Stan Lee will always be best remembered as the writer who created many of Marvel's most famous heroes and villains, but it recent years, he's been branching off beyond the House of Ideas. His new projects have ranged from creating the Indian hero Chakra the Invincible to helping make he British series Lucky Man. Now with San Diego Comic-Con almost ready to kick off, it's been announced that Lee already has another superhero project called Nitron in development, which will have a big future on both the big screen and other forms of media.
Stan Lee's Nitron will revolve around a "highly intelligent and advanced" alien species known as the Nitronians, who are living secretly among humans on present day Earth. According to Variety, Lee is working on this project with documentarian Keya Morgan and film producer Michael Benaroya. As with most superhero stories, Nitron will start out as a comic book series, but it will eventually expand to film, TV and digital adaptations thanks to Beyanora Films' financing, which has already set up $50 million to start with development and production. Lee, Morgan and Benaroya are all co-writing the initial Nitron comic book, which will be released by Benaroya Publishing in January as a six-volume series and will then be published monthly.
In a world where Marvel and DC dominate the majority of superhero media, it's always refreshing to see characters from other sources getting opportunities to shine not just on the printed page, but in other media as well. It wasn't disclosed when we might see the Nitron movie and TV adaptations, but presumably they want to make sure the comic book gets off to a good start before they start tackling the other versions. At the very least, the Nitron premise sounds intriguing, though it remains to be seen whether the series will follow multiple members of this alien species or if there will be one leading character distinguishing themselves from the bunch. I'm guessing the latter.
Despite being well into his 90s, Stan Lee has remained remarkably active. Not only is he still working on various projects, but he's still cameoing in most Marvel films, adding his own brand of charm for those brief seconds moviegoers see him pop up. He has had to ease up in recent years when it comes to public appearances, but it's good to see that he's still creating comic book characters for fans to enjoy in the years to come. Who knows, maybe this Nitron story will lead to other heroes spinning off into their own series, but one step at a time.
Stay tuned to Cinema Blend for the latest developments surrounding Stan Lee's superhero endeavors (whether they're Marvel-related or elsewhere) and Nitron's eventual movie and TV appearances.
