Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by egumeny
True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman
3.0
Engrossing and enlightening, if you can get past the fact that Riesman really, really hated Stan Lee. I don't know if I've ever read a book I kind of hated as voraciously.
The author regularly takes competitors and con artists at their word, while simultaneously casting even the most innocuous statement or action by Lee as sinister. Early on, Riesman even writes that, while the truth of Lee and Jack Kirby's feud almost certainly lies in between both men's egos, he was instead going to commit to making one of them (Kirby) a paragon of virtue and the other (Lee) an abject liar.
I get that Lee was no saint, and that he and Marvel absolutely screwed over creatives while he was there, but he was also an incredibly sad and easily-manipulated man. Desperate for attention and fame, sure, but also broken by being the child of immigrants in Depression-era New York. Large numbers of that generation grew up with a hoarding mentality and a desire for their own wealth, because they knew, they remembered, that it could all disappear in an instant. But that kind of understanding is nowhere in the book.
Instead, Lee is painted as a devious machinator of vast conspiracies, while also being a hapless pushover with no actual talent. What should have been a tragedy comes across as the one-sided biography of a failed villain.
The author regularly takes competitors and con artists at their word, while simultaneously casting even the most innocuous statement or action by Lee as sinister. Early on, Riesman even writes that, while the truth of Lee and Jack Kirby's feud almost certainly lies in between both men's egos, he was instead going to commit to making one of them (Kirby) a paragon of virtue and the other (Lee) an abject liar.
I get that Lee was no saint, and that he and Marvel absolutely screwed over creatives while he was there, but he was also an incredibly sad and easily-manipulated man. Desperate for attention and fame, sure, but also broken by being the child of immigrants in Depression-era New York. Large numbers of that generation grew up with a hoarding mentality and a desire for their own wealth, because they knew, they remembered, that it could all disappear in an instant. But that kind of understanding is nowhere in the book.
Instead, Lee is painted as a devious machinator of vast conspiracies, while also being a hapless pushover with no actual talent. What should have been a tragedy comes across as the one-sided biography of a failed villain.