Marvel Comics: The Mid '60s

By 1963 Marvel Comics was booming, at least as much as they could. Despite strong sales throughout there titles, Marvel was still locked into a distribution deal, through their rival DC Comics, which limited them to eight titles a month. Perhaps the biggest casualty of this problem was the Hulk, whose title was cancelled after its 12th issue so that Spider-Man could be given a book of his own.

The Marvel Universe

Even cancellation (which would have meant being virtually forgotten in an earlier time) couldn’t get rid of the Hulk, and he stayed alive through crossovers and guest appearances in other Marvel books. Such crossovers, where characters from one book would appear in the books of other characters, became the norm, not the exception, at Marvel.

All of the characters in what Stan Lee dubbed “The Marvel Universe” knew of and interacted with each other. In addition, the hub of the Marvel superhero activity was not a fictional city like Metropolis or Gotham City, it was New York City. These elements added a tone of realism and continuity to the Marvel books that brought in new fans in droves.

The Merry Marvel Marching Society

Part of the success of Marvel Comics can be attributed to the ways in which Stan Lee marketed them. His continual captions, the appearance of his Stan’s Soapbox, even the creation of a Marvel fan club (alliteratively titled the Merry Marvel Marching Society) were all geared at making the reader feel like they were part of the group, that Marvel Comics was one big community. The feeling worked.

Sgt. Fury and the Avengers

Lee always touted his belief in the “Marvel Method” (where writers give artists synopses, the artists draw the entire book, and then the writers provide dialogue) as the driving force behind sales. To prove it he bet publisher Martin Goodman that he could make a war book with a funny name sell well using the “Marvel Method”. Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos proved him right.

The Marvel Age had started when Goodman had asked Lee to come up with a superhero team book like Justice League of America. What Lee had delivered was the Fantastic Four, not quite what he wanted but definitely successful. In September of 1963, though, Goodman got just what he had wanted when Lee and Kirby assembled some of their top tier characters into marvels newest team the Avengers.

Captain America Lives Again

The Avengers book was a hit, but it didn’t really congeal and take off until # 4 when Lee and Kirby decided to bring back Marvel’s best selling character from the Golden Age, Captain America. Fans responded with overwhelming enthusiasm and Cap became a mainstay of the Avengers and one of the most important characters in Marvel Comics.

Dr. Strange and the X-Men

Marvel veered slightly off its superhero course to create their next character. Inspired by the old radio serial Chandu the Magician, Dr. Strange took marvel readers into fantastic and weird new worlds of magic and the occult. He started as an occasional filler story in the pages of the Human Torch’s book Strange Tales, but soon (thanks to the art of Steve Ditko) he was a regular feature.

Another departure from the normal superhero book was Marvel Comics’ new series The X-Men. The book featured a team of super-teens who had acquired their powers genetically. The X-Men were the next stage in evolution and as such normal people hated and feared them. Despite that hate, and partly because of it, the X-Men trained to protect and help mankind.

The book became an allegory for the civil rights movement in America, but only in the vaguest sense at first. Stan Lee left the writing to others very shortly after the books creation and it ended up lagging in character development as a result. It wouldn’t be until a decade later that the X-Men would truly come into their own.

Read the previous article in this series:

Marvel Comics: The Early '60s

Read the next article in this series:

Marvel Comics: The Mid to Late '60s

Stan Lee

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