Every now and then, something comes along to completely change the face of popular culture for the better.

I’m talking about fictional creative writing combined with visual storytelling.

Comic books.

Containing the type of stories set in a world, not unlike our own, but just different enough to allow the fantastic to occur.

A great example of this is J R R Tolkien’s book, The Lord of the Rings.

Recently it was successfully adapted to a trilogy of movies by Peter Jackson, that truly brought fantasy to life with great emotion, power and scale.

Helping to foster within me an endless reserve of hope and optimism, which I feel is sorely needed in our ever changing world today.

Created with little more than a few good ideas, something that we all possess in varying degrees.

Any one of us can create a story, but within Marvel Comics - sometimes called the House of Ideas - there lies a volume of stories that have stood the test of time.

Stories that have themes which are still relevant today.

The best example of this is the theme of prejudice running through the X-Men titles.

When I was first introduced to comic books in the mid 1980’s I was what became known as, a Marvel Zombie, a fan whose first comic book preference was anything produced by Marvel Comics.

The Fantastic Four was born. These were four people who had gained fantastic superpowers through a scientific accident.

Reed Richards a brilliant scientist who gained a body that was entirely elastic. Susan Storm, the Invisible Woman who could disappear at will.

Her brother Johnny Storm, the Human Torch could ignite his body and fly, surrounded by flame. Benjamin J Grimm, The Thing gained the power of incredible strength but the massive body of a freakish monster.

I first read these stories; a few years after I started collecting, through reprints (many of which are still reprinted today).

Stan’s writing was explosive and you could feel his passion for his work on every page.

This gave Marvel comic books a raw edge over their competition.

What made it even more sweeter was that both Stan and Jack had had long careers previously, writing and drawing comic books.

Stan was on the verge of quitting the business altogether! Overnight success is always years in the making.

What also made these, and the other characters they created at the time, different from competitors comic books was that they acted like real people and had personal problems readers could relate to.

This was a total departure from the clean-cut superheroes of the past.

One of the members of the Fantastic Four, The Thing, was a human like monster with a body of brick who hated his new appearance but hid his torture with his mad sense of humour.

The seeds of the continuing battle of today’s two main publishers had been planted.

Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko repeated this formula of creating realistic superheroes, ordinary people gaining amazing powers, with even greater success.

Together, in 1962, they created Spider- Man and nothing was ever the same again.

History was made there and then.

Readers not only loved the idea that a radioactive spider gave him spider like powers, but that shy student Peter Parker only became a hero after being indirectly responsible for his uncle's death.

Guilt is a powerful motivator and the tagline went ‘with great power comes great responsibility’.

Daredevil was the alter ego of blind lawyer Matt Murdock who, with enhanced senses, clashed in the courtroom by day and defended justice in costume at night.

The X- Men were born as mutants and under the leadership of Professor Xavier fought to protect a world that hated and feared them.

The Avengers were described as Earths mightiest heroes and fought the threats the single hero could not.

Their membership boasted among others, Thor, Marvel’s version of the mythological Asgardian god, Iron Man, the millionaire playboy in his futuristic suit of armour that also served as his pacemaker.

Also, Captain America, a scientifically created super soldier of World War II who had been reborn in the present day after decades in suspended animation.

Each of these characters had their own colourful, rogue’s gallery, or villains to contend with, and these were equally strong individuals.

With Stan writing all those early titles, a new method of scripting comic books was created called the Marvel method.

He would give his artists a brief plot of the story and the artists would draw it their way.

When the art was finished Stan would add the dialogue afterwards.

This enabled a massive volume of comic books to be produced in a short time and thus satisfy the growing demand.

Pencillers such as John Romita Sr, the late John Buscema and Gene Colan helped define the distinctive look of Marvel with dynamic artwork.

The writing duties were starting to be shared by talented authors like Roy Thomas who took over many of Stan’s early titles.

Some artists broke the status quo and used new techniques and styles.

Among them were Jim Steranko who with Stan Lee crafted the adventures of spy, Nick Fury, an agent for a fictional organization called S.H.I.E.L.D. and Neal Adams, who drew the later issues of the X-Men comic book.

These two artists influenced a generation of comic book pencillers that came after them.

Stan forged a dialogue with the fans within the comic books and made the creators more accessible by giving them nicknames like Stan ‘The Man’ Lee, Jack ‘King’ Kirby and Jazzy John Romita.

He would add funny comments within the stories as a nod and a wink to the reader and his Stan’s Soapbox column was required reading where he’d sign the end of each article with the word Excelsior! Or Nuff said!

The beginning of each comic book would have a brief description of the character.

For example, 'They are students of Charles Xavier, MUTANTS - feared and hated by the world they have sworn to protect. These are the strangest heroes of all! These are the Uncanny X-Men!'

This was followed by the words ‘Stan Lee presents…’ which are still used to this day on all Marvel Comics in homage to the legendary creator.

There is no doubt that Stan’s guerrilla marketing skills helped Marvel become the dominant force in the superhero comic book industry.

Many of Marvel Comics’ most popular main and supporting characters were created during this period, including T’Challa the Black Panther, who first appeared in the pages of the Fantastic Four and The Inhumans.