For over 50 years, Stan Lee was the First Ambassador of Marvel, co-creating much of the universe and championing the characters and stories until his death in 2019. Yet, Stan Lee loved to act. Despite his many cameos over the years, his appearance on the forgotten Spider-Man: The New Animated Series was the darkest one.

Before he was the guy who popped up in every Marvel movie, Stan Lee was the voice of Marvel Comics. His first-ever cameo in live-action was in the 1980s TV movie The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, a blink-and-miss-it moment. Yet, for the suite of animated series on Saturday mornings in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stan Lee was the voice who introduced each episode to the members of the Merry Marvel Marching Society watching from home. While he never appeared on the iconic X-Men: The Animated Series, he voiced characters on The Fantastic Four and appeared as himself (in animation) on the original Spider-Man: The Animated Series. After cameoing in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man film, appearing on the new animated "sequel" meant the godfather of Marvel Comics was creating his own Stan-Verse very early. Rather than an affable and avuncular man, Stan Lee's character, Frank Elson, was both a disturbing figure and victim in his own right.

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Spider-Man: The New Animated Series Was More 'Adult' Than the Raimi Films

Most Spider-Man cartoons are aimed at young kids, meaning that the action and situations are never too intense. Spider-Man rarely throws punches on those shows. On Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, the Web-Head wasn't so friendly and neighborly. There were more than a few episodes were Spider-Man would get into fist fights, usually with villains enhanced in some way. Still, he treated regular-old human baddies pretty roughly, too. He was still Spider-Man, though. He always made the right choice, until the episode where Stan Lee cameoed. Playing a character named Frank Elson, Lee creepily urged Peter Parker to kill Kraven the Hunter after he killed Mary Jane.

Season 1's Episodes 12 and 13 encompassed the two-part finale "Mind Games." The very dark episode featured twins with mental powers, original creations for the show, who were able to make Spider-Man think Kraven the Hunter killed Mary Jane. They also mind-whammied Stan Lee's hapless character. Spidey eventually figures it out and, well, only he and Mary Jane walk away from it. Again, this series was not afraid to dive into darkness. Yet, hearing such awful words come out of a character's mouth and sounding like Stan Lee? That might be the most disturbing thing on the entire show. Interestingly, even though Frank Elson was also a victim of the psychic villains, Spider-Man treats him pretty harshly.

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Stan Lee's Cameos Are a Marvel Tradition, but He Probably Loved This One a Lot

Stan Lee And Thor Odinson In Thor Ragnarok

The first movie Stan Lee cameoed in was not a Marvel joint but rather Mallrats from director Kevin Smith, who went on to talk about how much he loved to act. In most of his MCU cameos or even the cameos on the cartoons, he says one or two lines and is generally as nice a character as Stan Lee was in real life. However, the Frank Elson character is sinister and a little scary. It may bother the Marvel fans who grew up with him to hear him saying such awful things, but it was probably a lot of fun for Stan Lee to play it. As someone who always championed these stories for adaptation into both live-action and animation, Stan Lee landing all these cameos is a great reward for carrying the Marvel torch for so long.

Stan Lee is gone now, but his cameos and characters live on. While it's nice to remember him like his appearance in Spider-Man 3, uplifting the characters and the audience, a turn as an almost-villain is a fun departure from a prolific Marvel guest star.

Spider-Man: The New Animated Series streams on Disney+ starting Oct. 18.