A Graphic Memoir from Marvel Superstar Stan Lee

It seems only natural that such an outsized character’s life story be communicated through the medium he’s mastered (in Stan speak: “It strikes me as a horrendous oversight that I haven’t done it before!”), and Amazing Fantastic Incredible, co-written with Peter David and illustrated by Colleen Doran, is an eye-popping retelling of a remarkably action-packed career. Here are just five moments from Lee’s unbelievable origin story that you owe it to yourself to experience in full color.

Lee’s accidental introduction to comics
Though he loved comics growing up, Lee got into the business almost as an afterthought. After working as a delivery boy, writing obituaries, and ushering in a movie theater (once tripping over his feet in front of Eleanor Roosevelt), he got a job working as his uncle’s assistant at Timely Publications, which printed a wide range of magazines and had entered into the rapidly growing market for comic books, pushing a hero known as Captain America. He wound up serving as an assistant to two legends of the field, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (each given appropriately square-jawed hero’s entrances).
Contributions to the war effort
In the early 1940s, a young Lee somehow found himself in charge of Timely’s entire comic book division after Joe Simon and Jack Kirby abruptly left the company. “There was no one else around,” he remembers. But then things changed: the U.S. entered World War II and Lee joined up. His writing career was put on hold…for a little while. After a stint in the signal corps in New Jersey, he was assigned to a special unit based in Astoria, New York: the amy’s training film division. There, he worked alongside such familiar names as Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel, Frank Capra, and Charles Addams.
Comic book romance
The super woman in Lee’s life is Joan, his wife of nearly 70 years, and she looms large in this memoir, presented with the charm and dramatic flair of the heroines Lee would go on to write for later in life—including Spider-Man’s own Mary Jane Watson.
Origin stories
With his typical flair for drama, Lee reveals the true origins of some of his most famous creations, including the Fantastic Four (an idea given birth just as he was considering quitting the business all together; it was Joan who convinced him to stick with it), the Hulk (“We always root for the monsters!” he insisted to his reluctant publisher), and Spider-Man (that publisher again: “You can’t have a super hero be a teenager! Teenagers are sidekicks.”). There’s no telling how much Lee’s memory has embellished these events, but you can’t argue with the fact that the characters he created in the 1960s changed the comic book world forever.
Celebrity cameos
We already told you about Eleanor Roosevelt, but Stan Lee crossed paths with a lot of celebrities in his time, especially once he took the title of Marvel Comics Ambassador in the 1980s. Other famous faces you’ll find drawn in these pages: Rosalynn and Amy Carter (an encounter that led to an unfortunate confrontation between the Secret Service and the Green Goblin… no, really), Paul McCartney, KISS, Fabio, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Pamela Anderson.
At less than 200 pages, this isn’t the most comprehensive biography of Stan Lee, but it is the most quintessential. Ex-CEL-sior!