Tom Scioli's follow up to his 2010 graphic biography, Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics, is, naturally enough, the just released I Am Stan: A Graphic Biography of the Legendary Stan Lee.  As with Kirby, Lee is a figure with whom Scioli is intimately familiar with on many levels, having spent a lifetime immersed in reading their comics and absorbing their professional histories.  Again, as with the Kirby book, he then researched the personal and other details of Lee's life and picked out the key threads to weave into a well knit tapestry of the key points of his personal life and professional career that creates a powerful and lasting portrait.

Scioli worked – successfully – to differentiate the quality of Lee's life from that of Kirby's in his choices regarding the narrative form and visual presentation.  The construction of the narrative of Lee's life is – as is warranted – more multileveled and fraught with ironies. The tone is set early on with the page featuring a nine-panel grid containing a sequence of Warholian head shots representing the stages of Lee's life, which is as particularly apt as it is memorable. 

Made in Pittsburgh!

This is the hardcover edition.  It has been released simultaneously with a softcover edition, available HERE.