Marvels Storyline Part 3: Marvel Comics

Ever wonder what life would be like now a days if Stan Lee had stopped creating comics with artist Jack Kirby while Marvel went through the Western, Humor, Horror, Crime, and Romance comics phase? If it weren’t for Stan’s wife, we’d be living in a world without Marvel! Lee said to his wife that he wanted to quit writing those dull comics and do something else, but his wife said to him, “Before you quit, why don’t you do one book the way you’d like to do it?” and thus The Fantastic Four were born! After Stan Lee’s The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961) was released, the company began establishing a reputation that eventually lead to The Marvel Age of Comics! Stan thought that The Fantastic Four wasn’t going to take off, but it stuck and developed into a fantastic (pun intended) storyline. After that, Lee and Kirby revamped superheros; they were given more detailed costumes to hide their secret identities, some of them were monsters and still heroes, some bickered and complained and were faced with real-world problems. This style of comic was later referred to as “superheroes in the real world” and has been used ever since. This lead Marvel to create more characters riddled with real-world problems and anti-heroes as well such as Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, the X-Men, Daredevil, and the Silver Surfer along with Doctor Doom, Galactus, Magneto, Loki, the Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus! All of these characters existed in a shared reality known as the Marvel Universe.

Marvel’s comics built a reputation for focusing on characterization on superheroes to a greater extent than comics before them. This was expressed the most in The Amazing Spider-Man comics most of all. Spider-Man’s alter ego, Peter Parker, experienced regular teenage problems as well as the problems that a superhero faces. Marvel told the world that heroes didn’t have to be perfect in every way, they could be flawed freaks with tragic backgrounds and look like villains but be considered heroes.

Marvels Storyline Part 2: Atlas Comics

After our nations heros won the battles of World War II and returned home, the once popular Superman, Batman & Robin, Wonder Woman, and Captain America started to die out. Fighting Hitler and the Red Skull weren’t practical anymore because the battle was already over and in 1954 during an investigation on comic book violence and how it affects children the book, Seduction of the Innocent, nailed the coffin shut on our superhero buddies.

Comics now had to abide by certain rules and restrictions, churches and schools organized boycotts of comics and some had regularly timed book burnings in which kids would bring their old comic books of Superman and Captain America and burn them in a big heap. In that time, the Marvel and DC teams, among other publishers, would instead put out Western, Horror, Crime, and Romance comics. Meanwhile, Goodman started using the glob logo Atlas News Company on comics cover-dated November 1951 because he owned that company. Atlas published a plethora of children stories such as Casper the Friendly Ghost and he also unsuccessfully tried to revamp the old comic heros. According to Stan Lee, the company only survived the first two decades because they produced their work quickly, cheaply, and at a passable quality.

However, then came the Marvel Age of Comics!

Marvels Storyline Part 1: Timely Publications

Martin Goodman founded a company called Timely Publications in 1939, which would later come to be known as Marvel Comics. The first ever publication from Timely, released October 1939, featured Carl Burgos’ android superhero the Human Torch and Bill Everett’s anti-hero Namor the Sub-Mariner! It was a great success and sold, combined with the following issue, nearly 900,000 copies. After writer-artist Joe Simon, the companies first true editor, teamed up with artist Jack Kirby to create one of the first patriotic themed superheros of all time: Captain America who first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941) with sales of nearly one million. When Simon left the company in 1941, Goodman gave the job to Stanley Lieber, who Goodman hired in 1939. Stanley, who was now writing under the name “Stan Lee” kept the position of interim editor for decades except during the three years he fought in World War II. The strategy that Goodman came up with to do business was to his various magazines and comics published under a number of corporations all operating out of the same office and with the same staff. One of these shell companies produced Marvel Mystery Comics which Goodman would later adopt.