Exposed: Myths of Marvel's Silver Age - Part 1

BACK IN THE EARLY 1960s, Marvel comics was a small publishing house that no one really cared about. After some bad luck and at least one disastrous business decision during the 1950s, owner-publisher Martin Goodman, who was married to Stan Lee's mother's niece, was presiding over a company that had definitely seen better days.

But before I get too deeply into that, let's first pause to expose one of the minor myths of Marvel - that Stan Lee got his job because he was related to Martin Goodman.

It wasn't publisher Martin Goodman who got Stan Lee his job at Timely (later Marvel) in 1941, but Stan's Uncle Robbie Solomon, who was also Goodman's brother-in-law.

In fact, Stanley Martin Leiber (I'm pretty sure the "Martin" was a coincidence) was largely unknown to Goodman. It was Stan's uncle, Robbie Solomon, who secured an interview for Stan with then-Timely editor Joe Simon - and probably pressured Simon to hire young Leiber - that resulted in Stan working for Goodman. So Stan's claim, in his biography Excelsior - The Amazing Life of Stan Lee, that "Martin and I had never had much to do with each other before I started working at his company" is probably true. "My first day on the job at Timely, Martin seemed surprised to see me," Stan continues. "He sounded puzzled as he asked me, 'What are you doing here?' I didn't know if Robbie had neglected to mention that I had been interviewed and accepted by editor Joe Simon, or if Simon himself had forgotten to tell him."

Joe Simon has disputed that story, for example, when interviewed by Mark Evanier at the 1998 San Diego Comic Convention. "That story can't be true. We only had three offices and a bunch of [Goodman's] relatives in the building." But then later in the interview, Simon make an interesting throwaway comment. "[Goodman] had all his relatives around him. He had Uncle Robbie there, taking care of Uncle Robbie."

That says more to me about how Stan ended up working for Goodman than anything else. It seems pretty certain that it was Robbie Solomon who got Stan the job. Goodman may well have not known about it. Because "Uncle Robbie was taking care of Uncle Robbie." As in, he was taking care of his own family, not Goodman's.

That Stan Lee worked directly for Editor Joe Simon has given rise to another Marvel myth - the idea that Stan Lee ratted on Simon and Kirby's moonlighting at DC during 1941, leading to the Captain America creators being fired from Timely. But first, some background. 

When Martin Goodman first got into comics with the prophetically titled Marvel Comics 1 (Oct 1939), he had used a comics "shop" run by Lloyd Jacquet, First Funnies Inc. Jacquet was also contracted to supply all the material for Marvel Mystery Comics and sister magazine Daring Mystery Comics. A third magazine, Mystic Comics, used material supplied by Harry Chesler.

For reasons unknown, Marvel Comics became Marvel Mystery Comics after its first issue. In short order, Martin Goodman added Daring Mystery Comics and Mystic Comics to the lineup. But neither enjoyed much success and were marked by irregular publication and constant lineup changes.

With Goodman wanting more, Jacquet assigned Simon to write and draw a Human Torch knock-off The Fiery Mask for Daring Mystery Comics 1 (Jan 1940). Goodman liked the character and invited Simon over to the Timely offices for a chat. Goodman asked Simon what Jacquet was paying him. When Simon replied, Goodman said he’d pay more for Simon to create original, selling concepts for Timely. So Simon started freelancing for Timely. In December 1939, Simon answered an ad in the New York Times and became the editor at Fox Features Syndicate, while continuing his freelance work for Funnies and Timely. He began working with Fox artist Jack Kirby on a Funnies project for Novelty Press, Blue Bolt. In the spring of 1940, Simon quit Fox and joined Timely as Editor, bringing Kirby with him. I explain all of this to show that working for more than one company at a time was considered normal in the early days of comics.

Another bit of important background. At the end of 1939, a couple of months after the release of Marvel Comics 1, MLJ published Pep Comics 1 (Jan 1940), featuring the first appearance of a red-white-and-blue super-hero The Shield. MLJ was co-owned by Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit (Martin Goodman's first business partner in publishing), and John L. Goldwater, and would later morph into Archie Comics. Maurice Coyne is the name to watch, here.

MLJ's The Shield was the first superhero to dress up in the America Flag. Created by Harry Shorten (who would later edit Tower Comics in the 1960s) and Irv Novick, first appearing in Pep Comics 1 (Jan 1940). A later issue of Pep Comics - issue 17 (Jul 1941) - would debut a hero called The Hangman.

Back at Timely Comics, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby began to churn out material for Goodman's comic range, their key characters being Red Raven and all the backup features in Red Raven Comics 1 (Aug 1940), Marvel Boy in Daring Mystery 6 (Sep 1940), The Vision in Marvel Mystery 13 (Nov 1940) and, of course, Captain America and Bucky in Captain America Comics 1 (Mar 1941).

With Captain America Comics, Joe Simon had negotiated a better deal for Kirby and himself. He got Goodman to agree that Simon and Kirby would get 25% of the profits of Captain America Comics. For the first few issues, Simon and Kirby broke their backs to make Captain America the best comic they could, and their efforts were rewarded when sales rose to over one million copies. After Captain America 6 (Sep 1941) came out, pitting Cap against a villain called The Hangman, MLJ's John Goldwater, already smarting because Captain America was far outselling his own Pep Comics character The Shield, considered Timely's Hangman to be an infringement of his own Pep Comics hero, The Hangman, and threatened Goodman with a lawsuit. Goodman placated Goldwater by promising to never use The Hangman again. And that appeared to be the end of the matter.

However, in a strange turn of circumstance Maurice Coyne, who also worked as Martin Goodman's accountant at Timely Comics, drew Joe Simon aside, not long after the Hangman incident, and told him that Goodman was piling Timely expenses against Captain America Comics, to such an extent that the million-selling title wasn't showing a profit. And that Simon and Kirby were unlikely to get their 25%.

With the enormous success of Captain America Comics, Goodman capitalised by putting out further vehicles for Captain America ... All Winner Comics, USA Comics and Young Allies, all edited, written and drawn (to some extent) by the Simon and Kirby team.

Simon was furious, especially given that other Timely titles, USA Comics, All-Winners and Young Allies also featuring Captain America were selling near to a million copies a month too. So he put out feelers to National Comics publisher Jack Liebowitz, to see whether he and Kirby could jump ship. Liebowitz was delighted and quickly agreed to Simon's price of $500 a week, way more than the $85 and $75 Joe and Jack were getting from Goodman.

Simon and Kirby quickly rented office space and began working on concepts for National on their lunch-hours and in the evenings. But office junior Stan Lee began to get curious about where Simon and Kirby were disappearing off to and followed them one day. Realising they moonlighting on other projects, Stan pitched in to help, continuing as their gopher of the side project as well as in the Timely office. They swore Lee to secrecy and continued to work on concepts for Liebowitz.

Then one day, at Timely, Simon and Kirby were confronted by Goodman family members, including Robbie Solomon, who accused them of working for other publishers behind their backs. I'm not sure why this would have upset the Timely management so much. Moonlighting was pretty normal in these first, formative days of comics. Martin Goodman had actually asked Simon to moonlight for Timely while he was still at Funnies Inc. So the idea of Simon and Kirby moonlighting for another publisher while they were working at Timely surely couldn't have been a surprise.

Simon and Kirby were fired from Timely, but were forced to finish the current issue of Captain America first (10, Jan 1942), putting the date of the incident early to mid-September 1941.

A lot of people knew about Simon and Kirby's plans to move to National, but Simon recounts that Kirby always suspected Stan and that he commented, "Next time I see that little son of a bitch, I'm gonna kill him." (He didn't.) I'm not even sure why Kirby was upset. He and Simon were planning to leave Timely anyway. And even if Stan did tell the Goodmans - and there's no evidence that he did - they were his family, and Simon and Kirby weren't.

So with no evidence other than Kirby's general irritation with Lee to back it up, it seems as though the idea of Stan being responsible for Simon and Kirby leaving Timely in 1941 is a myth.

WAS 1960s MARVEL LIMITED TO EIGHT TITLES A MONTH?

This one is neither simple nor straightforward to answer. It's true that in the wake of the Great Atlas Implosion of 1957, Martin Goodman was forced to ask National publisher and rival Jack Liebowitz to distribute his Magazine Management publications, including the comics. As part of the deal, the comics were indeed limited to eight titles a month. That much is true. But it's not the full story. 

The popular myth is that Marvel limped through the 1960s with just 16 titles until it came time to renegotiate the contract with Independent News in 1967 and suddenly, with one bound, Marvel was free. But I looked at the Marvel line-up from 1957 to 1967 and the truth is a little bit different.

Westerns must've been struggling as the 1950s ended. Goodman cancelled Wyatt Earp, a title that began in 1949 and replaced it with the Archie Comics style My Girl Pearl (itself a revival of a 1950s title). Monsters were good business though, as Strange Tales and Tales to Astonish were promoted to monthly.

Yes, it is true that in the early days, Goodman was forced to cancel one title if he wanted to launch a new one. But that rule was eased as early as 1960 when, by the end of the year, the line had expanded by switching Strange Tales (with 78, Nov 1960) and Tales to Astonish (with 12, Oct 1960) from bi-monthly to monthly. Wyatt Earp with issue 29 (Jun 1960) was cancelled, its slot taken by My Girl Pearl 1 (Aug 1960). So Marvel was publishing nine titles a month.

1959		1960		1961
Odd months	Even Months	Odd months	Even Months	Odd months	Even Months
Gunsmoke Western Journey into Mystery Kid Colt Outlaw Love Romances Mille the Model My Own Romance Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish	Battle Patsy & Hedy Patsy Walker Strange Tales Strange Worlds/Kathy Two-Gun Kid World of Fantasy/Date with Millie Wyatt Earp	Gunsmoke Western Journey into Mystery Kid Colt Outlaw Love Romances Millie the Model My Own Romance/Teen-Age Romance Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish	Battle/Rawhide Kid Date/Life with Millie Kathy Patsy & Hedy Patsy Walker Strange Tales Tales to Astonish Two-Gun Kid Wyatt Earp /My Girl Pearl	Fantastic Four Gunsmoke Western Journey into Mystery Kid Colt Outlaw Love Romances Millie the Model Linda Carter Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish Teenage Romance Two-Gun Kid/Amazing Adventures	Journey into Mystery Kathy Life with Millie My Girl Pearl/Amazing Adventures Patsy & Hedy Patsy Walker Rawhide Kid Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish
8 slots	8 slots	9 slots	9 slots	12 slots	10 slots

By the end of 1961 Goodman had added Fantastic Four and Linda Carter as bi-monthlies. Two-Gun Kid and My Girl Pearl were cancelled, to be replaced by the monthly Amazing Adventures, leading to a net increase in titles to ten on even months and 12 on odd months.

Another long-running western comic Two-Gun Kid  was a casualty in 1961, cancelled with its 59th issue, making way for another monster title, Amazing Adventures. My Girl Pearl also went, but Linda Carter - Student Nurse was put on the schedule.

In 1962, Amazing Adventures became Amazing (Adult) Fantasy and motored right on as a monthly, until August's issue 15, when it was cancelled and Fantastic Four took over its monthly slot, with issue 6. Much has been made of the conflict between Stan Lee's editorial text in Amazing Fantasy 15, promising that Spider-Man would be the lead feature in future issues, and Stan later saying that he put Spider-Man in the magazine because he knew Goodman was cancelling it. They can't both be true. Given the timing of the cancellation and Fantastic Four's increasing sales, it seems to make the most sense that Goodman was winding up Amazing to clear the way to make FF a monthly. After all, he could always change his mind later, couldn't he? Similarly, with Fantastic Four doing so well, I think Goodman asked Stan for another superhero title, so he cancelled Teen-Age Romance (with 86, Mar 1962), making way for Incredible Hulk as a bi-monthly in May. The result was there were no net gains in 1962, with Goodman continuing to publish 12 comic titles one month and ten the next. Oh, and Two-Gun Kid returned in November.

Martin Goodman cancelled Teen-Age Romance with its 86th issue. That's a pretty good run for a general romance book. He still had Love Romances in that genre. The burgeoning Fantastic Four was moved to a monthly schedule with issue 6, but Amazing Fantasy was a casualty.

The following year 1963 maintained the number of titles, but there a few casualties. Sales of Incredible Hulk were disappointing, so Goodman cancelled it, and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby came up with Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos as a replacement. 

I'm starting to see a pattern, here. Goodman apparently gave a title a year to prove itself. If it didn't make good sales, it was gone. Just like The Incredible Hulk, cancelled after six disappointing bi-monthly issues. In its place, a reliable war-themed book, Sgt Fury, but done in Lee and Kirby's successful Fantastic Four style.

Gunsmoke Western headed for the last round-up and its slot was taken by new team-book The Avengers. To accommodate the other team book Lee launched that year, The X-Men, Marvel's last love story anthology Love Romances called it a day.

1962		1963		1964
Odd months	Even Months	Odd months	Even Months	Odd months	Even Months
Amazing Fantasy Fantastic Four Gunsmoke Western Journey into Mystery Kid Colt Outlaw Linda Carter Love Romances Millie the Model Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish Teenage Romances/Incredible Hulk	Amazing Fantasy/Fantastic Four Journey into Mystery Kathy Life with Millie Patsy & Hedy Patsy Walker Rawhide Kid Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish	Fantastic Four Gunsmoke Western/Avengers Incredible Hulk/Sgt Fury Journey into Mystery Kid Colt Outlaw Linda Carter/Amazing Spider-Man Love Romances/X-Men Mille the Model Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish Two-Gun Kid	Fantastic Four Journey into Mystery Kathy Modelling with Millie Patsy & Hedy Patsy Walker Rawhide Kid Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish	Amazing Spider-Man Avengers Fantastic Four Gunsmoke Western Journey into Mystery Kid Colt Outlaw Mille the Model Sgt Fury Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish Two-Gun Kid X-Men	Amazing Spider-Man Fantastic Four Journey into Mystery Kathy/Daredevil Modelling with Millie Patsy & Hedy Patsy Walker Rawhide Kid Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish
12 slots	10 slots	12 slots	10 slots	13 slots	11 slots

By 1964, Goodman was adding even more titles, sometimes increasing his slots by making the more successful bi-monthly titles monthly ... For example, the teen humour title Kathy was cancelled with issue 27, a respectable run for that kind of book. In its place came Daredevil, originally scheduled to launch alongside The X-Men and The Avengers. 

Even making Kathy a little bit less like Archie and a little bit more like Millie the Model couldn't save it, and it was axed with issue 27 (Feb 1964). Daredevil would have launched in 1963 - probably the month before or after The Avengers and X-Men, but Bill Everett struggled to get back into the swing of things and the book ran almost six months late.

The Avengers went monthly with issue 7. Meanwhile, Sgt Fury increased frequency in August, Modelling with Millie went monthly in September, Millie the Model stepped up from bi-monthly in October, giving the Millie franchise an impressive four titles, including the two bi-monthly spin-offs Patsy and Hedy and Patsy Walker.

Goodman had started sneaking in reprint 25-centers, under the guise of them being annuals. In fact, the first two Marvel Tales were designated annuals on the cover, but that pretence would be dropped the following year. And when the titles proved successful, Goodman did his usual trick of copying his own success and canned poor old Patsy Walker to make way for another low-budget reprint book, Fantasy Masterpieces.

1965 remained quite stable for Marvel. Modelling with Millie dropped back to bi-monthly for the first half of the year, but was again monthly from the summer onwards. In December, X-Men went monthly, pushing Marvel's title-count by the close of the year to 15. Patsy Walker's final issue was 124 (Dec 1965). That would be replaced in 1966 by the bi-monthly Fantasy Masterpieces. Other reprint titles had been sneaking in on an irregular basis. They too would go on the schedule ...

1965		1966		1967
Odd months	Even Months	Odd months	Even Months	Odd months	Even Months
Amazing Spider-Man Avengers Fantastic Four Journey into Mystery Kid Colt Outlaw Mille the Model Sgt Fury Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish Two-Gun Kid X-Men	Amazing Spider-Man Daredevil Fantastic Four Journey into Mystery Kathy Modelling with Millie Patsy & Hedy Patsy Walker Rawhide Kid Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish	Amazing Spider-Man Avengers Fantastic Four Journey into Mystery Kid Colt Outlaw Marvel Tales Mille the Model Sgt Fury Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish Two-Gun Kid X-Men	Amazing Spider-Man Avengers Daredevil Fantastic Four Fantasy Masterpieces Journey into Mystery Marvel Collectors Items Mille the Model Modelling with Millie Patsy & Hedy Rawhide Kid Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish X-Men	Amazing Spider-Man Avengers Daredevil Fantastic Four Kid Colt Outlaw Marvel Tales Mille the Model Not Brand Echh Sgt Fury Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish Thor Two-Gun Kid X-Men	Amazing Spider-Man Avengers Daredevil Fantastic Four Fantasy Masterpieces/Marvel Superheroes Marvel Collectors Items Mille the Model Modelling with Millie/Not Brand Echh Patsy & Hedy/Ghost Rider Rawhide Kid Sgt Fury Strange Tales Tales of Suspense Tales to Astonish Thor X-Men
12 slots	15 slots	15 slots	16 slots	15 slots	16 slots

In 1966, the reprint books Marvel Tales and Marvel Collectors' Item Classics became regular bi-monthly titles. Journey into Mystery became Thor (with the same numbering) so that doesn't really count as a cancellation and launch. The number of titles was further bumped up by Daredevil becoming a monthly as well.

Daredevil and X-Men were last two Marvel super-hero titles to make the switch from bi-monthly to monthly. In 1966, the only bi-monthlies Goodman still had were the untested Fantasy Masterpieces, along with other two 25c reprints Marvel Tales and Marvel Collectors' Items ... the westerns Kid Colt Outlaw, Rawhide Kid and Two-Gun Kid ... and Patsy and Hedy.

But 1967 was where it became really crazy. The Independent News contract was coming to a close and Marvel comics were gaining sales in leaps and bounds. In addition, IND - along with parent company National Periodical Publications (better known as DC) - were bought out by Kinney National, a cash-rich company with lots of car parks. Where DC sought to curb Marvel via their pointless restrictions, the new Kinney management soon tumbled to just how much money they were making distributing Marvels. It was in their own best interest to try to keep Goodman happy, because for the first time in ten years, he didn't really need them any more. With his sales figures, he could probably strike a deal with any distributor he chose.

Perfect Film owner Martin Ackerman also controlled Curtis Circulation, who counted two of America's biggest selling titles in their portfolio. He was obviously keen to add rising star Marvel Comics to his line-up and would buy Marvel, if that's what it took.

It's not very clear what happened next. It does appear that Goodman revised the terms of his distribution deal with Kinney/IND towards the end of 1967 - the tenth anniversary of having to go cap-in-hand to DC's Jack Liebowitz to get his comics on the newsstands. This allowed him to release more titles and would have been part of Goodman's plan to sell Magazine Management. The more titles he was publishing, the higher price he could get for his company. And I think this is the point where Goodman decided to give the co-stars of his anthology titles their own comics.

In retrospect, it looks like the first seed of Goodman's expansionism was sowed here, with a tentative new war title, Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders, a spin-off from the Sgt Fury title. The title was cover-dated Jan 1968, but actually went on sale on 9 Nov 1967.

Some critics have said that this decision was the beginning of the end for Marvel. Saleswise, the company was doing terrifically well, overtaking DC Comics in total copies sold, at 50 million a year. Expanding the stories in the split titles from 11 pages a month each to 20 pages put a big strain on Stan and the Bullpen and the quality inevitably slipped. But the point is Martin Goodman didn't care! He was aiming to sell the business, not make great comics.

After Captain Savage, Goodman next tried a new costumed character in the pages of Marvel Super-Heroes (in reality, a re-named Fantasy Masterpieces). Initially published to secure the name and prevent others trademarking a superhero with "Marvel" as part of his name, the character would be part of the 1968 Marvel explosion.

And sure enough, in 1968, it was revealed that Goodman had been in talks with Marty Ackerman to sell Magazine Management to Perfect Film and Chemical. Ackerman was also negotiating with Curtis Circulation, which distributed Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal among others, around the same time. So adding Marvel Comics to that acquisition would have made for a very attractive deal.

Goodman's expansion began more aggressively at the beginning of 1968. Tales of Suspense became Captain America with issue 100 (Apr 1968, on sale 2 Jan); Iron Man and Sub-Mariner were put in a holding book, on sale the same day; Tales to Astonish was renamed Incredible Hulk with issue 102 (Apr 1968, on sale 9 Jan); Iron Man and Sub-Mariner then graduated to their own titles, cover-dated May 1968 (on sale 1 Feb).

Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish were the first of the Marvel anthology books to be expanded. I was delighted to be getting 20 pages of Kirby Captain America every month and I also couldn't get enough Gene Colan Iron Man ... imagine my disappointment a few months later.

Relentlessly, Marvel kept on going ... Captain Marvel was awarded his own title a week later, also cover-dated May 1968, on sale 8 Feb; June cover-dated additions were Doctor Strange and Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, both on-sale 1 Mar. The big surprise was Silver Surfer's own new title, cover dated Aug 1968, on sale 1 May. It was a brilliant, if expensive, time for Marvelites.

Captain Marvel was one of my favourites, as I was a major Colan fan. And when Gene took over Doctor Strange, the title really came to life for me. Steranko's SHIELD comics were a delight, but he couldn't sustain the pace and Buscema's artwork on Silver Surfer was just sublime.

The net result was that Stan Lee's top artists were stretched thinly across the range. Jack Kirby would continue to draw Fantastic Four and Thor, and his 11 page Captain America assignment would go up to 20 pages monthly. Sixty pages a month would be tough sledding, even for speed-demon Kirby. Gene Colan would continue with his 20-page Daredevil gig, but his Iron Man would go from 11 pages to 20, and he also had 20 pages of Captain Marvel to draw. He only lasted four issues on that title. Stan would look to Colan in the next few months to take over Doctor Strange, so he also dropped Iron Man with issue 2 - which is where I lost interest in the title. John Buscema would take over Sub-Mariner art from a revolving door of artists -  including creator Bill Everett, Werner Roth and even Gene Colan - while continuing to pencil The Avengers - he would add Silver Surfer to his workload a few months later.

1968
Odd months	Even Months
Amazing Spider-Man Avengers Captain Marvel Captain Savage Daredevil Doctor Strange Fantastic Four Incredible Hulk Iron Man Kid Colt Outlaw Marvel Superheroes Marvel Tales Mille the Model Nick Fury Sgt Fury Sub-Mariner Thor Two-Gun Kid X-Men	Amazing Spider-Man Avengers Captain Marvel Captain Savage Daredevil Doctor Strange Fantastic Four Incredible Hulk Iron Man Marvel Superheroes Marvel Tales Mille the Model Nick Fury Not Brand Echh Rawhide Kid Sgt Fury Silver Surfer Sub-Mariner Thor X-Men
19 slots	20 slots

But it wouldn't be long before the cracks began to show ... by the beginning of the year, Kirby would relinquish Captain America to Jim Steranko for three glorious issues before Stan began musical artist chairs on the title. For the two following months, John Romita and John Buscema each took a swing at Cap before Stan settled on Gene Colan, who provided pencils from issues 118 to 137. Doctor Strange fared a little better, artwise. After a shaky start with Dan Adkins artwork, Colan took over that one too and powered Marvel's Master of the Mystic Arts through the next 11 issues ... but in May 1969 the title dropped to bi-monthly (along with Captain Savage) and was cancelled with Doctor Strange 183 (Nov 1969). For me that was a terrible development, as it was one of my favourite Marvel titles at the time.

On the SHIELD title, Steranko managed 1 - 3 and 5 before quitting after Stan mistakenly believed Steranko would miss the SHIELD 4 (Sep 1968) deadline (he didn't) and hired veteran Frank Springer to draw a fill-in issue. My 14 year-old self wasn't impressed. The title limped along till the end of 1969, when it was cancelled with issue 15 (Nov 1969). And 1969's final casualty was Captain Marvel, suspended as of issue 19 (Dec 1969). But by that time, Goodman had sold Marvel Comics to Marty Ackerman for $15 million, so he didn't care. Ackerman didn't care either, as he'd paid Goodman far less than what Magazine Management was worth.

In the very next entry in this blog, I'll look into the prevailing wisdom that:

• Stan Lee invented the "Marvel Method" of creating comics
• Stan Lee was fed up with kids comics so he came up with Fantastic Four.

Next time: More musings on Marvel Myths

Marvel Comics: The Rise of the Cover Blurb

BACK IN THE 1960s, comic publishers didn't have marketing budgets. There was nowhere for them to advertise their comics, except for in other comics. The only method they had available to them was to print way too many copies and try to get them in front of their customers, by dumping them onto the newsstands in great numbers. "Returns" of 50% weren't unheard of and, indeed, was considered normal. 

This newsstand comics rack was what the Summer 1949 (cover-dated August) comics industry output looked like. Click on the image to expand it, and you'll see titles like Crime Does Not Pay, Superboy, Crime Patrol, Millie the Model and a whole bunch of Classics Illustrated.

These "returned" comics would have the cover title logos torn off and sent back to the wholesalers for credits against the next issue. The mutilated returned comics were then supposed to be trashed, but many newsdealers simply put them out for sale again at 5c.

Newsvendors would tear the cover logos from unsold comics and send the logos back to their wholesalers to receive credit against future issues. They were then supposed to destroy the "unsolds" but invariably would offer them to customers at half price. Many of these mutilated comics have survived to the present day, though are considered to grade at "Poor" by most collectors.

So, all a publisher could do to get kids to pick up their comics off a spinner rack was to make the cover as attention-grabbing as possible. There were as many approaches to this as there were publishers and while the up-market guys like DC Comics would often show a modicum of restraint, some of the bottom feeders were anything but subtle.

DC's approach, from the 1940s right through to the 1960s, was to come up with an interesting - sometimes misleading - cover scenario, then write a story around it. Very often, they'd include explanatory speech balloons to tell the prospective customer what was going on, even if the cover art made that abundantly clear. EC, on the other hand, almost never used speech balloons, and rarely added cover lines. Dell/Gold Key didn't have any cover lettering at all on their sumptuously painted covers. And some poverty-row publishers would put the most outrageous and grisly art possible on their covers, which ended up causing huge problems for the whole industry by 1954.

A sample of comic covers, dated the year I was born. Harvey, also publishing Casper and Little Dot in the same period, took a pretty extreme approach with their horror comic covers. DC opted for the dramatic scenario with explanatory speech balloon, while Atlas (Marvel) followed EC's lead and offered situation covers with restrained, if any, cover text boxes.

Over the course of their history, Marvel Comics would try many approaches to the way they designed their covers, as publisher Martin Goodman, a notorious trend-follower, would regularly change his mind about what made a "selling" cover.

During the Golden Age of the 1940s, comics would sell between 200,000 and 400,000. Some individual titles would do even better. Superman was selling over a million copies a month in the early 1940s, Action Comics (the original home of Superman) was selling about 1.5 million copies during the post-war years and Whiz Comics (featuring Captain Marvel) topped that with sales of 2 million. In 1939, we know that Martin Goodman printed 80,000 copies of Marvel Comics 1 (Oct 1939) then, when that sold out almost immediately, went back to press to print another 800,000 copies, at the same time overprinting the cover date with "Nov".

The DC Comics of their formative years were restrained to the point of underselling. Where the later Superman titles would be a gab-fest of unnecessasry speech ballons and Ira Schnapp (beautifully) lettered text boxes, these 1940/41 comics were clean, allowing the strong image to sell the book.

The earliest DC Comics just let the cover image do the talking, avoiding speech balloons, and shrieking text boxes telling you what was happening inside the comic. It was a remarkably restrained approach, but it did seem to be the norm for the era.

The Marvel Comics from the same period aped the DC's by not using balloons or coverlines, but instead of DC's strong single images, the Timely books were a maelstrom of lurid and chaotic action. This probably came from Martin Goodman's history as a pulp publisher, but Alex Schomberg's hyper-kinetic covers were very much a forerunner of Jack Kirby's exaggerated action style that would later define the peak years of Marvel's 1960s output.

Just like their more affluent cousins over at DC, the Golden Age Timely Comics avoided text on their covers ... but by contrast, every square-inch of the cover space was crammed to bursting with frenetic action, often with the Timely characters depicted at a larger scale than the foes they were fighting.

Though dialogue balloons on comic covers weren't unknown during the 1940s, they were uncommon. Other publishers were prone to adding more in the way of shouty cover lines to their publications. The anthology titles published by companies like Quality, Fawcett and Nedor didn't have the instantly recognisable heroes that DC and Timely had, so would tell prospective readers about the stories they could expect to find inside their books.

The other publishers sort of followed DC's and Timely's lead and didn't overload their covers with text, but did tell customer what the comic contained. These covers from Quality, Fawcett and Nedor are all from November 1942.

Then, as the Second World War drew to a close, DC's Action Comics began including speech balloons on the covers. None of the other DC titles followed that lead immediately, but inevitably, someone further up the food chain must've issued an edict, because with the April and May 1951 cover dates, just about all DC covers became speech balloon gab fests, establishing the over-explanatory style they became famous for.

Blah, blah, blah ... in the spring of 1951, DC's covers all suddenly sported expository speech balloons on every cover - describing the situation to prospective customers whether the cover image needed it or not. It would set the tone for DC Comics for almost two decades.

Strangely, at the same time, Atlas publisher Martin Goodman, was roundly ignoring DC's lead and putting out his comics with a unique and distinctive cover style.

COMIC COVERS - ATLAS STYLE

Unlike DC Comics' heroes, the Timely characters struggled after World War II. It's true that by the end of the 1940s, DC's non-Superman/Batman titles folded or were turned into western books, but the core of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman marched right on. Captain America, Human Torch and The Sub-Mariner - positioned, as they were, very much as the nemeses of the Axis Powers - had no one to fight when the real world hostilities ended. So the core titles were either cancelled, or morphed into horror comics, following EC's New Trend line.

The Timely line of comics ground to halt in mid-1949. Captain America was a horror comic for its last two issues. The Human Torch's and Sub-Mariner's own titles were cancelled and the characters' original home, Marvel (Mystery) Comics, became Marvel Tales, another horror anthology.

It took Goodman a year or so to sort out what he wanted to do with his comic line, now that the superheroes were gone. In the end he concentrated on his girls' comics (Millie the Model and Patsy Walker), his western comics  (KId Colt and Two-Gun Kid) and his horror titles, lead by the new incarnation of Marvel Mystery Comics, Marvel Tales.

While the Western and girls' (and war) comics rolled on, Martin Goodman must have noticed the sales on his horror titles were growing, so ordered editor Stan Lee to come up with more titles. It seemed like Goodman couldn't get enough horror, and by 1951, the renamed Timely comics was pumping out horror titles under its new Atlas Comics imprint. In order of publication, these were:

• Amazing Mysteries 32-35 (May 1949 - Jan 1950)
• Marvel Tales 93-159 (Aug 1949 - Aug 1957), was Marvel Mystery Comics
• Suspense 1-29 (Dec 1949 - Apr 1953)
• Adventures into Terror 43-44 (first two issues), then 3-31 (Nov 1950 - May 1954), was Joker
• Journey into Unknown Worlds 36-59 (Sep 1950 - Aug 1957), was Teen Comics
• Mystic 1-61 (Mar 1951 - Aug 1957)
• Astonishing 3-63 (Apr 1951 - Aug 1957), was Marvel Boy
• Strange Tales 1-100 (Jun 1951 - Sep 1962)
• Adventures into Weird Worlds 1-30 (Jan 1952 - Jun 1954)
• Mystery Tales 1-54 (Mar 1952 - Aug 1957)
• Spellbound 1-34 (Mar 1952 - Jun 1957)
• Journey into Mystery 1-82 (Jun 1952 - Jul 1962)
• Uncanny Tales 1-56 (Jun 1952 - Sep 1957)
• Menace 1-11 (Mar 1953 - May 1954)
• Men's Adventures 21-26 (May 1953 - Mar 1954), was war comic of same title
• Strange Stories of Suspense 5-16 (Oct 1955 - Aug 1957), was Rugged Action
• Strange Tales of the Unusual 1-11 (Dec 1955 - Aug 1957)
• Adventure into Mystery 1-8 (May 1956 - Jul 1957)
• World of Suspense 1-8 (Apr 1956 - Jul 1957)
• World of Fantasy 1-19 (May 1956 - Aug 1959)
• World of Mystery 1-7 (Jun 1956 - Jul 1957)
• Strange Worlds 1-5 (Dec 1958 - Aug 1959)
• Tales of Suspense 1-38 (Jan 1959 - Feb 1963)
• Tales to Astonish 1-34 (Jan 1959 - Aug 1962)
• Amazing Adventures 1-6 (Jun - Nov 1961)
• Amazing Adult Fantasy 7-14 (Dec 1961 - Jul 1962)

Probably because these titles were the backbone of the company during the early 1950s, Stan Lee gave them a bit more attention than the other genres, quite rapidly evolving a unified cover style for the titles. This would consist of one main cover image, then smaller images down the left-hand side depicting scenes from the other stories in each (anthology) issue. It was the nearest thing to a house style Atlas had during the 1950s, which Lee was probably responsible for. 

At this point in the company's history, Lee was Art Director as well as Editor-in-Chief, and so was very hands-on when it came to designing the covers, though he would lean heavily on production man Sol Brodsky. As Lee told Marvel Age magazine in 1985, "Sol and I were the whole staff of Atlas Comics. I bought the art and scripts and Sol did all the production. My job was mainly talking to the artists and the writers and telling them I wanted the stuff done. Sol did ... the corrections, making sure everything looked right, making sure things went to the engraver and he also talked to the printer. He was really the production manager. And then little by little we built things back up again."

Later, Stan would offer Jack Kirby the post of Art Director - Kirby refused - and John Romita would step up in 1973 and be responsible for, among other things, designing all Marvel's covers.

No sign of any restraint here - the Atlas Comics covers of 1951 - 1952 were awash with  blurbs and speech balloons, in some cases so much that there was hardly enough room for the art. Click picture to enlarge.

Yet, this would only last for a couple of years before being phased out in favour of single image covers with far less text.

By 1954, the Atlas covers used far fewer words and no speech balloons at all. The cynic in me wants to say that Martin Goodman was trying to save on lettering costs, but the fact is cover lettering was done by in-house staffers, supervised by the genial Artie Simek.

The reasons for this will never be known, but it's likely that Martin Goodman - often months or years behind a trend - saw the EC Comics covers on a newsstand and ordered Stan to make the Atlas covers look like that.

This style would persist until the Great Atlas Implosion of 1957, when 60% of the Atlas titles were cancelled because of Martin Goodman's bad distribution decision. Lost in the mellee were: Adventure into Mystery, Astonishing, Journey into Unknown Worlds, Marvel Tales, Mystery Tales, Mystic, Spellbound, Strange Tales of the Unusual, Uncanny Tales, World of Mystery and World of Suspense, as well as a whole slew of western, war and humour titles.

Atlas, no longer called "Atlas", would limp along with just eight titles a month for the next few years, with no discernible changes to the cover format, starting with the below titles.

Odd Months	Even Months
Gunsmoke Western	Battle
Homer the Happy Ghost	Navy Combat
Kid Colt Outlaw	Patsy and Hedy
Love Romances	Patsy Walker
Marines in Battle	Strange Tales
Millie the Model	Two-Gun Kid
Miss America	World of Fantasy
My Own Romances	Wyatt Earp

But as the next couple of years rolled by, and Stan's star artist Joe Maneely died in a tragic underground accident, Stan began to re-think his approach.

Fresh from a legal dust-up with DC senior editor Jack Schiff, Jack Kirby washed up in the former Atlas' offices in 1959, looking for work. Steve Ditko was already there, and Stan's as-yet unnamed line of comics began to take on a new shape and a new editorial direction. The horror books, emasculated by the Comics Code and pale shadows of their former (already mediocre) selves, looked to monster and sci-fi movies of the 1950s for their inspiration and were soon featuring gigantic menaces like "Monstro", "Zog" and "Rro", mostly drawn by Jack. Ditko continued to follow a gentler path, and turned in more humanistic, often sentimental, tales that would spotlight moral issues like greed and betrayal, with titles like "Revenge of the Wooden Woman" and "One Look Means Doom".

Most of the pre-hero Marvels went for a big monster image by Jack Kirby and a screaming cover blurb that featured the monster's (often nonsensical) name. Most didn't have speech balloons, but occasionally there would be some dialogue lettered on the cover. The above are from mid 1961, around the time that the cryptic "MC" started appearing on the covers.

By the beginning of the 1960s, many of the stories in these "pre-hero" Marvel Comics appeared to take a lead from the "true confessions" style slick magazines Goodman was publishing at the same time, sporting titles like "I Opened the Door to Nowhere" and "I Brought the Roc to Life".

But in August 1961, Martin Goodman introduced a game-changing comic, Fantastic Four. As I've noted elsewhere in this blog, the first Marvel superhero comics did their level best not to look like superhero comics. Marvels were being distributed by the DC-owned Independent News Distributions (indicated by the "IND" on Marvel covers of the period) and I'm pretty sure Martin didn't want to annoy DC's Jack Liebowitz by appearing to be publishing competing superhero books.

The earliest superhero efforts from Marvel looked for all the world to be no different from the monster books. The FF wore street clothes, The Hulk actually was a monster and Thor's costume was not that of a traditional superhero. Even Spider-Man was completely different in look to any of DC's characters.

But very quickly, Goodman got a lot braver, and Stan gave the FF costumes, and rapidly added more superheroes to the remaining monster books. May 1963 saw the introduction of the unique Marvel corner box, and by the end of that year, the mystery stories were all but replaced by superheroics and the Marvel Empire began its rise.

Later in 1963, Marvel took a more upfront approach to the way they presented their superheroes on their comic covers. Costumes and action were to the fore, though there was still little consistency when it came to putting dialogue on the covers or not.

Later on the same year, Stan began to talk about the "Marvel Age of Comics" on the covers. Starting with some of the August 1963 covers, Stan placed a fairly discreet box that read, "Marvel Comics Group ushers in the Marvel Age of Comics". But over the next few months, these blurbs got bigger and bolder, so that Amazing Spider-Man 6 (Nov 1963) had a bold line in bright green along the bottom of the cover that said, "The Marvel Age of Comics is Here". 

This move coincided with Stan taking over the scripting of the lead strips in the anthology titles. Except I don't think it was a coincidence. I think it was a determined effort on the part of Stan to take control of the Marvel Universe, and prevent the fledgling Marvel from descending into the kind of directionless mess that Atlas became just before the Great Implosion of 1957.

And by the end of 1963, the speech balloons on Marvel covers had largely faded away. The last balloons on covers were Journey into Mystery 99 and Amazing Spider-Man 7 (both Dec 1963), the January 1964 issues of Strange Tales (116), Tales of Suspense (49), Fantastic Four (22) and Tales to Astonish (51). After that, Stan would let his hyperbolic blurbs do the talking and that's the way things would stay until mid 1970, when the balloons began to creep back ...

In mid-1963, Stan Lee brought his Marvel hyperbole to the covers, adding claims that this was "The Marvel Age of Comics" to much of the Marvel line. These would evolve over the next few months to become a standard component of Marvel's covers.

The big challenge that faced Lee (and Kirby) in the mid-Sixties though was, How do you ensure all your superheroes get a fair shake and your customers can find them easily on the newsstands? Especially if the titles of the books didn't change from Strange Tales and Journey into Mystery. The answer was simplicity itself. Just put two covers on the front of the comics.

As each of the former mystery books began to showcase two superheroes, Stan had his artists draw two images for each cover. He had used the idea before, not only on the occasional mystery book, but also on the earliest Fantastic Four and Spider-Man comics.

For a glorious period, between March 1964 and the end of 1965, Stan would split the covers of the former mystery books and present two awesome images on each cover, trumpeting the extra-value "two stories inside" nature of the comics. This was also around the same time (February 1964) that speech balloons were finally banned from Marvel's covers, a move which certainly made the Marvel books appear a lot less juvenile than their rivals'. 

Barely 18 months later, Marvel stopped splitting the covers between the two strips inside and started to devote alternating covers to the characters inside. Whether sales or aesthetics drove this is unknown. Then, just as Marvel stopped the practice, other lesser publishers began to imitate it.

Maybe Martin Goodman or Stan didn't think the dual covers were helping sales, because as 1966 began the anthology books started alternating their stars on the covers. And that would be the status quo for the next two years when, in 1968, the anthology books literally split, like amoebas, and all the anthology characters got their own titles. Then, in 1971 Marvel introduced the "frame cover ...

The change in cover format introduced in 1971 did away with the familiar and well-loved Marvel Corner Box, and brought in solid-colour frames around the comic's cover artwork. I can see why this may have been a good idea from an editorial and marketing point of view - no consecutive covers would have the same dominant colour - but I wasn't wild about it as a teenage fan.

With the November 1971 cover-dated issues, publisher Goodman made some big changes. He upped the page count across the board to 48 and raised the price of Marvel’s comics from 15c to 25c. And in the process, the cover format was completely re-vamped. Out went the familiar Marvel corner box and in came the idea of framing the cover art with a solid colour border. This allowed the art department more control over choosing suitable background colours to set the titles’ logos against. And in addition, a top bar was added to each cover, tagging it as a Marvel Comics Group publication in bold 24pt type.

Then, in an even more astonishing turn-around, the following month the page counts of all Marvel titles dropped back to 36 pages and the price was reduced at 20c. Whether it was the intention or not, arch-rivals DC Comics were completely wrong-footed. They’d raised the page-count and cover price in line with Marvel’s. But as publishing companies bought their printing time and paper months ahead, DC had no choice but to stick with the bigger, more expensive mags, while Marvel undercut them on the newsstands.

The “frame” covers must have been a success for Marvel as they were used, with little change, for the next couple of years. It had the advantage of making the Marvel books instantly recognisable on the newsstands and allowing the art department to ensure that the individual covers were all given distinct colour schemes from month to month. 

1960s vs 1970s - The over explanatory DC covers of the sixties were replaced with a more grow-up approach in the seventies. Speech balloons didn't disappear altogether, but they were used less to explain the obvious and more for dramatic effect. It didn't help. Marvel had already overtaken them ...

Though it wasn't the defining feature of Marvel Comics, the company's approach to cover design had far-reaching effects, both for Marvel, and for the industry as a whole. Eventually, DC would follow suit and banish the childish Mort Weisinger style covers where speech balloons described what was plainly apparent from the cover art. But for them - by then - it was too late, and Marvel had leap-frogged them in sales and were the new market leaders.


Next: An unscheduled DC interlude