Exposed: Myths of Marvel's Silver Age - Part 2

OVER THE LAST FEW DECADES, a great deal has been written about the history of Marvel Comics, not all of it as well-researched as it could have been. And because of this, certain historians have chosen to lift anecdotes from earlier histories without bothering to check the sources of the material they're quoting.

Last time, I took a look at some of the legends that have appeared in successive histories of Marvel Comics and questioned whether they had been verified by the authors or simply repeated based on faith. As with many histories, it seems that opinion often triumphs over fact ... and fans of a particular artist or writer will insist that their hero tells the objective truth while all others lie and dissemble. But as my old friend and collaborator Phil Edwards always said, "There's three sides to every argument - his side, her side ... and the truth."

Back when I was a teenager, the first glimmer we comic fans had that there was an actually history to comics was these two books, both published in 1971. In retrospect, neither were very good. We wouldn't really get a decent history till Steranko's History of Comics (1970), a project sadly aborted before it could get to the Silver Age and the stuff I was really interested in.

I've already looked at the oft-repeated story that Marvel Comics was limited to just eight titles a month during the 1960s (not true), that Stan Lee only got his job at Marvel Comics in 1941 because he was related to publisher Martin Goodman (not true) and that Stan Lee was the cause of Simon and Kirby leaving Captain America in 1942 because Stan snitched about their moonlighting for DC to his cousin-by-marriage Martin Goodman (no evidence to support that).

This time, I'm going to look at a few more cases where it seems to me as if the historians have gone with "Print the legend."

STAN LEE'S FIRST STAB AT GROWN-UP COMICS

To be fair to the comics historians, I should say that this myth has largely come from Stan Lee himself. As far back as Origins of Marvel Comics (Simon and Schuster, 1974), Stan had alluded to the claim that he had a revelatory moment when he realised he was fed up with hacking out copycat strips for Goodman and wanted to do something that would raise both his game and set a higher benchmark for the comic book medium. 

Stan expanded on the story in his autobiography Excelsior; The Amazing Life of Stan Lee (Fireside Books, 2002). "For once I wanted to write stories that wouldn't insult the intelligence of an older reader, stories with interesting characterisation, more realistic dialogue and plots that hadn't been recycled a thousand times before. Above all, stories that wouldn't hew to all the comicbook cliches of years past."

So, The Fantastic Four was born ... right? Well, not exactly, no.

All that stuff about wanting to quit the business and Joan Lee telling Stan to just write comics the way he wanted to, because he had nothing to lose, didn't result in Fantastic Four. It resulted in Amazing Adult Fantasy. At the very least, Stan was working on both simultaneously ... but tellingly, only one had the word "Adult" in its title. Also, only one promised to be "The Magazine That Respects Your Intelligence", right there on the cover. And though both sported a logo that strikingly resembled that of the hit, liberal-leaning Twilight Zone tv show, only one was an anthology of fantasy tales.

In this house ad from Strange Tales 95 (Apr 1962), which came out between FF 3 and FF 4 and the same month as AAF 11, Stan puts Amazing Adult Fantasy and Fantastic Four together, emphasising their common logo style - though tellingly, he places AAF above FF, indicating that he thought the fantasy anthology book best placed to further his agenda.

It's for these reasons that I think I can make a case for Amazing Adult Fantasy being the title Stan thought would bring the older reader to the table.

The Twilight Zone had premiered two years earlier, in October 1959, to outstanding reviews. "Twilight Zone is about the only show on the air that I actually look forward to seeing. It's the one series that I will let interfere with other plans", said Terry Turner for the Chicago Daily News. The New York Herald Tribune said it was "certainly the best and most original anthology series of the year" and Variety called it "the best that has ever been accomplished in half-hour filmed television". 

From the outset, Serling's moral fables, with their liberal worldview and chilling observations about human frailty, won a strong audience following and, later, Emmy and Golden Globe awards. And when you compare the stories that Stan Lee was offering in his anthology titles, especially those drawn by Steve Ditko, you can see just how much of an influence on Lee Serling's series was.

It's not a coincidence that Amazing Adult Fantasy and Fantastic Four shared a similarly styled cover logo. And I think it's fairly safe to say that Stan thought looking to the title design for Rod Serling's intelligent sci-fi tv show The Twilight Zone for inspiration might be the fastest way to reach the readers he was looking for.

So when Stan Lee felt he should do something more worthwhile than the kiddy-fodder he'd been filling the Atlas/Marvel comics with, it seemed natural to beef up the presence of the Serling-influenced Ditko fantasy tales by giving them their own title. So Amazing Adventures' Kirby kaiju stories gave way to the humanist fables of Lee/Ditko. I also think it's significant that Stan Lee almost always signed his stories with Ditko, but didn't much bother with the Kirby monster strips. 

The only reason I can think of that Stan would later downplay the role of Amazing Adult Fantasy in his quest to bring a degree of sophistication to the four-colour comic book is that ultimately the title fell prey to poor sales and was cancelled by Marty Goodman before the new approach could establish itself. Far better to hitch your revolutionary game-changing approach to a success rather than to a failure.

I also can't help but observe that the first few issues of Fantastic Four followed the formula of the Kirby Giant Monster comics, almost as though Stan felt you just couldn't do grown-up superhero tales. Certainly issues 1, with the Mole Man's Godzilla-like subterranean creatures, and 3 and 4, with The Miracle Man's giant marquee monster and The Sub-Mariner's Giganto creature, didn't stray far from kaiju territory.

When you have a successful formula, you'd be nuts to abandon it. So Stan stuck with giant monsters for the first few issues of Fantastic Four, reasoning that if monsters drove sales on Astonish, Suspense and the others, then it would for FF, too.

It wasn't really until Fantastic Four 8 (Nov 1962) that the tone of the comic shifted a bit and Stan made an effort to change the direction of the title. He makes The Thing less angry, the FF start calling him "Ben" instead of "Thing" and Reed begins his quest to revert Ben to his human form. Stan also gets rid of the (rather odd) Reed-Sue-Ben triangle and introduces a new love interest for Ben, Alicia, who initially resembles Sue - though that idea is also jettisoned quite quickly. For me, this is where Stan made a concerted effort to make superhero comics a bit more sophisticated than the standard superhero mags DC were putting out under the editorship of Mort Weisinger - pretty brave, considering how well the Superman family titles were selling in 1961.

And as history would show, turns out Stan was right. Once Marvel got into its stride, sales began to climb and the previously unassailable DC began their decline.

STAN LEE INVENTED THE "MARVEL METHOD"

There is a prevailing school of thought out there, especially among Kirby Kultists, that Stan Lee invented the Marvel Method (of comics writing) specifically to gyp artists out of their plotting payments. The story gets repeated over and over, but without any real evidence to back it up.

I think the first hint I came across - beyond Stan's own explanations in the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins - of how comics were created during the early days was in Steranko's History of Comics, which I would have picked up around the age of 18. In volume 1, Steranko recounts how the classic 44-page battle between The Human Torch and The Sub-Mariner (Marvel Mystery Comics 8 & 9, Jun & Jul 1940) was written and drawn over a weekend.

What's remarkable about this 44-page battle between The Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner isn't that it was the first such character cross-over, pre-dating the first appearance of the Justice Society by several months, but that it was conceived and completed over a weekend! Both books sold out.

"Carl (Burgos) and Bill (Everett) sat down at the drawing boards and composed the first two pages without having the slightest notion about the storyline. John Compton came in and began to plot out a script ... Breakdowns were pencilled as soon as page-by-page synopses were completed. Finished dialogue was written directly onto the pages, then lettered."

That process, with the art produced from a synopsis and the dialogue and captions written and lettered on the finished art sounds a lot like the Marvel Method to me.

More recently, I picked up a copy of The Best of Alter Ego, a compilation of the best articles from the pioneering fanzine of the early 1960s. In it, there was a short essay by Golden and Silver Age artist Paul Reinman, which first appeared in Alter Ego 4 (Oct 1962). Something Reinman wrote reminded me of that account from Steranko's History of Comics. 

"I remember when the artists were just a page, or a few boxes, ahead of the writer. We would come in in the morning and the editor, who mostly doubled as the writer, would say 'Sit down. I'll write an outline of the plot in a few minutes.' While the artist was working on the first page, the editor broke down the rest of the story and typed it for the artist. The dialogue was not written before the artist had finished his inkings. When the artist looked at the breakdown of his story and if the box showed a lot of action he would let his drawing take up most of the space of this box: if it was a close-up or very little action, he would leave more space for dialogue. Well, that's the way it was in the beginning of comics."

MLJ - which later became Archie Comics - had a spat with Martin Goodman over a Captain America villain called The Hangman. It was MLJ partner Maurice Coyne (also working as Goodman's accountant at Timely) who told Joe Simon that Goodman was cheating on the Captain America royalties.

Though Reinman doesn't give any dates, a quick check of his credits on GCD, shows that he spent the first two years of his career working for MLJ on strips like Hangman, The Wizard and Zambini, which appeared in their top titles, Pep Comics, Shield-Wizard and Zip. Though he moved on to DC in mid-1943, I think it's pretty safe to say that Reinman was talking about how they worked at MLJ.

Atlas was at its peak in the mid-1950s, publishing the most titles of any publisher. Sinnott was one of Stan Lee's mainstay comic strip artists, though only the real stars - like Joe Maneely and Bill Everett - got to draw the covers.

Different publishers worked in different ways, but during the 1950s, when Marvel was known as Atlas and Stan Lee was Editor and head writer, the artists worked from full scripts. Joe Sinnott was a prolific artist at Atlas and described the work routine in The Jack Kirby Collector 9 (1995). "I'd go down to the city on Friday, and Stan would give me a script to take home. I'd start on Monday morning by lettering the balloons in pencil. Then I'd pencil the story from the script and ink it and leave the balloons penciled. I'd pencil a page in the morning, and ink it in the afternoon ... I'd bring the story back on Friday and he'd give me another script. I never knew what kind of script I'd be getting. Stan had a big pile on his desk, and he used to write most of the stories himself in those days. You'd walk in, and he'd be banging away at his typewriter. He would finish a script and put it on the pile. Sometimes on his pile would be a western, then below it would be a science fiction, and a war story, and a romance. You never knew what you were getting, because he always took it off the top. And you were expected to do any type of story."

The later, in the post-Atlas years, when Marvel Comics was only known by the tiny letters "MC" on its covers, Stan was still supplying full scripts to his artists. The seeds of the Marvel Method were sown when Stan began to ramp up output at the beginning of the 1960s and found he was struggling to do all the editing and scripting himself. So he began writing with his brother Larry Leiber, who was primarily an artist.

In an interview for Alter Ego Vol 3, No 2 (1999), Lieber explained how those early Marvel stories were done. "Stan made up the plot, and then he'd give it to me, and I'd write the script ... I was unsure of myself just sitting down to write a script. Since I knew how to draw, I'd think, 'Oh, this shot will have a guy coming this way... this shot we'll have a guy looking down on him,' and later I'd sit at the typewriter and type it up. After a while, I'd just go to the typewriter. I would follow from Stan's plots ... Jack I always had to send a full script to." [My emphasis.]

A few months later, dissatisfied with Lieber's scripts, Stan Lee hired some veteran scripters -  Robert Bernstein, Ernie Hart and even Jerry Siegel - to cope with the load, but in the end he realised that to get the kind of stories he wanted for the fledgling Marvel Comics, he'd have to write them himself.

However, there is an important clue here to how Stan arrived at the Marvel Method. He was giving plots to brother Larry to break down into panel-by-panel scripts with dialogue and captions. I've not come across any indication that Larry had any input into the plots. It is possible that, when Stan was working with Bernstein and Hart, he did allow some plotting collaboration but, again, I've not found any statements from the participants to support that.

The above Marvels were the last scripted by Hart, Siegel and Bernstein before Stan took over all the writing chores himself. It's not a huge leap to go from providing brief plots to hired scripters, to providing plots to pencillers, to co-plotting with pencillers.

The next step in the evolution came when Lee rightly realised that it was the characterisation in the script - and the emotions felt by his characters - that made Marvel tales more appealing to his young audience than the old-fashioned, plot-driven DC-style stories. Stan understood that the details of the plot were the least important component. So rather than sit down with some less talented scripters and feed them plots, why not sit down with the artists, thrash out a plot, then have the artist draw it up before the dialogue was written? Pretty much a reversion to how it was done in the early 1940s.

As 1963 rolled over into 1964, it seems likely that Stan found some pencillers were better at fleshing out a brief story synopsis into a 20-page story than others. Steve Ditko appears to have been best at it, and had likely worked that way with Stan during the pre-hero years. Jack Kirby  - even though he'd been used to full scripts from the Marvel Bullpen was able to adapt and add detail to the briefest of outlines. Others, like Gene Colan and Don Heck, needed more hand-holding.

What is interesting is that those who had the biggest issues with how Stan worked - I'm thinking Wally Wood, Joe Orlando and Gil Kane - were all from a background where they would be given some form of full script to work from.

Kane had worked for DC Comics most of his career, and the editors there would hold regular story conferences with the writers to create a plot, then have the scripters - John Broome, Gardner Fox - go home and type up a full script for the penciller. I'm pretty sure the writers didn't get paid for the plotting session.

At EC Comics, where Wood and Orlando cut their teeth, the discipline was even stricter. Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein would plot and script the stories, then give the boards to a letterer to ink in the captions and dialogue. Only then would the boards go to the artist, who would have to fill the pre-ruled and lettered panels with drawings.

Here's a Wally Wood page and a Joe Orlando page - both from Weird Fantasy 13 (May 1952). The artboard was pre-lettered with the captions and balloons and the artists would have to fit their drawings in as best they could. Some artists would find this restrictive and impossible to work with, and others found it worked best for them. Wordy, aren't they?

So from Wally Wood's point of view, it may well have looked like Stan was getting him to "write" the story while taking the credit ... but that's only because Wood had never worked Stan's way before.

Interviewed by Mark Evanier, Wood said, "I enjoyed working with Stan on Daredevil but for one thing. I had to make up the whole story. He was being paid for writing, and I was being paid for drawing, but he didn't have any ideas. I'd go in for a plotting session, and we'd just stare at each other until I came up with a storyline. I felt like I was writing the book but not being paid for writing."

That doesn't really ring true to me. I just can't imagine Stan - the most talkative human being on the planet - just sitting and staring at Wally Wood. I rather think that Wood, like some others, is vastly overestimating the importance of the plot to a comic story. When Wood did actually write an issue of Daredevil by himself, Lee's criticism wasn't of the plot but of the lack of characterisation in the dialogue.

"I persuaded him to let me write one by myself since I was doing 99% of the writing already," said Wood in the same interview. "I wrote it, handed it in, and he said it was hopeless. He said he'd have to rewrite it all and write the next issue himself."

At that stage of the process, there was very little Lee could have done about the plot ... but he sure could fix up the dialogue. 

Joe Orlando, who preceded Wally Wood as Daredevil penciller, also had difficulties with Stan's way of working. After three issue - Daredevil 2 - 4 (Jun - Oct 1964) - he quit because he couldn't deal with Stan asking him to redraw the pages he was turning in.

The point is that every writer or artist has a different history and background. And each has different working habits. What works for some doesn't work for others. What drew Neal Adams to Marvel in 1969 is he'd heard that the artists worked from the slightest of plots and were free to draw the comic their own way.

So it turns out that Stan didn't invent the plot-art-script process of creating comic strips. It's a method that has been in use since the 1940s, which some artists prefer and some don't. I can see how Stan found his heavy workload - as Marvel Comics grew during the early 1960s - meant he had to find ways to get the comic stories completed faster. He tried several different processes before he hit on the one that gave him the best control over how the characters were portrayed. Because Stan was all about the characters and their emotions, just as DC were all about the plots and their resolutions, and thought characterisation was irrelevant ... And we know how that eventually turned out.

I was going to try to squeeze in an account of the 1971 "price war" between Marvel and DC and give some perspective on the sales numbers that have been quoted in a few accounts, but it's the end of the month and I just don't have the time to do it justice this month, so I'll leave it for now and try to publish the last part of this look at Marvel Myths and Legends in a week or two.

Next: The DC / Marvel Price War of 1971

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