As a kid, Stanley Lieber used to watch his unemployed dad desperately scanning newspaper ads for a job. Duly, Stanley decided early on that he wanted “a steady job” for life, and, perhaps, gained an early understanding of life struggles.
As a 17-year-old, Stan banked a job and a life in comics, also making sure that his work spoke to people. Slickly assembled using archive footage (claymation fills any gaps) and Lee’s recorded voiceover by director David Gelb, this Disney+ doc is a hurried, surface-level celebration more than a complex study of Stan’s story. But it’s a winning one, which unpicks the through lines of Lee’s thinking with spider-nimble clarity.
