The history of Marvel Comics

Marvel Comics, is one of the biggest two American media and entertainment companies that was widely regarded as the most known publisher and a subsidiary of the Disney Company. Its headquarters are in New York City. The precursor to Marvel Comics was founded in 1939 by a pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman and has grown to an entertainment monolith over the past 80 years.

The precursor — Timely Publications

Martin Goodman created Timely Publications in 1939, by then he had published plenty of western magazines by the time the comic mania rose. So he created a new line of stories to cash in on the comic craze. In October of 1939, the first Marvel Comic tales were published, The Human Torch and Submariner. 900,000 copies were sold within the first two months. The Next year, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby joined the crew and went on to create the star spangled man: Captain America. New heroes such like the original Vision, Whizzer, Miss America and the Destroyer. And then another staff named Stanley Lieber (pseudonym as “Stan Lee”) worked his way up to become the editor, and since became the most credited title holder and creator of many blockbuster characters.

Marvel Comics born

During WW2, western comics, men’s adventure, and romance comics were the main themes, so Timely Comics also followed the trend and anything else that would make a buck.

Stan Lee suggested publishing comics through Atlas Comics because it was cheap and fast, quantity over quality in satisfying the market needs rapidly. In the 1950s, DC Comics revived its genre and Marvel role to the occasion. In order to differentiate comic styles from DC heroes, which appeals mostly young people, Marvel decided to attract a more mature demographic which led to the publication of The Fantastic Four by Stan Lee. This broke the tradition of the time and paved the way for more Marvel heroes grounded in realism. Marvel’s characters are more relatable than DC’s, and more titles such as X-men, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Daredevil boomed into popularity. This shared universe, known as the “Marvel Universe”, engaged the readers and inspired wonder and awe among the Americans. In the ’60s, Atlas Comics changes its name to Marvel comics.

Branching out

In 1954, the Comics Code Authority was formed to censor the comics industry. It prohibited large amounts of violence, suggestive sex, drug content, and at the same time hindered the imagination of some writers whose work would include vampires, werewolves, or circumstance where evil prevailed in the end. Decades later, the comics code was updated to allow more content which led to Marvel branching out and creating new comics such as Howard the Duck, Conan the Barbarian, The tomb of Dracula etc. At this time, Martin Goodman passed the job to his son and later to the hands of Stan Lee. Marvel pulled ahead of DC comics soon and make them the top comic book distributor in the world. They also did a lot of license work for movies and TV shows such as Star Wars. In 1978 Jim Shooter became the the chief editor and began to remedy some problems at Marvel. In the ’80s, Marvel lost some ground to DC after some of their team defected to work for their rival company, yet Marvel still kept a firm foothold on the market.

Marvel killing it in the ‘80s

By the late ’80s Marvel was killing it. Some of the greatest artists of the time were drawing for Marvel and they were making quite the profit. Todd McFarlane’s first issue of Spider-Man sold two million copies and completely revitalized the character. Jim Lee’s first issue of X-man sold eight million copies as the most comics sold for one issue. It was the golden age in the 80s and 90s for comics, Marvel became a publicly held company in 1991. And then the comic Book Crash hit Marvel in 1996 due to fan speculation and poor management, which drove Marvel to file bankruptcy in 1996. The company later emerged again in 1998 and began to diversity its output, launching imprints aimed at a variety of demographics and expand its cinematic offerings under the marvel studios banner.

Ushering into the new century

As Marvel had sold the rights to their characters to movie studios, by 2002 Men-in-Black, Blade, X-men, and the massively successful hit spider-man were produced. Marvel left the Comics Code and created their own rating system and began to diversify once more. Comic runs were ended and in 2007 they digitized their comics to make it more accessible to their readers. The Marvel Ultimate Universe was created to give new origins and specifications to characters and engage the audiences even more. In 2008, marvel Studios rock the world with the incredibly successful Iron Man Movie. Iron man was the first in a set of plans to roll out a series of interconnected movies which became the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Disney Conglomerate and the MCU

In August 2009, Disney announced that they would acquire Marvel Entertainment. With this, Disney was able to distribute comics for the many titles that they also owned and help create many more movies and other media for the characters. As the MCU started ramping up, Marvel Studios and Disney saw great success. After Iron Man, the world received The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The first Adventure, and the very first Avenger movie which dominated box offices and garnered insane popularity amongst comic fans and layman alike. The MCU goes on today with sequels to all the original titles and the introduction of more characters in their own movies such as Ant-Man, The Guardians of Galaxy, Black Panther and many more.

Modern Marvel Comics

With the release of more movies, they started to produce more comics focused around the movies which people initially flocked to for more information and to delve deeper into the characters they loved. By 2015, Marvel announced to relaunch their comics calling an “all-new, all different Marvel”. Some amazing comics had come out like Civil War, Spider-Man: Spider-Verse, Old Man Logan, and Civil War 2, but later the Marvel Legacy which was released received many complaints from comic stores and they realized that movies do not affect comic book sales. As of 2018, Marvel has announced a return of Conan Comics and a Big Hero 6 comic, in addition to the excellent Star Wars titles. Marvel will continue to produce the familiar titles that we all know and love while the MCU will flourish stronger than ever leaving Marvel comics as one of the greatest entertainment studios in the world.