Stan's Soapbox!

If you know what that title means, I need explain no more. In those heady days before the advent of the home computer and Al Gore's invention of the internets, we mere mortals were forced to find our sustenance in actual printed words. Among the most charming, witty, gregarious, bombastic, and even banal experiences was the nigh monthly dose of Stan Lee's Soapbox.

Stan's Soapbox was a tiny yellow block of comics goodness, filled with bon mots and rank hucksterism, but almost always worth the minute or so it required. Stan connected like few writers of his time. He didn't always say something profound, in fact rarely did he do so, but he always said something that you believed. You believed it because you got the sense if for only the time it took him to type it out, that Stan believed it too.

I'll be honest that I have almost come to dread Stan on TV. He's a charming and by all reports a very nice man, but his exuberance wears thin very quickly in the cool medium. He's much more palatable in the written form, the form I know him best in from his stories and more directly from his Soapboxes.

Hero Initiative has collected up all of Stan's Soapboxes in a charming paperback. It's not only got the words of Stan the Man, but asides from fanboys who were perked up by the wisdom of The Man. The most interesting fact about these is that they take the time to give a pop-culture and sometimes political backstory for Stan's commentary. As the comments progress, it's a neat little history of some of my most potent years as a young man and fan. It's a good collection, a worthy read and it's for a good cause to boot. Good stuff!

Highly Recommended.

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