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A review by lyndsaydurbs
I Am Stan: A Graphic Biography of the Legendary Stan Lee by Tom Scioli
2.0
This unofficial biographical comic follows the long life of Marvel Comic creator, Stan Lee.
The reader is taken on a journey from the start of Stan's life all the way to his death in this 208-page graphic novel.
I did not enjoy this story for multiple reasons but thought it ultimately provided quite a lot of information to a reader unfamiliar with the specifics of Stan Lee's life.
I personally didn't enjoy the art style of Tom Scioli. A lot of his character designs were extremely similar with minimal distinctive attributes for the reader to follow along with who is who. Additionally, there are a few "close-ups" of some characters that just appear creepy, with large bulging eyes and portraying a fearful expression during what is normal conversation.
Another piece that I don't think translated well into this graphical biography format, is the way the information was presented. This is a long life to cover and inform the reader about. The way Scioli chose to do this was by having almost an entire page filled with text bubbles. Each panel ended up being majority text and minimal art which makes me wonder why a graphic novel was chosen as the format and not just an informative novel with lots of pictures and graphics.
Stan Lee lived a long time and accomplished a lot in his life. But there is poor cohesion to the story as a whole, as well as a poor distinction between "sections" of Stan Lee's life. There are no chapters or page breaks to get the reader an idea of where we approximately are in his life. Nothing to separate childhood from young adulthood to middle age to his final years. The reader has to gauge his general age basically just off appearance which is hard to do with this particular art style. The story mentions what feels like every single character Stan Lee had a hand in creating and name-dropping what was likely every single co-worker he had during his main comic writing days. Telling me repetitive back-and-forth between Stan Lee and a co-creator of "What if we name the character this? The company wants a character with this background" and then repeating that conversation several times throughout the next 10 or so pages was frustrating and led me to put the book down several times.
The reader is taken on a journey from the start of Stan's life all the way to his death in this 208-page graphic novel.
I did not enjoy this story for multiple reasons but thought it ultimately provided quite a lot of information to a reader unfamiliar with the specifics of Stan Lee's life.
I personally didn't enjoy the art style of Tom Scioli. A lot of his character designs were extremely similar with minimal distinctive attributes for the reader to follow along with who is who. Additionally, there are a few "close-ups" of some characters that just appear creepy, with large bulging eyes and portraying a fearful expression during what is normal conversation.
Another piece that I don't think translated well into this graphical biography format, is the way the information was presented. This is a long life to cover and inform the reader about. The way Scioli chose to do this was by having almost an entire page filled with text bubbles. Each panel ended up being majority text and minimal art which makes me wonder why a graphic novel was chosen as the format and not just an informative novel with lots of pictures and graphics.
Stan Lee lived a long time and accomplished a lot in his life. But there is poor cohesion to the story as a whole, as well as a poor distinction between "sections" of Stan Lee's life. There are no chapters or page breaks to get the reader an idea of where we approximately are in his life. Nothing to separate childhood from young adulthood to middle age to his final years. The reader has to gauge his general age basically just off appearance which is hard to do with this particular art style. The story mentions what feels like every single character Stan Lee had a hand in creating and name-dropping what was likely every single co-worker he had during his main comic writing days. Telling me repetitive back-and-forth between Stan Lee and a co-creator of "What if we name the character this? The company wants a character with this background" and then repeating that conversation several times throughout the next 10 or so pages was frustrating and led me to put the book down several times.