The Marvel Studios Story

How a Failing Comic Book Publisher Became a Hollywood Superhero

Charlie Wetzel,Stephanie Wetzel

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781400216192
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business History
• Index: Business

What can you learn from the world's most successful companies? Marvel characters have been shaping pop culture for decades and when comic books were no longer keeping the company afloat, Marvel Studios was born.

Marvel Studios is the multibillion-dollar home to iconic franchises. They are known for creating brilliant multilayered worlds and storylines that allow their audiences to escape into a fantasy and inspire the creative side of every viewer. But, behind those visionaries is a well-oiled storytelling machine dedicated to getting the Hulk's smash fists in the hands of every child and a sea of Spiderman costumes deployed every Halloween.

The Marvel Studios Story educates you on how one of the largest creative companies in the planetary universe runs their business and keeps their fans and their parent company, Disney, counting the profits. Through the story of Marvel Studios, you'll learn:

• How to recognize and pursue additional revenue streams.
• How a company can successfully balance the creative with business to appease investors and fans alike.
• And how to keep a decades-old superhero franchise new and exciting without losing sight of its roots.

The Marvel Studios Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled a struggling comic book publisher to parlay the power of myth and storytelling to become one of history's most successful movie studios.

CHAPTER ONE

THE BIRTH OF A NEW GENERATION OF SUPERHEROES

In 1960, Stan Lee was editing five teen humor titles, two romances, four westerns, one war comic, and four monster story titles.¹ And he wasn’t happy about it. “The various monster stories that made up the bulk of our production at that time were beginning to pale for me, and probably for the readers, too,” said Lee. “The titles were no longer selling the large numbers they once did. As far as I could tell, the comic book industry was in trouble. There was nothing new coming along to pique the readers’ interest. I felt we were merely doing the same type of thing, over and over again, with no hope of either greater financial rewards or creative satisfaction.”²

Lee had finally had enough. One day in the summer of 1961, he decided he was done with comic books and Goodman organization. “I felt I’d been there too long,” Lee said, “and I wanted to leave. I figured I could always get a writing job of some kind.”³ He planned to tell his boss that afternoon. But before the disillusioned editor could say a word, Martin Goodman came into Lee’s office and exclaimed, “Stan, can you come up with a team of superheroes like the Justice League?”

Goodman had just come back from playing golf with the publisher of National Comics. As always, Goodman was alert for any information that might clue him in on a coming trend. Nation’s publisher mentioned in passing that a new series, The Justice League of America, had been introduced at DC, featuring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and it was selling surprisingly well. Goodman suspected that meant interest in superheroes might be on the rise, and he wanted to capitalize on it.

“Martin caught me off guard with his enthusiasm for creating a new superhero title,” Lee remembered. “He was so fired up about it that I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I wanted out. I decided to let it go till the next day.”

Lee went home intending to get out of the comic book business. But when he discussed it with his wife, Joanie, she encouraged him to try something different.

“You know, Stan,” Lee recalled her saying, “if Martin wants you to create a new group of superheroes, this could be a chance for you to do it the way you’ve always wanted to. You could dream up plots that have more depth and substance to them, and create characters who have interesting personalities, who speak like real people. It might be fun for you to create brand-new heroes and write them in a different style, the style you’ve always wanted to use, one that might attract older readers as well as the young ones.” Lee often said that Goodman wanted his comic books pitched to six- or seven-year olds.

“Remember, you’ve got nothing to lose by doing the book your way,” Joan continued. “The worst that can happen is that Martin will get mad and fire you; but you want to quit anyway, so what’s the risk? At least you’ll have gotten it out of your system.”⁴

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This could be a chance for you to do it the way you’ve always wanted to. You could dream up plots that have more depth and substance to them, and create characters who have interesting personalities, who speak like real people.”

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This was exactly what Lee had been wanting to do. Goodman wanted a team, but Lee was determined not to do an imitation of DC’s Justice League. Plus, he wanted to move away from what Timely had always done. Lee said he wanted to make the unreal real, by creating more complex plots and trying to avoid many of the clichés that were common to comic book superheroes. His characters would be more like real people. Sure, they had superpowers, but they had flaws. They had personal and relational problems. They experienced internal conflict, which wasn’t typically shown at that time. And they dealt with real-world situations. They might be able to solve their superhero problems by using their superpowers, but they would still have to deal with day-to-day problems the way ordinary people did. Lee believed that would make the characters and stories more relatable to everyone.

Fantastic

Lee spent days scribbling notes, trying out characters, and playing with ideas. Finally, he landed on four characters he thought might fit the bill, and he called them the Fantastic Four. The leader of the group was Reed Richards, who immodestly called himself Mr. Fantastic. Lee said of Richards, “He was bright, he was heroic, but he was also a bore.”⁵ Ben Grimm, called the Thing, was a humorous semi-monster.⁶ The female lead character, Susan Storm, was Lee’s attempt to avoid stereotypes and the clichés. “Instead of the girl being the girlfriend of the hero who always had to be rescued and didn’t know that the mild-mannered hero was really the super-hero, I gave the Invisible Girl a superpower equal to the others—she was the hero’s fiancée and an active partner.”⁷ Rounding out the group was Johnny Storm, Susan’s brother. He was the Human Torch (different from the 1939 version). Lee said he “wasn’t that nice a guy, he always felt he was wasting his time—since he wasn’t getting paid, he’d really rather be modifying his Chevy or chasing girls.”⁸

Lee wrote a two-page summary of the characters and the basic plot and gave it to artist Jack Kirby to draw. “I figured the Fantastic Four would be my swan song. I had no idea it would catch on the way it did.” Lee said.⁹ “I was just trying to get it out of my system once and for all.”¹⁰

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I figured the Fantastic Four would be my swan song. I had no idea it would catch on the way it did. . . . I was just trying to get it out of my system once and for all.”

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It turned out to be a new beginning for Lee—and for Timely Comics. Even before the sales figures were reported, which usually took months after a title appeared on shelves, Lee was receiving fan mail. That had never happened in his twenty-year career. Readers loved Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961 issue), and they were telling him they wanted more.

The Fantastic Four opened the creative floodgates for Lee. “The characters just ran through Stan’s mind like crazy, one after the other,” said Joan. “It was a fantastic period.”¹¹

The Marvel Method

Most of the characters now familiar to moviegoers in the recent blockbuster Marvel films were created from 1961 to 1967. Often, Lee would come up with the idea for a character and a plot and give the overview to an artist, such as Jack Kirby. Kirby would then take it the next several steps. He would create how the character looked. He would draw the panels, fleshing out the plot and capturing the action. Lee or another staff member, such as his brother Larry Lieber, would write the dialogue and captions for each panel. Then it would be inked and colored. This collaborative process became known as the Marvel method.

People argue today about who really created which characters during this period, but it can be difficult to figure out. As Lee said, “A lot of people put something together, and nobody really knows who created it. They’re just working on it, y’know?”

At this time there was a growing team of people working on a lot of content, and they kept producing winners. In 1962, Ant-Man, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Spider-Man appeared in comic books for the first time. That didn’t happen without some resistance from Goodman. He liked the sales figures when comic books sold, but he still had a very narrow view of what should be in them. Lee told Goodman he wanted to create a superhero who was a teenager with spider powers. “I was told in chapter and verse by the fellow who was then my publisher,” said Lee of Goodman, “that it was the worst idea he’d ever heard. People hate spiders! You can’t call a hero Spider-Man! Stan, don’t you understand that teenagers can only be sidekicks?”¹²

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I was told in chapter and verse by the fellow who was then my publisher that it was the worst idea he’d ever heard. People hate spiders! You can’t call a hero Spider-Man! Stan, don’t you understand that teenagers can only be sidekicks?”

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Cracking the Code

But Lee had already cracked the code. “You ask the audience to suspend disbelief and accept that some idiot can climb on walls, but once that’s accepted, you ask: What would life be like in the real world if there were such a character? Would he still have to worry about dandruff, about acne, about getting girlfriends, about keeping a job?”¹³

Lee found a way to move forward with Spider-Man anyway. Since Goodman wanted Lee to discontinue one of their titles that wasn’t doing well, Amazing Adult Fantasy, Lee stuck his story of Spider-Man into its final issue. “When you’re doing the last issue of a magazine you’re about to kill, nobody really cares what you put in it. So I figured I’d get Spider-Man out of my system.”¹⁴

Spider-Man was a huge hit with readers, and he would go on to become the face of Marvel. The character would star in movies that would make more $6.36 billion!¹⁵

Lee got a lot more “out of his system” the next year. In 1963 he and his team created Iron Man, Nick Fury, Doctor Strange, and the Wasp. The X-Men also appeared for the first time, with Professor Charles Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops, Beast, Angel, Iceman, Marvel Girl, Mastermind, Quicksilver, Toad, and Scarlet Witch. Lee originally didn’t want to call them the X-Men. He wanted to call them “The Mutants,” but Goodman overruled him, saying he didn’t think the readers of his comic books would know what that word meant.¹⁶ Lee also introduced the Avengers that year, with Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man, and the Wasp. In 1964, he revived Captain America and had him join the group. Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Daredevil also debuted.

Starting in the early sixties, the comic book company that started as Timely (and was at one time known as Atlas) finally became Marvel. Beginning in June of 1961, the small initials MC started to appear inside a small rectangle on the cover of their comic books. In May 1963, Marvel Comics Group branding began appearing on covers.

Lee also began inserting himself into the comic books in a more personal way. He started writing an editorial piece he called “Stan’s Soapbox,” where he commented on social issues, such as racism or drug abuse. He asked fans to write in with their reactions to characters and stories. And he started to publish credits for writers, artists, inkers, letterers, colorists, and editors, which was unusual.¹⁷

After years of being disillusioned, he was excited again. He especially loved breaking new ground and pushing the envelope of the genre. Pop culture critic Richard Harrington pointed out that “Marvel in the early ’60s . . . established a reputation for breaking new ground. ‘Daredevil’ was the first blind super-hero; black super-heroes Black Panther (1968) and Luke Cage (1972) helped break the color line with their own series, while ‘Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos’ (1963) had featured the comic world’s first ethnic platoon with a black (Gabriel Jones), a Jew (Izzy Cohen), and an Italian (Dino Manelli).”¹⁸

Dealmaker

While Lee was hard at work writing and leading the artists at Marvel, Martin Goodman was trying to figure out how to better capitalize on it. In 1968 he sold his entire publishing enterprise, called Magazine Management Company, to a conglomerate called Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation, later renamed Cadence Industries.¹⁹ Goodman received slightly less than $15 million, which was just under the amount of Magazine Management’s annual sales, plus he also rece...