THE STAN LEE STORY

His tale is told by his successor at Marvel, renowned comics writer, editor, and historian Roy Thomas, who brings "you are there" insights and wide-eyed clarity to key moments of Lee's journey to pop culture immortality. Featuring hundreds of treasures of comic book art, intimate photographs sourced straight from his family archives, a foreword written by Lee himself, a novel-length essay and new epilogue by Thomas, and an appendix with complete reprints of Stan's comics from throughout the decades, this is a titanic tribute worthy of the Man. Stan "the Man" Lee stands the test of time as the most legendary name in comic book history. Stan began working at Timely Comics in 1940 at the age of 17 and found himself at the helm of the bullpen as its top editor just two years later. But it wasn't until 1961 that he ignited a revolution known as the "Marvel Age of Comics." With a legendary stable of art partners including Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita, and Jim Steranko, Lee unleashed a dizzying cascade of seminal comic book creations -- the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men, and the Avengers to name a few. After moving to Hollywood in 1980, he did it again, developing TV and film projects that laid the groundwork for the "Marvel movie." This is a bargain-priced new edition of the 2018 XXL $200 edition. For that reason, Stan’s introduction to this massive volume was written by Stan when he was still alive; he passed away in 2018. Even he was impressed by the huge size. I’m frankly amazed that Taschen is only asking $100 for this — it’s not quite as large as an XXL edition. This is 10” x 13” instead of 11” x 16”—but it’s still 576 pages, even more pages than a typical $200 XXL edition!!!  And Roy has done a tremendous job of gathering all the stories about Stan and making them interesting, even for a vet like myself who has heard at least some of this before. Roy makes it new and fresh, with a different perspective; I think any comics fan will enjoy this, no matter how much you think you already know about Stan. And of course, this is a history of Marvel, from the pulp publishing days before he became editor, through Timely and all the early years, and on through all the amazing changes and first issues and origin stories of the Marvel Age 1960s and beyond. - Bud Rush Service and International shipping could require an additional charge.