THE GOLDEN AGE

Before Marvel became the near-billion-dollar entertainment juggernaut it is today, the company started as humble Timely Comics. This disposa-ble pulp factory from publisher Martin Goodman—staffed by a skeleton crew of teens and twentysomethings—launched in 1939 with Marvel Comics #1, starring Carl Burgos and Bill Everett’s grim, garish heroes the Human Torch and Namor the Sub-Mariner, respectively. Far from hoping to build a multimedia empire, staffers Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee (above)  just wanted to make a living.

Joe Simon (editor, 1939–1941; cocreator of Captain America): This was the Depression, and I was out of a job. An art director in New York looked at my portfolio and suggested a new type of magazine making a lot of waves—comic books.

Stan Lee (editor in chief, 1941–1942, 1945–1972; cocreator of Spider-Man, X-Men, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, Dr. Strange, and Daredevil): My cousin’s  husband, Martin Goodman, published men’s magazines, romance magazines, pulps, all kinds of things. His philosophy was: Find out what’s selling and copy it. He was the great follower.

Joe Simon: We had the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner. [Writer-artist] Jack Kirby and I used to get ideas and put them on our shelves. We didn’t trust anybody in those days. When Martin Goodman came to me and asked if I had anything, there was almost a whole issue of Captain America ready to go.

Stan Lee: I heard that Martin needed an assistant, so I figured I might as well get out into the real world. I’m still waiting to get out there.

Joe Simon: Stan Lee used to follow us around. He was our little kid, made us laugh. Kirby hated him from the beginning. I thought he was cute.

Stan Lee: I don’t think becoming editor in chief had to do with my qualifications—there was nobody else.

Joe Simon: The royalty Martin paid us was never realistic. We got a little pissed off.

Stan Lee: Suddenly, Kirby and Simon left. Martin looked around and said, “Hey, do you think you could hold down this job until I can get an adult?”

Joe Simon: Stan was always embarrassed about being related to Martin. Three years ago he called me and said, “When I do interviews, I tell the story that I was walking down the hall and ran into Martin, and Martin says, ‘What are you doing here?’ I tell Martin, ‘I work here,’ and Martin says, ‘Wow, that’s a coincidence!’” I said, “Stan, that couldn’t have happened.” He says, “Why not?” “We didn’t have a hall.”

 

THE MARVEL UNIVERSE"S BIG BANG

When the superhero craze died down after World War II, Goodman ordered his comics company—renamed Atlas in 1951—to crank out romances, westerns, funny animal books, horror stories, anything that sold. It wasn’t until the fall of 1961, when Goodman instructed Lee to chase the sales of rival publisher DC’s Justice League of America, that Stan and Jack Kirby (now back in the fold) really struck out on their own with The Fantastic Four #1. An instant sales phenomenon, rivaled the next summer with the debut of Spider-Man, the book gave birth to the shared world of heroes and villains known as the Marvel Universe. Its flawed characters appeared in one another’s comics, teamed up against one another’s enemies, and learned from their experiences. Kicking off a comic book revival known as the Silver Age, it changed the industry forever.

Stan Lee: I felt I wasn’t getting anywhere. I used to say to my wife, “Should the company go out of business”—and once or twice we came close—“what do I do?” You couldn’t go to Time magazine and say, “I wanna write for you. I used to write Silly Seal and Ziggy Pig.” I loved doing comics, but where was the future?

Joe Sinnott (Fantastic Four inker, 1965–1981): At the time Stan created the Fantastic Four, we thought it was just another story. We were wrong.

Roy Thomas (editor in chief, 1972–1974; Conan the Barbarian writer, 1970–1980; cocreator of Red Sonja and Iron Fist): I bought Fantastic Four #1 off the stands. I fell in love with the Thing.

Joe Sinnott: Stan mailed me Fantastic Four #5 to work on. I had never seen anything like that before.

Marv Wolfman (editor in chief, 1975–1976; cocreator of Blade): The characters acted very differently from the other comics. They weren’t always friendly, and they seemed to live between episodes. That idea of continuity was picked up by all media, not just superhero comics. In the past every episode of a TV show was stand-alone. Marvel changed that.

Stan Lee: Before we did Fantastic Four, we might get one letter saying, “I bought one of your books and the staple came out. I want my dime back.” I’d hang it on the wall and say, “Look, we got a fan letter!” As soon as we brought out the Fantastic Four, we started getting real letters. You didn’t need a house to fall on you to realize you were onto something.

Joe Sinnott: That’s when comic books took off—the second coming of the Superhero Age.

Stan Lee: I’d say to myself, “What kind of character hasn’t been done yet?” With Spider-Man I was just trying to think of a superpower that no one had used.

Brian K. Vaughan (Lost writer, 2007–2009; cocreator of Runaways and the Hood): If you’re an awkward nerd, it’s a slam dunk to read about Peter Parker, who is an awkward nerd with money problems and girl problems, but gets to live this other life as a wisecracking hero.

Stan Lee: We couldn’t do enough superhero books. Everybody was clamoring for them.

Brian K. Vaughan: In a couple of years, they created dozens of characters that have lasted decades and become hit movie franchises. It’s totally unbelievable how hard that is to do. It’s like the Beatles.

 

MAKE MINE MARVEL

For a baby boomer audience quickly outgrowing the simplistic, square-jawed superheroics of DC’s Superman, Batman, and the Flash, Lee and company’s heroes were perfect: angsty, intelligent, rejected by society, even beset by physical handicaps. Pre-emo teens looking for an outlet and college kids eager to expand their minds helped nearly double Marvel’s annual sales in four years. While artists like Kirby and Steve Ditko added personal style and psychedelic flourishes to Lee’s soap-operatic stories, Lee became an in-demand speaker on campuses and a fixture in the comics’ letters column, painting Marvel as one big, happy family fans were welcome to join.

Stan Lee: I worked with the most brilliant artists: Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr., John Buscema, Gil Kane, Gene Colan, Dick Ayers. I don’t think we’d have been so successful if not for those guys.

Louise Simonson (X-Men line writer-editor, 1980–1991): Jack Kirby is the Picasso of American comic books. The man was a genius.

Gary Groth (The Comics Journal editor, 1976–present; copublisher of Ghost World): There was a lot of pain in Kirby’s work. Ben Grimm was always pissed off about being the Thing, the Hulk was in a constant state of angst— these guys clearly suffered!

Jim Steranko (Strange Tales; Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. writer-artist, 1966–1968): Marvel was in a different dimension than DC. One embraced a bravura ideology; the other was pragmatic and elitist. One was exhilarating; the other, exhausting.

Gary Groth: Kirby drew buildings and boulders and streets that felt real, whereas the same landscapes at DC looked like they were all made out of balsa wood. His fight scenes were down-and-dirty, where people really looked like they were pummeling each other.

Chris Claremont (Uncanny X-Men writer, 1975–1991): DC’s theory was that you cycled through an audience every three years. Stan’s revolutionary concept was, Why not just keep moving ahead?

John Romita Jr. (Amazing Spider-Man, X-Men, Daredevil artist, 1978–present): My father was working for DC, and he would bring home Superman. It was so childish to me—and I was a kid! But then he left to work on Daredevil. He’d explain it: “This is Daredevil, and he’s blind.” “He’s blind? He’s surrounded! How’s he gonna get out of there?” I was hooked.

Walt Simonson (The Mighty Thor writer-artist, 1983–1987): I was in college, and I wrote to Marvel and asked for a copy of Journey Into Mystery #122. One day a copy showed up with a card that said, “Couldn’t let you down. Enjoy the comic—from Stan and the gang.” I went bat-shit.

Herb Trimpe (The Incredible Hulk artist, 1968–1977; cocreator of Wolverine): The office was laid-back—no cards, no ID, no locks—you just walked in. Sometimes fans would come in, and if someone wasn’t busy they’d show them around.

Stan Lee: After a while Jack and Steve especially were practically doing whole plots. I might have
been writing an X-Men story for Jack when Steve Ditko would say, “I need the next Spider-Man story.” I couldn’t let Steve stand around with nothing to do, so I’d say, “Steve, I don’t have the script, but let’s get a villain called the Vulture; he does this and that, and then Spidey ends up beating him this way in the end. Draw it any way you want.” Jack and Steve were so imaginative—I’d just tie everything together with dialogue. I loved them. I was very sorry when they left. “Very sorry” is putting it mildly.

 

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

In 1967 Marvel’s Spider-Man and Fantastic Four first hit the small screen in cartoon form—the opening salvo in a cultural explosion that included Spider-Man Underoos and Paul McCartney writing songs about Magneto. But Ditko had abruptly quit. Three years later Jack Kirby departed for archrival DC. Even Stan Lee left his writing and editing duties behind in 1972 when Cadence Industries (Marvel’s owner) made him the company’s publisher.

As the “Holy Trinity” faded, a younger generation—fans first, creators second—took the reins and began crafting characters with a darker edge: Blade, Ghost Rider, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, even the
satirical Howard the Duck. Though they never reached the Silver Age’s success, Marvel’s ’70s crew laid the groundwork for huge growth by revamping a failed Lee-Kirby concept: the X-Men.

Stan Lee: Really, I’m not sure what the hell happened with Jack quitting. I was the face of the company, and I’m guessing he felt, “Jesus, we’re doing this together, and he’s getting so much credit.” With Steve, again, I’m guessing—he never said why he left. I asked him once, and he said, “You should know!”

Roy Thomas: After a few years at DC, Jack wanted to come back, but he knew he had set a few fires. Stan hadn’t been too happy about this [DC character] Funky Flashman that Jack had based on him. Jack joked, “Well, it was all in fun.” It wasn’t all in fun.

Len Wein (editor in chief, 1974–1975; cocreator of Wolverine; editor of DC Comics’ Watchmen):
We were a bunch of kids running a comic book company. If anybody wore socks, it was a big day.

Herb Trimpe: We did a lot of throwaway characters for the Hulk to fight—they came in one issue and were out in the next. Wolverine was one of those.

Len Wein: Roy Thomas gave me the name Wolverine. They’re nasty little creatures with razor-sharp claws. It was the easiest thing in the world to develop. I made him a mutant because there had been some talk about reviving the dormant X-Men book. Nobody intended him to be a superstar.

Chris Claremont: We just wanted to have fun. What were the most outrageous things we could do?

Bob Harras (editor in chief, 1995–2000): X-Men was what Marvel was about: being different and misunderstood and yet still striving to do good despite the world looking at you with doubt and suspicion.


RENAISSANCE MEN

As astute an editor as he was combative a personality, Jim Shooter ushered in a new era when he became editor in chief in 1978. Under Shooter the rights and royalties afforded to Marvel’s writers and artists improved, as did the accessibility of their story lines. Taking advantage of the new “direct market” of comic book stores, X-Men killed off S&M-tinged leading lady Jean Grey, the Phoenix, and its circulation went through the roof. Shooter’s Secret Wars series proved that editorially driven “crossover” titles could drive the bottom line, while cutting-edge work like Frank Miller’s Daredevil ushered in a creative renaissance.

Yet at the same time, an ongoing dispute with Jack Kirby over thousands of pages of original art Marvel refused to return to him gave the company a major black eye. Meanwhile, Shooter’s battles with both talent and management became legendary.

Jim Shooter: When I took over, it was a train wreck.

Marv Wolfman: Jim ruined things for a lot of people, and a lot of us left after that point.

Walt Simonson: But when Phoenix died, that catapulted the X-Men into the stratosphere.