THE EARLY 1960s WAS A TIME OF GREAT CHANGE ... especially for women, though the origins of this change go back to the World War II years. The conflict with Nazi Germany and their allies brought about two big transformations in society. First, with the domestic workforce being drained by volunteers and conscription into the armed forces, women began to take on jobs, formerly reserved for men, in manufacturing and service industries, leading to a change in way women saw themselves and their role in society. As the war ground on, women took a step further, actively participating directly in the war - driving ambulances, operating ant-aircraft guns and even piloting war planes from one airfield to another in order to free combat pilots. Almost half a million women were enrolled in the British Armed Forces, and societal resistance to married women taking jobs faded. In the Soviet Union, nearly a million women served as medics, radio operators, drivers, snipers and even combat pilots....
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...