Exclusive! Read Excerpt From Stan Lee: A Life by Bob Batchelor
Fans who have been waiting to catch Stan Lee: A Life by award-winning cultural historian and biographer Bob Batchelor can now read an exclusive excerpt at Forces of Geek, one of the premiere pop culture websites publishing today. Over the years, millions of fans have been entertained by FOG, which delivers outstanding columnists and opinion, reviews, and insightful analysis of geek culture from today and our nostalgia-tinged youths.
Exclusive! Read an Excerpt From Stan Lee: A Life by Bob Batchelor
Stefan Blitz is FOG editor-in-chief. In the introduction to the excerpt, he also revealed that Batchelor “will be joining the site next year.” He will be writing a column on Gen X and other popular culture topics.
On Stan Lee: A Life, Blitz explains, “Take the opportunity to check out an exclusive excerpt from his fantastic book, which might be the last word on one of pop culture’s most inimitable icons.”
The excerpt, “How the Marvel Universe Conquered the Globe,” is the first chapter from Stan Lee: A Life.
Forces of Geek — your home to discover and embrace the unknown, the forgotten, and the beloved from popular culture — has published an exclusive excerpt from Stan Lee: A Life (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022).
“While there are generations of great science fiction films and action movies, the difference between the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and the others is voice…The Marvel feeling is so ingrained in the heads of fandom that it feels subconscious. It’s driven by Lee’s voice. No matter who directs an MCU film or plays a superhero or supervillain, the internal consistency prevails: Thor’s humor and stilted formality, Iron Man’s snark, Spider-Man’s relentless patter and earnestness. This is Stan’s enduring legacy.”
— Bob Batchelor
While some readers might never have thought of the term “voice,” Batchelor breaks it down via the way the concept is outline by eminent writer Jerome Charyn, one of the most important voices in American literature today.
Charyn describes voice as “music.” Charyn’s concept, although focused on books, can be applied to Lee’s comic book writing:
“Writing…is about the music, it’s about the voice. This is what predominates. The music is all, the music is total, it’s absolute.”
— Jerome Charyn
Stan’s dialogue provided Marvel with a kind of music that readers could hear and matched their internal rhythms, resulting in an experience that transformed them. “It’s music alive with extreme sympathy,” Charyn explained, “there is no space between you and the text.” As a result, readers could feel the Marvel style, while simultaneously that Lee patter paralleled the cultural explosion booming across society. We hear this in the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and J. D. Salinger’s short stories.