Stan Lee was born in New York City in 1922. The son of Jewish immigrants of Romanian origin, his family had to deal with the economic crisis of interwar times and yes, at the time, young Stanley accepted a job for the Associated Press at 17 years writing obituaries of living people, a practice journalism to prevent information when someone dies (although it's macabre, there would surely be a few writings about Lee because of his lofty age).

Lee always wanted to write and saw in this job a good way to get started, as he recounted in an interview in 1992. However, she ended up "getting tired of writing as if she were dead about people who were still alive." A few months later she ended up entering Timely Comic, the future Marvel, then directed by Martin Goodman, husband of a cousin of the future co-creator of Spider-man. Lee later stated that "whoever has his obituary written before he died is because he has succeeded, and that he was glad to know that many media would surely have his own prepared." Humor, as we see, never lacked.