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deanopeez's review against another edition
dark
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
sad
medium-paced
5.0
kiwisandher's review against another edition
4.5
Well-written, thoroughly researched and engaging. A difficult truth to face, especially the elder abuse, but fascinating. Stan Lee has this incredibly bright facade that hides such a tragic figure - he was a visionary, but in his ambition sacrificed everything that would have made his eventual success meaningful to him. The last quarter of the book is particularly tough to read as he is increasingly overwhelmed by people taking advantage of the success he should have been enjoying.
richtate's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
5.0
One of the strangest biographies I've ever read. It leaves you feeling like we all fell for the con man that was Stan Lee.
kitsuneheart's review against another edition
5.0
Meticulously researched and honest, giving us a Stan Lee that a lot of comics fans wouldn't really want to see.
Riesman makes sure to provide evidence to back up every one of his claims against Stan Lee's own claims regarding the creation of the Marvel universe. What we get is a man who was willing to take far more credit than was deserved, and able to throw his compatriots under the bus. And yet also charismatic enough to do both repeatedly. This is actually my first foray into any biography of Stan, so the whole thing was just astonishing, and is a reminder of how important marketing can be. Because Stan knew how to market himself, and was apparently far better at that than at actually creating. (Honestly, the last few years of Stan's creative life reminds me a lot of James Patterson. Just throwing things at the wall, depending on his name and the actual work of others to make his bonkers ideas stick.)
Riesman made something impressive. While I'm sure there's plenty out there that must hate this book for smearing the legacy of Stan, there's no significant instance of conjecture or unsupported statements. Even regarding the tenuous history of the creation of many of Marvel's greatest heroes, with Stan making claims and other artists making claims, Riesman points out so many instances of the same pattern of HOW Stan claimed ownership that it becomes impossible to believe that most, or even any, of the heroes are Stan's.
And yet, the ending is so melancholy that the reader's ire is completely dissipated. It's the end a lot of us fear: elder abuse, a fading mind, and loneliness. For a man to be so loved, and die in such abandonment, is tragic.
Advanced reader's copy provided by the publisher and the Hugo awards.
Riesman makes sure to provide evidence to back up every one of his claims against Stan Lee's own claims regarding the creation of the Marvel universe. What we get is a man who was willing to take far more credit than was deserved, and able to throw his compatriots under the bus. And yet also charismatic enough to do both repeatedly. This is actually my first foray into any biography of Stan, so the whole thing was just astonishing, and is a reminder of how important marketing can be. Because Stan knew how to market himself, and was apparently far better at that than at actually creating. (Honestly, the last few years of Stan's creative life reminds me a lot of James Patterson. Just throwing things at the wall, depending on his name and the actual work of others to make his bonkers ideas stick.)
Riesman made something impressive. While I'm sure there's plenty out there that must hate this book for smearing the legacy of Stan, there's no significant instance of conjecture or unsupported statements. Even regarding the tenuous history of the creation of many of Marvel's greatest heroes, with Stan making claims and other artists making claims, Riesman points out so many instances of the same pattern of HOW Stan claimed ownership that it becomes impossible to believe that most, or even any, of the heroes are Stan's.
And yet, the ending is so melancholy that the reader's ire is completely dissipated. It's the end a lot of us fear: elder abuse, a fading mind, and loneliness. For a man to be so loved, and die in such abandonment, is tragic.
Advanced reader's copy provided by the publisher and the Hugo awards.
alexrobinsonsupergenius's review against another edition
5.0
It’s hard not to see Stan Lee’s life as a kind of tragedy, in the original sense of a character who is visited by disasters stemming from own their personal flaws.
Lee was able to capitalize on his collaborations with Jack Kirby (and at times it seems less like a collaboration than Lee signing his name to Kirby’s work) to become famous—famous enough where he thought he could finally leave low-brow comic books behind and be a legitimate artist/celebrity. Post-Kirby he would spend the next 40 years desperately trying to make a creative splash only to be met by failure after failure. Even his famous MCU cameos were bittersweet since he’d been unsuccessfully trying to get Marvel properties turned into movies for decades but had no input in (and got no royalties from) the blockbuster franchise.
He spent the last decade surrounded by parasitic hangers on in the care of a daughter who despised him. Who says this isn’t the Marvel Age of happy endings?
Lee was able to capitalize on his collaborations with Jack Kirby (and at times it seems less like a collaboration than Lee signing his name to Kirby’s work) to become famous—famous enough where he thought he could finally leave low-brow comic books behind and be a legitimate artist/celebrity. Post-Kirby he would spend the next 40 years desperately trying to make a creative splash only to be met by failure after failure. Even his famous MCU cameos were bittersweet since he’d been unsuccessfully trying to get Marvel properties turned into movies for decades but had no input in (and got no royalties from) the blockbuster franchise.
He spent the last decade surrounded by parasitic hangers on in the care of a daughter who despised him. Who says this isn’t the Marvel Age of happy endings?
tylerlucas's review against another edition
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
A deep look behind the public eye of a man who accomplished so much - but wanted to be known for more. What are murmurs in the comic industry are shown to be fact and shatter any modern ‘True Believers” concept of Stan The Man.
jennagrace_m's review against another edition
4.0
As a Marvel comic and movie fan, this was an extremely interesting read. I appreciate that the author provides a critical, true look at Stan's life and character rather than just the usual hero worship.
dantastic's review against another edition
4.0
True Believer is as the subtitle indicates: the story of the rise and fall of Stan Lee.
I've been a comic fan for about 40 years now. I originally encountered Stan Lee as the narrator of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. In the years since, my opinion of him has evolved into thinking of him as a huckster used car salesman and glory thief. This book did nothing to enhance his reputation in my eyes.
The book chronicles the life and death of Stan Lee, from his birth as Stanley Lieber during the Great Depression to the sad shit show his life became after the death of his wife. People criticize Abraham Riesman's take on Stan Lee but I've read other books that paint him in a similar light so I don't really see why this book is getting the attention it does. Maybe because the Marvel movies are so huge and Stan's death is fairly recent?
Anyway, Riesman puts it all out there, every shitty thing that Stan has done, every lie that he's been caught in, from the possibility of getting Simon and Kirby fired from Captain America in the 1940s to hogging all the credit for the creation of the modern Marvel universe in 1961 to being a millionaire who couldn't be bothered to help out his brother Larry Lieber at all during his lifetime.
Maybe some people are panning this book because it destroys the myth of Stan Lee being a jolly grandpa that loves comics. There are a lot of similarities between Stan Lee and Vince McMahon. Both of them achieved their greatest successes when attached to the best talents of their generation and coasted on their reputations and promotional skills the rest of the time. Both of them claim to be self made but each of them were given a leg up by their relatives. Both of them don't actually seem to like the business they're in and would rather be making movies.
In the Wizard of Oz, the Wizard is also called Professor Marvel. I find this amusing because that's who Stan Lee wound up reminding me of the most. Behind the Stan Lee public curtain, there's a hack writer named Stanley Lieber who toiled in obscurity for twenty years before he had the opportunity of a lifetime dropped into his lap. When that opportunity came, he squeezed the shit out of it for the next 50+ years.
The last section of the book was a sad grotesque shit show of manipulation, fraud, and elder abuse. Was it karma for the way he treated Kirby, Ditko, and the others? If it was, karma is a real mother fucker.
If you already dislike Stan Lee, this book adds plenty of fuel to the fire. It probably would feel like a personal attack if you think he's some kind of creative genius. I think he was a great self promoter but I don't know if he had much creative talent. I have to think if he did, he wouldn't have spent 2o years toiling for Martin Goodman writing mediocre material. If you have Jack Kirby writing and drawing six books a month and all you have to do is script them, it has to be hard to fuck up something like that. It's telling that he was never again able to catch lightning in a bottle after he no longer had Kirby and Ditko at his disposal. The fact that he avoided giving them even a little credit at times speaks volumes about his character.
I'm giving this four stars. It was a powerful, eye opening read but I can't exactly say I enjoyed reading it.
I've been a comic fan for about 40 years now. I originally encountered Stan Lee as the narrator of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. In the years since, my opinion of him has evolved into thinking of him as a huckster used car salesman and glory thief. This book did nothing to enhance his reputation in my eyes.
The book chronicles the life and death of Stan Lee, from his birth as Stanley Lieber during the Great Depression to the sad shit show his life became after the death of his wife. People criticize Abraham Riesman's take on Stan Lee but I've read other books that paint him in a similar light so I don't really see why this book is getting the attention it does. Maybe because the Marvel movies are so huge and Stan's death is fairly recent?
Anyway, Riesman puts it all out there, every shitty thing that Stan has done, every lie that he's been caught in, from the possibility of getting Simon and Kirby fired from Captain America in the 1940s to hogging all the credit for the creation of the modern Marvel universe in 1961 to being a millionaire who couldn't be bothered to help out his brother Larry Lieber at all during his lifetime.
Maybe some people are panning this book because it destroys the myth of Stan Lee being a jolly grandpa that loves comics. There are a lot of similarities between Stan Lee and Vince McMahon. Both of them achieved their greatest successes when attached to the best talents of their generation and coasted on their reputations and promotional skills the rest of the time. Both of them claim to be self made but each of them were given a leg up by their relatives. Both of them don't actually seem to like the business they're in and would rather be making movies.
In the Wizard of Oz, the Wizard is also called Professor Marvel. I find this amusing because that's who Stan Lee wound up reminding me of the most. Behind the Stan Lee public curtain, there's a hack writer named Stanley Lieber who toiled in obscurity for twenty years before he had the opportunity of a lifetime dropped into his lap. When that opportunity came, he squeezed the shit out of it for the next 50+ years.
The last section of the book was a sad grotesque shit show of manipulation, fraud, and elder abuse. Was it karma for the way he treated Kirby, Ditko, and the others? If it was, karma is a real mother fucker.
If you already dislike Stan Lee, this book adds plenty of fuel to the fire. It probably would feel like a personal attack if you think he's some kind of creative genius. I think he was a great self promoter but I don't know if he had much creative talent. I have to think if he did, he wouldn't have spent 2o years toiling for Martin Goodman writing mediocre material. If you have Jack Kirby writing and drawing six books a month and all you have to do is script them, it has to be hard to fuck up something like that. It's telling that he was never again able to catch lightning in a bottle after he no longer had Kirby and Ditko at his disposal. The fact that he avoided giving them even a little credit at times speaks volumes about his character.
I'm giving this four stars. It was a powerful, eye opening read but I can't exactly say I enjoyed reading it.