An extraordinary life - well told.

Terribly sad, but absolutely fascinating. His life was Shakespearean - he's a tragic character. Recommended.

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A fascinating listen and must read

This is a fascinating book and Riesman has done a great job of collecting various viewpoints, bits of opposing evidence and presenting them here in one place. For anyone that only follows the Marvel via the MCU I am sure that a lot of the bombshells dropped here will be a surprise and the polar opposite of what they have come to expect from Stan Lee, however it's very familiar territory for anyone who has followed comics or even read the wonderful 2012 book "Marvel Comics: The Untold Story" by Sean Howe (highly recommended follow-up reading if you have not!). Even as a teen in the 1990's I wondered why on earth each Marvel Comic had "Stan Lee Presents.." on the opening page when Lee was not included anywhere else in the credits; evidence enough that Lee was only happy to have his name against something he creatively had nothing to do with. It's staggering how many comics that Stan Lee see signed that had nothing to do with himself either, even on characters he didn't claim to create.

As a life-long Spider-Man fan I had previously heard a lot of the pieces that involve the creation and evolution of the web crawler. In 2007 Jonathan Ross made a UK documentary called 'In Search of Steve Ditko' (it often gets uploaded to YouTube) which highlights the battle of credit for who should be called creator and in his interview Stan Lee begrudgingly accepts Ditko's claim to be called co-creator however he immediately follows it up with that he considers whoever dreams up the idea to be the creator which was himself. Hmmm..

Blurred lines between writer and artist is nothing new either, Bill Finger only received the co-creator of Batman in 2015 from DC, prior to that Batman charlatan "Bob Kane" had the audacity to publicly claim credit for everything whereas in fact everything you know and love about Batman was created by Finger.

It's appropriate that Riesman notes that Stan Lee liked to be compared to the comics world version of Walt Disney as both men have a very public persona as a friendly, caring, creative genius and a darker business side; both Stan and Walt were pro-business and anti-worker rights, Walt was anti-union and handled himself extremely poorly throughout the animators strike, firing as discriminating against many including star animator Art Babbitt effectively tarnishing his career.

Anyone expecting this to be one prolonged attack on Lee will be happy to be proven wrong, Risemen walks the tightrope of narrative well, including both points of view when there is one and comes across fairly well balanced (to continue the analogy!). The details of Lee’s later life are heart-breaking as much as hearing about Jack Kirby being overlooked and you cannot help but have sympathy for all parties here. Even his prodigal and wily daughter JC.

Both Walt and Stan equally leave a shadow over their career, however their accomplishments cannot be, and in the case with this biography by Risemen is not, denigrated. Without Lee's imagination, his salesmanship, his persona you could easily argue that the media landscape would not be the same as it is today. Lee was not a perfect man, but no one ever is. Did I believe that the "Marvel Method" of comic book creation was purposefully used to obscure just how much those bullpen artists did in the early days of comics? Absolutely. Do I believe that Lee is responsible for less than he actually is? Absolutely. However that will never change the fact that the man is the co-creator of a universe beloved by many, a universe that sparked the imagination of kids and adults for decades, a universe that helped inspire many children to pick up a book and read, a universe that continues to dominate the TV screens (for good or bad) and entertain the world over. There will never be another Stan Lee.

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1 person found this helpful

Excelsior!

A great read that gets into all the controversy about the creation and ownership of the big Marvel characters, the different and often mitigating aspects of Stan’s life and ultimately - sad passing.

A worthy read about an interesting man.

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Too much for me

it's just all a little bit too much of an information dump for me.
No stone unturned.
It's so extensive in its research it's almost boring and massively depressing.
We need more mystery in our lives. To have just MASSIVE amounts of research, so extensively, on such a person is too much. It's just calls into question the validity of a person's entire existence. The way this book goes there is almost no point in having Stan even have been alive as EVERYTHING he ever did and said is contested.
Good on Abraham for putting in the effort and it's tremendous journalistic skills but aside from that it's just bitter, sad and pointless.
Just punching sand at this rate. Can't get absolutely anything else out of it.

Most people will probably love it but that's because people just love digging into every aspect of a person's life (especially one so fraught with controversy) until there is nothing more to go into. Folks love gossip. Especially some that can be backed up.

For me, personally, give me the brush strokes. I'll figure out the rest and make up my own mind. It's such a sad life to lead just needing to know every detail until your dying day.

In comparison to the "Marvel the untold story" for example, it's long as heck and very well researched also but it covers every aspect of Marvel's history so has to just gloss over certain aspects that really aren't important. It's only 3 hours longer than this Stan book. So that shows you how much extra stuff you don't need from this.

This is just my personal take, you may find it great but it's a no from me.

p.s. the performance from the narrator is very well done. Over the top from time to time but mostly great.

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A lot of drivel. Be warned

This book does say what it says in the title but my goodness there’s not a lot of good written about Stan Lee in this book. Sometimes I feel like the stories are just an excuse to bash him. However some arguments are very interesting. Nobody is perfect at all but I would have liked to have heard about some more of the good Stan did for comic books and super hero’s as a whole.

There’s a lot of fluff and stories which don’t seem to have any relevance to what the book should have focused on so a lot could have been cut and it still be the same book.

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