MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY
Go to SEANHOWE.COM to purchase a copy, or to read a chapter for free.
"A WILD-RIDE ACCOUNT" —The Hollywood Reporter
"EPIC" —The New York Times
"INDISPENSABLE" —Los Angeles Times
"DEFINITIVE" —The Wall Street Journal
"SCINTILLATING" —Publishers Weekly
“FASCINATING” —GQ
"AUTHORITATIVE" —Kirkus Reviews
"GRIPPING" —Rolling Stone
"PRICELESS" —Booklist
"A MUST FOR ANY SUPERHERO OR POP-CULTURE FAN" —NY Post
"ESSENTIAL" —The Daily Beast
"A SUPERPOWERED MUST-READ" —USA Today
"REVELATORY" —The Miami Herald
"AS FULL OF COLORFUL CHARACTERS, TRAGIC REVERSALS AND UNLIKELY PLOT TWISTS AS ANY BOOK IN THE MARVEL CANON" —Newsday
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“The Flying Fists and Glamour” of Sun Girl, 1948. Art by Ken Bald.
Happy 90th Birthday to Stan Lee!
Here he is, before and after the launch of the Marvel Age of Comics.
Here’s what happened between these two pictures: Seduction of the Innocent was published; there were Senate subcommittee hearings about comics’ contribution to juvenile delinquency; the entire Timely staff was fired; Joe Maneely died; Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko returned; the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Hulk, Iron Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, Doctor Strange, and dozens if not hundreds of characters were introduced; Steve Ditko left; Martin Goodman sold the company; Jack Kirby left; Martin Goodman retired as publisher; Stan Lee became president and publisher.
And here’s what was happening at the moment of each photograph.
(1954)
Martin Goodman moved operations to Madison Avenue, above the Boyd Chemists drugstore and cafeteria. With a carpeted office and a short walk to Central Park, he was headquartered at ground zero of 1950s consumerism, where legions of well-dressed martini-lunchers, responsible for approximately half of the advertising dollars in the country, ducked into newly built towers and straightened their ties at the elevator banks. At 655 Madison, most of Goodman’s new office space was dedicated to his magazine line (the creatively titled Magazine Management, Inc.), which had evolved from its pulp roots into a mixture of true confessions, movie gossip, crossword puzzles, and, under the editorial stewardship of Bruce Jay Friedman, mildly smutty action-adventure titles like Stag, Male, For Men Only, and Men’s World. But off to the side, Stan Lee was overseeing more than sixty different titles and, in the words of Friedman, “a sea of employees.”
(1972)
In a surprise twist, Goodman’s successor, Sheldon Feinberg, gave Lee a double promotion, to president and publisher of Marvel Comics. Lee would no longer have his hands tied. He could publish black-and-white comic magazines; he could have final say on covers; he could bring back the Silver Surfer. “It’s time for Phase Two to begin,” Lee proclaimed in his “Bullpen Bulletins” column. “No man, no group of men, no publishing company can rest on its laurels—and Marvel’s still much too young, too zingy, too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to settle back and bask in the sun of yesterday’s success… . If you think we turned you on before, the best is yet to be—wait’ll you see what’s coming! Hang loose! Face front! Marvel’s on the move again!” Restless from all the time spent in Martin Goodman’s shadow, Lee quickly began casting around for new, more sophisticated ventures. He started to line up luminaries like Anthony Burgess, Kurt Vonnegut, and Vaclav Havel to write a line of adult comic books (Tom Stoppard expressed interest as well). He asked former Mad editor (and father figure to the underground comix scene) Harvey Kurtzman to edit a satirical magazine called Bedlam. Lee also turned to the legendary Will Eisner, who wrote to prospective contributors that he’d be publishing a Marvel-funded magazine that was “neither sophomoric, nor foul- mouthed or tasteless.” Lee invited underground publisher Denis Kitchen to New York to discuss packaging an anthology title that would feature left-of-center artists like Kim Deitch, Art Spiegelman, and Basil Wolverton.
(From Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.)
Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader, by Frank Miller.
“The teenager Jim Steranko began stealing an arsenal’s worth of guns and a small parking lot’s worth of motor vehicles. In February 1956, Steranko and a partner were arrested for the thefts, committed throughout eastern Pennsylvania, of twenty-five cars and two trucks. (He was careful to avoid criminal activity in his hometown. ‘None of the things we did were done in Reading, maybe one or two. I stole a submachine gun in Reading, but that was all.’)”
io9.com has just posted yet another excerpt from the book—this time, it’s 6500 words about 1966!
http://io9.com/5952658/the-true-story-of-life-at-marvel-comics-in-the-glory-days-of-jack-kirby-and-stan-lee
REACH FOR THE STARS!
SF IN COMICS HAS COME OF AGE!
The phone calls from drug-addled Doctor Strange fans gave way to weirder visits, like the appearance at 635 Madison Avenue of two members of the Process Church. As usual, Lee was gracious, and if he had any discomfort when he figured out his guests praised both Jesus Christ and Satan, he masked it well. “He was predictably thrilled by our garb,” the Process Church’s Timothy Wylie remembered, “and, if I remember rightly, listened intently to our spiel about the reconciliation of opposites. He was both intelligent and funny and kindly agreed for us to use some Marvel material in one of our magazine cartoon pastiches.”
Another excerpt from the book, this one covering what Marvel was up to in 1992, is now up at The Comics Journal:
Well, today’s the big day!
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story is finally out there in the world. I hope you enjoy it. (And if you do, please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads!)
If you’re in New York, join us this evening at PowerHouse. It should be fun!
“I would tell any cartoonist who has an idea, think twice before you give it to a publisher.” —Stan Lee, 1971
Here’s one of the many fascinating documents I came across in the process of researching Marvel Comics: The Untold Story: Stan Lee forcefully criticizing the comic industry’s treatment of creators.
On the evening of Wednesday, January 20, 1971, Stan Lee joined a number of comic veterans—including Gil Kane, Will Eisner, and Archie Comics publisher John Goldwater—at the Lambs Club in Manhattan for a discussion about the state of the industry. Jack Kirby had quit Marvel the previous spring, and Lee himself was only a few months away from taking a sabbatical to collaborate on a film script with Alain Resnais. His disillusion with the world of comics is striking, as is the spirited nature of the debate with the other panelists, some of whom seem to feel he’s putting too much blame on publishers.
“I would say that the comic book market is the worst market that there is on the face of the earth for creative talent and the reasons are numberless and legion,’ says Lee. “I have had many talented people ask me how to get into the comic book business. If they were talented enough the first answer I would give them is, ‘Why would you want to get into the comic book business?’ Because even if you succeed, even if you reach what might be considered the pinnacle of success in comics, you will be less successful, less secure and less effective than if you are just an average practitioner of your art in television, radio, movies or what have you. It is a business in which the creator, as was mentioned before, owns nothing of his creation. The publisher owns it….”
The above documents pick up the conversation about halfway through. Near the end, you can practically hear Stan Lee prophesizing his escape hatch to Hollywood: “Isn’t it pathetic to be in a business where the most you can say for the creative person in the business is that he’s serving an apprenticeship to enter a better field? Why not go to the other field directly?”
