Origins Of Marvel Comics

Now back in print and timed for its 50th anniversary—the landmark book Origins of Marvel Comics by Stan Lee! Originally published in 1974, Origins of Marvel Comics features the first appearance of characters who have dominated the pantheon of Marvel’s modern storytelling mythology—Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor, and Doctor Strange—along with a second Silver Age tale featuring these special heroes, all hand-picked and introduced by the one and only Stan Lee, and serving as an essential showcase for writers and artists such as Stan himself, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita, and Marie Severin. Whether viewed as a historical artifact that launched an industry of presenting Marvel Comics to a broad audience of fans or a collection of the best in Silver Age comics by many of the greatest creators to ever put pencil to paper, Origins of Marvel Comics highlights both the lasting greatness of these iconic characters as well as the monumental contributions of the talented creators who launched an entire storytelling universe.

The Secret History of Marvel Comics digs back to the 1930s when Marvel Comics wasn't just a comic-book producing company. Marvel Comics owner Martin Goodman had tentacles into a publishing world that might have made that era’s conservative American parents lynch him on his front porch. Marvel was but a small part of Goodman’s publishing empire, which had begun years before he published his first comic book. Goodman mostly published lurid and sensationalistic story books (known as “pulps”) and magazines, featuring sexually-charged detective and romance short fiction, and celebrity gossip scandal sheets. And artists like Jack Kirby, who was producing Captain America for eight-year-olds, were simultaneously dipping their toes in both ponds. The Secret History of Marvel Comics tells this parallel story of 1930s/40s Marvel Comics sharing offices with those Goodman publications not quite fit for children. The book also features a comprehensive display of the artwork produced for Goodman’s other enterprises by Marvel Comics artists such as Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, Alex Schomburg, Bill Everett, Al Jaffee, and Dan DeCarlo, plus the very best pulp artists in the field, including Norman Saunders, John Walter Scott, Hans Wesso, L.F. Bjorklund, and Marvel Comics #1 cover artist Frank R. Paul. Goodman’s magazines also featured cover stories on celebrities such as Jackie Gleason, Elizabeth Taylor, Liberace, and Sophia Loren, as well as contributions from famous literary and social figures such as Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, and L. Ron Hubbard.

Tracing the rise of the Marvel Comics brand from the creation of the Fantastic Four to the development of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this volume of original essays considers how a comic book publisher became a transmedia empire.

It's the greatest tale ever told -- and you've never seen it like this! Writer Mark Waid and artist Javier Rodríguez weave together a sprawling, interconnected web of stories into one seamless narrative that takes you from the dawn of the Marvel Universe all the way to its end! Far more than a collection of moments you may already know, this is a new tale featuring previously unknown secrets and shocking revelations, connecting dozens of threads from Marvel's past and present! From the Big Bang to the twilight of existence, this sweeping saga covers every significant Marvel event, providing fresh looks at characters of all eras! COLLECTING: History of the Marvel Universe (2019) 1-6

What is good without evil? What is day without night? The bright "yins" of the universe need their dark "yangs" ... just as the hearty heroes of the Marvel Universe need their ferocious foes! Rejoice, true believer, for Mighty Marvel has at last added a sinister sequel to BRING ON THE BAD GUYS! That's right, lurking within this vile volume are the outlandish origins of some of the world's most venomous villains! Witness the tragic tale of Magneto, Master of Magnetism - the arch nemesis of the team of mutant misfits known as the X-Men! Track the meteoric rise of "a humble importer of spices" named Wilson Fisk, known to the unsavory underworld as the Kingpin of Crime! Bear witness to the dark genesis of the armored Iron Man's most hated foe, the ringed menace named the Mandarin! Enter the time stream alongside the Avengers as the Earth's Mightiest Heroes battle Kang the Conqueror! Run for your lives when the deadly dragon Fin Fang Foom takes to the fire-filled skies! Cower in fear before the arrival of the star-spanning world devourer known as Galactus! Whether you are a naive newcomer or a venerable veteran, you will find BRING BACK THE BAD GUYS an integral addition to your comics library! So if you are strong of will and steady of heart, O Seeker Of The Truth, then we invite you to venture inside. But don't forget batteries ... after all, you wouldn't want your flashlight to fail once you enter evil's heart of darkness!

The defining, behind-the-scenes chronicle of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and dominant pop cultural entities in America’s history -- Marvel Comics – and the outsized personalities who made Marvel including Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby. “Sean Howe’s history of Marvel makes a compulsively readable, riotous and heartbreaking version of my favorite story, that of how a bunch of weirdoes changed the world…That it’s all true is just frosting on the cake.” —Jonathan Lethem For the first time, Marvel Comics tells the stories of the men who made Marvel: Martin Goodman, the self-made publisher who forayed into comics after a get-rich-quick tip in 1939, Stan Lee, the energetic editor who would shepherd the company through thick and thin for decades and Jack Kirby, the WWII veteran who would co-create Captain America in 1940 and, twenty years later, developed with Lee the bulk of the company’s marquee characters in a three-year frenzy. Incorporating more than one hundred original interviews with those who worked behind the scenes at Marvel over a seventy-year-span, Marvel Comics packs anecdotes and analysis into a gripping narrative of how a small group of people on the cusp of failure created one of the most enduring pop cultural forces in contemporary America.

A graphic fantasy collection which throws light on the origins of the superheroes, such as Captain America, created by the U.S. Government during the Second World War, and the Prince of Atlantis, Namor, who rises from the depths.

Stan Lee, who was the head writer of Marvel Comics in the early 1960s, co-created such popular heroes as Spider-Man, Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and Daredevil. This book traces the ways in which American theologians and comic books of the era were not only both saying things about what it means to be human, but, starting with Lee they were largely saying the same things. Author Anthony R. Mills argues that the shift away from individualistic ideas of human personhood and toward relational conceptions occurring within both American theology and American superhero comics and films does not occur simply on the ontological level, but is also inherent to epistemology and ethics, reflecting the comprehensive nature of human life in terms of being, knowing, and acting. This book explores the idea of the "American monomyth" that pervades American hero stories and examines its philosophical and theological origins and specific manifestations in early American superhero comics. Surveying the anthropologies of six American theologians who argue against many of the monomyth’s assumptions, principally the staunch individualism taken to be the model of humanity, and who offer relationality as a more realistic and ethical alternative, this book offers a detailed argument for the intimate historical relationship between the now disparate fields of comic book/superhero film creation, on the one hand, and Christian theology, on the other, in the United States. An understanding of the early connections between theology and American conceptions of heroism helps to further make sense of their contemporary parallels, wherein superhero stories and theology are not strictly separate phenomena but have shared origins and concerns.