I Am Stan: A Graphic Biography of the Legendary Stan Lee
The first graphic novel biography of Stan Lee, from Eisner-nominated creator Tom Scioli—a clear-eyed, nuanced portrait of the man behind Marvel.
📖 Ten Speed Graphic • Started 2023
I Am Stan: A Graphic Biography of the Legendary Stan Lee is the companion volume to Tom Scioli’s acclaimed Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics—and in many ways, the more daring of the two. Where Kirby’s story was one of genius undervalued, Lee’s demands a nuanced reckoning with fame, ambition, and the tangled business of mythmaking.
Everyone knows Stan Lee: the smiling, mustachioed face of Marvel Comics, the man whose name became synonymous with superheroes. But who was Stanley Lieber behind the showmanship? I Am Stan cuts through the cameos and catchphrases to deliver the most layered portrait of Lee ever committed to the page—a man at once brilliant, insecure, generous, and calculating.
Scioli dispenses with a straightforward chronology. Instead, he assembles Lee’s life through a series of tight, self-contained vignettes—none spanning more than a single page—that vault across decades and perspectives. We watch the aspiring actor from the Bronx stumble into Timely Comics, rise as Marvel’s editorial showman, forge (and fracture) legendary partnerships with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and eventually transform into a globe-trotting ambassador for a medium he helped define.
What makes the book extraordinary is its refusal to flatten Lee into hero or villain. Scioli captures the contradictions whole: a man who craved credit yet genuinely adored his audience, who built a cultural empire while eyeing the exits, who could champion his collaborators in public and diminish them in private. The result earned a starred review from Library Journal, which called it “the most compelling and layered portrait of Lee to date.”
Published by Ten Speed Graphic in 2023, this 208-page full-color hardcover is essential reading for anyone fascinated by Marvel history, the art of graphic biography, and the complicated legacy of a man who remade pop culture—for better and for worse.
Perfect for fans of Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, and narrative-driven graphic nonfiction.
Created by Tom Scioli.
