From the pages of Stan Lee's failed comic book ideas:
[In hasty, scribbled script] So we open on a meek French boy, infatuated by the pleasantly red-headed girl whom he gazes bashfully at in between hours spent trapped in lockers, put there by the goon squad that roams his school. Our French boy has a crippling fear of heights. (Heights=Kryptonite!) Then, everything changes on the day our hero finds himself locked out of his parents' 7th floor apartment. With the goons and the red-headed fox watching, our hero climbs the building! No. This is terrible. Back to the radioactive spider bit.
It might not make for the best comic book, but it is in fact the backstory (with a few embellishments) for Alain Robert, the man who just yesterday climbed the tallest building in the world, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, standing at 2,716-ft tall. Robert performed the approximately 6-hour climb without the assistance of any climbing gear, though he was required to wear a harness.
Previously, Robert had climbed Taiwan's Taipei 101, Chicago's Sears Tower, and the Eiffel Tower, among other tall structures. Robert is a 48-year-old husband and father of two, and everything he does, he does it big.
