AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 1960s , there was no doubt that DC Comics were the undisputed sales champions of the comics business. Although slightly outsold by Disney's Uncle Scrooge title (854,000 per month), Superman (820,000) and related titles held seven of the top ten positions in the sales chart. The highest seller in Stan Lee's stable of soon-to-be Marvel Comics was Tales to Astonish at 185,00 a month. Today, of course, any publisher would have palpitations at the thought of that kind of monthly sale, but back in 1961, it was strictly small potatoes. To say that Marvel were a distant second would be overstate things. Outselling Marvel publisher Martin Goodman's titles by multiple margins were books from Dell, Archie and Harvey ... pretty much in that order. This is the top ten selling titles for 1961, in chart order - not a Stan Lee title in sight. Given those kinds of sales figures, DC Comics could be forgiven for feeling a bit smug. The sales on their Superman famil...
AT THE DAWN OF MARVEL COMICS , back in 1961, Editor Stan Lee must have known he had a big hill to climb. He presided over a comic line that had once been the largest in the business, and was now one of the smallest. This wasn't due to Lee's poor handling of the comics, but a direct result of publisher Martin Goodman's unsound business decisions. In 1957, Goodman had decided to close down his own Atlas magazine distribution company and strike a deal with the third party distributor American News to get his publications to the stands. Just months later, American News went out of business, leaving Goodman's magazines, including the comics, with no route to the newsstands. In the end, Goodman was able to do a deal with arch-rivals Independent News (distributors of DC Comics), but was forced to accept an eight titles per month cap on his comics line. At the beginning of 1959, the old Atlas Comics company was limping along, using the few artists who'd stuck with Stan thr...