shimahoshi, in the pages of Akita Shoten's Champion Red magazine. Dimensional Voyage is a retelling of the original 1978 Space Pirate Captain Harlock manga. It had been licensed in the U.S. by Seven Seas.
Matsumoto was married to manga artist and Licca-chan creator Miyako Maki.
On November 15, 2019, Matsumoto suffered severe respiratory problems and collapsed during an event in Turin,
Italy, for the 40th-anniversary tour celebrating the Captain Harlock
anime adaptation. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition and
had a breathing tube inserted after he was admitted to the emergency
unit. However, he was considered to be out of danger two days later.
Matsumoto died of acute heart failure at a hospital in Tokyo on February 13, 2023, at the age of 85.
Sayonara, Mr. Leiji Matsumoto! You will be sorely missed.
Kentaro Miura (三浦 建太郎, Miura Kentarō) was a Japanese manga artist. He was best known for his acclaimed dark fantasy manga Berserk, which began serialization in 1989 and continued until his death. As of 2021, Berserk had more than 50 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. In 2002, Miura received the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.
Early life and education
Miura was born in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, in 1966. In 1976, at the early age of 10, he made his first manga, entitled Miuranger, which was published for his classmates in a school publication; the series ended up spanning 40 volumes. In 1977, Miura created his second manga, Ken e no michi (剣への道, The Way to the Sword), in which he used India ink for the first time. When he was in middle school in 1979, Miura's drawing techniques improved greatly as he started using professional drawing techniques.
While in high school in 1982, Miura enrolled in an artistic curriculum, where he and his classmates started publishing their works in school booklets. His first doujinshi was published in a magazine, with the help of friends, in the same year. At age 18, Miura worked as an assistant to George Morikawa, of Hajime no Ippo fame. Morikawa quickly acknowledged Miura's high artistic level and dismissed him, saying there was nothing he could teach that Miura did not already know.
Career In 1985, Miura applied for the entrance examination to the art college of Nihon University. He submitted his project Futanabi for examination and was granted admission. The project later earned him a nomination as Best New Author in Weekly Shōnen Magazine. Miura's first serialized work, Noa, was published in the magazine, but it was not successful. In 1988, while working for Buronson on a project titled Orō (王狼, lit. "King of Wolves"), Miura published a prototype of Berserk in Hakusensha's Gekkan ComiComi. This 48-page prototype placed second at the 7th ComiComi's Manga-School prize. The full serialization of Berserk, ultimately Miura's most famous and successful work, began in Hakusensha's Monthly Animal House in 1989. In 1990, a prequel to Ōrō entitled Ōrō Den (王狼伝, The Legend of the Wolf King) was published in the magazine. In 1992, Monthly Animal House was renamed Young Animal, where Berserk continued serialization. In the same year, Miura collaborated with Buronson on Japan, also published in Young Animal.
In 1997, Miura supervised the production of a 25-episode anime adaptation of Berserk produced by OLM, Inc., which aired in the same year on NTV. He also supervised the 1999 Dreamcast video game Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage. In 2002, Miura received second place in the annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for the series. Starting in 2006, Berserk went on frequent and often extended hiatuses, alternating between monthly and irregular serialization. As of 2018, the series has been collected in 40 tankōbon volumes, and as of May 2021 it had more than 50 million copies in worldwide circulation, including digital versions. The series also spawned a host of merchandise, both official and fan-made, ranging from statues, action figures to key rings, video games, and a trading card game. Various art books and supplemental materials by Miura based on Berserk were also released.
In 2013, Miura released the short standalone manga Gigantomakhia, released into English-speaking territories as Giganto Maxia by the publisher Dark Horse in 2016. Duranki, a short manga produced by Miura's personal manga studio Studio Gaga, was serialized in Young Animal Zero in 2019.
Death On May 20, 2021, Hakusensha announced that Miura had died on May 6, 2021, due to an acute aortic dissection. A private ceremony was held by his family. Various manga artists offered condolences, including George Morikawa, Hiro Mashima, Rei Hiroe, Hebi-Zou, Ken Akamatsu, Chica Umino, Makoto Yukimura and Atsushi Ohkubo. Susumu Hirasawa, composer for the 1997 television anime adaptation of Berserk, and singer Yoshino Nanjō also offered condolences. Thousands of online players gathered together in Final Fantasy XIV to mourn Miura, with many playing as the Dark Knight class, which itself was heavily inspired by Berserk's protagonist.
Influences Miura stated that the work that had the biggest impact on his own is the manga series Fist of the North Star (1983 debut). In particular, Miura was influenced by Nagai's manga Violence Jack (1973 debut). Other influences cited by Miura include the Japanese fantasy novel series Guin Saga (1979 debut), Paul Verhoeven films, the Hellraiser series (1987 debut), shōjo manga works, Disney films, and the works of Hieronymous Bosch, M. C. Escher, Gustave Doré and Pieter Bruegel.
Legacy
Established as one of the best-selling manga of all time, Miura's series Berserk impacted the manga medium and beyond, with journalist Jade King stating: "[It] is difficult to overstate the tremendous impact his work has had on the world of games, manga, film, anime, and even literature." The image of Guts and his massive sword is attributed to inspiring characters like Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII and Dante from the Devil May Cry series, with the overall aesthetic of Berserk inspiring the monsters and world of the Dark Souls series.
[Source: Deadline] J. Michael Mendel, an Emmy-winning animation producer best known for his work on The Simpsons and Rick and Morty has died. He was 54.
Mendel began working on popular Adult Swim series Rick and Morty when it launched in 2013. The cable network released a statement Monday calling him the “heart” of the show’s production team.
“All of us at Adult Swim are devastated by the untimely passing of Mike Mendel,” the statement began. “Mike was the heart of the Rick and Morty production family, his fantastic talent and wit will be sorely missed.”
Rick and Morty on Adult Swim
“Mike was a universally respected Emmy-winning producer with over 25 years in the industry, who guided and supported a generation of artists, writers and creators and his absence will be felt by the entire community,” the statement continued. “Our deepest condolences go out to his family, friends and colleagues during this difficult time.”
Justin Roiland, co-creator of the series, shared a tribute on Twitter.
“My friend, partner, and line producer Mike Mendel passed away,” Roiland tweeted Monday. “I am devastated. My heart breaks for his family. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you by my side Mike. I’m destroyed.”
Mendel won four Emmys for his work on The Simpsons and Rick and Morty.
Lupin III manga creator Monkey Punch (real name: Kazuhiko Katō) passed away on April 11 due to pneumonia. He was 81.
Monkey Punch was born in Hamanaka, Hokkaido in 1937. He made his major debut with Playboy Nyūmon in Futabasha's Manga Story magazine in 1965. Lupin III then launched in Futabasha's Manga Action magazine in 1967. Due to the popularity of the series, the first Lupin III television anime adaptation premiered in 1971. The franchise has since inspired numerous television anime and films, as well as live-action works and games.
Beginning in the 1980s, Monkey Punch received honors such as Comic-Con International's Inkpot Award, Romics' Golden Romics, the Association of Media in Digital (AMD) Awards' Meritorious Service Award, and Tokyo Anime Award Festival's Meritorious Service Award. In recent years, Monkey Punch had been studying 3D art using CG, and he served as a guest lecturer for manga production at major universities.
The Lupin III franchise's newest anime film, Lupin the IIIrd: Mine Fujiko no Uso (Lupin the IIIrd: Fujiko Mine's Lie), will open in Japan on May 31
Kia Asamiya Launches Speope!! New Manga Series in March
[Source: AnimeNwsNetwork] Manga creator Kia Asamiya announced on his Twitter account on February 10 that he will launch a new manga titled Speope!! (Space Opera!!) in the May issue of Shonengahosha's Young King Ours magazine on March 30. The manga centers on the protagonist Opera Cat Rune and the protagonist's machine, the "Fragile," as they travel through space. At the same time, Kamon the Robot contemplates where it is from, where it is headed, and what it will become.
Manga centers on a space pilot and robot in a space opera adventure
Asamiya recently ended the Silent Möbius QD (Quadriga) manga last June. Asamiya launched the series in August 2013. Kodansha scheduled the fourth compiled volume for April 2018, but it has not yet shipped, and is now listed for release on June 20.
Viz Media published his Silent Möbius and Steam Detectives manga in North America, while CPM Manga published Nadesico, and DrMaster published Junk: Record of the Last Hero.
The cause of death was ALS, which Hillenburg revealed he had been diagnosed with in March of last year.
“We are incredibly saddened by the news that Steve Hillenburg has passed away following a battle with ALS,” Nickelodeon said in a statement. “He was a beloved friend and long-time creative partner to everyone at Nickelodeon, and our hearts go out to his entire family. Steve imbued ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ with a unique sense of humor and innocence that has brought joy to generations of kids and families everywhere. His utterly original characters and the world of Bikini Bottom will long stand as a reminder of the value of optimism, friendship and the limitless power of imagination.”
Hillenburg graduated from Humboldt State University in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in Natural Resource Planning and Interpretation, with an emphasis on marine resources. He then became a marine biology teacher at the Orange County Marine Institute (now the Ocean Institute) in Dana Point, California. This interest, combined with his artistic talent and love of the sea and its creatures, led him to write and illustrate stories as teaching tools with characters that would later become the denizens of SpongeBob’s home, Bikini Bottom.
He began his animation career in 1987, pursuing a degree in Experimental Animation at the California Institute of Arts in Valencia and earning his Master of Fine Arts in 1992.
That same year he won an award for Best Animated Concept at the Ottawa International Animation Festival for his animated short “Wormholes”, which went on to be shown at various international animation festivals. From 1993 to 1996 he would pursue work in television as a director and writer on Nickelodeon’s series “Rocko’s Modern Life.”
From there, he began to work full-time on writing producing, and directing on the animated series that would eventually become “SpongeBob SquarePants.” The first episode aired on Nickelodeon on May 1, 1999 and the series commenced its full run on July 17 of that year. The series has aired nearly 250 episodes to date. It appealed not only to children but older viewers as well, with college students even organizing viewing parties for the show.
The series has won both U.S. and British Emmy Awards, Annie Awards, and ASACP Awards and has been dubbed or subtitled in more than 60 languages, including Urdu, Azerbaijani and Maori.
Hillenburg also wrote, produced, and directed “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie,” which was released in 2004 and went on to gross over $140 million worldwide. Hillenburg then wrote the story for and was the executive producer of the sequel, “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water,” in 2015.
Hillenburg — or Steve as he was known to family, friends, and fans — was born August 21, 1961, at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma. After leaving the military, his father, Kelly N. Hillenburg, Jr., became a draftsman and designer for aerospace companies. His mother Nancy taught visually impaired students.
He is survived by his wife of 20 years Karen Hillenburg, son Clay, mother Nancy Hillenburg (nee Dufour) and brother Brian Kelly Hillenburg, his wife Isabel, and nieces Emma and Hazel.
In the hands of Benjamin Shine, a piece of tulle isn’t just for making fancy dresses and curtains. Using nothing but an iron, The British artist turns the fabric into amazingly realistic "paintings".
Shine sculpts, presses and pleats the huge single piece of tulle, whose transparent qualities give the portrait more texture and depth. By layering in this way, the artist obtains different tones and shadows that enable him to realistically depict everything from objects to portraits.
From Bergdorf Goodman and Givenchy to Sotheby’s — and across much of the internet — artist Benjamin Shine’s ethereal work with tulle has made him perhaps the foremost fabric sculptor in practice today. Meet with Shine in his studio to see, and try to understand, his process.
[Source: Yahoo!News] Stan Lee, the Marvel Comics godfather who helped create Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man and so many more “feet of clay” superheroes, characters that both reinvented the comic genre and formed the basis for the now-dominant motion-picture form, died Monday, according to TMZ and the Hollywood Reporter. He was 95.
In 2018, as the latest Marvel movie, Black Panther, was winning over audiences and critics, Lee canceled public appearances due to an irregular heartbeat and pneumonia. While he returned to the convention circuit a couple of months later, longtime friends and admirers, such as filmmaker/podcaster Kevin Smith, said they were no longer able to communicate with the comic legend, and a report said a battle over the control of Lee’s estate was underway.
Lee, Marvel’s longtime editor and publisher, was credited as an executive producer on nearly 150 films and TV shows based on Marvel titles, including the billion-dollar-grossing X-Men, Spider-Man, Avengers, and Iron Man franchises. Other productions bearing Lee’s name include the Wolverine, Captain America,Guardians of the Galaxy, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor and Doctor Strange films, as well as the Jessica Jones and Luke Cage series.
As of 2017, four of the world’s top 20 all-time box-office hits were based on characters co-created by Lee: The Avengers; Avengers: Age of Ultron; Iron Man 3 and Captain America: Civil War. Many more Marvel movies bearing Lee’s name, if not featuring one of Lee’s signature onscreen appearances, are in the pipeline. In 2018 alone, Lee appeared in Black Panther; Ant-Man and the Wasp; Avengers: Infinity War; and Venom. He will also appear in the untitled Avengers movie, due out in 2019.
“Stan’s impact on popular culture is immeasurable,” Tobey Maguire, star of the 2000s’ Spider-Man movies, once said at a Comic-Con event honoring Lee.
Hard as it was to sum up what Lee meant to what we watch, read and consume, the world kept trying. Lee was presented with the Producers Guild’s Vanguard Award, the National Medal of the Arts and a Disney Legends Award. At age 91, he was placed among Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas on Forbes’ annual ranking of the most influential celebrities.
Lee had an aw-shucks take on his career and legacy: “I’m just a guy who wrote comic books,” he would say.
Lee’s own origin story went like this: He was born Stanley Martin Lieber on Dec. 28, 1922, in New York City. In 1939, when he was 17, Martin Goodman, his cousin Jean’s husband, launched Timely Comics, the forerunner to Marvel. Goodman hired the young Lee to refill inkwells for Timely’s editing team, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, both already renowned for having created the star-spangled Captain America.
When Kirby and Simon left Marvel in 1941, Lee was transformed like Peter Parker was from nerdy high-schooler to Spider-Man: The former gofer was tapped to be Timely’s lead writer, art director and editor-in-chief. The latter title was something Lee, outside a break to serve in the Army during World War II, would hold until the 1970s.
In the 1950s, Timely, which morphed to Atlas, which morphed to Marvel, churned out monster, mystery and cowboy tales. Superheroes surfaced only occasionally. Marvel was on the ropes, and Lee was bored.
“Around 1960, I told my wife, ‘I can’t stand this anymore,'” Lee said. “…My wife said, ‘If you want to quit anyway, before you leave why not do a comic or two the way you want.'”
Around the same time, Lee would recall, Goodman told his editor he wanted a superhero team-up title, à la Justice League of America, a then-hot, new hit for rival DC Comics.
A year later, in 1961, the first issue of The Fantastic Four, co-created by Lee and Kirby, who’d returned to the Marvel fold, was published. The title was unlike anything comic-book fans had seen.
Where the JLA was an all-for-one collective of do-gooders, the Fantastic Four was a group of mutants who bickered.
“I changed the whole line around,” Lee would say. “New ways of [characters] talking, hangups, introspection and brooding.”
Lee’s vision for the superhero came down to this: “Inside their colorful, costumed booties they’d still have feet of clay,” he wrote in his book, Origin of Marvel Comics.
The thinking was revolutionary.
“The beauty of Stan Lee’s characters is that they were characters first and superheroes next,” Jeff Kline, a producer of animated series (Transformers Prime, Dragon Tales), once said. “They never just had superpowers.”
Hulk, Iron Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, Nick Fury, the Silver Surfer, Ant-Man and Black Panther were among the flawed heroes and antiheroes Lee and Kirby cranked out, one after the other, through the early 1960s.
“Lee and Kirby were the Lennon and McCartney of comics,” Dark Horse Comics founder Mike Richardson once told the Los Angeles Times.
With Steve Ditko, Lee co-created Spider-Man, the web-slinging outsider who would become, status-wise, Marvel’s equivalent of Superman. It was Lee who penned, in the very first Spider-Man adventure in Amazing Fantasy No. 15, the words that would famously be boiled down to, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Lee was front and center as Marvel rose like a rocket, and he became a star (complete with his own catchphrase, “Excelsior!”) to baby-boomer and Gen-X readers of the 1960s and 1970s.
In the 1960s, Hollywood began mining Marvel for fodder for children’s cartoons. As comics moved into the mainstream, Marvel heroes went primetime with the 1970s shows The Amazing Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk.
Lee’s characters had a tougher time transitioning to the big screen. While DC scored successes with the Christopher Reeve Superman franchise and the Tim Burton Batman movies, Spider-Man and his cohorts languished in development hell. For a time, the most famous Marvel movie was the one that never got released: the low-budget, Roger Corman-branded Fantastic Four. (Lee was not a producer on that fiasco.) In 1996, Marvel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Then, in 2000, X-Men opened in theaters, and everything changed. The bigger-than-expected hit spawned multiple spinoffs, including the Wolverine and Deadpool movies, and, along with the Sam Raimi Spider-Man that followed in 2002, sent Hollywood on a superhero binge from which it has yet to back away from.
Lee’s name not only appeared in the credits, but the man himself appeared onscreen, a cameo tradition that dated back at least to the 1989 TV-movie The Trial of the Incredible Hulk and will continue with the upcoming Wreck It Ralph sequel, Ralph Breaks the Internet, which open Nov. 21. His 2017 cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 teased that Lee’s omnipresence was due to his being one of the all-seeing Watchers — yet more characters created by Lee and Kirby.
Lee once joked his cameos were the reason the Marvel movies were so successful. “The cameo is very brief,” he said. “Somebody might miss it, you might’ve reached down for popcorn. If you missed a cameo, what do you do? You run to the box office and buy another ticket! So half of the money they’ve made is because of my cameos!”
In 2009, Disney bought Marvel Entertainment, and a price tag was essentially affixed to the characters, adventures and titles that originated at the Lee-era Marvel Comics: $4 billion.
Lee, who stepped down as Marvel publisher in the 1990s, kept a hand in the company as its chairman emeritus. Always a hustler, Lee founded the media company POW! Entertainment and starred in his own reality-TV series, Who Wants to Be a Superhero?.
In 2017, the man who’d left an imprint on so many literally left his prints at the TCL Chinese Theatre. The ceremony was held less than two weeks after Lee’s wife of 69 years, Joan Lee, died at the age of 95.
Lee grappled with claims of elder abuse, which were being investigated by Los Angeles police, in the past year. He was granted a temporary restraining order against a former business manager in June, following a bizarre series of events, including the disappearance of millions from his bank accounts and the sale of his blood to fans. However, he insisted just last month, “There really isn’t that much drama.”
Through it all, Lee showed no signs of slowing down or of losing the ability to spin a good story. Asked once which of his characters was his favorite, Lee answered as any proud parent would: “I love ’em all,” he said.
