The comic writer Stan Lee, co-creator of iconic characters including Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Daredevil and the X-Men, has died aged 95.

Lee, who teamed up with artists such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, revitalised the comics industry with his superheroes, giving them complex emotional lives to colour their all-action adventures.

Stan Lee: 
If only I had kept it, and kept it in good condition. It would be the nearest I have ever had to a pension plan.

In February 1973, as a 10-year-old, I bought the first issue of the new UK edition of something called Spider-Man Comics Weekly for 5p from my local shop – and the addiction continued for a couple of years.

Previously, my comic of choice had been something called Whizzer and Chips. Now Spider-Man introduced me to a dark and disturbingly adult world of superheroism laced with depression, frustration and failure to get the girl. Peter Parker’s terrible life persuasively and seductively mimicked our own banal humiliations; his alter ego was therefore a compelling wish-fulfilment fantasy.

His inventor, Stan Lee (by 1973 he was the publisher and a commander-in-chief figure, no longer actually writing), composed cheerfully accessible “letters from the editor” to his fans and soon we were devoted to Hulk, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man and all the rest – and aware of Lee as an avuncular figure.

Marvel Comics is sometimes described as the “French New Wave” outfit to the blandly conventional “Hollywood studio” world of DC Comics, whose creations were more strait-laced: Lee introduced real superheroes with real problems and real vulnerabilities.