Just Finished Reading…Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir by Stan Lee, Peter David And Colleen Doran
Stan Lee, born Stanley Leiber, started life in a very poor Jewish family in New York and ended it hugely famous, a major part of the comics and comic films industry. He did a cameo in every film, right to the end. He even made a brief appearance in an episode of Agent Carter, a TV show about Peggy Carter, a British- born agent working in the US after losing her beloved Steve Rogers (aka Captain America). Lee was in one scene where he was at a shoe shine stand and asked for a newspaper.
I discovered this book at my local library and couldn’t resist. And very good it was, too, artwork by Colleen Doran and co-written with Peter David. Peter David started as a novelist, and I have read two of his fantasy books. He went on to write an early episode of Babylon 5 and many comics. This is very suitable for the memoir of a comic book writer, and the book is, also appropriately, in the form of a graphic novel, and I have to say the artwork by Colleen Doreen is great, reflecting the humour of the story.
And what a delightful graphic novel it is! It’s presented as a talk by Stan Lee to a crowded auditorium, in which he shows his life as a sort of PowerPoint, from his childhood through his first job writing comics and the war years when his writing skills were used for army films warning about VD, his first meeting with his beloved wife(love at first site - he was supposed to go on a blind date with someone else!) and his career that followed. The book was written just about the time when The Avengers: Age Of Ultron was about to be released.
At one point he visits his child self to inform him that he will never achieve his dream of becoming President…
My favourite scene was when his daughter and a friend are passing his study where he is dramatising a scene from a comic aloud. The friend asks what’s going on. The daughter says that’s her Daddy and he is working. The friend says her father is an accountant and much quieter!
I’m guessing this is written for younger readers as he has written a regular memoir. That’s fine with me!
It’s available, along with many of his other books and comics, in all the usual places. It’s even available in audiobook.