marvel illustrated
marvel illustrated books are comics produced in a paperback - novel - sized format .
thomas said he would love to work with gully again on another marvel illustrated project. while it’s not his decision, he offered a few suggestions from the stevenson collection .
legendary writer and former marvel editor - in - chief roy thomas is reteaming with young gun talent mario gully on their second robert louis stevenson adaptation for the marvel illustrated imprint as the publisher presents, “kidnapped” later this year .
marvel illustrated is an imprint from marvel comics for comic adaptations of classic literature. each novel' s story is told in the form of a limited series, the issues of which are later collected together as a trade paperback .
you can take marvel comics out of this book, but you can’t take martin goodman out of marvel comics and have any confidence at all that there would still be a marvel comics .
a new marvel illustrated epic begins here! painter basil hallward has done a portrait of a strange subject - youthful dorian gray, a man with a mysterious and tangled history. the young man broods on... more
in a sharp departure from its usual target audience, marvel comics is courting the literary and educational crowd with marvel illustrated, a new imprint devoted to adapting classic literature into comic books. since its launch in may 2007, it has transformed titles like the last of the mohicans, treasure island and the three musketeers into comics miniseries, with many more on the way. roy thomas, a comics legend and former english teacher with a long resumé of comics adaptations, currently writes the marvel illustrated titles. thomas; david gabriel, marvel sr. v - p of sales; and marvel associate editor nicole boose talked with pwcw about taking the classics to the comics shop market and beyond .
the way i see it, if these marvel illustrated have a purpose besides giving roy thomas an easy line of work, it' s exposing today' s youth to classic stories they might otherwise be too lazy to read. i' m still a youth, by some standards at least, and i' ve always been too lazy to read homer' s the iliad all the way through. therefore, marvel illustrated: the iliad # 1 is perfect for me. theoretically anyway .
guidebook to the marvel cinematic universe - marvel’s agents of s. h. i. e. l. d. season two (2016 )
guidebook to the marvel cinematic universe - marvel' s agents of s. h. i. e. l. d. season one (2016 )
guidebook to the marvel cinematic universe - marvel' s agents of s. h. i. e. l. d. season three (2016 )
marvel masterworks: atlas era strange tales vol. 4 (2010 - 2011 )
a new marvel illustrated epic begins here! painter basil hallward has done a portrait of a strange subject - youthful dorian gray, a man with a mysterious and tangled history. the young man broods on how unfair it is that he will age and his portrait will remain ever young. he wishes with all his might that it were otherwise - and in some bizarre, magical way - it is! this is a novel of dark wonders brilliantly brought to life in the heralded marvel illustrated style. rated t +... $ 2. 99
a new marvel illustrated epic begins here! painter basil hallward has done a portrait of a strange subject - youthful dorian gray, a man with a mysterious and tangled history. the young man broods on how unfair it is that he will age and his portrait will remain ever young. he wishes with all his might that it were otherwise - and in some bizarre, magical way - it is! this is a novel of dark wonders brilliantly brought to life in the heralded marvel illustrated style. rated t +... $ 2. 99 more
excellent illustrated guide. i' ve been a huge black panther fan for most of my life and as such i have been exposed to most of the art in this guide at one point or another .
marvel' s black panther: t... has been added to your cart
marvel universe ultimate spider - man vs. the sinister six (2016 - present )
marvel' s guardians of the galaxy vol. 2 prelude (2017 - present )
“i love comics. i love drawing comics and ant still remains to be my favorite character. and i seriously doubt that will change. but working on ‘marvel illustrated: treasure island’ and now ‘kidnapped’ has really been, and continues to be, a thrill ride for me, ” said gully .
i understand what kirby’s role was at marvel. and being an artist myself, and knowing how the marvel method worked, i also have a pretty good idea what contributions kirby made .
there’s no frickin’ way marvel’s revenue in 1969 was $ 15 million. do the math, people .
this is a brief history of marvel comics in the style of an informational graphic. it' s only appropriate that the history is illustrated because - - and i don' t know if you knew this or not - - but marvel actually produces comic books. so like, there are pictures in those too. but that' s not what' s important, what' s important is that marvel used to own the rights to the word zombie. zomg! could you even imagine owning the rights to a gem like zombie? ! you' d be like a gazillionaire. unfortunately marvel doesn' t anymore, which is why they got bought by disney .
marvel universe hulk: agents of s. m. a. s. h. (2013 - 2014 )
he also understood intellectual property only in the narrowest of business senses: he paid writers and artists once for their work, and then the content was his to print or reprint. (the reprinting of formative 1960s marvel superhero comics in marvel tales and marvel’s greatest comics, was a simple goodman manoeuver to sell more sheaves of paper, but those reprints broadcast those tales to another generation of readers, sowing the seeds of the marvel “mythos. ” )
david gabriel: both dan buckley [ president of marvel publishing ] and i have fond memories of the classics illustrated line from when we were kids. we’ve been coming up with ideas, formats and stories that will bring in new readers to comic shops and expand our reading audience. we’ve been asked repeatedly by librarians, book buyers and other fans of the aforementioned classics line to bring back a line of classics .
goodman was no dummy, which is why he sold magazine management company (which included marvel comics) when he did .
lexus presents: marvel' s agents of s. h. i. e. l. d in the chase (2014 )
i’ll note that the fact that “sale was for more than just marvel” and that “comics were a small percentage of the business” undercuts robert stanley martin’s arguments for martin goodman’s sagacity. because if true (and i accept this is true) then goodman sold marvel comics for less than $ 15 million. how “small” is “a small percentage” — it must be less than 50% at least. so goodman sold marvel for $ 7. 5. million or less. if by “small percentage” we mean 30% or 20% then goodman sold marvel for less than $ 5 million .
castle of frankenstein # 12 carries a jan. 1968 date on the contents page. the recent stan lee universe book claims “this interview first appeared in 1965’s castle of frankenstein # 12. note how it was so early in the marvel age that the cover bills it as an “interview with marvel comics. ” apparently whoever wrote that comment isn’t very observant because the blurb on the cover reads “interview with marvel comics’ stan lee. ” urltoken
there’s no denying kirby was a critical part of marvel’s silver age success, but he was also part of a substantial team that was just as important .
based on those 1987 numbers for a full - page ad, marvel was charging $ 2, 907 per million circulation for 6. 5 million readers .
but let’s talk about the downs again. in 1995, marvel lost approximately $ 48 million and laid off 275 people, approximately 40% of their workforce .
the business model you claim to be a success isn’t. marvel comics as a comics publisher isn’t a ‘house of ideas’ anymore. that ended when kirby left .
the iliad by homer told in an eight - issue comic series published by marvel comics. the set was collected into a trade paperback and a deluxe hardcover edition .
a very quick bing search gave me a dan adkins quote about wood’s marvel pay when he went there in 1964. adkins says that marvel’s then starting pay was $ 20 per page for penciling, $ 15 for inking, and that wood, being wood, got their top pay of $ 45 for both (after having received mad’s top rate of $ 200 a page). whether that makes marvel’s top page rate for penciling $ 25 or $ 30 or something else, it doesn’t specify .
whenever anyone gets angry about the way kirby was treated by marvel, rsm tries to remind them that marvel was only playing by the rules as they then stood. his stance is neatly summed up by a comment in in a post he contributed to another tcj article: “if you disagree with me, go talk to a lawyer” .
marvel’s circulation in 1968 was about 4 million per month, so if we make that the baseline, the 1987 cost for 4 million is $ $ 11, 628 .
people can play the game of desperately seeking loopholes all they want in an effort to deny that about kirby. the fact remains that this was found to be the business relationship between him and marvel by a federal district court judge and reaffirmed unanimously by the three judges who reviewed the determination on appeal. the judges found the situation so unambiguous that there was no point in having a trial. the efforts by the kirby heirs to terminate marvel’s copyrights in the foundational marvel publications was essentially declared a frivolous nuisance action .
but the fact remains that without the stage that goodman provided for kirby; and without stan’s soap opera writing style, savvy editorial chops, and rah - rah marvel boosterism; and without the contributions of ditko, heck, lieber, ayers, sinnott, simek, rosen and everyone else; there would have never been a marvel age of comics .
2. you claim that when jeet and others argue that marvel and / or dc should or could make things right, their desired outcome has no chance of ever being enacted .
and while people find it fashionable these days to denigrate goodman, without his money and motivation to publish, there would have been no marvel age of comics. he made the decision to keep the doors at marvel open after the staggering bankruptcy of his distributor in the late 1950s, opting to invest the remainder of his money each month rather than sitting on his bankroll and retiring. and by keeping marvel in play as a viable company, goodman not only paid kirby a decent wage, he gave him a worldwide stage with which to perform his miracles .
do you know anything at all about marvel’s licensing income from 1968? does anyone? why isn’t it common knowledge. worse, why the hell hasn’t anyone even tried to find out ?
“…i’m firmly of the view that kirby and his estate ideally would be receiving royalties from marvel from the licensing and so forth. if he’d come along 20 years later, they would be…”
when marvel went corporate, the price increases suddenly came like clockwork every few years or so. why? because in a corporation, the focus is always on increasing profits to appease shareholders .
“honestly, i’m a professional. i should be able to handle any project that comes down the pipe and make it look like i’ve been drawing any particular time period or subject matter for years, ” explained gully. “i’m not saying that i’ve arrived at that point. but, that’s my goal. when i broke into this industry, i was, and for the most part still really am, known for drawing ‘ant, ’ and some had labeled me a t & a artist. now, i’m on my second marvel illustrated series. i think that shows at least that i have more potential and diversity than some comic fans give me credit for. ”
marvel as a company has had dramatic ups and downs over that time. by the mid - ’70s, less than ten years after sheldon feinberg had purchased the company from goodman, he was actively looking to completely shut down the publishing operations. according to james galton, who became marvel’s president in late 1975, the company lost approximately $ 2 million during the first half of that year. just about every knowledgeable observer, from sean howe on, is of the view that had it not been for the success of marvel’s star wars movie adaptation, the publishing operations would have ended in 1977 .
marvel’s recent success is due to movie adaptations that until about 15 years ago were not technologically possible. in many instances, the technology necessary to make them was developed with the specific projects in mind .
what do you consider a just settlement? providing a middle - class pension? marvel can do that, and that’s exactly what they did do for roz kirby after jack kirby’s death. shortly after the avengers movie was released, jim starlin was apparently able to negotiate a settlement with marvel that he’s very happy with. he didn’t even have to threaten legal action to get it. they’re not unreasonable .
i’ve never claimed kirby was ‘poor’, he worked hard for a living and made a good wage. he was unfairly… no, he was cheated by marvel. i think we both agree on that .
all of this book’s research and content is very welcome, and it comes at a good time. sean howe’s recent marvel comics: the untold story (2012) provided an authoritative history of marvel comic books; this book expands our understanding of the publishing industry context in which those comics were produced, and it gives us an unprecedented portfolio of non - comic book art from some notable comic book artists .
kirby worked six – seven days a week to produce 60 pages and three covers a month, down from what he at one time had to do at marvel to make that kind of money – upwards of 100 pages a month. he wasn’t a machine. he wasn’t a hack. his creative output was vital to the only real sustained successful run that marvel comics had ever had up to that point .
i suspect that goodman did miss being a publisher. don’t know how much of his starting up atlas in the ’70s was motivated by revenge on marvel and stan lee for having given son chip the boot .
( so, marvel didn’t offer health insurance to its employees, mostly freelancers? there are plenty of far wealthier companies which don’t. doesn’t mean it’s right, merely that the company is hardly uniquely evil. )
marvel rates weren’t static during the 1960s — particularly the pencils. they apparently went up significantly between 1962 and 1970. that makes sense, particularly with the company’s dramatic rise in circulation during the same time period .
“…i’m firmly of the view that kirby and his estate ideally would be receiving royalties from marvel from the licensing and so forth. if he’d come along 20 years later, they would be…” (emphasis added. )
for the record, jack kirby should have lived his late years and died a multi - millionaire. yet it’s easy with marvel movies taking in hundreds of millions in the box office, to forget that kirby’s entire oeuvre, was for most of its existence virtually unknown to the public at large, which would have dismissed it as disposable kiddie fare. that in that span, as a corporation, marvel was hardly a behemoth .
and paul, what you fail to realize is the only part of kirby’s relationship with marvel that i’m discussing is how he was treated while goodman was the owner. after 1968, goodman no longer called the shots .
of all the charges i’ve seen leveled at goodman, the only one i think he may be guilty of is promising secondary royalties to one or more artists for the “marvel super heroes” cartoon series, and then not delivering .
your assertion that kirby was owed ownership in marvel is what’s totally absurd here — and kirby, who himself had worn the publisher’s hat, would be the first person to tell you that, if he were still around .
i do know that without kirby, there would not be a marvel universe, and there wouldn’t be all that profit from the movies. it seems morally repugnant that money wasn’t shared, and credit was not properly given .
it would be nice if every person wanting to add some perspective on the business side to the “kirby vs. marvel” debate were not automatically tarred as a “defender of corporate exploitation, who believes that artists should be bled try”…
kirby was paid 60 $ a page in 1968? can i have a source please? it was my understanding that 1) it was less than that, certainly in the beginning 2) dc paid more than marvel .
and steranko, in an interview by gary groth in fantastic fanzine # 12, explained the economics of the comics business at that time. most marvel books were clearing about $ 1, 000 in profit after costs were deducted .
it’s really two books in one, both a step removed from comic books. the first is a beautifully illustrated, 100 - page monograph on the history of martin goodman’s business operations and publications, excluding comic books. the second is a 170 - page anthology of black - and - white pulp / magazine illustrations by comic book artists who appeared in goodman’s non - comic publications, including jack kirby, joe simon, alex schomburg, bill everett, carl burgos, syd shores, and many others. who knew that artie simek was also a cartoonist? !
oh, and kirby did not have health care benefits at any point while working for marvel comics (it’s a fact that’s been mentioned by everyone from jim shooter to mark evanier) and when he left marvel comics in 1970, he was making $ 35, 000, still as a freelancer (still with no contract) source: (braun, saul (may 2, 1971). “shazam! here comes captain relevant”. the new york times magazine .
i even threw you a research bone, on the off chance you were really serious about truly understanding the economics of silver age marvel. i pointed out above steranko’s 1970 interview that patrick ford linked to, which corroborates my theory .
@ r. maheras. “i repeat, for a given issue, kirby’s take was more than the publisher’s. ” again, this would only make sense if the economic value of any given marvel comic was discrete, and only existed on an issue - by - issue basis. but marvel comics featured continuing characters existing in a shared universe. you might want to dismiss kirby as just one cog in the wheel, a part of the “team” but there is ample evidence that he was the creative heart and soul of that team, the driving engine without whom the marvel universe would not exist. if you are not familiar with that evidence, charles hatfield provides an excellent summary of it in his book hand of fire .
kirby had the option of participating in marvel’s health insurance plan per his 1975 contract. if he didn’t sign up for it that’s on him, not marvel. given his income from that contract–approximately a quarter - million a year after adjusted for inflation–he should have been able to afford private insurance if marvel hadn’t offered it. jeet doesn’t know what he’s talking about. oh, and calling hanna - barbera or ruby - spears “bottom - of - the - barrel” animation studios in the context of a discussion about business and compensation is really off - base. they were probably the two biggest producers of tv animation in the country at the time, and all accounts i’ve seen are that they paid the people who worked for them quite well .
this is not the full story - when it says' first chapter' it doesn' t mean that the odyssey is the second chapter - it literally means, you only get the beginning of the iliad. or at least that' s all we got. . still not sure because the listing says: collects marvel illustrated: the iliad # 1 - 8. - but there are no numbers on the book to let us know if we just got 1 and there are books 2 - 8 out there. the story itself and the pictures are as the other reviews say, very well done and true to the original. but we thought we were getting the entire story. very disappointed by that. wish the listing was more clear. edit - still don' t know if there are more books, but the seller refunded .
by your metric, you would have been saying in 1976 that sheldon feinberg made a bad buy. and in the late ’90s, you would have been saying goodman was really damned lucky to have gotten rid of marvel for the money he did .
infographics (informational graphics) are all the rage these days. it clearly points out that people don’t like reading anything unless there are pretty pictures involved. well, in continuing with the trend here’s a history of marvel comics infographic style. there’s some cool information on here that maybe some of you didn’t already know. i for one didn’t know that at one time marvel owned the rights to the word zombie. i now own it, and anyone that uses it owes me a cupcake. cupcake or gtfo !
the sale was for more than just marvel. it was for all of magazine management, including puzzle books, cheesecake mags, and so forth. i gather the comics were a small percentage of the business, although they’re the only part that’s still around .
at the risk of my own sanity, i’ll weigh in, here. i appreciate you fighting valiantly to keep the record straight, jeet. man, it’s hard for me to understand why any informed person today would want to defend marvel’s treatment of jack kirby .
and that $ 35, 000 pay figure cited in 1970 equates to $ 211, 000 in today’s dollars. figure out how many pages and covers he penciled his last year at marvel, and you can get a pretty good idea what his page rate was .
marvel treated him like shit. they didn’t even treat him ‘like anyone else’. they treated him like shit. for what he did for them, for what he did for comics… i hope goodman burns in hell, and i hope stan lee follows him there .
i’d agree with most of the figuring russ maheras has done about industry economics circa 1968. so, the real argument to be made is that goodman sold marvel a few years too soon, that he should have waited for the licensing, movies, and other things to start to take hold. but aside from a few dinky tv series, like the hulk, and movie of the week types of movies for characters such as dr. strange, there were no movie franchises for a very long time to showcase the marvel characters. i’d wager that the big budget movies jump started the value of the other licensing rights, although not the circulation of the comics themselves. and goodman would have had to wait a very long time to see marvel explode into a corporation worth four billion dollars to disney. so, while the sale of marvel for fifteen million in ’68 sounds like peanuts, it really wasn’t all that bad a business move. it made a nice little nest egg for goodman in his retirement, one which he later squandered to a certain extent by publishing atlas comics in the seventies .
there wasn’t much money coming in from licensing back then, either. for example, in 1976 the television rights to spider - man, the hulk, and ten other characters proved to be worth all of $ 12, 500 to marvel. that’s what universal paid for them .
regarding comic book economics, i just laid the groundwork above for answering a lot of questions about silver age marvel. perhaps one of these days some enterprising young historian will nail down the available data i cited, plug in the numbers, and see how close my estimates were .
dennis culver is a writer and artist whose work has been published by marvel, dark horse, boom, stela, and oni press. you can find out more at www. dennisculver. com. he lives in los angeles with his feline best friend / worst enemy, flirtcat .
this review starts out very wisely stating for all to hear that captain america and marvel comics per se do not appear in this book. this is the rare pulp art from the myrid of companies that were the predecessor to timely / marvel comics. the artwork is dramatic, dark, and in some cases, borders on the good side of porn. there are clear examples of good girl art, bsdm and bondage, but it’s all in documentation of this long gone period when men’s periodicals were just “accepted” and they fueled men’s fantasies before playboy and penthouse came along .
nicole boose: we started with last of the mohicans because it' s a boyhood favorite of our ceo, alan fine. from there, we’ve come up with the ideas internally, and there really hasn' t been any shortage of excellent suggestions coming from all over the marvel office .
the richest element of this book may be its muted, conflicted call to start caring about martin goodman, at least a little bit. to see him as a limited, determined businessman and family man – a classic 20 th century striver – without whom there would likely be no marvel comics .
a blogger named nick caputo recently posted a cut from a june, 1968 issue of a fanzine called on the drawing board which announces the sale of marvel to martin ackerman the owner of perfect film, and curtis publishing. that would seem to place the sale in april or may of 1968 .
goodman sold out right at peak glut time in 1968. smart move for him at the time. he would not have lived long enough for marvel comics to enter the movie biz. the technology to make the movies properly buh - leeve - able was not yet invented till the 21st century .
the cover of this book depicts captain america leaving the building. he’s not in the book, nor is the history of “marvel comics” as such, aside from some brief cameos. what’s actually in the book partly corresponds to its subtitle: “jack kirby and the moonlighting artists at martin goodman’s empire. ”
or, if you want to argue that captain america, the human torch, and the sub - mariner (three different creators) are intrinsically better than the 179 early masked heroes that we’ve forgotten, then maybe martin goodman knew how to choose winners. maybe he is the indisputable “creator” of marvel comics .
now, beginning in 1979, marvel’s publishing fortunes improved. however, the licensing was still hit and mostly miss. but after ten years of consistent growth, ronald perelman’s andrews group purchased it in 1989 for $ 82. 5 million. adjusted for inflation, that’s approximately $ 155 million in today’s dollars .
and no one at that time knew the marvel characters had any long - term value. i’m sure that, based on previous historical comic book cycles, most (including kirby) felt the superheroes boom was a fad – a fad to be milked until it faded and the next one (hopefully) rolled in .
oh, and if marvel was so obviously valuable, why didn’t disney buy it back during that bankruptcy period, when they could have most likely paid a lot less than the $ 4 billion they spent in 2009. sony and time - warner both looked into the company at the time and decided it wasn’t worth taking over .
marvel was selling 50 million comic books a year in 1968, and while that sounds impressive, once one examines the financial realities of comic book publishing during that era, in most cases, for successful books, goodman was actually making a pre - tax profit that was less than he was paying his creative staff on each title .
kirby had a lot of creative guidance and a lot of input from stan in the early stages of the marvel silver age. there may even have been some directives from goodman — directives that stan couldn’t argue his way out of. and regardless of what pages were turned in, lee wrote the dialogue and orchestrated the editorial direction .
evanier: kirby’s page rate just before he left marvel was the same as romita’s. actually, in a way, it was lower because romita had a staff job that paid him a salary per week so he was paid for the time he spent in story meetings with stan or doing redraws on his work, whereas kirby was not .
here as elsewhere, the book stumbles over its false premise – that it is a book about marvel comics. this absent center disorganizes the book’s intent, judgment, and structure. it obscures a story that would have been better told – would have required a better telling – if captain america really had left the building on the front cover .
in that issue, in gary groth’s interview of jim steranko, groth asked about page rates. and steranko, who was doing freelance work for marvel at the time, was quite candid (as he was during the entire interview). after thinking out loud a bit, he finally concluded, “fifteen dollars to a hundred dollars a page .
the goodman monograph itself is both gratifyingly researched and frustratingly delivered. as a meticulously researched history of goodman’s business undertakings and of the publications that came out of them, no more could be asked of the authors. this is a missing piece from the history of 20 th century american publishing and, yes, marvel comics. thank you, gentlemen .
as for goodman, i think you can see his regrets in the fact that he started another comics company after he left marvel as publisher. even then, it was probably less dissatisfaction in the price he got than that he missed being the owner more than he thought he would, and wasn’t as avid for retirement as he thought he might be .
true, you can embark upon a flight of fancy to muse “there could be no lolita without its publisher” or “no marvel age without its publisher. ” but by the same such flight, one could also wonder “what if some different publishers had come along and boosted such creative artists even further? ” so that’s truly a dead end in the reasoning department .
as for the perceived value of comic book properties by low - end publishers, herewith a little story. i have it on good authority that when charlton finally closed down their comics business and sold most of it to dc, they calculated their price by charging $ 10 a page for the film. this was maybe 15 years or more after goodman sold marvel .
i can only speak for myself, but i’m firmly of the view that kirby and his estate ideally would be receiving royalties from marvel from the licensing and so forth. if he’d come along 20 years later, they would be. but that’s not the case. all we can do is try to understand the business and legal circumstances dictating the way things are .
marvel was printing 20 books a month, probably averaging 200, 000 copies per issue (4 million pages – comichron. com) compared to some fly by night start up publisher’s one issue at 20, 000 copies who was going to get muscled off the sales racks anyway…. the price per page to print was considerably higher for the new guy. considerably higher .
the saga of marvel comics as intellectual property gets weirder, once you see goodman’s decision making, issue by issue, title by title, year by year. he had no respect for others’ intellectual property, insofar as he was a blatant imitator and published works to which he had no rights. he created a maze of separate companies to divide up his legal and financial risk .
maybe these things are easier in hindsight but history did show that marvel’s uniquely intricate mythology was potentially a great moneymaker, and the signs that it could be were there in the successes of the late sixties (james bond, the batman tv show) as was a dedicated marvel fanbase and a sense that they had already captured part of the cultural zeitgeist. my impression is that their relative lack of success in other media before the superhero movie boom of the 2000s had a lot more to do with a series of crummy deals than any serious problem with the technology at hand. hollywood has done well with effects - driven films and fantastical characters for as long as it’s been in business, and the effects are always laughable until they’re sold with some storytelling flair .
second is a simple diagram of three smaller gears all turning as a result of the initial larger drive gear. each of the three smaller gears represent archie, dc / national and timely / marvel and clearly show how each of the three major comics publishing houses stemed from the apprentiship of the parent publishing effort at the start of the industry. it’s very illuminating in its simplicity .
as for goodman’s creative (as opposed to financial) contribution, i’ll note that prior to kirby’s arrival, timely / atlas / marvel specialized in being a knock - off house. if horror was big, they did horror knock - offs; if archie was big, they did archie knock - offs, if mad was big, they did mad knock - offs; when superheroes were big, they did superhero knock - offs. but it’s in the last case that the story changes, because suddenly and for the first time marvel started doing comics that were more than shallow knock - offs, comics that had originality and worth. it seems like goodman’s original instructions were something like “do a justice league knock - off or a challengers of the unknown knock - off or even a sea devils knock - off. ” but the comics that kirby and lee created were more than knock - offs. the x factor that made them different was kirby. he was incapable of being an imitator. everything he touched had his own touch. that’s why he made marvel comics a qualitatively different company that before. and that’s why his creative contribution was far more important than goodman or lee .
instead, we know him as the first person to refuse marvel comic book creators a share of the accumulating value of their creations. as he always had, he regarded the properties he’d bought as his own, and then he sold all the important ones for less than the value of ant man. from the lofty perch of 2014 parent company disney, martin goodman was as clueless as jack kirby .
an aside: i believe goodman sold magazine management company (which included marvel) when he did because he was certain the industry - wide comic book circulation jump, driven by the batman tv show, had peaked. i don’t think he realized what he had in his relatively new stable of characters, and he probably figured the superhero boom had peaked — much they way it did following world war ii .
“if you’re going to fault goodman as a businessman you wouldn’t point to the sale of his company so much as the sucker deals he made with the movie business or people purporting to be in the movie business, which debased the value of the company for years to come. ” i agree with this. or to reframe it slightly one could argue that marvel was undervalued for many years because it lacked both the capital and expertise to fully develop its most valuable asset (the intellectual properties mainly created by jack kirby and steve ditko). the buying - and - selling of marvel took place against this background of under - capitalization. it’s only recently that it’s been in the hands of people who have the resources to fully develop the intellectual property (fully develop in terms of profit, not of course in terms of aesthetic value) .
and before patrick or someone else chimes in with, “b - b - b - but stan lee lied about who created the characters, ” the issue of who originated what was completely irrelevant to the judges’ determination. it didn’t matter any more here than it did in the marv wolfman suit, where there was no question that wolfman created blade and so forth. as the district court judge said in the kirby decision, “ [ t ] his case is not about whether jack kirby or stan lee is the real ‘creator’ of marvel characters, or whether kirby (and other freelance artists who created culturally iconic comic book characters for marvel and other publishers) were treated ‘fairly’ by companies that grew rich off the fruit of their labor. it is about whether kirby’s work qualifies as work - for - hire under the copyright act of 1909. ”
they wouldn’t have had access to national advertising (or even have been published nationally), so individual printing plates for every page would’ve had to be created for this new book… whereas a back page ad on 20 marvel comics would’ve had less plates made that could’ve been used for multiple books. considerably more expensive. did wood even publish ads in witzend initially? i know later there were some local convention ads and such, but… .
“naturally, i pull a lot of my inspiration and tricks from what i already learned on the first adaptation, ” said gully. “i still have to do a lot of searching on the net to get the right elements in a particular scene, and the marvel editors and roy really has this stuff down. they steer me in the right direction when i draw a ‘dirk’ as a gun instead of a knife [ laughs ]. ”
what is unreasonable is the expectation that proprietary rights are negotiable, or, in general, that multi - million dollar payouts are possible. you are talking about a publicly traded company. they have a legally mandated fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to work in those shareholders’ best interests, which means maximizing the monetary return on the shares. giving up ip rights or parting with large cash sums is asset forfeiture. marvel cannot voluntarily do that .
nb: teachers, parents and librarians have been responding very well so far. i haven' t had much of a chance to gauge the reaction of traditional marvel fans, but i' d love to get more of their feedback, whether it' s positive or critical. someone from the office recently told me that our treasure island adaptation was one of the best they' d seen, and i thought that was really flattering .
of special note are two illustrations near the extreme end of the book, near the references. one shows a staggered, tiered skyscrapper, with various cubes and butresses supporting the larger blocks…all labled with names of martin goodman’s various companies…. all leading upward toward timely and ultimately marvel… what this is based upon, what research or examination of the facts remains to be seen…but the collossal imagry is great, showing how complex a publishing world he operated .
given that we’re talking about these subjects from a business standpoint, there’s a crucial difference between nabokov and kirby’s situations. regardless of the degree of editing nabokov may or may not have been subjected to, at the end of the day he was a principal in an author - publisher business partnership with olympia press. jack kirby, regardless of the extent of his contributions, was a for - hire pieceworker employed by marvel to help put together company publications .
it & apos; s time again to break down the convoluted history of a comic book character in the recurring segment we call comics, everybody by curt franklin and artist chris haley of let & apos; s be friends again. today & apos; s subject: cable, one of the best known marvel comics characters from the & apos; 90s, and currently preparing for his big return in next week & apos; s avengers: x - sanction # 1 .
beyond that, i’m not defending the companies beyond trying to explicate their actions. one cannot understand a conflict unless one understands where both sides are coming from. there has been no effort to understand why marvel or other companies take the actions they do beyond the assumption that the people running them are eeee - vil. life is more complex than a daredevil - vs. - the - kingpin adventure story, and my position is that we should start treating it as such .
the real story in this book, then, is about an early - to - mid - 20 th century industry (periodical publishing), and about a very old - school, first - generation american, family business entrepreneur. he was obtuse about art, practical about the periodical market, and good at making money within a very narrow understanding of his opportunities. marvel comics was one result, an accident of market demand that he managed to meet, and indeed fuel .
alex schomburg is another interesting case that is well documented in this book. he’s best known for his immaculately precise and detailed comic book covers during the world war ii period – many of them for the “marvel” line – and thereafter for his painted science fiction work. he, too, was a prolific pulp artist, though his work veers from the seemingly hasty to the very deliberate. he produced a lot of primitive torture - porn illustrations, as well as more sophisticated splash page layouts .
but i don' t care that this is a largely bloodless issue so much as i care that it' s flat out boring to read. the first eight or nine pages might as well be an illustrated version of the wikipedia entry for all the care and effort that went into them. thomas essentially glosses over the kidnapping of helen and the march to war with a glut of narrative captions. when the story properly begins in the second third of the issue, the trojan war has already been waging for nine years. i' m willing to label this as a huge error in story pacing, even though the adaptation has another five issues to go. even when thomas slows down and throws some actual dialogue into the story, things don' t get much better. the iliad # 1 shares another problem with the ill - inspired troy. the reader is given little reason to believe helen is beautiful or charming enough to inspire a thousand ships to chase after her. this is as much a failing of the art as it is the writing. the characters are all rendered in a very bland style, and you may have some difficulty in distinguishing most of agamemnon' s captains from one another .
in addition to all of the timely, atlas, and marvel comic books (through 1967), goodman published multiple titles in nearly every mass audience periodical genre for four decades. he was a captain of industry when it came to volume of product and conformity to the prevailing trends. as a result, this generous collection of goodman covers and interior art is also a substantial survey of mid - century mass audience periodical history – reflecting the changing appetites of the public and corresponding trends in magazine illustration and design .
i’m sorry but saying “martin goodman sold the company for considerably less than he should have” is almost synonymous with saying he sold it for a pittance. so the argument you are having is with yourself. as for the ups - and - downs of marvel’s history, i think the washington post analogy holds. it was a long time after the 1933 purchase that the washington post became really profitably, decades before it became the powerhouse paper it became in the 1970s. still, it’s fairly standard to say that eugene meyer got it for bargain basement prices and to admire those who had the foresight to buy stock in the company early (warren buffet’s decision to buy stock in the washington post in the 1950s or so is often cited as an example of his foresight. if buffet had bought marvel in circa 1969 for $ 15 million, that would have become another part of legend of buffet’s sagacity). you can complain all you want about “tropes” but you shouldn’t be surprised why someone might think that $ 15 million in 1969 or so was a low price .
but we’ll never see that happen again, because the business model you claim to be a success is actually such a drastic failure for comics, it’s left a hollow shell of a hobby for marvel’s ‘house of ideas’. no one creates anything anymore. it’s all rehashed same old same old. why? because of what happened to kirby. they know better than to give great new ideas to a thief. so what we get is tired, boring retreads of ideas repeated ad nauseum, dressed up in variant covers and story promises, and cluttered store racks…
the history is past, nothing can be done about it. the real question is, is there any way that kirby’s heirs could be allowed to share in what their father created? would marvel, or disney, ever settle with the kirby estate as a gesture of goodwill, once the dust has settled on the legal action? the odds are not good, but it’s an avenue that needs to be encouraged by keeping the issue out front. so that despite the fact that the past is the past, the future is not doomed to be the same.
marvel illustrated is a marvel comics publishing imprint specializing in comic book adaptations of classic literature . each novel 's story is told in the form of a limited series , the issues of which are later collected as a trade paperback . writer roy thomas has adapted many of the titles ; the imprint is also known for its six adaptations of books from the land of oz series , all done by eric shanower and skottie young ; and its four adaptations of jane austen novels by writer nancy butler . 
marvel illustrated is a marvel comics publishing imprint specializing in comic book adaptations of classic literature. each novel's story is told in the form of a limited series, the issues of which are later collected as a trade paperback. writer roy thomas has adapted many of the titles; the imprint is also known for its six adaptations of books from the land of oz series, all done by eric shanower and skottie young; and its four adaptations of jane austen novels by writer nancy butler.
marvel illustrated is a marvel comics publishing imprint specializing in comic book adaptations of classic literature. each novel's story is told in the form of a limited series, the issues of which are later collected as a trade paperback. writer roy thomas has adapted many of the titles; the imprint is also known for its six adaptations of books from the land of oz series, all done by eric shanower and skottie young; and its four adaptations of jane austen novels by writer nancy butler.