Stan Lee, the mastermind behind Marvel comics died on Monday, November 12, at the age of 95.
The comic giant was taken by ambulance to Cedar’s Sinai Medical Center Monday morning where he later died.
Lee helped created some of the most iconic comic book heroes in history—such as Spider-Man, Iron Man and the X-Men. Many people are mourning his loss.
Power Comics in Conway said people are calling and coming in looking for anything Stan Lee related.
Even their Stan Lee Pop! figures immediately sold out online Monday. They’ve also had several people call looking for autographed items.
“I did have a little bit of a strange situation,” Steven Haines, an employee at Power Comics, said. “Where some people just kind of gravitated into the store, like they needed to be around comic books. So that’s kind of an interesting thing I haven’t seen before.”
Desiree Orticelli, a customer at Power Comics, has been reading comic books since she was a kid. She said she owes the start of that passion to Stan Lee.
“I saw the first X-Men movie, and I saw his cameo, and I was like okay I can get into this,” Orticelli said.
What started as some light reading evolved over the years to an appreciation much deeper. “What’s going on now with diversity in the world and you see the comic books that he brings out like X-Men where they’re persecuted for being different, being different races and stuff like that,” Orticelli said, “It’s good to read a comic based off what you’re going through.”
It’s not just comic book lovers that Lee touched; his creations became larger than life on the big screen. “I think that probably hits a little bit broader stroke than most people think it would,” Haines said.
“He’s the Walt Disney of our time.”
