With all the damn posts about all the TV and movies I watch, you might wonder, "Does Dave-El ever pick up a damn book?"
Well, yes I do and today I'm going to post about a book I finished up a couple of months ago,The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman.
Now, before I get into this book, let me share some of my thoughts about Stan Lee.
I never bought into the whole "Stan Lee created the Marvel Universe" mystique. I understand enough about how comics are made to give too much credit to one person. Whatever Stan's skills and talents were as a writer and editor, he was certainly just as adept as salesmanship, a huckster in service to the Marvel brand and also of the image of Stan Lee.
I saw Stan Lee as equal parts creator and con artist.
Abraham Riesman's book suggests I may be too generous to credit those parts equally.
Riesman details Stanley Lieber's metamorphosis into Stan Lee through a hodge podge of some skill and talent and a lot of luck. Starting off as a teenage office assistant at the nascent Marvel Comics, circumstances propelled Stan into writing for the comics and quickly becoming the operation's editor in chief.
Riesman also explores the questions of who created what. Stan Lee was more than willing to sell the concept of him as the genius creator of Marvel working in tandem with various artists who endeavored to give pictures to Stan's wonderful ideas.
Jack Kirby took exception to that concept.
The problems stemmed from what Stan called "the Marvel Method" of producing comic books. Usually comic books were produced with a writer creating a plot and full script with details telling the artist what to draw. At Marvel, the process started with the plot, the artist draws it and then the writer writes the script based on the art.
The problems start with exactly how much "plot" does the writer provide and how much of the story creating is left to the artist. Jack Kirby's contention was Stan Lee gave him very little or nothing at all. Jack's position was he was doing all the heavy lifting storywise and Stan Lee wasn't doing shit.
Which is why it irked him no end when the credits would list as Stan Lee as the writer and Jack Kirby only as the artist.
Even today you will find Marvel fandom divided on this point, that Stan Lee had more creative input than Jack Kirby alleges or that Stan was a mere hustler and Jack was the one and only creator.
In trying to be kind to his biographical subject, Riesman tries to threat the needle by citing many inconsistencies in the tales told by both Stan and Jack but it's clear Riesman leans towards Stan not quite being the super writing genius he claims to be.
The book is littered with the tales of Stan Lee's shortcomings and failures as writer. His best successes were in tandem with strong collaborators like Jack Kirby, Steve Dikto, John Buscema and others.
When left to his own devices, Stan Lee's creative output floundered.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the later years when media companies were started with their sole output being Stan's ideas. Half baked concepts for super heroes were hatched but never went anywhere. Not just because they were bad ideas from a writer of questionable talent aged well past his prime but those ideas were in service of entities that were more criminal enterprises than cutting edge media outlets.
Basically the pitch was "Hey, we've got the guy who created Spider-Man and the Hulk and the Fantastic Four and he's gonna create more stuff just like that and we're gonna turn those ideas into movies and shit" and investors would throw their money into these companies because Stan Lee was gonna create more stuff like Spider-Man and the Hulk and the Fantastic Four but he didn't and people wound up going to jail and stuff.
Basically, the latter part of Riesman's book is a litany of sad depressing tales of people abusing and manipulating Stan Lee until he finally and almost mercifully dies.
Basically the only good thing Stan had going on was his beloved cameos in Marvel movies which endeared him to a new and expanding audience of true believers in the man, the myth and the legend of Stan Lee.
While constantly reminding us of Stan Lee's shortcomings as a writer and creator, Riesman only gives a cursory mention of projects like Stan's Silver Surfer series he produced with the French artist Jean Giraud (AKA Mœbius) or his project for DC Comics where Stan Lee collaborated with artists like Joe Kubert, Jim Lee and others to re-imagine DC heroes. Did any of these artists have any issues with Stan? What exactly did he bring to the table for these projects? Was he greatly involved or just cash the checks?
In addition to con artists trying to make money off Stan Lee's name, there is the exceedingly sad tale of his daughter J.C. was the caught in the throes of various mental illnesses while making Stan's life a living hell with incessant demands for more money.
The back half of True Believer is a slog about a man who outlived his prime and is desperate to be relevant, to matter as major player in the entertainment industry while being ignored by anyone with real power and influence and being manipulated by those trying to forge power from nothing.
It's the story of a young man who got lucky, had enough skill and talent to play out the string of luck into a vaunted position of renown in the comic book industry but was unable to expand his influence beyond his halycon days as Marvel's principal writer, editor in chief and publisher.
Marvel in the 21st century achieved all the success Stan Lee imagined for Marvel back in the day but Marvel did all this without him. They let him film his cameos and write him some checks but Stan lived along enough to see his role slide into irrelevance.
True Believer is not a happy book but Stan's life was frequently not happy, his reach exceeding his grasp.
What ever his missteps in life, one can't help feel sorry that Stan Lee deserved better than what he got.
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