Stan Lee, the former president of Marvel Comics and creator of Spiderman, has revealed his eyesight has become so bad he can no longer read.

The 93-year-old - who co-created the likes of the webbed superhero, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and X-Men during his long-standing stellar career with Marvel - says he is not blind, but reading is no longer possible.

'My eyesight has gotten terrible and I can't read comic books anymore,' Lee said in a new interview with the Radio Times.

Losing his superpowers: Marvel Comics genius Stan Lee - seen here in Hollywood in 2000 - has revealed he can no longer read in a new interview

Lee continued: 'The print is too small. Not only a comic book, but I can't read the newspaper or a novel or anything. I can't even read a script.

'I come up with ideas for stories and somebody writes an outline for me – but I can't read it.

'I have to hope it's good. If something is very important, they print it in very big type for me to read – but that's all I can do. I have the same trouble with hearing. It's awful to feel a thousand years old.'

Lee described losing his eyesight as his 'biggest miss in the world'.

'I miss reading 100 per cent,' he told the magazine.

However depsite his ailments, Lee remains optimistic and his thankful for his legacy - an incredible catalogue of superheroes and supernaturally gifted characters and stories.

'I always say that luck is the greatest superpower, because if you have good luck, everything goes your way,' he said.

Stan Lee attends the Spider-Man 2 premiere in Los Angeles in 2004. Lee said this week that while he is not blind, he can no longer read his comic books, or anything at all

Stan is responsible for teenage favourites such as Iron Man, X-Men, The Incredible Hulk and his favourite, Spider-Man

Lee has been known for his outspoken nature and has long defended comic books against claims they are too violent for young children.

He said that much of the graphic content of yesteryear had been softened in recent times, with the focus shifted to the dialogue.

'I can’t read a comic book. The print is too small,' Lee said in an interview this week

'When I first got into the business, my publisher would say to me, ''Stan, don't waste time worrying about characterization and philosophy; just give me lots of action'',' he said.

'It's a whole different story today.'

Lee also revealed how he once ashamed to be a comic book author, despite his early successes.

'When I was young, I was embarrassed to tell people that I wrote comic books,' he said.

'I even changed my name because people hated them so much. My name used to be Stanley Martin Lieber.

'I was saving it for the great American novel, which I never wrote.'

In 2012, while stepping out to support The Avengers - arguably Marvel's most lucrative creation - Lee spoke of his upset at some of the ways his characters had been translated to the silver screen.

'I would have liked the Hulk to be smaller in the first two movies, and I didn't like the way Doctor Doom was portrayed in Fantastic Four,' he told Blastr at the time.

'Now with Daredevil, they just wrote the whole thing wrong. They made him too tragic.

'That's not the way I wrote him. I think they're working on a new Daredevil movie and it will be better, so hold your judgment until then.'

The original Daredevil movie Lee spoke of starred Ben Affleck and was critically panned upon its release in 2003, while a reboot made for Netflix received much acclaim last year.