Stan Lee is and always will be a cultural legend. Even though Lee was very proud to see movies like "X-Men," Marvel's most important box office hit ever, bring his creations to life faithfully on screen, he was a champion of comic books until his dying day. Without Lee, it's entirely possible that superheroes, broadly speaking, might never have achieved mainstream respect in the way they have it now. Be that as it may, there was a time when even Marvel's Stan Lee was embarrassed to be a comic book writer. That may be difficult to fathom, but when Lee started working in the medium as a young man, mainstream comics weren't what they are today.