Imagine that you are tasked with creating a book about someone whose life has made a worldwide impact. They help found an entire industry and the look of their creation is one that every kid aged three and up knows. That is a daunting task. Now take this person’s life and make an illustrated book on it without directly using the style that most people are familiar with. The task is even more daunting now. With Great Power, The Marvelous Stan Lee is an unauthorized biography that nails the early life of Stan Lee to the floor. It’s entertaining, has great non-Marvel type illustrations, as well as, nuggets of information that even the comic or Marvel kids in elementary school will be surprised to learn.
It starts when a young Stanley Lieber was just a kid in New York City. His family’s apartment had a window that opened up to a brick wall, literally. He had always loved writing and read stories with a huge canvas for the imagination like Frankenstein or one of Shakespeare’s plays. Times were different then and when he turned 16 his mom and dad expected him to get a job so that he could help support the family.
Luckily he got a job as an errand boy at a local magazine, Timely Comics. Stanley would get lunch for the artists, sharpen pencils, erase lines and do whatever was needed. While there he met some of the legends in the comic book world, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. His work was really in a pinch and needed someone to create stories immediately. They were so desperate they even gave a teenager the chance to write stories.
However, being a comic book writer wasn’t really writing in the eyes of some. People viewed them as adults in long underwear who were characters in things that only kids read. It was because of that fact that Stanley created the pen name of Stan Lee, and the rest is history.
Stan Lee shortly became the editor of Timely Comics and he was quite happy, but after a while, he became bored with the characters. They were the impossibly perfect heroes with cowboy hats, capes and never had any problems. After 20 years of churning out stories like that Lee teamed up with his old co-worker Jack Kirby and they printed The Fantastic Four. The readers loved the complex emotions and new angles that hadn’t previously been explored in the comic book medium. This gave Lee the confidence to create a strip based on a teenage boy who was bitten by a radioactive spider.
It’s safe to say that this was a hit. With Great Power touches on many of the angles that created Marvel Comics’ other key characters, as well as, the fact that Lee would answer fan mail in his Stan’s Soapbox column. Grades two through five will love this book. Those younger readers will need to have it read to them, but the text by Annie Hunter Eriksen flows in a succinct way that ensures that they’ll pay attention. Those older readers will be able to read it by themselves and be curious to explore some of the links that are shared in the bibliography at the end of the book.
The art by Lee Gatlin is also worth celebrating. His art pays tribute to the characters that Lee created, all the while being their own creations. It’s obvious which superheroes are which, but they feel softer and more approachable to elementary school without babying them down. The result is something that kids can read that expands the universe that they know and enjoy, while also making something different with a new perspective. Marvel Comics fans of any age will like the book. Those aforementioned grades who like a great illustrated book will enjoy the book. Teachers or parents will like the book because it’s quick enough to read once but also has enough details in the art to where you can greatly expand things if needed.
With Great Power The Marvelous Stan Lee is by Annie Hunter Eriksen with illustrations by Lee Gatlin and available on Page Street Publishing.
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