Marvel's Stan Lee is virtually unrivaled as a comic book creator, but did he have a counterpart at the rival company DC? The "distinguished competition" as Marvel calls the company is known for being home to such superhero mainstays as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and many more. However, DC was not shaped primarily by one person in the same way as Marvel and Stan Lee - but that doesn't mean there were important figureheads that worked at the company and molded it into the publishing powerhouse it is today. In point of fact, there were two such people.
Beginning in 1961, Stan Lee's comic ideas at the time were unheard of. Superheroes with no secret identities that were treated like celebrities (the Fantastic Four), an arms manufacturer who saw the errors of his ways (Iron Man), and a teenage superhero who was the main character rather than the sidekick (Spider-Man). These heroes battled so-called "regular" problems as often as they fought supervillains - Peter Parker struggled to pay rent, Reed Richards and Susan Storm had difficulties in their marriage, etc. DC's heroes were mostly created by different writers and as such didn't have a unified creative vision like Marvel's, so it fell to two writer/editors to break new ground: Julius Schwartz and Gardner Fox.
Gardner Fox was a longtime editor at DC Comics, and oversaw the company's flagship books, especially Superman and Batman. It was Fox's idea to retool Batman in the mid-60s and steer him away from the Silver Age silliness that defined the character and eventually the Adam West Batman television show. He also spearheaded the idea of a new superhero team-up book. The Justice Society had first appeared in All-Star Comics #3 in 1941, including Hourman, Doctor Fate, the Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, Hawkman, and others. The updated group would eventually become the Justice League of America.
Julius Schwartz would influence the company in another way - by introducing the concept of legacy characters. In 1956, Schwartz revived popular brands like the Flash and Green Lantern, but bestowed the titles to new characters. Barry Allen was a forensic chemist who was struck by lightning and bathed in chemicals that allowed him to run at superhuman speeds; Hal Jordan was a test pilot who encountered an alien member of the Green Lantern Corps and was granted a ring, giving himself the powers of a Green Lantern. The reimagining of two of DC's major heroes into science-fiction icons brought the Flash and Green Lantern brands back into popularity.
Overall, while Stan Lee's ideas on the page were entirely new and imminently noticeable, Gardner Fox and Julius Schwartz made just as profound an impact. Neither man will be remembered for their individual characters or storylines. But with their work behind the scenes, they are just as influential to DC as Stan Lee was to Marvel Comics.