A librarian's guide to Marvel Comics

Abstract

Marvel Comics, along with rival DC Comics, is one of the two powerhouses of the comic book industry and has been for many decades. The company was founded in 1939 by pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman. Goodman owned various publishing houses responsible for a variety of pulp titles, including Marvel Science Stories. In 1939, a colleague persuaded Goodman that comic books were the upcoming trend in periodical publishing, so Good-man launched a book called Marvel Comics. Issue no. 1 contained a story by Bill Everett about the Sub-Mariner, as well as the first appearance of the Human Torch. Both characters quickly became leading draws of the Golden Age of comics. Soon after, Goodman hired writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby, who were to become giants in the industry. Simon and Kirby created Captain America, a character who remains a comics icon even today. In those early days, Goodman also hired another future legend: writer Stan Lee, who happened to be Good-man's nephew.Goodman's comic company was known officially as Timely Comics, Inc., then later as Atlas Publishing. The firm did not change its name to Marvel until the early 1960s. Timely benefitted from the comics boom of the early 1940s, but interest in super-hero stories waned later in the decade. Atlas briefly revived its super-hero line-up in 1954, but the company spent most of the next decade publishing romance, western, horror, and humor comics.1 1. Les Daniels, Marvel: Five Decades of the World's Greatest Comics (NY: Abrams, 1991), pp. 17–23, 26–36, 40–61.1

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