Stan Lee, the writer behind some of the world's best-known comic book characters including Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, Black Panther, the Avengers and the X-Men, has died aged 95.

Lee died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles on Monday (local time) , according to Kirk Schenck, an attorney for Lee's daughter, Joan Celia Lee.

Lee began his career in comics in 1939 as an office assistant at Timely Comics, which would later become Marvel Comics.

Working alongside artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Lee created dozens of well-known characters and helped bring about what is now known as Marvel's Silver Age.

Lee's creations have been made even more popular over the past decade with the release of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the highest-grossing film franchise of all time.

Its 20 films have grossed more than $US17.5 billion ($24.3 billion) at the box office.

This year's release of Avengers: Infinity War broke the record for the highest opening week, raking in $831 million worldwide.

Despite his fundamental contribution to Marvel's success, Lee's estate was reported to be worth only a fraction of what the company earned from his ideas.

He never received copyright ownership or royalty payments for his writing, although he was reportedly paid $1.3 million a year by Marvel.

His final years were also marked by a legal battle against his company POW! Entertainment and allegations of elder abuse.

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Finding success in flawed superheros

Stanley Martin Lieber was born in New York City on December 28, 1922, the first son of his Romanian immigrant parents.

In his autobiography Excelsior!, Lee wrote he read to escape from the dreariness and sadness of his home life and school during the Great Depression.

He also scribbled little illustrated stories to amuse himself.

"My mother use to say that if there was nothing to read, I'd read the labels on ketchup bottles, which I did," Lee wrote.

Lee poses at the premiere of Spider-Man 2 in Los Angeles in 2004. ( Reuters: Fred Prouser )

Stan Lee poses for a photograph taken in the late 1960s. ( Twitter: Stan Lee )

"In truth, one of my darkest secrets is that I've never been comfortable eating unless I'm also reading.

"One of my greatest childhood pleasures was to sit with my legs over the arms of an upholstered chair reading while I snacked on buttered crusts of rye bread."

Lee began his career at age 17 at Timely, where he churned out comics about whatever was popular with kids for two decades.

"If cowboy films were the rage we produced a lot of Westerns. If cops and robbers were in vogue we'd grind out a profusion of crime titles," Lee wrote in his 1997 book Origins of Marvel Comics.

"We simply gave the public what it wanted — or so we thought."

In the early 60s Lee, then head writer and editor, was considering quitting the industry when his wife Joan Lee pushed him to write characters he would actually want to read about.

"They'd be fallible and feisty, and — most important of all — inside their colourful, costumed booties they'd still have feet of clay," he wrote.

"I was utterly determined to have a superhero series without any secret identities.

"I knew for a fact that if I myself possessed a super power I'd never keep it secret. I'm too much of a show-off."

And so in November 1961 the world met The Fantastic Four — The Thing, Mr Fantastic, the Human Torch and Invisible Girl.

Lee said they knew the series was a hit when Marvel started receiving fan mail.

"It was one of the most exciting things to ever happen to us. We found out that there were actually real live readers out there."

Lee also created the Fantastic Four characters the Silver Surfer and Doctor Doom.

Sorry, this video has expired Fantastic Four actor Ioan Gruffudd speaks fondly of Stan Lee.

Actor Ioan Gruffudd, who starred as Mister Fantastic in the 2005 film adaptation of the popular comics and its 2007 sequel, remembered Lee as kind, generous and enthusiastic.

"He was thrilled to be part of our movie and see his creation come to light," Gruffudd said.

"He's left a legacy, he created these universes for people like myself who probably felt a little bit on the outskirts of society or felt a little bit nerdy or different or lacking in confidence.

"He created these universes that we could escape to and find strength and be taken on these amazing adventures."

The first edition of The Fantastic Four. ( Supplied: Marvel )

'With great power comes great responsibility'

The Fantastic Four was a success but Lee's greatest creation arguably came a year later; the first superhero with "everyday problems", Spider-Man.

Lee said he drew inspiration for the character from pulp magazine hero The Spider, who he loved as a child, but also wanted to have a teenager as the hero, not the sidekick.

Spider-Man was the first teenage superhero. ( Origins of Marvel Comics )

"He was probably the first superhero to wear his neuroses on his sleeve," Lee wrote in Origins of Marvel Comics.

"The poor guy is far more troubled than most of the characters he has to battle.

"How many other superheros are there who have to worry about their dear old Aunt May dying of a heart attack?"

Lee took the concept to his publisher, who thought it was crazy because people hated spiders.

But Lee could not shake the idea, so in August 1962 he published the character in the final issue of Marvel's series Amazing Fantasy.

The edition was a best seller, cementing Spidey's future in the comic world. The Amazing Spider-Man series launched the following year.

Six Spider-Man films, released between 2002 and 2017, have grossed more than $2.51 billion at the box office.

The 2017 film Spider-Man: Homecoming was the third attempt to reboot the comic on the silver screen. ( Supplied: CTMG )

Assembling the Avengers

Lee created a string of iconic characters that would go on to make up Earth's mightiest superheros — The Avengers.

In May 1962, The Incredible Hulk smashed his way onto the scene, inspired by the popularity of the Fantastic Four's The Thing.

Originally gamma rays turned scientist Bruce Banner into a grey Hulk, but the rippling monster was recoloured green in the second edition of the comic strip.

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The following year, another scientist made his Marvel debut in the Tales of Suspense series — millionaire bachelor Anthony "Tony" Stark, aka Iron Man.

The 2008 film Iron Man not only jumpstarted the Marvel Cinematic Universe but rebooted the acting career of Robert Downey Jr, who was Hollywood's highest-paid actor in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

The Iron Man films alone have grossed more than $1.3 billion.

In the comics, Iron Man and the Hulk team up with Thor, Ant-Man and the Wasp to defeat Thor's brother Loki.

Lee said he used Shakespeare and The Bible to craft the Norse god Thor's speech patterns as opposed to the incantations of the magician Doctor Strange, which he just made up.

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The comics of Doctor Strange developed a cult following among college students, who devoted term papers to the mystical hero's language and wrote to Lee asking him to confirm their conclusions.

"After they had done all that research, all that probing and digging, how could I tell them it wasn't so — I had made it all up?," Lee wrote in Origins of Marvel Comics.

Lee also created Marvel's first black superhero, the Black Panther, whose 2018 film raked in more than $1.3 billion worldwide as well as notable Avengers Black Widow, Hawkeye and SHIELD boss Nick Fury.

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Maybe they're born with it, maybe they're X-Men

Lee, in partnership with Jack Kirby, created the X-Men the same year the Avengers was released but the series' success would not kick off until about a decade later under different writers and artists.

The first comic in 1963 introduced a group of mutant students led by the telepathic Charles Xavier, who try to stop villain Magneto as he uses his magnetic powers for evil.

Lee said he originally wanted to call the series Mutants but his publisher told him no-one would know what a mutant was, so he picked X-Men because of their extra powers and leader's name, Professor X.

Mutant heroes Cyclops, Angel, Iceman, Beast and Professor X in the first X-Men comic.

In a 2002 interview, Lee said the idea for the heroes to be born with their powers was actually done out of "laziness".

"I was bored with cosmic rays and gamma rays and radioactivity and I was running out of things," Lee said.

"I figured what if they were just mutants, I don't have to explain anything. We know there are mutants in the world — there are mutant vegetables, trees, frogs.

"It was a cop-out."

The original X-Men series developed the heroes Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Angel and Jean Grey, as well as Magneto's sidekicks the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (who have also appeared in the Avengers universe).

But Lee and Kirby had too much on their plate so the series was dropped.

Other writers would shape the franchise into what it is today with the creation of iconic X-Men including Wolverine, Mystique and Deadpool.

The X-Men film franchise, which includes the main series, Wolverine and Deadpool films, has grossed more than $7 billion, making it one of the most successful film franchises of all time.

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Legacy, love and later years

Lee enlisted during World War II but never went overseas and was put to work writing instructional manuals and films.

After his time in the army, Lee met his wife Joan on the way to a date with another woman.

"There was one face I always drew, to me it was the ideal gorgeous looking girl's face," he told Web of Stories.

"I went up to this hat model place and somebody opened the door and I took one look at her and it was the face I had always been drawing, I couldn't believe it.

"It really was, on my part, love at first sight."

Joan died of complications from a stroke in July 2017 at age 95.

Stan Lee and wife Joan at an awards show in 2012. ( Reuters: Fred Prouser )

In his final years Lee battled a series of health problems and was declared legally blind in 2015 due to macular degeneration.

He also fought a number of legal battles, including against his company POW! Entertainment for the use of his name and likeness, and he was allegedly a victim of elder abuse, according to a 2018 expose by the Hollywood Reporter.

Stan Lee working in the 1950s at Timely Comics, which would go on to become Marvel Comics. ( Twitter: Stan Lee )

Lee told BBC4 he was most proud of his contribution to making comics a form of literary enjoyment for intelligent people as well as young children.

"When I got into the field, nobody but very young kids and illiterate adults were reading comics," he said in 2016.

"Parents didn't even like their children to read comics, they felt they were no good for them 'cause they were poorly written and most of the publishers said just give me action, action, action on every page.