DOCUMENTARY REVIEW: STAN LEE

3.5/5

Across The Stan Lee Verse. 

86 Mins. Starring: Stan Lee. Director: David Gelb. On: Disney +. 

Marvellous. Right now we are heading 'Across The Spider-Verse' in cinemas for one of the biggest blockbusters of the year, not to mention one of the best 'Spider-Man' films of all-time. And it's animated. Amazing. Even more so than Tobey Maguire, Tom Holland AND of course "Peter THREE", Andrew Garfield. And right as 'The Flash' tries to outrun it in this multiverse of madness, from 'Doctor Strange', to 'No Way Home', we have every hero, everything, everywhere, all at Michelle Yeoh once. The Oscars are calling as you can expect another animated gold statue with a red hood to catch even more cobwebs. And just to think this all came from Marvel character co-creator and cameo king, Stan Lee staring at the walls of his New York office and seeing an insect climb the walls like King Kong did the Empire State Building. 

Coincidentally watching his last 'Big Hero 6: The Series' episode as Boss Awesome this weekend, the late legend who we lost a few years back was truly an original. And now he's immortalized yet again on a Disney + documentary that some critics are calling an "infomercial", as Jack Kirby's son Neal blasts it for misrepresenting his dear dad's own legacy. Kirby was an incredible artist, ditto to Steve Ditko, who also left Marvel with no love lost towards Lee. Yet, this documentary that you can file as canon next to Marvel's '75 Years: From Pulp To Pop', 'Assembling A Universe' and 'Behind The Mask', not to mention the making of 'Legends' series, doesn't shy away from the strained times, even if it does lean heavy towards their side of the story. Narrated by the man himself before his death, and heavy on archival footage to go along with some cute, but relatively cheap looking claymation, like Netflix's current 'Arnold' and Schwarzenegger's 'Total Recall' autobiography, this biography can do next to the 'Marvellous Memoir' of Stan Lee's own 'Amazing, Fantastic, Incredible' comic-book life story. Thank you for the gift. 

Stanley realized that comic-books were for more than just kids when he completed training manuals for soldiers in the war using the same cell by cell format. From Timely to Atlas, the world domination would begin as he corralled a team of writers and artists to give you something that could even be kryptonite to Superman and DC Comics. For every billionaire Batman, there was a playboy philanthropist like Iron Man. In talk shows, Detective Comics brass body claimed fans didn't want to see more human heroes and relatable villains, but here we are, all these years later with both sides straddling the fenced fine line of good versus evil. A hero could even be a high-school kid, holding his homework in one hand and a subway car about to plunge into the Manhattan river on the other strand. And now your friendly, neighbourhood Spider-Man from canon to cosplay is all over the world. From Mumbai to a whole new Mexico. Rocking out like a punk and even hamming it up like a pig. And to think the web-crawling pitch was originally rejected with a rolled up newspaper before it debuted on the last copy of an Amazing Fantasy book (not that type of fantasy) nobody normally gave a damn about. 

For every Justice League, there were Avengers. And then an X-Men when the world needed to come together and celebrate their differences, instead of living in a bigotry we still see today. But Marvel's first family was the 'Fantastic Four', and that's where Kirby became the jack of all trade with his action spreads that are even adapted to the big screens you see the live action on today. In 'FF', Lee gave us the iconic Silver Surfer. An alien who wondered why we were killing and hating each other when we lived in a brand-new Eden where we should love and embrace our fellow man. Sound familiar? Imagine that! X-Men friends and foes Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto were based on Civil Rights heroes Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Stan Lee created the first black superhero in 1966. And you know what the Black Panther and the late, great Chadwick Boseman did to the already crazy successful comic-book culture in 2018, changing the game. 

Masterminding the likes of The Incredible Hulk based on his love of literary classics like Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' and Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein', Stanley Martin Lieber grew up during the Great Depression. His father struggled to find employment, and young Stanley vowed to not follow this same struggling path. Taking inspiration from the likes of 'Sherlock Holmes' as he read at night under his magnifying bedside lamp, Lee went on to write his own iconic books for his collective cast of characters, chapter crossing over in each other's verses. 'Wolfgang' and 'Jiro Loves Sushi' documentary director David Gelb really marvels and excels when he serves up a slice of family life. The greatest story being between Lee and the love of his life, his late wife Joan. A real Ms. Marvel whose English accent was described as being "like music" for the self-confessed Anglophile. Joan herself in an old interview describing the moment she met her man. Stanley apologizing to her and admitting that he was "going to fall in love with (Joan)" at first sight. Now how's that for a caption for your panel? What else can we say but, Excelsior! TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

Further Filming: 'Marvel 75 Years: From Pulp To Pop', 'Marvel: Assembling A Universe','Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse'.