Speaker 1: Welcome to the Brink, a production of I Heart Radio's
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. They put the amazing in Our Spider Man,
Speaker 1: the incredible in Our Hulk, and Captain America started punching
Speaker 1: Nazis before America even entered World War Two. So it
Speaker 1: might seem astounding that Marvel entered bankruptcy in the late nineties,
Speaker 1: having weathered the fickleness of the comics market multiple times,
Speaker 1: like a human torch burning bright, bursting bubbles, greedy ventures,
Speaker 1: and what some might call financial villainy lead owners grasping
Speaker 1: for a plan seed to world comic domination and selling
Speaker 1: their heroes out like mercenaries. But it pays to be good,
Speaker 1: and after a struggle of illegal battle, some positive new blood,
Speaker 1: and some daring risks, Marvel is now living up to
Speaker 1: the Excelsior motto. This is Marvel on the Brink. Hi, Ariel, Hi,
Speaker 1: I like Marvel. I do too. I like I like
Speaker 1: comic books and superheroes and comic book movies and comic
Speaker 1: book TV shows. He guess what, I like all that
Speaker 1: stuff too. Yeah, So Ariel and I are fans. Some
Speaker 1: might call us geeks. I would call us geeks. We
Speaker 1: have called each other geeks affectionately, and we love Marvel.
Speaker 1: I mean we love especially the most recent incarnation of Marvel.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to ignore Marvel at this point. There's a
Speaker 1: new Marvel film out practically every month. Well not every month,
Speaker 1: but you like every quarter. Yeah, well enough, like to
Speaker 1: the point where people joke that if it's if you
Speaker 1: go to the movie theater, what are you seeing a
Speaker 1: Star Wars movie or a Marvel movie? Yeah? And you know,
Speaker 1: when Marvel movies first started coming out, I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know about this, Arcter. But now at this point,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, here, let me just write you a check. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Every time that Marvel was coming out with a new film,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, can they really pull this off? I mean,
Speaker 1: starting off with iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe stories,
Speaker 1: I thought, wow, iron Man really, because that's I don't
Speaker 1: think of him as a upper tier character. I mean
Speaker 1: he is if you're a comic fan, right, but mainstream
Speaker 1: mainstream audiences I don't think knew very much about iron Man.
Speaker 1: And then then you get to something like Guardians of
Speaker 1: the Galaxy and you're like, there's no way they're going
Speaker 1: to make that work, And you know to be fair.
Speaker 1: Even though I am a self proclaimed geek and I
Speaker 1: love Marvel. I came to comics late in my geekdom um.
Speaker 1: I started off with sci fi and fantasy and kind
Speaker 1: of worked my way to superheroes. So it's been a
Speaker 1: learning curve. Yeah. I I collected a little bit when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I'll talk about one of the
Speaker 1: comics I collected in this episode. But I was not
Speaker 1: the biggest comic book fan. I I always tried to
Speaker 1: keep semi aware of what was going on because it
Speaker 1: was interested in it. I just didn't have the allowance
Speaker 1: to go out and buy every single title that was
Speaker 1: coming out. Well, and we'll get to it, but there
Speaker 1: was a while where Marvel was putting out so much
Speaker 1: stuff you couldn't keep up. Yeah, so we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: today about how we got to this point because there
Speaker 1: it was not a guarantee that Marvel was going to
Speaker 1: become such a breakout success, not at all. Not a
Speaker 1: few years ago. You would have laughed if someone had
Speaker 1: said that a company would buy Marvel for four billion dollars,
Speaker 1: But that in fact has happened. Before we get into it, though,
Speaker 1: arial we need to settle something who is your favorite
Speaker 1: Marvel character? Well, that would be the Hulk. The Hulk.
Speaker 1: The Hulk is that the secret You're always angry? That's fair,
Speaker 1: all right? You know I'm a hulk. I like in
Speaker 1: D and D. I play a barbarian. I'm just a bruiser,
Speaker 1: sort of a girl. Got you, all right? That's fair.
Speaker 1: Who's Taskmaster? I can see that Taskmaster is a villain
Speaker 1: in Marvel. He has not yet been depicted in films
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell. Taskmaster's ability is he
Speaker 1: can watch other people do stuff and then he can
Speaker 1: replicate it perfectly. So he can watch, say, an Olympic
Speaker 1: diver do a perfect dive, and then he can do
Speaker 1: that perfect dive. He's kind of like a visual rogue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's He's usually known for training mercenaries. Okay, we had
Speaker 1: to get that out of our system. We had to
Speaker 1: get all of that geekery out so that we can
Speaker 1: talk about the business. Yeah, we we need to get
Speaker 1: down to business because there's a lot to cover, and
Speaker 1: I know we're gonna want to cover it all. We
Speaker 1: are going to be able to cover it. Also, you
Speaker 1: can do tangents and stuff anyway, So let's let's Let's
Speaker 1: try to start off by talking about how Marvel got started,
Speaker 1: because it wasn't always known as Marvel. No, it was
Speaker 1: started by Martin Goodman in he had made a comic
Speaker 1: brand called Timely Comics, and Marvel Comics Number one was
Speaker 1: the actual comic book. Right. This is not unusual, by
Speaker 1: the way. We think of a lot of like big
Speaker 1: name comic books like Superman or Batman, which are both
Speaker 1: d C comic books. Well, those didn't start off as
Speaker 1: Batman number one or Superman number one. In fact, the
Speaker 1: first Batman comic was a Detective Comics issue number twenty seven.
Speaker 1: The first Superman comic was in a spinoff called Action
Speaker 1: Comics Number one. Well, and I would call you on
Speaker 1: talking about d C during a Marvel episode. But it's
Speaker 1: important to note because DC came out with superheroes before Marvel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like two years yeah, but still still it still counts.
Speaker 1: So who was in Marvel Comics number one? Tell everybody
Speaker 1: the superhero who appeared in that. Well, there are a few,
Speaker 1: but the most notable are Human Torch. But at the
Speaker 1: time he was like a human android, So he wasn't
Speaker 1: It wasn't Johnny story, it was it was human Torch
Speaker 1: version one point oh yes, and the sub Mariner a
Speaker 1: k A naymore a k A antihero version of Aquaman,
Speaker 1: although Acuman is sometimes an Yeah, he went through a
Speaker 1: dark phase. We all went through that dark phase. It's
Speaker 1: just a couman did it well after his teenage year.
Speaker 1: And something to note, right when Timely Comics was starting off,
Speaker 1: stan Lee joined. So he joined at the age of
Speaker 1: seventeen with the help of his uncle to become an
Speaker 1: assistant there. So, I mean he's he's bounced around and
Speaker 1: he's written stuff for DC as well, but he started
Speaker 1: right at the beginning. And someone else who was really
Speaker 1: important in Marvel history and comic book history is Jack Kirby.
Speaker 1: And one of his huge contributions happened just a couple
Speaker 1: of years after the founding of this company, and that
Speaker 1: was in one with the first Captain America comic book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good old cap and Captain America that you might remember.
Speaker 1: There's like the famous illustration of Captain America punching Hitler
Speaker 1: and they kind of recreated that in the the Captain
Speaker 1: America film Contain America the First a Injured. The interesting
Speaker 1: fact is we mentioned in the introduction that Marvel had
Speaker 1: their superheroes fighting Nazis before the United States had even
Speaker 1: entered into World War Two. Yeah, Timely had some other
Speaker 1: heroes Wizard, Miss America, Destroyer, and they still occasionally show up,
Speaker 1: but they never really took off, like Captain America and
Speaker 1: I guess for that matter, nay More or the Human Torch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so not everyone would end up becoming a household name.
Speaker 1: Now these days, the years between nineteen thirty eight and
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six or so, these are not hard dates,
Speaker 1: but kind of general dates. We tend to refer to
Speaker 1: that as the Golden Age of comics. You'll hear people
Speaker 1: to talk about Golden Age heroes, Silver Age heroes, Bronze
Speaker 1: Age heroes, and modern age. So fifty six, that's golden age.
Speaker 1: Let's win. A lot of different iconic characters debuted. With
Speaker 1: d C. You had Batman and Superman. With Marvel, you
Speaker 1: had sub Mariner, Captain, Captain America. But you also saw
Speaker 1: a lot of comic books that weren't superhero comics. We
Speaker 1: often think the two are hand in hand, but in truth,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of different genres that got started
Speaker 1: or at least that had comic book versions, like horror stories,
Speaker 1: science fiction westerns, and in fact, a lot of those
Speaker 1: became more popular than superheroes because when America came out
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression of World War Two in the
Speaker 1: early fifties, people stopped buying comic books. It was still
Speaker 1: the Golden Era, but it was it was shifting around some. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason why comic books were doing so
Speaker 1: well even during the Great Depression or or shortly thereafter,
Speaker 1: was that they were a cheap form of entertainment. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't as expensive as going out and buying a
Speaker 1: radio or heaven help you, a television set. After World
Speaker 1: War two, Yeah, these were much less expensive, and so
Speaker 1: they were very popular. And we should also point out
Speaker 1: that the comic books at this time they weren't necessarily
Speaker 1: just for kids. There were quite a few that we're
Speaker 1: dealing with some pretty dark subject matter, and they got
Speaker 1: darker as time went on. So as as comics evolved,
Speaker 1: they tried to reach out to a broader audience. Other
Speaker 1: notable things in Marvel's history and early fifties is Timely
Speaker 1: comics turned their name to Atlas magazines and Steve Ditko,
Speaker 1: who is also a very famous comic artist, joined the
Speaker 1: Marvel team, well, the Atlas team, and at that time
Speaker 1: Timely Slash Atlas Slash Marvel decided they were going to
Speaker 1: stop making superhero books for a while and focus more
Speaker 1: on the other genres sci fi, Western, horror, funny animals
Speaker 1: to try to recoup they had tried to push Captain
Speaker 1: America and Nay More and Human Torch and it just
Speaker 1: wasn't quite going right. And so this was kind of
Speaker 1: industry wide. It wasn't just Marvel that was backing off
Speaker 1: on superheroes. That didn't last too long though. By the
Speaker 1: mid fifties, d C started to reintroduce some of these
Speaker 1: characters and create some new ones, including new teams and
Speaker 1: new uh associations. So that became a trend where we
Speaker 1: started seeing superheroes come back in. So it was only
Speaker 1: you know, it was only kind of like four or
Speaker 1: five years when superheroes were sort of absent. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that was still a part of the olden age. Around
Speaker 1: that time, Atlas switched its distribution to American News Company.
Speaker 1: And now we're getting back to the business stuff, which
Speaker 1: is it's hard because again we just want to talk
Speaker 1: about all of the fun heroes and things like that.
Speaker 1: American News Company was the largest distributor in the US,
Speaker 1: and shortly after Atlas switched their comic distribution to them,
Speaker 1: they were found guilty of restraint of trade. They kind
Speaker 1: of had a monopoly on the distribution market and they
Speaker 1: liquidated and disappeared. Yeah, so that's the danger of becoming
Speaker 1: too big. So eventually the government might say, hey, you
Speaker 1: need to you know, break up into lots of little
Speaker 1: companies in order for this to be fair. This would
Speaker 1: also be the mark of the transition from the Golden
Speaker 1: Age to the Silver Age of comics. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about it. Right after this break superheroes had gone to
Speaker 1: decline for a few years, but they came back because
Speaker 1: the United States started to regulate what content could be
Speaker 1: used in comic books. You've probably heard about the comic
Speaker 1: book code and this various rating systems. That was largely
Speaker 1: in response to this, because the United States government was saying,
Speaker 1: we need to make sure that these youths ain't becoming
Speaker 1: delinquents by reading your funny books. They read your funny
Speaker 1: books and the next thing you know, they all wants
Speaker 1: to hang out at the drug store and smoke cigarettes.
Speaker 1: And then there's a music man who comes in and
Speaker 1: tries to sell instruments. I might be mixing my metaphors.
Speaker 1: I think you are, I think you are. Let's get
Speaker 1: back on all right. Anyway, The point is that they
Speaker 1: started to bring superheroes back as kind of a way
Speaker 1: of they were backing off on some of the more
Speaker 1: controversial topics, right, they were trying to create more family
Speaker 1: friendly type content. This would also be the era where
Speaker 1: we started seeing more zany comic books. If you don't remember,
Speaker 1: it's so much from the Marvel side, but on the
Speaker 1: d C side you definitely saw. This is when like
Speaker 1: characters like the Joker or the Penguin started being much
Speaker 1: more cartoonish and less violent. During the Silver Age. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, you did get somes any because Marvel
Speaker 1: came out with its what If series, Oh Yes, which
Speaker 1: I love. What If was where they would ask these
Speaker 1: hypothetical questions like what if Dr Doom had turned into
Speaker 1: a good guy. Yeah. It's the same year that they
Speaker 1: actually went from Atlas magazines specifically to Marvel Comics. So
Speaker 1: now Marvel comics were all branded as Marvel Comics, and
Speaker 1: they added a bunch of characters. Most successfully, they started
Speaker 1: the Fantastic Four, Stanley and Jack Kirby did, and they
Speaker 1: started a new sort of comic writing. Now these superheroes
Speaker 1: were interacting with each other in a more like realistic
Speaker 1: way and dealing with real world problems, and they also
Speaker 1: inhabited this shared universe, right, So now it was no
Speaker 1: longer these individual story arcs where characters just kind of
Speaker 1: inhabited their own version of the world. Now they had
Speaker 1: a shared version, which was beneficial in the sense that
Speaker 1: you could boost different title sales by having different character
Speaker 1: show up, almost like a cameo, But it would also
Speaker 1: add the problem of the more complex this got, the
Speaker 1: harder it was to maintain continuity across the entire universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, unsurprisingly, the Silver Age Marvel heroes were
Speaker 1: Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor Ant Man, Iron Man, Spider Man,
Speaker 1: X Men, Avengers, which they did to compete specifically with
Speaker 1: Justice League, which had come out in nineteen sixty Daredevil,
Speaker 1: and then the what If comic the original Bullpen, where
Speaker 1: Stanley and all of them were the Fantastic Four. So
Speaker 1: this is an era where a lot of the characters
Speaker 1: we often associate with comic book superheroes today. This is
Speaker 1: the era they first arrived. And if you look at
Speaker 1: Marvel movies nowadays and you go, well, why in the
Speaker 1: world do they make an ant Man movie? Guse he
Speaker 1: was part of their silver age, choosing around a long time. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then in nineteen sixty eight we get a change of ownership.
Speaker 1: That's when Goodman would sell his company, actually the parent
Speaker 1: company that owned Marvel Comics, because it was kind of
Speaker 1: an umbrella company holding company almost to a company called
Speaker 1: the Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation. Yeah, okay, the PFCC. Yes.
Speaker 1: So the interesting thing here was not just that it
Speaker 1: was a acquisition, but that Goodman himself went along with it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like Goodman sold and then walked away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, PFCC seemed to be very interested in
Speaker 1: Marvel's success, unlike some of the companies we talked about
Speaker 1: where they acquire company and then don't really pay attention
Speaker 1: to it. I would say, like my Space or something. Sure,
Speaker 1: they were invested. So they also bought Curtis Circulation in
Speaker 1: ninety nine to help use them to distribute the Marvel
Speaker 1: comics they had bought. This is really interesting to me too,
Speaker 1: because throughout the history of Marvel you'll see eras where
Speaker 1: the company would own its own distribution, and then following
Speaker 1: eras where they would abandon that and go and work
Speaker 1: with an independent distributor. So that's kind of interesting. Nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy Marvel would say goodbye to one of its instrumental creators, Yes,
Speaker 1: Jack Kirby. He goes over to d C. The Trader.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of crossover, that's true, and this would
Speaker 1: be about where we see the transition between Silver Age
Speaker 1: and the Bronze Age. So in the Bronze Age you
Speaker 1: started to get a change in tone, and there's no
Speaker 1: like hard line here. There's not like an event that
Speaker 1: you could point to. A lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: Marvel's history doesn't have hard lines. It's kind of very fluid, right,
Speaker 1: So in this case, we started seeing sort of a
Speaker 1: return to what the kind of storylines you saw in
Speaker 1: the Golden Age, but amped up, like you started seeing
Speaker 1: comic books deal with some very serious and very dark
Speaker 1: themes in this era. This is when we start seeing
Speaker 1: more of the types of stuff that would feed into
Speaker 1: even the the nineties and early two thousand's. I think
Speaker 1: of like Frank Miller's run with Daredevil that would come
Speaker 1: in the Bronze age. That such a good one. It
Speaker 1: is a really good run. I'm not a huge Frank
Speaker 1: Miller fan, but that Daredevil run was really good. When
Speaker 1: I when I was watching the Netflix Daredevil series, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I see especially season two there it owes a ton
Speaker 1: to the Frank Miller run. In the U S Department
Speaker 1: of Health, Education and Welfare commission Stanley to do a
Speaker 1: comic story regarding drug abuse which goes falls into this
Speaker 1: darker era, and Stanley wrote a three parts Spider Man
Speaker 1: series about it, kind of warning against it. So it
Speaker 1: was a darker subject, but a positive message and a
Speaker 1: positive message for kids who might read it as well
Speaker 1: or teenagers who relate to Spider Man. But the Comics
Speaker 1: Code Authority didn't approve it. They said, you can't put
Speaker 1: this out because it talks about drugs. Period. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what the messages. The content itself was objectionable.
Speaker 1: So what did they do? Well? They published it anyhow,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was so popular that the c
Speaker 1: c Age changed their rules that same year. Huh. So,
Speaker 1: I guess that's better to ask for forgiveness than permission,
Speaker 1: I guess. Sometimes In nineteen seventy two, Goodman would finally
Speaker 1: step down. He retired, and he handed the reins over
Speaker 1: to someone who had started when he was just seventeen
Speaker 1: years old as an assistant Excelsior Stanley. Yes. And then
Speaker 1: immediately the comic books went into a slump. This was
Speaker 1: not Sley, by the way, not at all. So Marvel
Speaker 1: diversified to expand their comic line, and they kind of
Speaker 1: give us superheroes in the other genres, so like they
Speaker 1: gave us superheroes in the fantasy genre like Red Sonja
Speaker 1: and Conan and Barbarian, or in funny animals like Howard
Speaker 1: the Duck. Now, I mentioned earlier that as a kid,
Speaker 1: I collected certain comic books. Howard the Duck was one
Speaker 1: of the comic books I collected. I had the first
Speaker 1: twenty issues of Howard the Duck. You know, people are
Speaker 1: hit a miss on him, but I like him in
Speaker 1: the comics. He was a very interesting character, and he
Speaker 1: would often end up teaming up with someone like Spider Man.
Speaker 1: Spider Man's history is often spider Man teaming up with
Speaker 1: a even more sarcastic, crazy character. Sometimes it's how Are
Speaker 1: the Duck, Sometimes it's Deadpool. Sometimes it's stores Frog, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's Wolverine who just doesn't put and they switched bodies. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: They also this year lowered their comic prices and kind
Speaker 1: of started under cutting d C and taking DC's market
Speaker 1: share because people could buy Marvel Comics cheaper. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is not necessarily a long term sustainable no strategy, by
Speaker 1: the way, but it's a good way to get fans alright.
Speaker 1: So then we get to nineteen seventy three when PFCC
Speaker 1: was it went under its own identity change became Cadence Industries,
Speaker 1: and the Magazine Management Company officially was renamed the Marvel
Speaker 1: Comics Group. So, just just to clarify because we didn't
Speaker 1: really talk about it earlier, Magazine Management Company was the
Speaker 1: overhead company of Marvel com So you had Magazine Management
Speaker 1: Companies a parent company, and then Marvel Comics under it,
Speaker 1: and now the entire group is Marvel Comics Group. Now
Speaker 1: this is also when we started seeing a shift in
Speaker 1: consumer behavior. So up to this point, the place where
Speaker 1: you would typically buy a comic book would be a newsstand.
Speaker 1: You would go to a news stand, you buy yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, your whichever titles you liked, and you would
Speaker 1: go off on your married little way. But by the
Speaker 1: mid seventies, newsstand sales were in decline. This could have
Speaker 1: led to a complete collapse of the comic book industry,
Speaker 1: but the industry as a whole was able to adapt
Speaker 1: to this by concentrating more on specialty stores comic book stores,
Speaker 1: because those were not really a thing until the mid seventies.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until you started seeing people who had grown
Speaker 1: up with comic books investing to create stores specifically to
Speaker 1: cater to that audience. That's when you started seeing comic
Speaker 1: book stores start. And without that, the industry might not
Speaker 1: have made it. So this was like almost like a
Speaker 1: mini brink moment where if the industry had not been
Speaker 1: able to adapt, it would have gone into extinction or
Speaker 1: at least gone into hibernation for a really long time.
Speaker 1: But you know, the comic industry, they're they're like the underdogs.
Speaker 1: They write about their scrappy They just fighting. We have
Speaker 1: more to say about Marvel, but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. In nineteen Jim Shooter became the editor in
Speaker 1: chief of Marvel and Jim Shooter. He was kind of
Speaker 1: a controversial editor in chief. He did some really good
Speaker 1: things like he introduced creator Royalties and a subsidiary of
Speaker 1: Marvel Epic Comics, I believe, where the creators of the
Speaker 1: comics could own the properties they were creating. And then
Speaker 1: he also made a company wide crossover Secret Wars. Yes,
Speaker 1: this was one of those things where when I heard
Speaker 1: about Secret Wars, I would have to ask my friends
Speaker 1: who were more avid comic book collectors to explain what happened.
Speaker 1: That tends to happen whenever there would be any of
Speaker 1: these huge multi title arcs or or whatever, like the
Speaker 1: various Crises and Secret Wars and things, where it usually
Speaker 1: is an attempt to reset everything so that the continuity
Speaker 1: makes sense again, because one of the problems with having
Speaker 1: all these individual titles is that things that developed in
Speaker 1: one title might not be reflected in other titles because
Speaker 1: you have different teams working on them. Yeah. But you know,
Speaker 1: Jim Shooter, despite all those good things, yeah he So
Speaker 1: let me talk about this for a second. About in
Speaker 1: this era, there had been kind of a revolving door
Speaker 1: for the editor in chief of Marvel, and the reason
Speaker 1: for that was largely because the artists or writers who
Speaker 1: would become editor in chief would find that it was unmanageable.
Speaker 1: There were so many different titles that were being published
Speaker 1: at the time, each of which had its own deadline,
Speaker 1: and they had deadlines for are completing art completing the writing,
Speaker 1: publishing it, getting it distributed, and it was becoming unmanageable,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of teams that were slipping
Speaker 1: on their deadlines. Yeah, So Shooter becomes the editor in
Speaker 1: chief and he lays down the law. He starts exercising
Speaker 1: editorial control. He starts to in the minds of some
Speaker 1: writers and artists, interfere with their work. But on the
Speaker 1: flip side, he starts making sure that those titles are
Speaker 1: hitting those deadlines. So he starts turning things around and
Speaker 1: getting the company back on track. But he is his
Speaker 1: style and his hands on approach was something that really
Speaker 1: rubbed the creative types of the wrong way. So it
Speaker 1: was a double edged sword. On the one hand, the
Speaker 1: business side is getting attended to. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: the writers and artists are getting more and more irritated
Speaker 1: and frustrated and angry about how things are going. So
Speaker 1: it was it was definitely I think you put it
Speaker 1: best saying it's a he was a controversial leader. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also around this time, we're getting him to a
Speaker 1: point where Marvel doesn't just go through editors in Chief,
Speaker 1: but they're going to start changing hands a lot. But
Speaker 1: before they do, Shooter buys an animation studio, the one
Speaker 1: that used to make Pink Panther, and they rename it
Speaker 1: Marvel Productions, and they start making animated cartoons like Spider
Speaker 1: Man and his Amazing Friends. And in eighty four they
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to do something pretty amazing. I kind
Speaker 1: of wonder what how things would have turned out if
Speaker 1: they had done this. They had the chance to buy
Speaker 1: out their old nemesis, d C. Yeah, but why didn't they? Well,
Speaker 1: they figured that DC characters just weren't as good as
Speaker 1: Marvel characters. That's why DC was struggling, and that's how
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers just trying to sell them off to Marvel.
Speaker 1: But they were wrong. Yeah. No, I mean it turns
Speaker 1: out like I think, for your average person, if you
Speaker 1: asked them to name comic book characters, if Batman or
Speaker 1: Superman isn't or Wonder Woman, if those are not in
Speaker 1: like the first more or five names that they say,
Speaker 1: that's odd. I mean they are the first ones that
Speaker 1: I think of. Superman was like, first, I'm a I'm
Speaker 1: a huge Marvel fan, and I think of Superman and
Speaker 1: Batman first Marvel. I like the Marvel stories more, but
Speaker 1: the characters don't stick in your mind the way like Batman, Superman,
Speaker 1: Wonder Woman do Yeah. Typically I say that now I
Speaker 1: also acknowledge at the box office they can do no wrong.
Speaker 1: But we'll get to that. Yeah, Okay, so we've hit
Speaker 1: the Golden Age, Silver Age, and the Bronze Age. What
Speaker 1: age is next? The Modern Age? That's the age wherein now?
Speaker 1: So that that starts around the mid eighties. Generally, this
Speaker 1: is where we start getting to more psychologically complex storylines
Speaker 1: and characters. You get into a lot of storylines that
Speaker 1: involve anti heroes, so heroes who are not always behaving
Speaker 1: like super good guys. Wolverine is a great example. Wolverine
Speaker 1: is kind of an anti hero. He's more on the
Speaker 1: heroic side of anti hero. But then you have like Elektra,
Speaker 1: who's maybe more on the shady side of anti Pools
Speaker 1: an anti hero. Deadpool is definitely an anti hero. Deadpool
Speaker 1: is a special case all on his own because he
Speaker 1: can break the fourth wall. At least, it was just
Speaker 1: about saying until recently, but we don't need that's a
Speaker 1: large that's that's yeah. Yeah, So we started seeing that.
Speaker 1: By the end of nineteen eighty five, the company was
Speaker 1: hitting revenues of a hundred million dollars a year. And
Speaker 1: the interesting thing to me is that not all of
Speaker 1: that was coming from comic book sales. They were making
Speaker 1: a significant amount of their revenue through licensing their characters,
Speaker 1: either to toy companies to produce toys or lunch boxes
Speaker 1: or you know that sort of thing. So video games
Speaker 1: that would become a thing, not so much in five
Speaker 1: but a few years later, so that would become an
Speaker 1: increasingly important part of their revenue. Yeah. In Marvel Entertainment
Speaker 1: Group sold to New World Entertainment for forty six million
Speaker 1: dollars yep. And they mainly wanted to get the animation
Speaker 1: studio and the rights to all those characters. And then
Speaker 1: in we get the release of a film that is
Speaker 1: a rift between your beloved hosts. Yes, Howard, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to sing it the Duck because I don't want royalties,
Speaker 1: but yeah, how are the Duck? Released? It did not
Speaker 1: go over well, it's it's not a good movie, Ariel,
Speaker 1: It's not a good movie. But it's a fun movie.
Speaker 1: Ariel loves this movie and I do not. When Howard
Speaker 1: the Duck came out and Guardians of the Galaxy, and okay,
Speaker 1: I did like that. I was I want to know
Speaker 1: Howard the Duck movie. Now, I'm just glad that they
Speaker 1: avoided having to get like the music sting from the
Speaker 1: Howard the Duck film and played in the background. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were other Marvel movies that people wanted to produce,
Speaker 1: but they cost too much to make, so they just
Speaker 1: stayed in this production limbo. Yeah, and just never got
Speaker 1: out of the development phase. Now, how Are the Duck tanked?
Speaker 1: But the failure wasn't necessarily an omen However, the following
Speaker 1: ten years would lead to the event that would almost
Speaker 1: put Marvel out of business. So we're now about to
Speaker 1: get into the braink But in a surprise plot twist,
Speaker 1: we're going to cover that in part two of Marvel
Speaker 1: on the Brink. Don't you just hate when you're left
Speaker 1: with a surprise cliffhanger. Look, if Marvel can have twenty
Speaker 1: two movies in their first arc, I think we can
Speaker 1: have it to be continued, all right, We'll tune in
Speaker 1: next week for another exciting installment of Marvel on the Brink.
Speaker 1: And if you want to get any of your suggestions
Speaker 1: to us, well, you can send us a little email
Speaker 1: that's a feedback at the Brink Podcast dot show. And
Speaker 1: you can also check out our website at www dot
Speaker 1: The Brink podcast dot show. And until then, I am
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and I'm arial casting. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: Excel See or the Brink is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Nine