Stan Lee biography explores the complexity of Marvel icons: ‘Never holy nor Satan’

The comic book legend Stan Lee was one of the true titans of pop culture Marvel Cinematic Universe cameos confirming its status as a pillar of the Marvel universe. The man behind Spider man, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the X mans captivated the audience with countless interviews and cartoons drawn for fans who paid $ 50 (or more) and waited in line for hours to meet him.

I did exactly that in Wizard World New York in 2013 and felt a little weird when I saw the then 90-year-old legend’s hand tremble as he grabbed my copy of Amazing Spider-Man no. 96 signed. It was a flash of the vulnerable man behind a man I’ve worshiped as a hero since I started reading Spidey’s Adventures religiously at the age of nine.

In the years since the meeting, by Lee’s died in 2018, I read countless biographies and reports about him and Marvel’s early days trying to understand the real people behind the fictional universe. These stories have become almost as comfortable and familiar as the comics they have produced.

Then I read Abraham Riesman’s True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, which is coming to the shelves this week, and one early rule told me it would not be so comfortable.

“Stan Lee’s story is where objective truth is going to die,” he writes.

Instead of starting with the famous stories of Lee’s childhood in New York City in the Depression or his early days at Marvel, Riesman wastes little time referring to Lee’s alleged lies and exaggerations regarding his role in the creation. of characters, the legal problems facing his post. -Miracle businesses and the abuse of older people he suffered in the last months of his life.

This led to a very captivating and deeply uncomfortable reading, which is why I asked Riesman why he chose to open up the normal romance about the advent of Marvel Comics as we know it.

“When I started ‘Bang pow zoom’, comics are cool ‘- I mean, who cares? It seemed like the natural thing to do to situate the reader in Stan’s world with all its different facets,” he said. he said. told me via Zoom about his home in Providence, Rhode Island.

“Stan was not holy or Satan. He was a human, he was not a superhero. There are no superheroes.”

Riesman’s own Marvel origins began in the 1990s after picking up a copy of Megan Stine’s Marvel Super Heroes Guide Book, a mini-encyclopedia, to lure young readers to the worlds of Spidey and friends in elementary school book fair. The Marvel Action Hour, in which Lee teased episodes of Fantastic Four, Iron Man and Hulk cartoons, introduced him to the man himself.

The first real encounter took place in 1998 when Lee received his successful copy of Fantastic Four no. 47 (an early sign) signed Onmense story) during the Wizard World event in Rosemont, Illinois. Riesman’s biography contains a delightful retro photo of the encounter his mother took, but it does not capture a strange moment in its immediate aftermath.

“He looked at me, looked at my mother and said, ‘You immortalized me’ – a very strange thing to say to someone who will eventually become your biographer,” Riesman recalls.

The uncertainty behind who has created Marvel’s most iconic characters has long been a point of contention for comic book fans – the late artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko both claim Lee took more than his fair share of credit because he invented Fantastic Four and Spider-Man in particular. According to Riesman, we should not expect clear answers.

“I do not think there is a smoking gun that actually tells us who created the Marvel characters,” said Riesman, a journalist who writes for New York Magazine and Vulture. “And it’s really hard for people, because we want certainty. The human brain thrives on making judgments, but it’s a complicated, confused world.”

Part of the problem lies with the Marvel Method of comics, which Lee used with Kirby and Ditko in the 60s. He gives artists a rough storyline and lets them use their imagination to fill pages and panels with images of action and drama. Then Lee would return to write the dialogue based on what his collaborators had drawn.

This approach created great ambiguity about who exactly did what, in a time before we all started leaving digital paths. Kirby was especially confident when he demanded full credit for the creation of Marvel’s iconic characters, and Riesman explores this in his book.

“I think Stan and Jack were the only ones who knew … only two people are involved at the highest level in the creative process,” Riesman said of this pop culture mystery. “It was to some extent two men in a room, both dead and had no recordings or notes to substantiate their allegations.”

The Marvel Method also makes it difficult to use the comics to gain insight into Lee, as we do not know how much he contributed to individual problems and story arcs. Riesman chose to concentrate on the reality of life, rather after deep autobiographical revelations in the lives of Bruce Banner, Peter Parker or Reed Richards.

“I do not think you can learn as much from these comics as many people thought,” Riesman said. “I do not think it is nearly as important as looking at the hard facts of his life and impact.”

Ultimately, the author wants this biography to help people accept that ambiguity is ‘the order of the day’ when it comes to Lee or anyone else’s life.

“We really run the risk of making the world a worse place if we make real-life people superheroes, whether they be politicians, singers, actors or titans of the industry,” Riesman said. “Once you start putting people in those categories, you really separate yourself from reality. And sir, you know, we spend way too much time these days completely separated from reality.”

If there is one thing I have learned from diving into biographies like that of Riesman, it is that the people behind the legends are always more fascinating and complex than the stories they have told. If you obsessed with every detail in every movie or show of Marvel Cinematic Universe – and the people who came in many of them – you owe it to yourself to understand the highs and lows of the real stories that laid their foundation.