AMAZING FANTASTIC INCREDIBLE!

Stan Lee wrote an autobiography! And the fun part? It’s in comic book form!

I mean- it wouldn’t be Stan Lee if it was in any other form. Am I right?

I am not really a comic book reader. In fact, I skipped right over Spider-man in the Sunday papers as a kid. Mary-Jane hung around in her underwear all day long while Spidey went out and fought bad guys,while spouting out the worst puns imaginable. Gag me.

I also think they are the reason parents are still trying to get used to the idea of Graphic Novels. I mean- they are not high literature. The plots are ridiculous. Stan Lee comes out and says that he knows absolutely nothing about science. He says if you keep the science vague enough nobody questions it. Uh-huh. Right….

Anway-

  Marvel MOVIES on the other hand- BIG FAN!

Love the characters!And this is the man who created them. Well, a handful of them anyway. Spider-man, Thor, Nick Furry, The Hulk, Iron-Man, Ant-man, Dr. Strange, a lot of the X-Men, and a bunch of other ones that I had never heard of before.  (I think the low point was Stripperella. Pole dancer by day, superhero by night? Um….ewww.)

However, there were some things that I learned about good ol’ Stan that I didn’t know before. For example, I didn’t realize that Stan Lee helped to revolutionize Superheroes. Before Marvel, comics were made up of Superheroes like Superman. He was Godlike. Literally. I believe his creators wanted him to represent Jesus.

Stan wanted his characters to be flawed. He wanted them to be regular people that made mistakes. He had to try really hard to convince his editors to approve a monster like Hulk. Nobody was going to root for a monster. Monsters are bad guys. He sure showed them.

When he pitched Spider-man they tried to tell him no one was going to read a comic book about a teenager who couldn’t get the girl.

They laughed at a character who fought when he was the size of an ant. (Ok, lets be honest. We all did. I had no idea how that movie was going to possibly be a hit. It’s arguably my favorite one thus far.)

I loved the reason he created the X-men. He wanted everyone who felt like an outcast to feel represented. At the time that was “Jews, blacks, and gays.”

Anyway. Despite Stan Lee’s kind of chauvinistic view on women, his pretty obvious self worship, (I mean his book is called The Amazing Fantastic Incredible Stan Lee), and a few awkward moments that we really didn’t need to know about (a random renter who I guess likes to hang around in a speedo for example. ???) this book was pretty a fun find.

I give it 3/5 stars.

  It was an entertaining way to  learn more about the man behind the – SO INCREDIBLY MARVELOUS and FANTASTIC AND MOST BESTEST EVER superheroes.

Or..you know- those characters in those movies we like.