Reception
A contemporary review in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix criticized Lee's bombastic style: "Though his patronizing tone is entertaining for the first few paragraphs, he seems to forget one of his own conclusions about the readers of comics books [sic], that they are not necessarily youthful devotees who are accustomed to being lectured, but rather may be reasonably intelligent and educated people who will quickly tire of Lee's self-centred and falsely casual manner." However, the review allows that the book offers "substantial information of the early evolution of the comic book and its first steps to becoming a true piece of 20th century art."[3]
Author Ray Bradbury wrote an unusual review of Origins of Marvel Comics for The Los Angeles Times, "Here's a Pictorial Tonic to Relieve Virus Plaguing a World with Too Much Reality," praising the "intellectual-with-a-small-i" who enjoys both highbrow literary classics and middlebrow comic strips. In a florid passage, Bradbury wrote, "I sing the full wide-open-alert-unbiased, sometimes splendidly mediocre, pig-that-flies man and woman and their dirty children with bright faces. If this sounds like a description of you with your secret guilts for having loved the wrong films and wrong books, Stan Lee's new volume is the very stuff for you."[4]
A critical review in The Spectrum, the University at Buffalo student newspaper, savaged Lee's style: "The writing is stylistically crummy, which wouldn't be so jarring if Lee hadn't made such a big deal about his style. It takes an embarrassing [sic] combination of pretentiousness, awkwardness, insecurity, and ignorance to write a sentence like, 'Myself when born was christened Stanley Martin Lieber — truly an appellation to conjure with.'" The review also groused, "Production values were expendable to the publisher. Lee introduces one Spiderman [sic] story, but instead another one is printed. The Dr. Strange stories near the end of the book are placed in the wrong relationship to the introductory copy; one of them is thrown in after the epilogue. Maybe they'll fix these things in subsequent printings. Then again, Marvel's mistakes are legend, by now. Maybe they'll leave them in."[5]
In ''Give Our Regards to the Atom-Smashers! Writers on Comics,'' Christopher Sorrentino points out that, in the mid-70s, the stories chosen to represent the modern style were all from the late 1960s: "The message coming through loud and clear was that Marvel had already peaked."[6]
