AS A KID in the Sixties, I was first a reader of DC Comics, then discovered Marvel. My introduction to the work of Stan Lee and his collaborators was a bit of a slow burn ... I didn't really start reading the flagship Marvel title The Amazing Spider-Man until mid-1965, by which time Lee and Ditko were in full swing. Okay, this kid is reading a comic in the 1940s, but his experience wouldn't have been much different from mine. The Superman behind him is the November 1947 issue, though the Ha Ha Comics he's reading is from mid-1943. See if you can identify any others ... In my last blog entry, I described how I had come to be a regular reader of the title and how Stan Lee's and Steve Ditko completely different approach to superhero stories captivated my imagination and made me feel they really understood my life. I didn't realise at the time they were telling stories that resonated with any number of teenagers and tweenagers, and it was this that started Marvel i...
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...