True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee cover art

True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of 900K+ titles.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto-renews for $8.99/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee

Written by: Abraham Riesman
Narrated by: Vikas Adam
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $28.19

Buy Now for $28.19

About this listen

 The definitive, revelatory biography of Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee, a writer and entrepreneur who reshaped global pop culture—at a steep personal cost

HUGO AWARD FINALIST • EISNER AWARD NOMINEE • “True Believer is in every imaginable way the biography that Stan Lee deserves—ambitious, audacious, daring, and unflinchingly clear-eyed about the man’s significance, his shortcomings, his transgressions, his accomplishments, and his astonishing legacy.”—Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road

Stan Lee was one of the most famous and beloved entertainers to emerge from the twentieth century. He served as head editor of Marvel Comics for three decades and, in that time, became known as the creator of more pieces of internationally recognizable intellectual property than nearly anyone: Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, Black Panther, the Incredible Hulk . . . the list goes on. His carnival-barker marketing prowess helped save the comic-book industry and superhero fiction. His cameos in Marvel movies have charmed billions. When he died in 2018, grief poured in from around the world, further cementing his legacy.

But what if Stan Lee wasn’t who he said he was? To craft the definitive biography of Lee, Abraham Riesman conducted more than 150 interviews and investigated thousands of pages of private documents, turning up never-before-published revelations about Lee’s life and work. True Believer tackles tough questions: Did Lee actually create the characters he gained fame for creating? Was he complicit in millions of dollars’ worth of fraud in his post-Marvel life? Which members of the cavalcade of grifters who surrounded him were most responsible for the misery of his final days?

And, above all, what drove this man to achieve so much yet always boast of more? Art & Literature Authors Fantasy Popular Culture Social Sciences Celebrity Superhero Fiction Biography
All stars
Most Relevant
This book is written by someone who also writes for gossip websites, so you have to take its content with a grain of salt. It paints a biased but interesting portrait of a flawed and talentless man who wanted to do something other than comics with his life. The author seems to have done his research, but much of the book (let's say about a quarter) feels like speculations written by someone attempting to paint a complete picture from the verbal descriptions of others. Whether this is fiction of an accurate portrait of Stan Lee, it's an interesting book about someone who probably wasn't as large as the legend he's become.

Revealing and speculative

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
There should be reviews for samples.
I still bought the book, but woman oh man, that sample was grating on the ears. Just get me a Marvel anecdote to whet my earhole.
Who in the heck decided that that what I just heard should be the 5 minutes we get to hear? If the book is like that for the first 30 minutes, I will return the book.
This review is mostly for the publishers - please pick a different sample, unless that is truly the best you have to offer us. If that is the case, then this will go down like a lead balloon.
Ok, I will most likely come back and edit this after listening, but what a shocker sample.

Sample was annoyingly terrible

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
the author makes it clear at the beginning that he is no fan of Stan Lee, and goes to length to denigrate Stan's accomplishments, giving far more credence to others suggesting Stan had nothing to do with the creation of the characters he is known for while showing no evidence to support this stance.

A vicious muckraking of a beloved figure

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The author seemingly has a personal issue against Stan Lee and spends the duration of his book diminishing any and all of the positive contributions Stan Lee made throughout his life/career.

If you are a fan of Stan and Marvel comics you are better off listening to podcasts like Robservations with Rob Liefeld, or Fatman on Batman with Kevin Smith. Save your money/credits and skip this book.

If you dislike Stan Lee this book is for you!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.