Abraham Riesman
Before reading True Believer, Abraham Riesman’s new biography of Marvel comics legend Stan Lee, my knowledge of Stan was limited to “the old guy that appears in the Marvel movies I take my little brother to.” I vaguely knew who he was, but after True Believer, I feel like I understand him — flaws and all.
As Riesman writes, “Stan Lee’s story is where objective truth goes to die.” Lee, born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922, was a master of creating legends about himself. He told so many stories — so many false stories — over and over again that he eventually believed them to be true. Riesman does a great job of unpacking these myths and half-truths, speaking to many people in Lee’s orbit.
Lee was the head editor of Marvel during a time of unprecedented creativity (Spider-Man, Black Panther, the Avengers, Thor, and more all launched under his tenure), but he spent the rest of his life chasing fame and fortune that eluded him — until the movies started coming out, and his cameos in those films gave him a second wind of fame. And while Stan Lee was born to a Jewish family that fled antisemitism, he resisted identifying as Jewish or claiming any semblance of Jewishness.
Ahead of the publication of True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, I chatted with Riesman over the phone about all things Stan Lee and his complicated relationship to Jewishness — and how Riesman found questions about his own Jewish identity reflected back in the life of this comics giant.
