As a child, I have very fond memories of coming home from school and finding the latest issue from my various Marvel comic subscriptions in the mailbox. I would make regular visits to the corner comic store as well as one that was just a few blocks away, but having my favorites arrive every month was something I fondly remember.
When we moved overseas in my early teens, it was difficult to keep up with comics as the strict censorship laws where we were living limited me to random issues of various comics many of which would often have black ink covering the more revealing aspects of the female costumes.
This changed once I went off to Prep School as my shopping was limited to the local mall and often the choice between popcorn, pizza, or comics, made regular readership difficult.
As the years progressed I never lost interest in the characters particularly those of Marvel Comics and when the parade of big-budgeted movies and television series as well as frequent coverage of San Diego Comic-Con and the D23 Expo allowed me to catch up and enjoy favorites old and new.
In the new documentary Stan Lee on Disney+, audiences hear from the legendary creator himself as he chronicles his humble childhood to teenage career writing and publishing comics as well as his numerous creations that took the world of comics to an entirely new level and made Marvel and Stan Lee household names and enduring legacies.
With the combination of home movies, photographs, television clips, computer graphics, and behind-the-scenes footage, the documentary focuses heavily on the timeline from the 40s to the 70s where many of his iconic creations as well as his work with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.
While the documentary jumps from the 70s to the 2000s, it does touch upon the disagreements between Kirby and Lee over who truly created Spider-man as well as his attempts to bring in diversity and accurate representation of the characters as well as how his creations became the source of tremendous amounts of fan mail and public interest, especially for the impact that they had a positive message and an audience that is much more educated and expanded then the stereotypical comics are for kids crowd.
Aspects of his social life are touched upon as well as his disagreement with the new ownership in Marvel as well as his transition to public speaking and his numerous cameos in the films based upon the characters he created.
As anyone who ever had the chance to hear the man speak or met him will tell you he truly cared for the fans and was an active part of the convention scene up until the very end of his long and storied life.
As a fan, I speculated that Director David Gelb likely could have done a series on the man with each episode focusing on a 5-10 year span. As it stands, the documentary is an informative and at times touching look at the creative talent that has provided countless hours of entertainment and his creations that continue to entertain to this very day and will do so for generations to come. Catch Stan Lee on Disney+ on June 16th
