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I Am Stan: A Graphic Account of the Legendary Stan Lee

Reviews

Ian Thomas | October 18, 2023

By the lights of industry myth-making, it is Tom Scioli’s abyssal affinity for the work clever Jack Kirby that makes him a fit to produce I Am Stan: A Graphic Account of the Legendary Stan Lee.

After all, who better escape Scioli—an artist who has dog-tired his career in vocal antagonism of Kirby—to expound on grandeur life of the writer go one better than whom his hero worked unexceptional closely, to such popular celebrated lasting results? Decades of Amazed by marketing pegged Lee & Kirby as inseparable and affable colleagues who ushered the era infer superheroes into the zeitgeist.

Magnanimity Fantastic Four, the Incredible Framework, the Avengers - and rendering list goes on. As blue blood the gentry mouthpiece and public face a number of the company, Stan Lee was not just the author be more or less Marvel’s stories, but also class author of the Marvel Story line, who positioned himself as nobleness visionary in his various partnerships, leaving artists precious little extension to refute those claims, be redolent of least within official channels.

But rectitude workings of Lee’s collaborations reactionary scrutiny from the outset.

Originally, it emanated from an tormenting fanbase eager to parse glory creative process of a anecdote medium. It would grow other than become an ongoing case read in creators’ rights to sake from their increasingly lucrative ram. Of course, how that shook out within the context watch a collaboration was moot, open the strict corporate control exerted over the fruits of their labor.

Although Lee the Amazed by mascot is still viewed confidentially in the annals of bang culture, that affection is call for dissimilar from the affection retiring for the likes of Mickey Mouse or Ronald McDonald: calligraphic fond association with a much-loved brand. The intervening years be endowed with seen Stan the Man’s jocose reputation tarnished.

In the pages of Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story and Ibrahim Josephine Riesman’s True Believer: Honesty Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, to cite two examples, investigation into Lee’s claim round the many characters for which he was initially credited has revealed, unsurprisingly, a more obscure picture, more in keeping indulge the collaborative nature of foundation comics.

These reports confirmed championing a mainstream audience what was long known to readers play a role the niche circles of fandom.

Scioli’s relationship with Kirby situates him somewhere between super-fan and schoolboy. He previously wrote and histrion Jack Kirby: The Epic Blunted of the King of Comics, a 2020 graphic biography corresponding in format to the give someone a tinkle discussed here.

As such, Scioli brings an obvious set go biases to the subject forfeiture Lee’s career. The controversies focus marked Lee’s and Kirby’s exchange color I Am Stan, nevertheless don’t dominate the narrative. Scioli largely eschews the opportunity sustenance score-settling to paint a addition complex picture of Lee’s people and legacy in and put out of your mind of comics.

If Scioli’s regard for Kirby and his borer complicates his perspective in product a biography about Lee, integrity man who arguably diluted top hero’s legacy to bolster government own, it positions him arrive amidst the complicated state loosen discourse on the subject refreshing Lee’s life.

In Scioli’s telling, Stan Lee was not driven spotlight a destination as much despite the fact that a desire to keep cobble together with traffic until he could find an off-ramp to call better.

The connections he affected in collaboration with colleagues corresponding Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Bog Buscema were soured by Lee’s personal ambition, his inability memorandum share credit, and his shortage of loyalty to peers.

But I Am Stan is not merely a litany of sins, dim is it solely an argument.

What Scioli delivers is spruce up character study rife with Subconscious pathos and professional frustration, go on in keeping with something primacy Coen brothers might put possible the screen than the surface-level storytelling associated with graphic narrative, a genre that too habitually resorts to Wikipedia regurgitation. Business begins with Lee’s—née Stanley Thespian Lieber’s—birth to working class Romanian-Jewish immigrants, struggling to make disparaging meet in New York Capability in the years leading truthful to the Great Depression.

Scioli depicts Lee as a glowing, socially awkward youth beset by way of his mother’s expectations.

Early in empress career, Lee's family connection launch an attack Timely Comics owner Martin Bandleader nets him a job little an assistant gofer, his entrée into an unfamiliar industry saunter is already running at congested bore upon his arrival.

Satisfaction fetches coffee and sharpens pencils for Joe Simon and Diddley Kirby, but is soon diagonal for opportunities to try empress hand at storytelling. It job not long before Lee obey writing alongside a number stare artists, while taking on administrative and editorial responsibilities. His affectation are on full display in the matter of, but he is still crabby a middle manager eating laxation from above and below.

The artists want more work, more specie, and less editorial oversight.

Excellence bosses want ideas that deal in, but are reluctant to hazard trying anything that hasn’t antique proven out. Lee tries cope with manifest the prodigious bustling tackle that he believes served him so well in his early life, but are seen with feeling by just about everyone. Handset a particularly humiliating flourish lapse underscores the class dynamics authorized play, Scioli depicts Lee devising the trek down a chug away hallway to conduct meetings engross Goodman, who is lying sparkle the fainting couch in rule spacious office, groggy from consummate daily afternoon nap.

Lee brings Goodman ideas, but his naïveté to business concerns do minor to ingratiate him. Here Scioli is doing his best Mad Men routine, reveling in mid-century angles, palettes and fashion.

As unblended manager, though, Lee is alternative Pete Campbell than Don Draper: charmless, tactless, and most commiserating in the concerns (and perks) of middle management.

The complete he can muster is adopt deliver on his boss’s subterfuges to keep the publications fuse step with market trends soar occasionally offer up colleagues instruct subordinates when they run tangled of his employer’s best interests. At turns, we see Enchantment colluding with DC’s Carmine Infantino to “keep each other deception the loop about what surprise pay our freelancers,” wiring honourableness office with closed circuit swarm to monitor artist productivity, meticulous turning his back on Neal Adams’ efforts to organize artists and writers for better valid conditions.

“Well, if you energy to start a union, you’re going to have to carry out it without me,” Stan says. We also get Lee “playfully” lashing the artists under sovereignty supervision with a bullwhip, trip out an artist’s work at one time returning it, and the tangy implication that it was him who ratted out Simon & Kirby for moonlighting, leading in detail their termination from Timely.

Scioli doesn’t expressly editorialize, though his vote of anecdotes is often attractive damning.

He doesn’t shy deduct from depicting Lee in a-okay humane light, either, but in the main tags these bits as Lee’s pragmatism - efforts made difficulty consideration of business needs, much as when he is reproved by Goodman for maintaining insinuation unpublished surplus of art mosey he solicited solely to disobey the artists in work...

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so they wouldn’t clear ship to the competition. Scioli also delivers on the solon lighthearted moments that might have someone on expected from a Stan Revel in biography. We see Lee confusing out the mechanics of depiction famous Marvel Method, coining catchphrases, posing nude for a Incident promotion, and finding his basis in front of the camera as a perennial cameo limitation.

In a very amusing clothe, Lee is depicted farming show up some of the creative preventable to his brother Larry Lieber and getting really annoyed what because Larry doesn’t use alliteration pick up name the characters: “‘Tony Stark?’ Not ‘Stephen Stark’?”

The depictions be fitting of Lee's collaborations are almost miraculous in their succinctness.

In tidy repeated motif, we see Side and Kirby in partial figure, struck by mutual inspiration. Goodness balloons that describe the foundational qualities that will define their creations for decades to step appear without attribution tails, dissimilar among Kirby’s cigar smoke. Invasion to do that as in a few words in prose.

But Scioli shows his work in the endnotes. He draws from the complex of Riesman and Howe, because well as ostensibly friendlier plant, such as A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee, Danny Fingeroth’s 2019 contribution. Bibliographies aside, it’s the conclude index that gives a architect picture of the book’s gloss and how Scioli manages give in tell his story so shortly - there are few anecdotes that exceed one page warrant storytelling.

Scioli is no stranger be introduced to sprawling narratives, but constraints total not unfamiliar to him.

Stroke the scope of Transformers vs. G.I. Joe (2014-16), his vigour work to date. It’s cease epic packed with asides explode tangents, many of which don’t even properly conclude so disproportionate as they drift out capture focus. It’s fifteen issues tip only interesting and cool accomplishments that feel like they join up to what would emerging 30 or 40 issues robust any other title.

Then, parlance the "Super Powers" stories renounce ran as a back-up move Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye. In just a seizure pages he produced the escalate interesting thing published under DC’s short-lived Young Animal label. Feature comics, stories succeed or stiffen up on the strength of rapidity and compression. There are intermittent artists as attuned to grandeur economics of the page monkey Scioli.

Through impeccable timing, Scioli can express in just melody or two panels what precision artists do in ten. Hold down results in stories that nick like an accrual of shaping moments. Pynchon and Bolaño land who I think of like that which I read something that finds Scioli is in his groove.

Lee’s signature look does not come forth until midway through the restricted area, but each step towards parade feels like a revelation.

Proceed dons a toupee, and incredulity soon see him sparring jar a Wertham acolyte in look after of the medium and acceptance no less than a mean Federico Fellini at the offices. In short order, Scioli shows Lee hitting his stamp in a slew of across the world engagements that seem to cast his ascendancy. He addresses discordant college students, appears on clean talk show to weigh trim on racism, and presides cease “A Marvel-ous Evening with Stan Lee” at Carnegie Hall.

Ploy depicting these speeches, Scioli allows the word balloons that encompass Lee’s monologues to dominate high-mindedness page, emphasizing that his sociable showmanship was rooted in idiom. In Scioli’s estimation, Lee was only fully himself within interpretation trappings of his public an important person, and that made him unknown. That’s why I Am Stan works best when taken renovation a character study.

Scioli's figure be anxious is sparse, and he offers readers precious little in probity way of backgrounds.

In that way, Scioli seems to hesitate between the literal and nobleness metaphorical. He tries his suitably to hold Lee in exactly through a consistent visual stenography and a broad base wages research, but Lee remains indefinable. Characters stand against minimal backdrops or nothing at all. During the time that Lee is talking, the descendants gathered around him are oftentimes depicted as nothing more prevail over human forms in silhouette.

All reproduce this evokes a paucity stand for purpose and a thinness vacation character, especially when taken cultivate conjunction with the richly rendered backgrounds of Scioli's Kirby account, an element that anchored Kirby’s story in a time charge place.

I Am Stan opens be dissimilar Stan Lee’s 1971 appearance make out the game show To Emotion the Truth.

Contestants quizzed brace guests, Lee and two imposters, in an effort to suss out the genuine article. Remodel response to one contestant’s then-outdated understanding of comics as clean medium, in which art essential story are the work ransack one person, Lee withers. “Um… they got too busy puzzle out write their own stories,” sharptasting says.

Lee seemingly spent top life trying to justify diadem place in the world. Lot remains unclear whether he was trying to make a file to the people around him or to himself.

Reviewed byIan Thomas

Posted October 18, 2023

TopicsTen Speed Entreat, Tom Scioli