Marvel Comics

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...

IF YOU'VE NEVER READ THE JACK KIRBY INTERVIEW in The Comics Journal 134 (Feb 1990), you really should. It's the basis for most of the unfounded vitriol heaped on Marvel Editor and architect Stan Lee over the last 28 years, and many Kirby supporters view it as the literal truth. But is it the literal truth? I really don't think so ... For over thirty years, fans have argued over who created what in the Marvel Universe ... but does it actually matter? Yet, it takes only the most cursory search of the internet to find an abundance of comments from some of Kirby's more extreme followers who take every word of that interview as gospel ... this despite even interviewer Gary Groth admitting that "some of Jack's claims may have been exaggerated." The further effect of that interview was to polarise Jack Kirby's and Stan Lee's camps, a rift which seems to have deepened right up to the present day. And neither side wants to shift their position an inch. I ...