WEBVTT - The Brink Marvels at, uh, Marvel 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:06.800 Welcome to the Brink, a production of I Heart Radio's 0:00:06.880 --> 0:00:15.960 How Stuff Works. They put the amazing in Our Spider Man, 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:20.239 the incredible in Our Hulk, and Captain America started punching 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:24.320 Nazis before America even entered World War Two. So it 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:28.200 might seem astounding that Marvel entered bankruptcy in the late nineties, 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:31.480 having weathered the fickleness of the comics market multiple times, 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:35.960 like a human torch burning bright, bursting bubbles, greedy ventures, 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:40.480 and what some might call financial villainy lead owners grasping 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:45.839 for a plan seed to world comic domination and selling 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:48.760 their heroes out like mercenaries. But it pays to be good, 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:52.320 and after a struggle of illegal battle, some positive new blood, 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.200 and some daring risks, Marvel is now living up to 0:00:55.200 --> 0:01:10.440 the Excelsior motto. This is Marvel on the Brink. Hi, Ariel, Hi, 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:13.760 I like Marvel. I do too. I like I like 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.959 comic books and superheroes and comic book movies and comic 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:21.319 book TV shows. He guess what, I like all that 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.400 stuff too. Yeah, So Ariel and I are fans. Some 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:27.959 might call us geeks. I would call us geeks. We 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:32.840 have called each other geeks affectionately, and we love Marvel. 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:37.640 I mean we love especially the most recent incarnation of Marvel. 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:41.440 It's impossible to ignore Marvel at this point. There's a 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:45.119 new Marvel film out practically every month. Well not every month, 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:48.920 but you like every quarter. Yeah, well enough, like to 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:51.280 the point where people joke that if it's if you 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:53.240 go to the movie theater, what are you seeing a 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:55.520 Star Wars movie or a Marvel movie? Yeah? And you know, 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:58.360 when Marvel movies first started coming out, I was like, 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:01.200 I don't know about this, Arcter. But now at this point, 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:03.280 I'm just like, here, let me just write you a check. Yeah. 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:05.680 Every time that Marvel was coming out with a new film, 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:08.359 I was thinking, can they really pull this off? I mean, 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:12.440 starting off with iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe stories, 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:15.560 I thought, wow, iron Man really, because that's I don't 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.919 think of him as a upper tier character. I mean 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.239 he is if you're a comic fan, right, but mainstream 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:25.720 mainstream audiences I don't think knew very much about iron Man. 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:28.200 And then then you get to something like Guardians of 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:30.519 the Galaxy and you're like, there's no way they're going 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:32.919 to make that work, And you know to be fair. 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:35.760 Even though I am a self proclaimed geek and I 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:39.560 love Marvel. I came to comics late in my geekdom um. 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:41.680 I started off with sci fi and fantasy and kind 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.920 of worked my way to superheroes. So it's been a 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:48.720 learning curve. Yeah. I I collected a little bit when 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:51.320 I was a kid. I'll talk about one of the 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:54.920 comics I collected in this episode. But I was not 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:57.880 the biggest comic book fan. I I always tried to 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:00.440 keep semi aware of what was going on because it 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:03.960 was interested in it. I just didn't have the allowance 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:06.320 to go out and buy every single title that was 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:08.240 coming out. Well, and we'll get to it, but there 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:10.440 was a while where Marvel was putting out so much 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:12.880 stuff you couldn't keep up. Yeah, so we're gonna talk 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:17.440 today about how we got to this point because there 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:19.960 it was not a guarantee that Marvel was going to 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:23.520 become such a breakout success, not at all. Not a 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:26.760 few years ago. You would have laughed if someone had 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:31.079 said that a company would buy Marvel for four billion dollars, 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:34.760 But that in fact has happened. Before we get into it, though, 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:38.240 arial we need to settle something who is your favorite 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:41.600 Marvel character? Well, that would be the Hulk. The Hulk. 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:45.440 The Hulk is that the secret You're always angry? That's fair, 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:47.560 all right? You know I'm a hulk. I like in 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:50.240 D and D. I play a barbarian. I'm just a bruiser, 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:52.320 sort of a girl. Got you, all right? That's fair. 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:57.960 Who's Taskmaster? I can see that Taskmaster is a villain 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:01.000 in Marvel. He has not yet been depicted in films 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:04.400 as far as I can tell. Taskmaster's ability is he 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:07.800 can watch other people do stuff and then he can 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:10.960 replicate it perfectly. So he can watch, say, an Olympic 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:14.880 diver do a perfect dive, and then he can do 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.799 that perfect dive. He's kind of like a visual rogue. Yeah, 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:21.200 he's He's usually known for training mercenaries. Okay, we had 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:22.640 to get that out of our system. We had to 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:24.440 get all of that geekery out so that we can 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:26.160 talk about the business. Yeah, we we need to get 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:28.560 down to business because there's a lot to cover, and 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:30.839 I know we're gonna want to cover it all. We 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:32.600 are going to be able to cover it. Also, you 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.360 can do tangents and stuff anyway, So let's let's Let's 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.760 try to start off by talking about how Marvel got started, 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:43.120 because it wasn't always known as Marvel. No, it was 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:47.680 started by Martin Goodman in he had made a comic 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:50.760 brand called Timely Comics, and Marvel Comics Number one was 0:04:50.880 --> 0:04:53.960 the actual comic book. Right. This is not unusual, by 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:56.239 the way. We think of a lot of like big 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:00.000 name comic books like Superman or Batman, which are both 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:03.880 d C comic books. Well, those didn't start off as 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:06.719 Batman number one or Superman number one. In fact, the 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:10.520 first Batman comic was a Detective Comics issue number twenty seven. 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:14.039 The first Superman comic was in a spinoff called Action 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:16.839 Comics Number one. Well, and I would call you on 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:19.400 talking about d C during a Marvel episode. But it's 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:23.480 important to note because DC came out with superheroes before Marvel. Yeah, 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:27.360 like two years yeah, but still still it still counts. 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:31.040 So who was in Marvel Comics number one? Tell everybody 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:34.280 the superhero who appeared in that. Well, there are a few, 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.120 but the most notable are Human Torch. But at the 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:40.119 time he was like a human android, So he wasn't 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:43.520 It wasn't Johnny story, it was it was human Torch 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:46.600 version one point oh yes, and the sub Mariner a 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:50.880 k A naymore a k A antihero version of Aquaman, 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:54.760 although Acuman is sometimes an Yeah, he went through a 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:57.760 dark phase. We all went through that dark phase. It's 0:05:57.800 --> 0:05:59.960 just a couman did it well after his teenage year. 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:04.360 And something to note, right when Timely Comics was starting off, 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.039 stan Lee joined. So he joined at the age of 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:09.040 seventeen with the help of his uncle to become an 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:12.000 assistant there. So, I mean he's he's bounced around and 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:14.400 he's written stuff for DC as well, but he started 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:17.000 right at the beginning. And someone else who was really 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:22.159 important in Marvel history and comic book history is Jack Kirby. 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.640 And one of his huge contributions happened just a couple 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:29.640 of years after the founding of this company, and that 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:34.719 was in one with the first Captain America comic book. Yeah, 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:38.120 good old cap and Captain America that you might remember. 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:41.360 There's like the famous illustration of Captain America punching Hitler 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:46.119 and they kind of recreated that in the the Captain 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:49.680 America film Contain America the First a Injured. The interesting 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:52.840 fact is we mentioned in the introduction that Marvel had 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:56.520 their superheroes fighting Nazis before the United States had even 0:06:56.640 --> 0:06:59.840 entered into World War Two. Yeah, Timely had some other 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:04.320 heroes Wizard, Miss America, Destroyer, and they still occasionally show up, 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:07.200 but they never really took off, like Captain America and 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:11.960 I guess for that matter, nay More or the Human Torch. Yeah, 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.560 so not everyone would end up becoming a household name. 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:19.720 Now these days, the years between nineteen thirty eight and 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:23.240 nineteen fifty six or so, these are not hard dates, 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.160 but kind of general dates. We tend to refer to 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:29.720 that as the Golden Age of comics. You'll hear people 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:33.520 to talk about Golden Age heroes, Silver Age heroes, Bronze 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:38.120 Age heroes, and modern age. So fifty six, that's golden age. 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:41.680 Let's win. A lot of different iconic characters debuted. With 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:43.960 d C. You had Batman and Superman. With Marvel, you 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:48.360 had sub Mariner, Captain, Captain America. But you also saw 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:52.000 a lot of comic books that weren't superhero comics. We 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.960 often think the two are hand in hand, but in truth, 0:07:56.120 --> 0:07:58.880 there were a lot of different genres that got started 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:02.680 or at least that had comic book versions, like horror stories, 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:07.120 science fiction westerns, and in fact, a lot of those 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:11.120 became more popular than superheroes because when America came out 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:12.920 of the Great Depression of World War Two in the 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:15.480 early fifties, people stopped buying comic books. It was still 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:19.840 the Golden Era, but it was it was shifting around some. Yeah. 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:22.040 Part of the reason why comic books were doing so 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.560 well even during the Great Depression or or shortly thereafter, 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:28.960 was that they were a cheap form of entertainment. You know, 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:31.440 it wasn't as expensive as going out and buying a 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:35.080 radio or heaven help you, a television set. After World 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.840 War two, Yeah, these were much less expensive, and so 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:42.120 they were very popular. And we should also point out 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.400 that the comic books at this time they weren't necessarily 0:08:46.000 --> 0:08:48.240 just for kids. There were quite a few that we're 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:51.320 dealing with some pretty dark subject matter, and they got 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:55.080 darker as time went on. So as as comics evolved, 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:58.160 they tried to reach out to a broader audience. Other 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.720 notable things in Marvel's history and early fifties is Timely 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:05.880 comics turned their name to Atlas magazines and Steve Ditko, 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:09.760 who is also a very famous comic artist, joined the 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:14.360 Marvel team, well, the Atlas team, and at that time 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:17.760 Timely Slash Atlas Slash Marvel decided they were going to 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:20.040 stop making superhero books for a while and focus more 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:23.840 on the other genres sci fi, Western, horror, funny animals 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:27.960 to try to recoup they had tried to push Captain 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:30.480 America and Nay More and Human Torch and it just 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:33.920 wasn't quite going right. And so this was kind of 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:36.719 industry wide. It wasn't just Marvel that was backing off 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:38.920 on superheroes. That didn't last too long though. By the 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:43.480 mid fifties, d C started to reintroduce some of these 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:46.760 characters and create some new ones, including new teams and 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:51.840 new uh associations. So that became a trend where we 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:53.880 started seeing superheroes come back in. So it was only 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:55.520 you know, it was only kind of like four or 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.600 five years when superheroes were sort of absent. Yeah, and 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:02.080 that was still a part of the olden age. Around 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:05.640 that time, Atlas switched its distribution to American News Company. 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:07.640 And now we're getting back to the business stuff, which 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:09.559 is it's hard because again we just want to talk 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:11.640 about all of the fun heroes and things like that. 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:15.560 American News Company was the largest distributor in the US, 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:20.160 and shortly after Atlas switched their comic distribution to them, 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:22.800 they were found guilty of restraint of trade. They kind 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:26.000 of had a monopoly on the distribution market and they 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:30.360 liquidated and disappeared. Yeah, so that's the danger of becoming 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:34.400 too big. So eventually the government might say, hey, you 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:37.160 need to you know, break up into lots of little 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:40.480 companies in order for this to be fair. This would 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.160 also be the mark of the transition from the Golden 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:45.400 Age to the Silver Age of comics. And we'll talk 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:57.760 about it. Right after this break superheroes had gone to 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:01.400 decline for a few years, but they came back because 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:04.679 the United States started to regulate what content could be 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:06.920 used in comic books. You've probably heard about the comic 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:11.560 book code and this various rating systems. That was largely 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:14.040 in response to this, because the United States government was saying, 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:17.800 we need to make sure that these youths ain't becoming 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:21.640 delinquents by reading your funny books. They read your funny 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:23.680 books and the next thing you know, they all wants 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:27.360 to hang out at the drug store and smoke cigarettes. 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:29.600 And then there's a music man who comes in and 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:32.280 tries to sell instruments. I might be mixing my metaphors. 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:33.679 I think you are, I think you are. Let's get 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:36.040 back on all right. Anyway, The point is that they 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:39.520 started to bring superheroes back as kind of a way 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:41.400 of they were backing off on some of the more 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:44.520 controversial topics, right, they were trying to create more family 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:47.120 friendly type content. This would also be the era where 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:51.920 we started seeing more zany comic books. If you don't remember, 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:53.760 it's so much from the Marvel side, but on the 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:56.760 d C side you definitely saw. This is when like 0:11:57.080 --> 0:11:59.960 characters like the Joker or the Penguin started being much 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:04.200 more cartoonish and less violent. During the Silver Age. In 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:07.360 nineteen sixty one, you did get somes any because Marvel 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:09.760 came out with its what If series, Oh Yes, which 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:11.920 I love. What If was where they would ask these 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.080 hypothetical questions like what if Dr Doom had turned into 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:17.319 a good guy. Yeah. It's the same year that they 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:21.400 actually went from Atlas magazines specifically to Marvel Comics. So 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:25.080 now Marvel comics were all branded as Marvel Comics, and 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:29.520 they added a bunch of characters. Most successfully, they started 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:32.840 the Fantastic Four, Stanley and Jack Kirby did, and they 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:36.600 started a new sort of comic writing. Now these superheroes 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:39.040 were interacting with each other in a more like realistic 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:41.880 way and dealing with real world problems, and they also 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.080 inhabited this shared universe, right, So now it was no 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:48.600 longer these individual story arcs where characters just kind of 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:51.679 inhabited their own version of the world. Now they had 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:55.320 a shared version, which was beneficial in the sense that 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:59.960 you could boost different title sales by having different character 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:02.760 show up, almost like a cameo, But it would also 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:05.760 add the problem of the more complex this got, the 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:09.400 harder it was to maintain continuity across the entire universe. Yeah, 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:13.680 and you know, unsurprisingly, the Silver Age Marvel heroes were 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:18.000 Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor Ant Man, Iron Man, Spider Man, 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:21.400 X Men, Avengers, which they did to compete specifically with 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:24.559 Justice League, which had come out in nineteen sixty Daredevil, 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:28.679 and then the what If comic the original Bullpen, where 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:32.080 Stanley and all of them were the Fantastic Four. So 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:34.400 this is an era where a lot of the characters 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:38.520 we often associate with comic book superheroes today. This is 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:41.600 the era they first arrived. And if you look at 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:43.880 Marvel movies nowadays and you go, well, why in the 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:46.400 world do they make an ant Man movie? Guse he 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:50.040 was part of their silver age, choosing around a long time. Yeah. Uh. 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:54.080 Then in nineteen sixty eight we get a change of ownership. 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:58.680 That's when Goodman would sell his company, actually the parent 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:01.520 company that owned Marvel Comics, because it was kind of 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:05.920 an umbrella company holding company almost to a company called 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:12.120 the Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation. Yeah, okay, the PFCC. Yes. 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:15.400 So the interesting thing here was not just that it 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:20.240 was a acquisition, but that Goodman himself went along with it. 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:22.600 It wasn't like Goodman sold and then walked away. Yeah, 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:25.560 and you know, PFCC seemed to be very interested in 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:28.600 Marvel's success, unlike some of the companies we talked about 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:31.160 where they acquire company and then don't really pay attention 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:34.240 to it. I would say, like my Space or something. Sure, 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:38.600 they were invested. So they also bought Curtis Circulation in 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:42.320 ninety nine to help use them to distribute the Marvel 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:44.880 comics they had bought. This is really interesting to me too, 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:48.040 because throughout the history of Marvel you'll see eras where 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:52.800 the company would own its own distribution, and then following 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:56.040 eras where they would abandon that and go and work 0:14:56.080 --> 0:15:00.720 with an independent distributor. So that's kind of interesting. Nineteen 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:06.720 seventy Marvel would say goodbye to one of its instrumental creators, Yes, 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:09.560 Jack Kirby. He goes over to d C. The Trader. 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:14.000 There's a lot of crossover, that's true, and this would 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:17.440 be about where we see the transition between Silver Age 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:21.240 and the Bronze Age. So in the Bronze Age you 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:24.120 started to get a change in tone, and there's no 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:26.800 like hard line here. There's not like an event that 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:28.760 you could point to. A lot of a lot of 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:32.800 Marvel's history doesn't have hard lines. It's kind of very fluid, right, 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:35.480 So in this case, we started seeing sort of a 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:38.160 return to what the kind of storylines you saw in 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:41.000 the Golden Age, but amped up, like you started seeing 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.440 comic books deal with some very serious and very dark 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:47.600 themes in this era. This is when we start seeing 0:15:48.320 --> 0:15:52.040 more of the types of stuff that would feed into 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:56.440 even the the nineties and early two thousand's. I think 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.240 of like Frank Miller's run with Daredevil that would come 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:01.120 in the Bronze age. That such a good one. It 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:03.400 is a really good run. I'm not a huge Frank 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:06.400 Miller fan, but that Daredevil run was really good. When 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:09.520 I when I was watching the Netflix Daredevil series, I'm like, oh, 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:13.240 I see especially season two there it owes a ton 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:18.920 to the Frank Miller run. In the U S Department 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:21.680 of Health, Education and Welfare commission Stanley to do a 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:25.640 comic story regarding drug abuse which goes falls into this 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:29.880 darker era, and Stanley wrote a three parts Spider Man 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.720 series about it, kind of warning against it. So it 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:35.160 was a darker subject, but a positive message and a 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:37.840 positive message for kids who might read it as well 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.440 or teenagers who relate to Spider Man. But the Comics 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.720 Code Authority didn't approve it. They said, you can't put 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:47.880 this out because it talks about drugs. Period. Yeah, it 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.320 doesn't matter what the messages. The content itself was objectionable. 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:53.760 So what did they do? Well? They published it anyhow, 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:57.280 you know, and it was so popular that the c 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:00.920 c Age changed their rules that same year. Huh. So, 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:03.640 I guess that's better to ask for forgiveness than permission, 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:07.160 I guess. Sometimes In nineteen seventy two, Goodman would finally 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:12.200 step down. He retired, and he handed the reins over 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:14.640 to someone who had started when he was just seventeen 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:19.960 years old as an assistant Excelsior Stanley. Yes. And then 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:22.760 immediately the comic books went into a slump. This was 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:26.199 not Sley, by the way, not at all. So Marvel 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:29.200 diversified to expand their comic line, and they kind of 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:32.719 give us superheroes in the other genres, so like they 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:35.719 gave us superheroes in the fantasy genre like Red Sonja 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:38.480 and Conan and Barbarian, or in funny animals like Howard 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:41.960 the Duck. Now, I mentioned earlier that as a kid, 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:45.400 I collected certain comic books. Howard the Duck was one 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:49.040 of the comic books I collected. I had the first 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:52.639 twenty issues of Howard the Duck. You know, people are 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:54.520 hit a miss on him, but I like him in 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:58.359 the comics. He was a very interesting character, and he 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:01.720 would often end up teaming up with someone like Spider Man. 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:05.560 Spider Man's history is often spider Man teaming up with 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.639 a even more sarcastic, crazy character. Sometimes it's how Are 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:13.600 the Duck, Sometimes it's Deadpool. Sometimes it's stores Frog, sometimes 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:18.440 it's Wolverine who just doesn't put and they switched bodies. Anyhow, 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:22.160 They also this year lowered their comic prices and kind 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:26.040 of started under cutting d C and taking DC's market 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:29.200 share because people could buy Marvel Comics cheaper. Yeah, this 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:32.879 is not necessarily a long term sustainable no strategy, by 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:35.840 the way, but it's a good way to get fans alright. 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:39.880 So then we get to nineteen seventy three when PFCC 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:46.240 was it went under its own identity change became Cadence Industries, 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.960 and the Magazine Management Company officially was renamed the Marvel 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:54.639 Comics Group. So, just just to clarify because we didn't 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:58.120 really talk about it earlier, Magazine Management Company was the 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:01.920 overhead company of Marvel com So you had Magazine Management 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:04.199 Companies a parent company, and then Marvel Comics under it, 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:07.159 and now the entire group is Marvel Comics Group. Now 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:10.520 this is also when we started seeing a shift in 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:15.680 consumer behavior. So up to this point, the place where 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.560 you would typically buy a comic book would be a newsstand. 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:20.720 You would go to a news stand, you buy yourself, 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:23.600 you know, your whichever titles you liked, and you would 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:26.399 go off on your married little way. But by the 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:31.000 mid seventies, newsstand sales were in decline. This could have 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:35.680 led to a complete collapse of the comic book industry, 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:40.440 but the industry as a whole was able to adapt 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:44.919 to this by concentrating more on specialty stores comic book stores, 0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:48.200 because those were not really a thing until the mid seventies. 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:51.000 It wasn't until you started seeing people who had grown 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:55.200 up with comic books investing to create stores specifically to 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:58.560 cater to that audience. That's when you started seeing comic 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:02.159 book stores start. And without that, the industry might not 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:04.240 have made it. So this was like almost like a 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:07.560 mini brink moment where if the industry had not been 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:11.000 able to adapt, it would have gone into extinction or 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:13.520 at least gone into hibernation for a really long time. 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:17.359 But you know, the comic industry, they're they're like the underdogs. 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:20.199 They write about their scrappy They just fighting. We have 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.000 more to say about Marvel, but first let's take a 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:35.280 quick break. In nineteen Jim Shooter became the editor in 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:38.080 chief of Marvel and Jim Shooter. He was kind of 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:40.760 a controversial editor in chief. He did some really good 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:45.840 things like he introduced creator Royalties and a subsidiary of 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:49.000 Marvel Epic Comics, I believe, where the creators of the 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:52.400 comics could own the properties they were creating. And then 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:55.560 he also made a company wide crossover Secret Wars. Yes, 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:57.479 this was one of those things where when I heard 0:20:57.520 --> 0:20:59.440 about Secret Wars, I would have to ask my friends 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.960 who were more avid comic book collectors to explain what happened. 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:05.359 That tends to happen whenever there would be any of 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:11.359 these huge multi title arcs or or whatever, like the 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:15.520 various Crises and Secret Wars and things, where it usually 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:19.920 is an attempt to reset everything so that the continuity 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:22.600 makes sense again, because one of the problems with having 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:25.760 all these individual titles is that things that developed in 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:30.119 one title might not be reflected in other titles because 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:33.199 you have different teams working on them. Yeah. But you know, 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:36.360 Jim Shooter, despite all those good things, yeah he So 0:21:36.600 --> 0:21:39.280 let me talk about this for a second. About in 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:42.240 this era, there had been kind of a revolving door 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:46.200 for the editor in chief of Marvel, and the reason 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:49.479 for that was largely because the artists or writers who 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:53.160 would become editor in chief would find that it was unmanageable. 0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:55.840 There were so many different titles that were being published 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:58.480 at the time, each of which had its own deadline, 0:21:58.760 --> 0:22:02.720 and they had deadlines for are completing art completing the writing, 0:22:03.520 --> 0:22:08.400 publishing it, getting it distributed, and it was becoming unmanageable, 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:10.760 and there are a lot of teams that were slipping 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:15.359 on their deadlines. Yeah, So Shooter becomes the editor in 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:19.160 chief and he lays down the law. He starts exercising 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:22.560 editorial control. He starts to in the minds of some 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:26.119 writers and artists, interfere with their work. But on the 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:29.280 flip side, he starts making sure that those titles are 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:33.360 hitting those deadlines. So he starts turning things around and 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:36.600 getting the company back on track. But he is his 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:42.040 style and his hands on approach was something that really 0:22:42.640 --> 0:22:45.879 rubbed the creative types of the wrong way. So it 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:48.000 was a double edged sword. On the one hand, the 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:50.120 business side is getting attended to. On the other hand, 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:54.399 the writers and artists are getting more and more irritated 0:22:54.440 --> 0:22:58.879 and frustrated and angry about how things are going. So 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:02.440 it was it was definitely I think you put it 0:23:02.520 --> 0:23:05.320 best saying it's a he was a controversial leader. Yeah, 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:07.800