Marvel Comics
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Marvel Comics is an American comic book line published by Marvel Entertainment, Inc. Affectionately called the House of Ideas by the fan press, Marvel's best-known comics titles include Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Daredevil, Thor, Captain America, and X-Men. Since the 1960s, it has been one of the two largest American comics companies, along with DC Comics.
Located in New York City, Marvel has been successively headquartered in the McGraw-Hill Building on West 42nd Street (where it originated as Timely Comics in 1939); in suite 1401 of the Empire State Building; at 635 Madison Avenue (the actual location, though the comic books' indicia listed the parent publishing-company's address of 625 Madison Ave.); 575 Madison Avenue; 387 Park Avenue South; 10 East 40th Street; and 417 Fifth Avenue.
History
Timely Comics
Marvel Comics was founded by established pulp-magazine publisher Martin Goodman in 1939 as an eventual group of subsidiary companies under the umbrella name Timely Comics. Its first publication was Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), featuring the first appearance of Carl Burgos' android superhero, the Human Torch, and the first generally available appearance of Bill Everett's mutant anti-hero Namor the Sub-Mariner. The contents of that sales blockbuster were supplied by an outside packager, Funnies, Inc., but by the following year Timely had a staff in place.
The company's first editor, the writer-artist Joe Simon, teamed with soon-to-be industry legend Jack Kirby to create one of the first patriotically themed superheroes, Captain America, in Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941). It, too, proved a major sales hit.
While no other Timely character would be as successful as these "big three", some notable heroes — many continuing to appear in modern-day retcon appearances and flashbacks — include the Whizzer, Miss America, The Destroyer, the original Vision, and Paul Gustavson's The Angel. Timely also published one of humor cartoonist Basil Wolverton's best-known features, Powerhouse Pepper.
Atlas Comics
Sales of all comic books declined drastically in the post-war era as the superheroic übermensch archetype popular during the Depression and the war years went out of fashion. Like other comics companies, Timely — generally known as Atlas Comics in the 1950s — followed pop-cultural trends with a variety of genres, including funny animals, Western, horror, war, crime, humor, romance, spy fiction and even medieval adventure, all with varying degrees of success. An attempted superhero revival from 1953 to 1954, with the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner and Captain America, failed. From 1952 to late 1956, Goodman distributed his comics to newsstands through his self-owned distributor, Atlas. He then switched to American News Company, the nation's largest distributor and a virtual monopoly — which shortly afterward lost a Justice Department lawsuit and discontinued the business. Gerard Jones in Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book (Basic Books, 2004; trade paperback ISBN 9780465036578) explained that in 1956, the company
"...had been found guilty of restraint of trade and ordered to divest itself of the newsstands it owned. Its biggest client, George Delacorte, announced he would seek a new distributor for his Dell Comics and paperbacks. The owners [of American News] estimated the effect that would have on their income. Then they looked at the value of the New Jersey real estate where their headquarters sat. They liquidated the company and sold the land. The company ... vanished without a trace in the suburban growth of the 1950s."
This and other events led to what collectors and comics historians refer to as the "Atlas Implosion". The final comic to bear the Atlas globe logo was Dippy Duck #1, the company's only release with an October 1957 cover date. Goodman switched to the distributor Independent News, owned by rival DC Comics, on constrained terms that allowed only a limited number of titles per month. Fans sometimes refer to these surviving titles as the "sweet 16" (published bi-monthly, eight titles per month). The first of these to bear the new "Ind." label was Patsy Walker #73 — ironically cover-dated, like Dippy Duck #1, October 1957. The best-selling titles were Westerns (with Kid Colt starring in two titles) and girl humor (led by the long-running Millie the Model).[[Citing sources citation needed]] The two fantasy titles (Strange Tales and World of Fantasy) clung on printing stored inventory material from late 1957 through late 1958.
At that point, Goodman attempted a new direction by following the current drive-in science fiction-movie trend, launching or revamping six titles to offer that genre of story: Strange Worlds #1; World of Fantasy #15; Strange Tales #67; Journey into Mystery #50; Tales of Suspense #1; and Tales to Astonish #1. Their space-fantasy tales proved unsuccessful, and by the end of 1959, most of these titles (Strange Worlds and World of Fantasy being cancelled) were devoted to B-movie monsters. Most featured a line-up of Jack Kirby-drawn stories (often inked by Dick Ayers) followed by Don Heck's atmospheric rendering of jungle/prison escapes and weird adventures, or stories by artists such as Paul Reinman or Joe Sinnott, followed by a Stan Lee-Steve Ditko twist-ending bagatelle, which were sometimes daringly self-reflexive.
Marvel also expanded its line of girl-humor titles during this time, introducing Kathy ("the teen-age tornado!") (Oct. 1959) and the short-lived Linda Carter, Student Nurse (Sept. 1961).
The first comic book labeled Marvel Comics was the science-fiction anthology Amazing Adventures #3, which showed the "MC" box on its cover. Cover-dated August 1961, it was published May 9, 1961, according to Library of Congress copyright information. [link].
1960s
In the wake of DC Comics' success reviving superheroes in the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly with The Justice League of America, Marvel decided to follow suit. Editor/writer Stan Lee and freelance artist Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four, vaguely reminiscent of adventuring quartet the Challengers of the Unknown, which Kirby had created for DC in 1957. Eschewing such comic-book tropes as secret identities and even costumes at first, having a monster as one of the heroes, and having its characters bicker and complain in what was later called a "superheroes in the real world" approach, the series, as noted in countless comic-book histories (see "References"), represented a change that helped to make both it and the approach a great success. Marvel began publishing further superhero titles featuring such heroes and anti-heroes as the Hulk, Spider-Man, The Mighty Thor, Ant-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men, Daredevil, and such memorable antagonists as Doctor Doom, Magneto, Galactus, the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus. The most successful new series was The Amazing Spider-Man, by Lee and Steve Ditko. Marvel even lampooned itself, and other comics companies, in a parody comic, Not Brand Echh (a play on Marvel's dubbing of other companies as "Brand Echh", a la the then-common phrase "Brand X").
Marvel's comics were noted for focusing on characterization to a greater extent than most superhero comics before them. This was true of Spider-Man, in particular. Its young hero suffered from self-doubt and mundane problems like any other teenager. Marvel superheroes are often flawed, freaks, and misfits, unlike the perfect, handsome, athletic heroes found in previous traditional comic books. Some Marvel heroes looked like villains and monsters. In time, this non-traditional approach would revolutionize comic books.
In an October 10, 2003, column for IGN.com [link], Peter Sanderson, surmised that in the 1960s,
"DC was the equivalent of the big Hollywood studios: After the brilliance of DC's reinvention of the superhero ... in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it had run into a creative drought by the decade's end. There was a new audience for comics now, and it wasn't just the little kids that traditionally had read the books. The Marvel of the 1960s was in its own way the counterpart of the French New Wave.... Marvel was pioneering new methods of comics storytelling and characterization, addressing more serious themes, and in the process keeping and attracting readers in their teens and beyond. Moreover, among this new generation of readers were people who wanted to write or draw comics themselves, within the new style that Marvel had pioneered, and push the creative envelope still further."
Lee became one of the best-known names in comics, with his charming personality and relentless salesmanship of the company. His "voice" permeates the stories, the letters and news pages, and even the hyperbolic house ads of many of the Marvel Comics of the first half of the 1960s: his sense of humor and generally lighthearted manner, and the exaggerated depiction of the Bullpen (Lee's name for the staff) as one big, happy family. The artists — who eventually co-plotted the stories based on the busy Lee's rough synopsis or even simple spoken concept, in what became known as the Marvel Method — contributed greatly to Marvel's product and success. Kirby in particular is generally credited for many of the cosmic ideas and characters of Fantastic Four and The Mighty Thor, such as the Watcher, the Silver Surfer and Ego the Living Planet, while Steve Ditko is recognized as the driving artistic force behind the moody atmosphere and street-level naturalism of Spider-Man and the surreal atmosphere of Dr. Strange. Lee, however, continues to receive credit for his well-honed skills at dialogue and story sense, for his keen hand at choosing and motivating artists and assembling creative teams, and for his uncanny ability to connect with the readers.
In 1968, company founder Martin Goodman sold Marvel Comics and his other publishing businesses to the Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation. It grouped these businesses in a subsidiary called Magazine Management Co. Goodman remained as publisher.
1970s
Goodman retired as publisher in 1972 and was succeeded by Lee, who stepped aside from running day-to-day operations at Marvel. A series of new editors-in-chief oversaw the company during another slow time for the industry. Once again, Marvel attempted to diversify, and with the updating of the Comics Code achieved moderate success with titles themed to horror (Tomb of Dracula), martial arts, (), sword-and-sorcery (Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja), satire (Howard the Duck) and science fiction ("Killraven" in Amazing Adventures). Some of these were published in larger-sized black-and-white magazines, targeted for mature readers. Marvel was able to capitalize on its successful superhero comics of the previous decade by acquiring a new newsstand distributor and greatly expanding its comics line. Even more importantly, during a time when the price and format of the standard newsstand comic were in flux, Marvel captured a significant piece of DC's market share by offering a lower-priced product with a higher distributor discount.
In 1973, Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation changed its name to Cadence Industries, which in turn renamed Magazine Management Co. as Marvel Comics Group. Goodman, now completely disconnected from Marvel, created a new company called Atlas/Seaboard Comics in 1974, reviving Marvel's old Atlas name, but this project lasted only a year-and-a-half.
In the mid-1970s, Marvel was affected by a decline of the newsstand distribution network. Cult hits such as Howard the Duck were the victims of the distribution problems, with some titles reporting low sales when in fact they were being resold at a later date in the first specialty comic-book stores. An attempt by Marvel to buy DC was frustrated by DC's refusal to sell its entire library of characters (wanting to retain control of Superman and Batman), and DC was sold to Warner Communications instead.
By the end of the decade, Marvel's fortunes were reviving, thanks to the rise of direct-market distribution (selling through those same comics-specialty stores instead of newsstands) and the sales increase of previously borderline books — such as the canceled '60s title The Uncanny X-Men, revived to become a hit series under the team of writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne, or the more naturalistic, urban-crime superhero comic Daredevil, by writer/artist Frank Miller.
1980s
In 1981 Marvel purchased the DePatie-Freleng Enterprises animation studio from famed Looney Tunes director Friz Freleng and his business partner David H. DePatie. The company was renamed Marvel Productions and it produced well-known animated TV series and movies featuring such characters as G.I. Joe, The Transformers, Jim Henson's Muppet Babies, and such TV series as Dungeons & Dragons, as well as cartoons based on Marvel characters, including Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.
In 1986 Marvel was sold to New World Entertainment (which was eventually acquired, in 1997, as part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation/Fox Group). New World Comm, in 1988/1989, sold it to MacAndrews and Forbes owned by Revlon executive Ronald Perelman. Ronald Perelman, took the company public on the New York Stock Exchange, and oversaw a great increase in the number of titles the company published. As part of the process, Marvel Productions sold its back catalog to Saban Entertainment (acquired in 2001 by Disney ), and Marvel management closed the animation studio, opting to outsource.
1990s
Marvel earned a great deal of money and recognition during the comic-book boom of the early 1990s , from its flagship titles, X Men, Avengers, Spider Man, and Fantastic Four. However, it also launched the unsuccessful 2099 line of comics set in the future (Spider-Man 2099 etc.) and the creatively daring yet commercially unsuccessful Razorline imprint of superhero comics created by novelist and filmmaker Clive Barker.
In 1992 Marvel acquired Fleer Corporation, famous for his trading card and possibly in 1993 created Marvel Studios, devoted to film and TV projects. ( Avi Arad is credited as director of the company since 1993, but the 'boom' of production started in 1998 with Blade film).
In 1993 it was also created (with some talented people from Film Roman studios, and involvment of Stan Lee, Fox Group, and Avi Arad). Due the strong agreement from News Corporation/Fox Group and Saban, in 1997 the division will be closed.
Due to the poor sales relating titles mentioned above, which had been hugely unpopular with Marvel fans, and for wrong investiments, Marvel filed for bankruptcy amidst accusations that Perelman had strip-mined the company for his own gain. The casualties included the comic-book distribution industry in 1994, when Marvel announced it was acquiring Heroes World to use as its exclusive distributor. As the industry's other major publishers made exclusive distribution deals with other companies, the loss of the industry's largest companies threw the majority of the comic book distributors out of business. Marvel's plan failed, and by the end only Diamond Comic Distributors Inc. survives as the major distributor of comic books in North America, a development many comic retailers believe profoundly damaged the business status of the industry.
Investor Carl Icahn attempted to take control of Marvel, but after protracted legal battles, in 1997 control of the company landed in the hands of Isaac Perlmutter, owner of the Marvel subsidiary Toy Biz. With his business partner Avi Arad and publisher Bill Jemas and editor-in-chief Bob Harras, Perlmutter helped Marvel back on its feet, largely by returning to the fan favourites, X Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four. In addition to Marvel revitalizing its comics line, several of its properties have been licensed to become hit movies, most notably X-Men and Spider-Man.
Creatively and commercially, the '90s were dominated by the use of gimmickry to boost sales, such as variant covers, cover enhancements and regular company-wide crossovers that threw the universe's continuity into disarray. In 1996, Marvel had almost all its titles participate in the Onslaught Saga, a crossover that allowed Marvel to relaunch some of its flagship characters, such as the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, in the Heroes Reborn universe, in which Marvel defectors Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld were given permission to revamp the properties from scratch. After an initial sales bump, sales quickly declined below expected levels, and Marvel discontinued the experiment after a one-year run; the characters returned to the Marvel Universe proper. In 1998, the company launched the imprint Marvel Knights, taking place within Marvel continuity; helmed by soon-to-become editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, and featuring tough, gritty stories showcasing such characters as the Inhumans and Daredevil, it achieved substantial success.
2000s
With the new millennium, Marvel Comics escaped from bankruptcy and again began diversifying its offerings. In 2001, Marvel withdrew from the Comics Code Authority and established its own Marvel Rating System for comics. It also created new imprints, such as MAX, a line intended for mature readers, and Marvel Age, developed for younger audiences, including children. In addition to this is the highly successful Ultimate Marvel imprint, which allowed Marvel to reboot their major titles by deconstructing and updating their major superhero and villain characters to introduce to a new generation. This imprint exists in a universe parallel to the proper Marvel continuity, which allowed the writers freedom from the characters' convoluted history and the ability to redesign them, and to maintain their other ongoing series without replacing the established continuity. This also allowed Marvel to capitalize on an influx of new readers who were not familiar with comics but became familiar with their characters through their film franchises, making it easier for a mainstream audience to follow. The company has also revamped its graphic novel division, establishing a bigger presence in the bookstore market.Marvel remains a key publisher in the comics business, even as the industry has dwindled to a fraction of its peak size decades earlier. Stan Lee is no longer officially connected to the company, save for the title of "Chairman Emeritus," but remains a visible face in the industry and occasionally remarks on his fondness for the characters. In 2002, he sued successfully for a share of income related to movies and merchandising of Marvel characters, based on a contract between Lee and Marvel from the late 1990s; according to court documents, Marvel had used "Hollywood accounting" to claim that those projects' "earnings" were not profits. Marvel continues to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange as MVL. Regardless, Marvel has also become a key player in Hollywood, with many of its characters being turned into successful film franchises, the highest-grossing being those of the X-Men, starting in 2000, and Spider-Man, beginning in 2002.
In 2006, Marvel's fictional crossover event "Civil War" established federal superhero registration in the Marvel universe, creating a political and ethical schism throughout it. Also that year, Marvel created its own wiki.[link]
Editors-in-chief
The Marvel editor-in-chief oversees the largest-scale creative decisions taken within the company. While the fabled Stan Lee held great authority during the decades when publisher Martin Goodman privately held his company, of which the comics division was a relatively small part, his successors have been to greater and lesser extents subject to corporate management.The position evolved sporadically. In the earliest years, the company had a single editor overseeing the entire line. As the company grew, it became increasingly common for individual titles to be overseen separately. The concept of the "writer-editor" evolved, stemming from when Lee wrote and managed most of the line's output. Overseeing the line in the 1970s was a series of chief editors, though the titles were used intermittently. Confusing matters further, some appear to have been appointed merely by extending their existing editorial duties. By the time Jim Shooter took the post in 1978, the position of editor-in-chief was clearly defined.
In 1994, Marvel briefly abolished the position, replacing Tom DeFalco with five "group editors", though each held the title "editor-in-chief" and had some editors underneath them. It reinstated the overall editor-in-chief position later in the year, installing Bob Harras.
- Joe Simon (1939-1941)
- Stan Lee (1941-1942)
- Vincent Fago (acting editor during Stan Lee's military service) (1942-1945)
- Stan Lee (1945-1972)
- Roy Thomas (1972-1974)
- Len Wein (1974-1975)
- Marv Wolfman (B&W magazines 1974-1975, entire line 1975-1976)
- Gerry Conway (1976)
- Archie Goodwin (1976-1978)
- Jim Shooter (1978-1987)
- Tom DeFalco (1987-1994)
- No overall editor-in-chief (1994-1995)
- Bob Harras (1995-2000)
- Joe Quesada (2000-)
Imprints
- Current
- * Marvel Next
- * Icon Comics
- * Marvel Age
- * Marvel Knights
- * MAX
- * Ultimate Marvel
- Defunct
- * Curtis Magazines
- * Epic Comics
- * Marvel 2099
- * Marvel Edge
- * Marvel Music
- * Tsunami
- * MC2
- * Marvel UK
- * Malibu Comics
- * New Universe
- * Paramount Comics
- * Razorline
- * Star Comics
See also
- Marvel Universe
- Marvel Multiverse
- List of Marvel Comics alien races
- List of Marvel Comics characters
- List of Marvel Comics publications
- List of Marvel Comics people
- List of Marvel Comics movies
- List of Marvel cosmic beings
- List of Marvel Comics teams and organizations
- Marvel Golden Age Characters
- Toy Biz v. United States, which ruled that action figures of certain Marvel characters are legally toys, not dolls
References
- All in Color for a Dime by Dick Lupoff & Don Thompson ISBN 0873414985
- The Comic Book Makers by Joe Simon with Jim Simon ISBN 1887591354
- Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee by Stan Lee and George Mair ISBN 0684873052
- Jack Kirby: The TCJ Interviews, Milo George, ed. (Fantagraphics Books, Inc., 2001). ISBN 1560974346
- Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics by Les Daniels ISBN 0810938219
- Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones (Basic Books, 2004) trade paperback ISBN 9780465036578
- Origins of Marvel Comics by Stan Lee ISBN 0785105794
- The Steranko History of Comics, Vol. 1 by James Steranko ISBN 0517501880
- Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and the American Comic Book Revolution by Ronin Ro (Bloomsbury, 2004) ISBN 1582343454
- [A Timely Talk with Allen Bellman]
- [Atlas Tales]
- [The Marvel/Atlas Super-Hero Revival of the Mid-1950s]
- [The Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center]
- [Jack Kirby Collector #25: "More Than Your Average Joe"]
- [Clive Barker official site: Comics]
- [Independent Heroes from the USA: Clive Barker's Razorline]
- [Buzzscope (June 23, 2005): "Addicted to Comics" #10 (column) by Jim Salicrup]
External links
- [Marvel Entertainment official site]
- [Official UK Marvel Site]
- (Wiki site)
- [Superhero Database: Marvel Comics]
- [Superheroes Lives] Live-action movies based on Marvel characters
- [The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe]
- [Marvel Directory]
- [Comic Book and Strip Service article] on Marvel and DC Comics
- [Marvel Guide: An Unofficial Handbook of the Marvel Universe]
- [Big Comic Book DataBase: Marvel Comics]
- [Timely Atlas Cover Gallery]
- [Nick Simon's Silver-Age Marvel Comics Cover Index]
- [The Collected Comics Library podcast and blog]
- [ComicCovers.com Marvel page]
- [GashaponCollector.com Marvel page]
- [some detail about Marvel Film Animation, from the homepage of animator John Cawley]
- [NewKadia.com - Website displaying cover scans of Marvel comic back-issues]
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