Stan Lee Presents – The Mighty Marvel Strength and Fitness Book

by Matt Peters

How does Spider-Man keep his legs and core flexible? How does the Human Torch warm up his arms and shoulders before he puts his strength and endurance to the test? Matters like those don’t lend themselves to flashy comic book covers, but they fill the pages of one of Marvel’s more unusual projects from the 1970s, Stan Lee Presents: The Mighty Marvel Strength and Fitness Book.

Writer-editor Stan Lee had a knack for finding new ways to connect to readers. In the 1960s, he helped build the Marvel brand by bringing a new take to the superhero genre, introducing characters whose personality flaws and private struggles made them more relatable than the polished protagonists of other comic book publishers.

That approach helped Marvel’s popularity swell. It also gave the company the creative space to explore everyday concerns and real-world issues, in addition to its more fantastic fare, like shape-shifting aliens and laser-wielding robots. Health topics became a part of that equation, nudged along by a letter Lee received in 1970 from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the U.S. agency that later became Health and Human Services. The letter suggested that Marvel develop stories that could educate readers about the risks of drug abuse. Lee liked the idea, so he developed a subplot for three issues of Amazing Spider-Man (issues 96 through 98) in which a friend of Spider-Man was lured into illicit drug use during a period of emotional distress.

Five years later, in 1976, Marvel took on the topic of physical fitness in a book it co-published with Simon & Schuster. The two companies had entered a partnership to reprint classic comic books in paperback collections, sparing the newly initiated from having to search for back issues in comic book shops and flea markets. In addition, they developed several original books, most of which were Marvel-themed activity books and how-to guides. They included a cookbook, various puzzle books, and a guide to drawing comic books.

The Mighty Marvel Strength and Fitness Book was part of the latter batch of books. Primarily an exercise guide, it also includes tips on beauty and nutrition. While it’s not a graphic novel in any faithful sense of the term, it borrows heavily from the conventions of comic book storytelling, using sequential illustrations and occasional speech and thought bubbles to guide readers through the steps of dozens of different exercises.

Writer Ann Picardo and illustrator Joe Giella made up the book’s creative team. Picardo appears to be a one-time author; a WorldCat search reveals no other books to her credit. With no author bio in the book, it’s unclear whether Picardo had any particular expertise in fitness, but her writing appears to have passed muster with Alvin Robert Mintz, a fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics who wrote the book’s foreword. Giella, meanwhile, was a veteran comic book illustrator who had made a name for himself working on titles such as Batman and The Flash.

There are a number of things The Mighty Marvel Strength and Fitness Book does well. To help the information stick, exercises are grouped into several categories, such as stretching, warm-up, and strength-building activities. Each category features a different Marvel character, one who fits it thematically because of his or her superpower(s) or temperament. The featured character then demonstrates each exercise in the category. The Human Torch does warm-up exercises, Mister Fantastic does stretches, and the Silver Surfer does posture and balance exercises. The Hulk, predictably, does the body-building exercises, but additional strength-building activities are covered by Thor and Luke Cage. In total, sixteen characters serve as fitness facilitators.

Knowing that emulating superheroes could be a recipe for overexertion, the book offers multiple reminders to proceed judiciously. As the introduction advises, “If along the way you find any of the exercises difficult for you, leave them for a while…and go back to them in a week or so” (page 11). To reinforce its low-pressure style, the book also keeps a lighthearted tone throughout, often by adding editorial asides to its picture captions. “Ease yourself down to a lying position (but always tell the truth) with your hands over your head” (page 47), reads the second step of “The Spider Bounce,” a head-to-knee forward bend demonstrated by Spider-Man.

The 1970s were a period of slow economic growth and high unemployment, among other economic woes, so perhaps it’s not surprising that Marvel’s first foray into fitness instruction made it a point to keep its exercises affordable. Most of them require no equipment whatsoever, and those that do stick to cheap or improvised equipment like jump ropes, a pelvic cushion made from a towel, or a foot platform made from books.

While the book was inclusive in that sense, in other ways it missed the mark. The most glaring problem is that the book is very gendered. Nearly all the exercises are demonstrated by male characters. The only two female characters, Sue Storm and Medusa, don’t appear until the latter chapters of the book, and they’re relegated to demonstrating slimming and beauty tips respectively. Sue’s chapter is also the only one where the book pivots to the topic of diet before it delves into exercise—and that detour has a single-minded focus on counting calories.

If that wasn’t enough, the book also includes a mildly ageist jab at Mister Fantastic, pointing out that he’s “getting a little gray at the temples” (page 23), as well as a fatphobic jab at The Thing, calling out his “lumps and bumps” and “unsightly bulges” (page 97). Given those shortcomings, it’s perhaps reassuring that the book is no longer a staple resource for fitness-minded comic book fans. Long out of print, it’s now more of a collector’s item and historical curiosity, usually fetching upwards of $50 on eBay.

More recently, Marvel partnered with Chronicle Books to make a new fitness guide, but they took care to make this modern version more inclusive. Published in 2024, it took the form of a boxed set of cards called Marvel Fitness Deck: Be the Hero of Your Exercise Adventure. The card set was written by Robyn Warren, the health coach who founded Geek Girl Strong, an online and in-person community where intersectional feminism and comic book fan culture meet. For anyone who might have cringed at The Mighty Marvel Strength and Fitness Book, this newer project was in good hands.

Both the 1976 book and the more recent card set were designed to make fitness fun. It’s a worthy goal when conventional physical education (PE) classes can feel alienating to so many kids, especially if they’ve ever felt the shame of being the last to be picked for a sports team. For some of them, competitive PE activities can feel intimidating, and group exercises can feel more like manufactured conformity than camaraderie.

That emotional resistance can be added to a long list of other barriers to physical activity, many of them socioeconomic. A lack of time, facilities, and financial means can put adequate exercise out of reach for many households. Not surprisingly, many people fall short of physical activity recommendations. Research has indicated that physical activity among youth has been on a downward trend for decades. Today, only 20 to 28% of children and youth get their recommended hour per day of physical activity, and only 24.2% of adults meet the weekly recommendations for both aerobic and strength-building exercise.

Stan Lee often signed off his correspondence with a personal motto: “Excelsior!” The archaic term means “ever upward.” Perhaps the spirit of that motto could serve people well when they’re trying to improve personal or community fitness measures. At the very least, it helped inspire a panoply of superheroes who occasionally moonlight as exercise instructors.

Matt Peters is a program manager at the University of Arizona College of Health Sciences. He is a longtime Marvel fan with an interest in health communication and graphic medicine. Views expressed are his own.