Marvel's First Comic

Marvel

Several weeks ago we looked at the origin of DC comics so it is only fitting that we look at the other great comic book company: Marvel. From early beginnings in 1939 Marvel has brought to the world countless of characters and stories which have inspired generations. Spider-Man, Wolverine, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers are just some of the characters and teams to come out of Marvel. Today we'll look at the early origins of Marvel but first we'll look at the world which Marvel came into.

The World in 1939

Marvel first appeared in May 1939. Like with the origins of DC Marvel came into the world in a time of darkness. Despite Roosevelt's New Deal the USA still faced mass unemployment and poverty thanks to the Great Depression. Similarly, most of the world, bar perhaps the USSR which had remained politically isolated, had seen their economies plummet and very few had recovered. The ones that did, (Nazi Germany), were soon plunged back into economic depredation. Europe and Asia faced threats from the far-right and ultra-nationalists. By 1939 Hitler had stripped German Jews of their rights; annexed Austria and what is now Czechia; and started to set his sights on Poland starting the Second World War. In 1939 a non-aggression pact was signed between the USSR and Germany named the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which later allowed the division of Poland in September. In Spain right-wing authoritarian forces under General Francisco Franco won a ferocious civil war spelling the end of Spanish democracy until the late-1970s. Japan, meanwhile, was tearing apart China to create its own empire in Asia. In fear that Hitler was developing nuclear weapons Albert Einstein wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt about developing a nuclear weapon, (something that Einstein would later campaign against). Culturally 1939 saw several movies and comics which would be highly influential. Two book adaptations were released in 1939. One was Gone with the Wind, a three and a half hour long epic about a family in the South during the US Civil War which remains one of the most successful movies of all time. The other was The Wizard of Oz the famous technicolor musical which strangely was almost a financial loss for MGM. In regards to comics in 1938 Superman made his debut in Action Comics #1 and in 1939 in Detective Comics #27 Batman made his debut.

Marvel's Founder

Marvel's Founder

Marvel was founded by Martin Goodman in 1939. Unlike the founder of DC, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Goodman came from a more humble background. Martin's parents were Jewish immigrants from Vilnius who had met in the United States he was the first of thirteen children to be raised by the pair in New York. When the Depression hit he would travel across the USA occasionally living in hobo camps, called 'Hoovervilles' in a sarcastic homage to then president Herbert Hoover. In late 1929 he would start working for the future co-founder of Archie Comics, Louis Silberkleit, and would take over his role as circulation manager of pulp magazines. Silberkleit would later get Martin to be the editor of his new company called Newsstand Publication Inc. With Newsstand Publication Inc. he would publish principally Western stories. In 1936 he released a new pulp magazine called Ka-Zar. Marvel fans will recognize the name but this one is different to the current Ka-Zar. Replicating Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan it features a white family crash-landing in the Congo. The mother soon dies of disease and the father raises his son with a lion, Zar, and the boy grows up to be basically Tarzan. The boy then calls himself Ka, brother of Zar.

The Ka-Zar Comic

Two years before the arrival of Ka-Zar a title named Famous Funnies pioneered the comic book. Then in 1938 the Man of Steel Superman made his debut from the minds of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. This caused a craze for superheroes which Martin recognized. In 1939 he would begin a new publication to do this.

Marvel Comics #1

Marvel Comics #1

In 1938 Martin had been publishing science-fiction magazines called Marvel Science Stories. In the 1930s a comic book packaging company was founded called Funnies Inc. This company would package and help distribute comic books of different companies. The sales manager of Funnies Inc., Frank Torpey, struck up a friendship with Goodman. Torpey talked to Goodman and tried to convince him to form a publishing company. They struck up an agreement: Goodman would form a company to publish superhero stories and Torpey would package them. Thus Timely Publications was founded and their first publication was Marvel Comics #1.

Marvel Comics #1 featured several stories. One included a Ka-Zar story but it featured several others. Unlike with DC Marvel immediately had superhero stories and several would remain major Marvel characters until this very day. Two were most important: The Human Torch and The Sub-Mariner. Created by Carols Burgos, (The Human Torch), and Bill Everett (Sub-Mariner), these stories would foreshadow Marvel's trend for having heroes who were outsiders in a 'normal' society. They weren't conventional heroes either. The Human Torch wasn't human but instead an android made by Professor Phineas T. Horton which combusted when it came into contact with oxygen. The Sub-Mariner featured Captain Leonard McKenzie who fell in love with Princess Fen of Atlantis. Their son was named Namor and was half-human, half-Atlantean. Namor's grandfather later had Namor attack New York. It was a strange feat by Everett getting readers to understand the character of Namor who was not fully human, (bear in mind many US states prohibited mixed-race relationships), and viewed the USA as a threat. Both the Human Torch and Namor would become major characters in the Marvel Universe. Years later the title Human Torch would be recycled and the two have even met.

Torch vs. Torch

Becoming Marvel

In 1940 Goodman hired writer/artist Joe Simon from Funnies Inc. and with Simon came artist Jack Kirby. Simon and Kirby would revolutionize the Golden Age of Comic Books. With a dynamic style of visual telling they attracted many readers. Even before the USA went to war with Germany Kirby and Simon started their own war with the Nazis. In Marvel Mystery Comics #4 Namor fought Nazis on a U-Boat. At the end of the year Simon and Kirby got an assistant in the 17-year old cousin of Goodman's wife. This kid was called Stanley Lieber and was an avid writer, and in 1941 with Captain America Comics #3 even got to write a comic. He said, 'I felt someday I'd write The Great American Novel and I didn't want to use my real name on these silly little comics'. So he used a pseudonym which eventually became his actual name: Stan Lee. However, after the end of the war love for superheroes died down. With sales dropping Goodman turned Timely into Atlas in 1952. Goodman decided to sacrifice quality for quantity having 400 releases in 1952 alone. These reflected new trends like shock-horror with Journey Into Mystery, (which in my opinion were the better ones), Westerns like Two Gun Western and inspired by Archie Comics teen dramas/romance like Girl Confessions. With the popularity of the radio show Adventures of Superman introducing new people to superheroes there was an attempt to bring back superheroes, (mainly Human Torch, Captain America, and Namor). However, Atlas was going downhill and needed a change.

In the late-1950s superheroes were coming back. The Space Race between the USA and USSR had made science-fiction a very popular genre. DC was returning to power reinventing the Flash and Green Lantern to have sci-fi origins, (they left Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman alone). Throughout the 1950s Stan Lee had been working for Atlus after leaving the army he had been thinking of quitting. That is until Goodman asked him and Jack Kirby to make a superhero team. DC had struck gold with their superheroes and in 1960 had created the Justice League. Changing itself to Marvel with Lee as editor/writer and Kirby as artist they began creating a new team. At the request of Joan Boocock Lee, his wife, Stan made these new characters flawed. Instead of having secret identities everyone would know who they are, one would be a hotheaded teenager, and another would be an ugly, antisocial monster. Together Kirby and Lee in 1961 produced their title which would revolutionize comic books. This was Fantastic Four #1.

Fantastic Four #1

Over the next few years Marvel would release more and more characters inspired by the success of Fantastic Four. In 1962 they created a story of a feeble scientist who would turn into a monster powered by rage during a bomb test gone wrong. The same year Lee and Steve Ditko created a skinny, bullied teenager who gains powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider who then becomes a hero after his own greed let his uncle get shot. Lee and Kirby then created a story of a Norse God who becomes disgraced and banished to Earth. In 1963 Marvel released another story about a hero group hated because they exist in an allegory to the Civil Rights Movement with the X-Men. Thus comic, and cultural, history was made.

Thank you for reading. For future posts please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

The sources I have used are as follows:

-The Age of Extremes: 1917-1991 by Eric Hobsbawm

-Marvel Year by Year: A Visual History edited by Cefn Ridout

DC's First Comic

The DC logos until today

Even non-comic book fans know DC comics. Alongside Marvel it is the largest comic book company in at least the English speaking world giving us characters such as Superman, Wonder Woman, and my personal favorite of Batman. For decades this company has dominated the world of comic books and pulp fiction. How then did DC comics start? To answer this question we must go back to 1935...

The World of 1935

What would become DC comics came about in 1935 in a time when the world was in crisis. In 1929 the Wall Street Crash had plunged the world economy into crisis leading to the Great Depression. In the United States over 20% of the workforce became unemployed and in Germany it stood at 25%. The only country to be largely unaffected was the Soviet Union who had become a social pariah in a capitalist world. In 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president and he began a program named the 'New Deal' which redefined the American left and began lifting the USA out of Depression, (although it would take until American entry into the Second World War for the economy to recover). Meanwhile, in Europe and Asia the far-right was taking over. Imperial Japan started to become ultra-nationalist and in 1937 would reinvade China, the Kuomintang in China drifted towards fascism under Chiang Kai-shek, Italy under Mussolini hoping to rebuild the Roman Empire invaded Ethiopia in 1935 committing horrible atrocities, and in 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. In 1935 he would start German rearmament in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and would pass the Nuremberg Laws which stripped German Jews of their rights. 1935 also saw the friendship ruining game Monopoly being released by the Parker Brothers and in I Haven't Got a Hat Porky Pig made his debut. It was in this setting that comic book history was made.

Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson

The man who made comic book history

Who would have thought that a former army major would shape comic book history so much? The man pictured, (while in his army uniform sometime in the 1890s), is Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. He had written an open letter criticizing army command causing him to face a lawsuit and even being shot, something which his family described as being down to the army attempting to assassinate him. After resigning in 1923 he began writing pulp stories in Adventure and Argosy writing about historical and military adventure stories. He even acted as a ghost writer for six novels for Street and Smith Publications. In 1925 he first stepped into the comic book industry by founding Wheeler-Nicholson Inc. which published a daily comic-strip adaptation of Treasure Island. Then came the Depression. With the economy in tatters Wheeler-Nicholson had to find a way to keep things a float and Famous Funnies seemed to be the answer. In 1933 Famous Funnies published what can be seen as the very first comic book. Instead of just comic-strips this new comic book offered many comics in one for just 10 cents. The next year Famous Funnies became regularly sold with the first issue offering 100 comics and games for just 10 cents. Cash strapped people bought this book by the thousands. The equivalent today would be a company selling the seven main Harry Potter books for $10. Although Wheeler-Nicholson didn't realize that the comic's success also made the company go over four grand in the red he saw dollar signs. In 1934 National Allied Publishing was founded and the next year New Fun #1 was published.

New Fun #1

The First Comic

New Fun would act like Famous Funnies where Wheeler-Nicholson would reprint famous or at least somewhat popular comic-strips in a book format. It was subtitled 'The Big Comic Magazine' as it was literally larger than the competition at 25.4 x 38.1 cm (10 x 15 inches). In this one issue there were several stories including the cowboy Jack Woods fighting cattle rustlers (depicted on the cover), Super-Police fighting crime in 2023, Native Americans attacking a band moving West, and some kids being sent to Ancient Egypt by a crystal ball just to name a few stories. All these would be brief, one page, and would continue in the next issue. However, Wheeler-Nicholson was at a disadvantage. Although he wanted to reprint famous comic-strips he couldn't: licensing was expensive and many of the famous strips were already being licensed by Famous Funnies. Although later they did manage to publish a story involving Oswald the Lucky Rabbit; the character Walt Disney made before Mickey. Not only that but New Fun could only afford color on the front while Famous Funnies could afford color throughout. It would take until issue three for it to have color on the inside. New Fun did pioneer something though which would revolutionize comic book history. Wheeler-Nicholson, to save money, got people to write original stories so he didn't have to pay the expensive licensing costs. Although they were comic-strips they served as a landmark in comics as they were original stories. Issue one came out in February and in October, with issue six, something important happened: DC's first super hero was introduced.

DC's First Character

Issue Six

On first glance New Fun #6 appeared to be like the five preceding comics. Several of the stories featured happened to be 'part 6' of the ones from the first issue. For this issue a pair named Jerry Siegel (the writer) and Joe Shuster (the artist) were hired to write two stories. The first was 'Henri Duval, Famed Soldier of Fortune' went on to appear in in only four installments. Their second story, written under pseudonym, was 'Dr. Occult, the Ghost Detective'. In this story the titular hero and his assistant, Rose Psychic, attempt to save a man and his wife from a vampire. Those who know their DC comics will understand the significance of this. For those who don't Dr. Occult and Rose Psychic regularly feature in stories to this day, and are DC's 'superheroes'. Siegel and Shuster went on though to write an even more important character.

Siegel's and Shuster's Second Character

By 1937 with the Depression still ravaging the world economy Wheeler-Nicholson was going under despite owning two titles, More Fun Comics, (formerly New Fun), and New Adventure Comics, and he couldn't afford to create his desired third. He wanted a title devoted to detective stories and mysteries after seeing the success of the Green Hornet and the Phantom but neither of his titles could accommodate them. He turned to his distributor Harry Donenfeld who helped get Detective Comics #1 released as well as forming Detective Comics Inc. Still Wheeler-Nicholson was not seeing profits so by the end of the year he was forced out. Donenfeld's business adviser Jack Liebowitz was eager to buy Wheeler-Nicholson's shares saying that 'I had a feel for it [comic books], that it was a good field'. While this was happening Siegel and Shuster were continuing to write comics. They had a love for science-fiction and started implementing it into their comics. In More Fun Comics #15 they had Dr. Occult don a blue costume and red cape to resemble a character which they had pitched years earlier. This character was a bald-headed, cape-wearing powerful alien trying to dominate the world but their plan had been rejected. In 1938 Detective Comics Inc. bought More Fun Comics and New Adventure Comics with many of the writers/artists coming with them. Siegel and Shuster were hired to write a story for the new title, Action Comics, and they decided to bring back their old character. However, they changed him. Instead of a villain he would be hero. As Siegel and Shuster were Jews in a time of intense hatred to not only Jews but other minorities including African-Americans and Asian-Americans they decided to make this character an alien. That way minorities could see themselves as this character, another minority. In fact, the subtitle for this story was 'Champion of the Oppressed'. Although other stories were featured alongside it Siegel's and Shuster's story was granted the cover page. Thus the world was introduced to the Superman.

The Arrival of Superman

From there DC produced more and more memorable characters. A year after Superman's debut the world was introduced to the Batman. However the last words of Superman's debut story would reverberate in the history of pop culture: And so begins the adventures of the most sensational strip character of all time.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this. For future posts please see our Facebook or follow me on Twitter @LewisTwiby