Today is the 70th Anniversary of Marvel Comics, and that’s a milestone if I’ve ever heard one! One of the two comic giants of our era, Marvel has been publishing quality comics now since 1939, completely defining a whole era of comics (along with their biggest competitor). And now, at 70 years old, it’s still looking GOOD! I mean, damn Marvel, how are you keepin’ so fine??
So we here at Multiversity Comics salute you on this epic achievement. Allow us to have a brief look back at Marvel through the years and all the things you’ve offered us.
In 1939, a man by the name of Martin Goodman founded a comic book company called Timely Publications. The first publication in October of that year, entitled Marvel Comics (which changed to Mystery Marvel Comics), solidified the future direction the publishing company would take, introducing the original Human Torch as well as Namor. It was a smash hit. Two years later, Joe Simon (Timely’s editor) teamed up with Jack Kirby to publish the first ever Captain America comic, which sold up into the millions. More characters were invented (most of whom have since been retconned) as well as a line of children’s comics. It wasn’t until 1950s that the comic company changed its name to Atlas Comics in the post-war world. Superheroes were less popular now that the war was over, so the comic company began publishing pulp stories, such as horror, crime, Westerns, etc.
In 1961, Marvel began it’s return to the superhero medium with Amazing Adventures. In November of that year, a young and unknown author named Stan Lee, along with artist Jack Kirby, created the first superhero team of Marvel, the Fantastic Four. The book served as an update of the idea of superheroism in the modern age, with the book inside reflecting the world outside in a move that was relatively unheard of at the time. DC was also publishing it’s first real brand of superhero comics with Green Lantern and the Flash, although their books were set in an alternate Earth as opposed to Marvel. Bringing in a whole new world of secret identities and bickering amongst heroes, Marvel proved a whole new idea of heroes would work in the 60’s. Soon, they began publishing more and more series, with characters that last to this day such as the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, the X-Men, Daredevil, and the best selling book of all, the Amazing Spider-Man. These books focused mainly on the characterization of heroes over just the adventures of a hero, and Spider-Man showed that the most with a 16 year old boy trying to balance the life of a superhero as well as that of a crime fighter. On top of that, they had heroes like the Hulk, who himself was a monster and looked more like a villain, and was a pretty ballsy move on Marvel’s part.
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.
Throughout the years, Marvel continued to grow exponentially with Stan Lee eventually taking over as the Editor-In-Chief, made especially succesfull with the developing of his huge fan following based on his defining writing. In the 70’s, Marvel would continue to expand, bringing in other elements into it’s universe such as horror, medeivel fantasy, kung-fu, science fiction, and satire (Howard the Duck, anyone?). Although a decline in sales happened (goodbye, Howard), Marvel still managed to excell and grow, moving to direct publishing from their offices as well as distribution overseas to a European market. The 80’s featured an even bigger growth for Marvel with a wider cast of characters introduced, the first company wide crossover event (Secret Wars, Contest of Champions), as well as Marvel growing into an even larger company known as Marvel Productions which then produced animated shows such as Transformers, GI Joe, and even Muppet Babies. It wasn’t until the 90’s that Marvel became a public company versus one owned by a parent company, and continued to further expand it’s market into toys and trading cards, as well as bringing in hotshots in the industry, such as Todd Macfarlane, and people outside of the industry to write for them, such as Clive Barker. Although the company did go bankrupt in 1996, it rebounded back and remained a giant and titan of the industry where it remains today, still challenging the medium, challenging it’s readers, and pushing the boundaries of how to publish comics (such as their new digital/animated comic intiative).So three cheers for Marvel! It’s been a long and bumpy road, but it’s still quite an amazing set of books. Marvel has easily defined comic books for me, and for a long time I was a die hard Marvel fan, refusing to even read any DC Comics. Characters like Spider-Man, Magneto, Venom, and Deadpool will always be some of the greatest comic book characters of all time in my book. Plus, when I met Stan Lee earlier this year, it was easily one of the coolest moments in my geek life. So congrats, Marvel. You’ve made it this far. Don’t stop now!
