Abraham Riesman’s “True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee” remains one of my all-time favorite books. it should be yours, too.
From Abraham Riesman’s “This Is Not a Secret Jewish History of Stan Lee” article: “To posthumously conscript Lee into a Jewishness he did not want is to play an intellectually dangerous and narcissistic parlor game. Let him dwell in the liminal spaces of Jewishness in death, as he did in life, joining all the other fascinating Jews of assimilation who have come before and since. Even if Lee was, in some ways, one of us, he does not really belong to us.”
It was just Stan Lee’s birthday. He would have been 100 years old. I can’t say too many nice things about Stan Lee. I’ll refrain from saying anything bad, as well. So, I’ll share this memory of a great book that I had read one year ago.
One year ago, I had posted this on Facebook:
I thoroughly enjoyed “True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee.” It’s a nice addition to the books that I mentioned before, “Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said!” and “Ditko Shrugged: The Uncompromising life of the artist behind Spider-Man and the rise of Marvel Comics.” Also, “True Believer” is certainly based more on reality compared to Stan Lee’s sugar-coated (auto) biography, “Excelsior!: The Amazing Life of Stan Lee.”
The common narrative between all of these books is pointing out the unpleasant negative factors with working in the Marvel Method of creating comics. Creators such as Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, and Dick Ayers are quoted as saying that they came up with the plots of the comics that they drew, and all Stan Lee did was write the word balloons and took writer credit (along with all the money being paid to a Marvel writer).
And as time goes by, and as I research more on the subject, I am convinced that Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were the guys that created all of these wonderful Marvel characters and stories in the 1960s. (You just have to look at the lack of sellable creations Stan Lee produced in the decades before and after he worked with Kirby and Ditko.)
I’ve read and watched critical reviews of “True Believer.” One thing this book is NOT is a hit-piece. Abraham Riesman does point out Stan Lee’s good qualities. Most of Stan Lee’s employees found him to be pleasant. Stan (The Man) Lee was an excellent editor, and an spectacular promoter of the Marvel brand (as well as of himself), and Stan Lee had an incredible skill at writing word balloons and caption boxes.
Also, I want to point out that Abraham Riesman included a wealth of new interviews and information in “True Believer.”
I can’t recommend “True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee” more. It’s wonderful. It’s sad. And it informs. Great stuff.
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