Book review — Excelsior ! by Stan Lee & George Mair
Hello again 🙂
Sorry, Sorry, Sorry for not writing the blogs consistently. But I promise I’m working on this.
Okay, So this is my first book review, so bear with me.
The book we are talking about here is — Excelsior ! This book is written by none other than the curator of the word itself. The creator of Spiderman, Thor, Green Lantern, Ironman, Captain America and everything which Marvel stands for. I am a big fan of biographies and autobiographies. Well, this one is neither, because in the words of the writer himself, it’s a bio-autography. George Mair, Stan’s old friend is the co-author of this book but more provides his take on things going on in Stan’s life, one chapter at a time.
Let me tell you this, that I’m not a huge Marvel fan but more of a DC person. BUT…… I am a huge Stan Lee fan. A bit weird right !! Well, in my defense, I feel that even though Marvel as a brand is definitely one of the coolest among all, The creator of Marvel should be given all the credit for that. Also, Stan Lee, in my opinion was one of the people in the world who had a magnanimous impact over the 90’s generation and the ones after them. Not only in the thoughts, but he managed to create something so big which has now impacted lives in terms of entertainment, society and finance aspects too. I can just go on and on about how amazingly talented he was but then that’s why you need biographies and autobiographies right — To know more about the person in his/her own words.
Now more about the book:
Good Things
This book is a take on Stan Lee’s life but not from what you read in newspapers. It is his own words which makes this book special.
You get to know his journey from a soldier (YES… He did work as a soldier but didn’t go on wars. He was special 😉 ) to a full-time comic-book writer to chairman emeritus of Marvel.
Skills which we hear about in all those damn podcasts, I learnt how to develop them in real life by the way Stan worked all his life. The second dedicated person (for their craft) I know after Elon Musk.
Stan as a creative person is still a bit common knowledge, but this book gives an insight on his personal life, relationships and how they impacted his work and ideas.
You get to know some really cool details like Stan used to write letters as column to all his readers and share trivia about his upcoming work or how he and his team came up with story lines and so on.
Not so good
So, I know that George Mair is quite celebrated when it comes to biographies but I didn’t like much when he jumps in between the texts and share his own perspective about a certain topic which Stan might be sharing about. This going back and forth didn’t seem to make sense for me… but hey, that’s just me.
How good/bad is it?
I would rate it on the scale of OKAY → GREAT/MIND-BLOWN as
Good
For now, That’s all folks.
Originally published at http://specsandcurls.wordpress.com on December 15, 2021.
