RIP, Joan Lee

Joan Lee, the wife of long-time Marvel Comics editor Stan Lee, has died at 93, according to an obituary published by THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.

Joan Lee, 93, in some versions of the story, encouraged Stan to try different comics ideas in the early 1960s, when Marvel began creating its line of super heroes.

By other accounts, Joan Lee was an influence in different ways.

Writer Gerry Conway, in Sean Howe’s book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, described why it made sense to kill of Peter Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy in a 1973 story.

“Only a damaged person would end up like a damaged guy like Peter Parker,” Conway told Howe. “And Gwen Stacy was perfect! It was basically Stan fulfilling Stan’s own fantasy. Stan married a woman who was pretty much a babe — Joan Lee was a very attractive blond who was obviously Stan’s ideal female. And I think Gwen was simply Stan was replicating his wife.”

A more detailed examination of all that is best left to another time. For now, here’s a sequence from a 1971 Daredevil comic by Conway, Gene Colan and Tom Palmer. Not only did Stan Lee make a cameo, but so did Joan Lee.

 

Cameo by Stan Lee and Joan Lee in Daredevil 79 (1971).

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