Source: Wikimedia Commons
This article originally ran in a May 2012 edition of the Star-Tribune. In light of Stan Lee’s death Monday, we are re-publishing the article.
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Lee challenged the image of the prototypical superhero by giving his characters humanistic flaws. He created the serialized comic, stories continuing from one issue to the next. His characters once again appear in theaters Friday with the U.S. debut of the Marvel film “The Avengers.”
And it is the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center in Laramie that houses his archives: 118 boxes of working drafts, photos, video, articles and fan mail.
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Once the American Heritage Center landed the collections of a few people in the entertainment industry, it became appealing to others who wanted their scripts and drafts preserved for posterity.
That’s how the center got Stan Lee.
In a January interview with the Wall Street Journal, Lee said: “I have this little archive at the University of Wyoming. You may wonder why I picked that university, but when they asked if I would archive my material there, they said that Jack Benny, he had his archive there, and I was a big fan of Jack Benny’s and I figured if he’s there I want to be there.”
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
