SW024- THE BIRTH OF THE FANTASTIC FOUR (and subsequently the REBIRTH of Marvel Comics)! Part Two. A Golf Game Makes History!
By 1960 Martin Goodman’s once powerful Timely Comics Inc, which had comic titles selling into the millions with a staff of employees and a long list of freelance writers and artists, was now down to a small line of juvenile horror comics, westerns, romance and comedy titles with only Goodman’s wife’s cousin Stan Lee as the only company employee and the freelance team reduced to artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Lee was writing all of the scripts Marvel Style, which meant that he would give his artists an idea for a story which consisted of several sentences and those artists would develop the ideas into a fully realized comic book which Lee would then add dialogue too. This improved productivity and kept his artists working but Timely (now called Atlas Comics) had added insult to injury by lowering the page rate it paid those artists to an embarrassingly low amount.
A chance lunch between Goodman and the publisher of National Comics (Now called DC) on a golf course changed Atlas Comics forever. Goodman was a survivor, and he was always looking for the next big trend. He had struck gold when he launched his comics company after National introduced SUPERMAN into the medium and now publisher Irwin Donenfeld was telling him over a plate of pasta prima vera that he was surprised how well his new superhero titles had been selling. In fact, Donenfeld told him, combining the modern superhero versions of their golden age heroes The Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman had resulted in a wind fall when they revamped ALL STAR COMICS which had featured the superhero team Justice Society of America in the 40s into the brand new JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA which they tested in the pages of BRAVE AND THE BOLD #28 (March 1960).
Goodman finished his lunch and excitedly told his editor Stan Lee to create a superhero team and give them a shot to see if they could catch lightning in a bottle again and cash in on this new trend.
Lee, apparently, was considering leaving the company to persue his writing career and discussed the concept with his wife Joan over dinner. He told her he didn’t want to do the same simple minded superheroes they’d done in the 40s or the bland version DC was currently doing, he wanted to do stories with real character development and conflict and Joan pushed him to try injecting that into this new superhero title.
It’s hard to imagine now, sixty years later, but in 1960 comic book superheroes were pure fantasy characters. Yes Clark Kent had a secret identity as a reporter but he never struggled with getting his story in on deadline AND saving the world as Superman, nor did he ever face a layoff or cutbacks at the Daily Planet. Bruce Wayne might have lost his parents to crime, but his war on criminals was greatly helped by his millionaire status which allowed him to focus on his crusade without worrying about how his butler Alfred was getting paid.
In fact, if you read those early Justice League Stories, any character could be substituted for any other character in any situation and the only thing that defined them was their powers. They were all part of the team for the greater good and the only worries they ever had was figuring out where Wonder Woman had parked the invisible jet.
Stan sat down at his typewriter and fleshed out his superhero team and he fully injected personality into the characters. He made them a family, consisting of super scientist Reed Richards, his girl friend Sue Storm and her brother Johnny. Rounding out the team was Reed’s friend Ben Grimm who was an experienced fighter pilot who would helm the mission Reed had accepted and which would go haywire and end up giving them all super powers that they would struggle to accept and to use. They would also, like most families, bicker and get on each other’s nerves.
Reality seldom entered the world of DC Comics where characters adventures took place in fictional cities like Metropolis, Gotham and Central City. Marvel would base the action in New York City, and real world threats, like communism, would play a central part in their stories.
THE FANTASTIC FOUR #1 (Nov 1961) featuring the dynamic art of Jack Kirby hit the stands and sold out, history had repeated itself. Lee was able to successfully reincorporate new versions of the Golden Age characters The Human Torch and Sub-Mariner into the new age of comics, now published under the banner of MARVEL COMICS.
Lee continued to have success, stumbling only with THE INCREDIBLE HULK that only lasted six issues before finding his way a short time later but his biggest success came when he introduced Marvel’s first teenage Superhero Spider-Man. Peter Parker was a character the readers could relate to and Lee injected true soap opera drama into Peter’s life, making survival a daily struggle for an unpopular high school kid living with his widowed aunt.
Thus was launched the legendary Marvel Comics who would go on to dominate the comic publishing world for the next sixty years!
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