Have you ever stoped to think about how many years "Marvel" was keeping it's head above water with these monsterbooks before they tried the superhero thing? It's not hard to calculate. Divide 12 (months) into the number of issues in the title to determine the number of years (approx.).
Strange Tales was going roughly 100 issues...or a little better than 8.5 years.
(*see Luke's note below. expand this to 9 years for good measure)
Journey into Mystery, about 7 years to Thor. (*again, see Luke's note)
Tales of Suspense, a little over 3 years.
Tales to Astonish, about 3 to 3.5 years.
Amazing Fantasy...about a year or so.
So it helps to put the great explosion of superheroes into perspective, when you realize that before being "spun off"...
Submariner had a soap opera in a split book for only 3 years
The Hulk was roughly 4 years.
Captain America was roughly 3.5 years.
Iron Man was about 5 years,
Dr. Strange about the same 5 years.
Human Torch ran about 3 year tops, and
Nick Fury/SHIELD ran about 3 years before being spun off and dieing within a year or so.
Kinda makes you think, doesn't it?
Replies
It does; it brings out how creative Marvel was in its early years too.
There are a couple of points you may have missed about how long some of the titles had been around. Strange Tales and Journey into Mystery were both were bimonthlies for their first few issues and at other times during the 50s. According to the GCD Strange Tales started in 1951 and Journey into Mystery in 1952. Journey into Mystery went in hiatus in 1957 and was revived in 1958 a couple of months before Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense started. During the earlier monster comics period these titles were all bimonthlies. Marvel published the same kinds of stories in the period in World of Fantasy, Strange Worlds and Amazing Adventures (1961 series), which became Amazing Adult Fantasy with #7 (when it was converted into a title in which all the stories were by Steve Ditko).
(much revived and corrected)
Oh, thanks, Luke,
I wasn't familiar with that wrinkle. So, the period of those longer running titles (JIM and ST) are even LONGER than common sense might suggest with the simple formula to divide by 12.
I don't think I've ever seen a copy of World of Fantasy, or Strange Worlds. (And until recently, I had never laid hands on a copy of "Black Magic" an early Jack Kirby vehicle as well!)
Regarding JIM and ST, yes, but they were apparently somewhat different early on. They only became monster-stories-led comics in 1958/1959.
Some of the Black Magic stories were reprinted by DC in a title of the same name in the 70s via a deal with Joe Simon.
My understanding is that Marvel got out from under DC's thumb by finding a different distributor, followed by the expansion.
Robin Olsen said:
I think the cap must have been raised to ten or eleven in 1960, which is also when ST, JiM, TOA and TTA went monthly. Last year I had a look at what Marvel was publishing in the period and wrote about it here.
Thanks, but it's all derived from other guys' information.
Have you ever stoped to think about how many years Marvel was treading water with these monsterbooks before they tried the superhero thing?
Those mystery and monster comics were very popular for a long time, and the mainstay of the Atlas line pre- and post-Code for many years. The success of those mystery comics, in fact, is what made it possible for Marvel to be around in the early 1960s when the superheroes regained popularity. And keep in mind that Marvel's early forays into superheroes were themselves "monster comics" (The Thing, The Hulk, just about every bad guy that Thor came up against that wasn't named Loki, etc.). So I'd hardly say Atlas was just "treading water" at the time; those mystery comics were paying the bills!
These days, it's a fair question to ask whether Marvel will ever do anything besides superhero comics.
They do, though. I'm not familiar with all of Marvel's output (I only by Daredevil), but I see in their newest round of solicitations they've got an Oz book (fantasy), a Dark Tower book (horror/fantasy), and Fury MAX (a war story). They've also done adaptations of classic novels recently.
They publish this stuff, but no one ever talks about it. And while they could certainly publish more, they are putting other stuff out there. It's just that fans mostly ignore it, for whatever reason.
I think in the old days of newsstand distribution more genres would be available because of the broader audience. When your audience has to seek out a comic book store, virtually all the books sold will be superhero.
Of course, I was speaking slightly hyperbolically when I suggested Marvel's comic book output was entirely superhero comics. I took a look at their November 2012 solicitations, and found five titles that aren't superheroes: an adaptation of the "Dexter" TV show, the above-mentioned Return to Oz title, and three Disney comics devoted to Fairies, Cars, and other stuff (these might actually be magazines rather than strictly comic books, but let's just assume they're bona fide comic books for this experiment). So that's 5 out of the 67 titles Marvel has scheduled for November (there are actually several titles that have two issues coming out that month, but let's stick with just the title itself, not how many issues are being published). So 93% of Marvel's line in November is superhero comics; 93 is certainly less than 100, so I stand corrected.