My wife knows that I'm a big fan of both Jack Kirby and Stan Lee and got me both of Tom Scioli's graphic biographies of these two Marvel legends. The favorability of Stan the Man had lessened in my eyes after reading the Kirby book. Stan Lee took advantage of the King. But to be fair, a lot of high ups in the comic book industry used Jack Kirby as their personal door mat.
Knowing how Stan Lee came off as a massive jerk in Scioli's other work, I held off on reading this book which I got last year for Christmas. But I couldn't hold off any further as I Am Stan was just sitting atop my 'To Read' pile just screaming to be read.
With Stan Lee as the subject, Tom Scioli does seem to paint the man born as Stanley Lieber in a more favorable light. There's no doubt that Stan was a master storyteller and a lot of the anecdotes he regaled both interviewers and audiences seemed to evolve over time; getting more and more wilder and inaccurate with every retelling. As Scioli utilized a slew of articles and writings by and about Stan Lee, a lot of material is more positive about Stan as history is often told by the victors. However, I am glad to say that Stan Lee is portrayed as far from perfect.
For one thing, Stan was a workaholic. Makes sense as his father was often in-between jobs and seldom actively searching for work. However, Stan's work ethic caused friction between him and his beloved Joan, whom I did not know until I read this work that she was married to some other dude when Stan met her. I also expected Scioli to reveal that Stan was cheating on Joan with possibly his gal Friday, the Fabulous Flo Steinberg. However, it appears that in that regard, Stan was a saint!
Stan Lee was also a businessman. As much as he acted as one of the people in his monthly 'Stan's Soapbox' columns, Stan was the MAN, taking the side of big business when approached to support a comic book writer and artist union in the 1970s. That's despite claiming to be all for it years later once he was nothing more than Marvel's Chairman Emeritus.
You might blame Stan's ego on his family. His mother smothered him with praise; perhaps in hopes he'd grown into someone other than his father. Stan could be modest. However, he also couldn't help himself to ham things up. It's a tale almost as old as time. The guy looked upon as the leader gets all the accolades. As their heads balloon up with the forthcoming perks and riches, the leader forgets the little guys, causing friction if not all around dissension and broken relationships along the way.
Jack Kirby's love/hate relationship with Stan Lee is covered in large part in this work. Thankfully, Tom Scioli doesn't just repeat everything that transpired between the two founders of the Marvel Universe play out exactly as it did in the earlier Kirby biography. If there was ever a time I would expect a comic book creator to phone it in with repeated swipes of previously published material, it would be in this book. Yet, Scioli doesn't fall into that trap!
Reading this biography has got me itching to give the Kirby graphic novel another read in order to compare notes. I've got a perfect chance to do so coming up in a couple of weeks. I'll be interested to see where Tom Scioli repeats himself as well as portraying incidents that are covered in both histories differently. I don't normally like to do a re-read. But this is one of those exception times where I'm actually looking forward to it.
I'm also hoping that Tom Scioli doesn't stop with the graphic biographies of comicdom's biggest names. Julie Schwartz, Bill Gaines and Steranko are just a few subjects I would love to see Scioli give notice to!
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment