I was curious to read this title as part of last year's Hugo voting packet. However, I was entirely the wrong audience and ended up not finishing it. Thank you for providing a copy so I was able to make an informed decision for the Hugos.

Apparently, despite loving Marvel Comics and everything I have previously seen about Stan Lee — especially his dedication to supporting diversity and the underdog — this one was just not for me.

I DNF'd pretty quickly; given it was Hugo-nominated, however, that presumably says ar least as much about me as the book. I think it's myself that I'm disappointed in, tbh.

Received as part of the Hugo voter packet for Hugo voting purposes.

True Believer provides what may be as comprehensive look at the life of Stan Lee's life and controversies including his early days, conflicts with partners/collaborators, and through the end of his life. Recommended for casual and die-hard Marvel fans.

Meticulously researched and honest, giving us a Stan Lee that a lot of comics fans wouldn't really want to see.

Riesman makes sure to provide evidence to back up every one of his claims against Stan Lee's own claims regarding the creation of the Marvel universe. What we get is a man who was willing to take far more credit than was deserved, and able to throw his compatriots under the bus. And yet also charismatic enough to do both repeatedly. This is actually my first foray into any biography of Stan, so the whole thing was just astonishing, and is a reminder of how important marketing can be. Because Stan knew how to market himself, and was apparently far better at that than at actually creating. (Honestly, the last few years of Stan's creative life reminds me a lot of James Patterson. Just throwing things at the wall, depending on his name and the actual work of others to make his bonkers ideas stick.)

Riesman made something impressive. While I'm sure there's plenty out there that must hate this book for smearing the legacy of Stan, there's no significant instance of conjecture or unsupported statements. Even regarding the tenuous history of the creation of many of Marvel's greatest heroes, with Stan making claims and other artists making claims, Riesman points out so many instances of the same pattern of HOW Stan claimed ownership that it becomes impossible to believe that most, or even any, of the heroes are Stan's.

And yet, the ending is so melancholy that the reader's ire is completely dissipated. It's the end a lot of us fear: elder abuse, a fading mind, and loneliness. For a man to be so loved, and die in such abandonment, is tragic.

Advanced reader's copy provided by the publisher and the Hugo awards.

I read this for Hugo voting purposes, and found it a really insightful piece of work about a figure who I knew relatively little about beyond surface level appearances. Thanks very much to the publisher for providing this copy for review.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/stan-lee-was-a-comics-saint-who-thought-he-was-a-god

Lee biographer Abraham Riesman opens up about the dizzying time he had squaring his subject’s legitimate accomplishments with Lee’s habit of hogging all the credit all the time.

I know we all loved Stan Lee and what he brought to the world through his creations.
This book was interesting, giving an inside look at what life was like and how it all came to be.
As a Marvel fan, this is a great way to remember him.

A warts-and-all deep dive into the life of Stan Lee, one that has been mostly obscured over the decades by self-mythologizing and the powerful Marvel PR machine. Comic fans likely already know much of the contentious history between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby over creative attribution for the dozens of iconic characters they pumped out in their glory days in the '60s, but the real revelations here lie in Abraham Riseman's look into Lee's final years. From his business dealings with various shady creators and enablers, his intense difficulties with his daughter, and the charges of illegal activities surrounding the business that bore his name in the latter years of his life, Riesman paints a picture of a man who never truly felt satisfied or respected with his career, even as he was celebrated by fans across the globe.

Some of these revelations may be hard for fellow Marvel Zombies fans to process, but Riesman never loses sight of the incredible work that Stan Lee aligned himself with over the years, even as he digs deeper than most to uncover the full story of the man behind the famous moniker and catch-phrases.

(This title will be included in our Best Pop Culture Books of 2021 list - a link will be added when the post goes live.)

I really enjoyed this extremely in depth and honest look at Stan Lee's life. Tis biography really digs deep to get to the truth behind the myths and legends of his rise to fame and success.

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: https://www.ManOfLaBook.com

True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman is a biography of the famous writer and editor, mainly concentrating on debunking many of his claims over the past decades. Mr. Riesman is a journalist writing mostly about culture and arts.

I have been a fan of comic books for many years, its American mythology for better or for worst. True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman reinforces many of the rumors, as well as innuendos which were roaming around the comic book universe. Much of the book focuses on the creator credit of many beloved characters, especially his very public and litigious fight with Jack Kirby.

Indeed many fans which believe Stan Lee is the creative genius which the Marvel empire was built upon. These fans may have issues with the book. On the other hand, nothing in this book is Earth shattering, or something that hasn’t been invoked previously, but is packaged in a concise, well researched package.

The book asserts that Stan Lee was a loving husband, doting father, an excellent boss, knowledgeable editor, certainly creative, and a genius self-promoter. On the other hand, he is a credit hog (which we all knew), prone to attract con-men which took advantage of him in his late age, and it seemed that his creative genius peeked in the late 60s, and he spent the next six decades trying to recapture that magic.

Stan Lee gets full credit in this book for being decades ahead of his contemporaries. Mr Lee, after all, conceived the interconnected fictional universe now knows the Marvel Universe. These days it seems obvious, but that innovation of having a shared, overarching story-line were admired characters can interact and team up cannot be overstated.

Mr. Riesman is attempting to tell the truth, let alone staying away from rumors and innuendos and states so when possible. In all honesty, I thought that the author actually erred on the side of scholarship than fandom. The author furthermore sees Stan Lee as a remarkable, talented man with a vision not many people have, or even understand. Stan Lee is indeed responsible for getting the Marvel brand out, selling it, and making it cool.

True Believer deftly brings Stan Lee’s era, circles and culture to life, while creating the most vivid portrait of the man you’re going to get. I didn’t want it to end. RIYL Marvel, Roberto Caro and/or Walter Isaacson.

Special thanks to Crown and NetGalley for the free ARC I was provided in exchange for an honest review.

As someone who is a fan of Marvel comics, I found this to be a fascinating read. Author Abraham Riesman seems to have gone to painstakingly efforts in his research, including interviewing many of the people who knew Stan throughout his life. The portrait he weaves of Stan Lee is not one of a god, but rather a man, and a very complex one at that.

My favorite part by far was the early/mid 1960s portion when many of the iconic Marvel characters we now know and love were created. I had heard before about how Jack Kirby was likely the real brains behind most of the characters created in that time period, and this book explains the controversy really well. It's infuriating how much Stan loved to take credit for others' work, though his role in developing, marketing, and promoting Marvel comics shouldn't be dismissed entirely either. Perhaps even more infuriating is how, in his final years, Stan was abused and exploited for his fame and money by those closest to him--"friends", family, business associates, etc. It's tragically ironic that this was taking place right when he had finally achieved the fame and respect he had always sought among the public, becoming a household name thanks to the Marvel movie adaptations. All of this is a brutal reminder that our heroes are ultimately human, and we shouldn't put them on pedestals.

I can only think of two criticisms off the top of my head. The first is that Riesman occasionally goes into a little more detail than is necessary, particularly early on when he talks about Stan's ancestry going back several generations. The second that is the book could really use a glossary of names of the individuals, companies, etc. named throughout; he throws out a LOT of names, and it's sometimes difficult to keep with who's who.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone who's a fan of comics, especially Marvel, although I would not recommend it to anyone who idolizes Stan Lee and wants to preserve their image of him in their head. Riesman has clearly done his homework, and I look forward to his future work.

This well written and extensively researched biography of Stan Lee stands apart from most other books on the topic by not being a thinly veiled hagiography of Saint Stan. The book casts doubt on many of the long held "truths" about the history (mythology?) of the founding or Marvel Comics. Riesman builds on extensive interviews to paint a story of an ambitious Stan Lee who never truly felt comfortable working in the comics industry. Stan the Man in parts appears as a highly effective manager but also as a person who was always ready to take all of the credit for himself. He is shown as a brilliant self-publicist and a person who was bullied early on by the financial desires of his wife and daughter and later by the business partners he looked to to finally get him what he felt was his due. By the end of his life the reader feels sorry for all that has happened to Stan but in many ways cannot help but think that some of it is justice for his treatment of fellow creators, most notably the Great Jack Kirby.

This book was provided to me as an eArc by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

I read this biography as a comic fan, and also as someone who was peripherally aware of all the controversy surrounding Lee's name much later in life. I knew some details in broad strokes, but nothing in the sort of detail presented in this book. While eye-opening (and sad, in the later chapters), it didn't surprise me much.

People are complicated, and I think Stan Lee embodied that. I think he was complicated, he was egotistical, he was ambitious to an unrealistic degree, and he always seemed to struggle to come to terms with who he was. Complicating matters of his life, he seemed to also unwittingly surround himself with people just like him, muddying the waters a bit in terms of what was truth and what was fiction in the early days of Marvel. Without going into detail here on my thoughts of the Kirby/Lee debacle, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle of what the two men each claimed.

Having said all that, a life led full of ambition, avarice, and wealth does not mean that you earn whatever comes next. Whatever wrongs Stan committed to get where he ended up do not justify his treatment at the hands of all the leeches that came out of the woodwork in his later years. He didn't deserve any of that treatment at the hands of people he initially trusted, people that were by blood or by friendship family to him.

This biography was extremely engaging, and clearly well researched by the author. The notes section in the end is extensive, and the author mentions at multiple points the sources of information used to write the different chapters. I enjoyed this book immensely, even if the subject is not the perfect person a lot of people expected him to be.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A honest, unvarnished story of the greatest showman for Marvel Comics, Stan Lee, the co-creator of some of the world’s most iconic cultural heroes. Riesman digs deep to reveal the different sides of Lee that shaped the mythos the world reveres. Definitive read for fans of the Marvel world.

A compelling biography that digs deep into a man who is often viewed by fans and media through only a surface level. Stan Lee was known as a storyteller and the author dutifully sifts through many conflicting stories to arrive as close to the truth as possible at this time. Stan Lee is celebrated as the figurehead of Marvel but his full story shows less a hero to be praised and more a human figure who is both complex and simplistic, and much more a mix of good and evil than any character he wrote or created (or "wrote" and "created" depending on who recounts what happened). The writer deals admirable with the complicated mess of lawsuits that followed Lee in his later years and Lee's own complicity. Far from the hagiography that usually follows Lee, this work deals the man in full, as he was, and his impact for good and bad on the industry he was stuck in.

An excellent nonfiction title that will entertain readers and educate them on a very important figure that revolutionalized a genre.

For anyone with an interest in comic book heroes and the man who made many of them, this is a treat. I enjoyed reading about the iconic Stan Lee. I didn't know much before, despite being a huge fan of his work. Well worth the time.