Marvel Comics was started by pulp publisher Martin Goodman in 1939 with the anthology comic book title Marvel Comics (which was changed to Marvel Mystery Comics with issue #2). During the golden age of comics, the publisher developed a popular core of characters including Captain America, Bucky, Human Torch, Submariner, Miss America, Golden Girl, Red Skull, and many others by creators such as Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Bill Everett, Stan Lee, and others.
Goodman used a number of corporate brands for Marvel throughout his tenure, including Timely Publications, Atlas Comics.
During the years following World War II, like many comic book publishers, the company transitioned to horror, crime, romance, and western titles among others. Marvel titles from this era include Journey into Mystery, Marvel Tales, Strange Tales, Venus, and countless others.
But the 1961 debut of The Fantastic Four signalled the start of the Marvel Universe we're familiar with today. Characters and teams such as Hulk, Ant Man, Wasp, Avengers, X-Men and more by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita, and others became the foundational characters which Marvel has expanded upon since that time.
In 1968, a company called Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation acquired Marvel from founder Martin Goodman. Marvel was acquired by film and media company New World Entertainment in 1986. New World sold the publisher to Ronald Perelman in 1989, who took the company public.
After riding high on a booming comics market and trading cards and other merchandise through the next few years, but its fortunes quickly turned with a slumping industry and other factors, and Marvel filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 1996.
Toy Biz, headed by Avi Arad and Isaac Perlmutter, acquired Marvel the next year, ending the bankruptcy. In 2004, Marvel Studios' acquired funding from Merrill Lynch to self-finance its own films, and with the 2008 debut of Iron Man, the company's rise to prominence in both the American and global film industry began. The Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Entertainment on December 31, 2009, for $4 Billion.
Next week will be a monster week in comics – that's if all the comic books arrive. Weather and pandemic have seen many delays, especially from Diamond Comic Distributors, but if all goes to plan, there are a LOT of big books coming out next week. First is Infinite Frontier #0, the big DC Comics […]
Ed McGuinness is drawing the first and a-bit-of-the-second issue of Heroes Return in May. And Bleeding Cool has managed to get a peek inside a few of the pages… HEROES REBORN #1 Written by JASON AARON Art by ED MCGUINNESS Cover by LEINIL FRANCIS YU REBORN #1 will welcome readers to a world where Tony […]
Looks like Bleeding Cool's mindless Krakoan speculation from a month ago paid off this time, which makes for a nice change. Jonathan Hickman has brought The Dome and The City from the Ultimate Universe, and plonked them down in The Vault, which houses next-humans Children of The Vault. One-and-a-half years after the Children returned and […]
See, this is what you get when Marvel Comics hires a British writer like Paul Grist. You get Union Jack, the classic Marvel Comics superhero character living above a Tesco Metro and reading the i Newspaper. You're not going to get that with Tom Taylor. Also, that means that I can check exactly where Union […]
In today's Marvel Voices: Legacy #1, based on the Marvel podcast celebrating diverse voices in the Marvel Universe, Nnedi Okorafor and ChrisCross add something new. A new Venom for the Marvel Universe in a less-than-usual place, in "A Luta Continua" – the fight goes in in Portuguese. ERRATA: Apologies, I totally missed this one, was […]
As Bleeding Cool promised yesterday, today's Amazing Spider-Man #60 is going full One More Day mode. And it begins with a performance piece by Peter Parker, under the spotlight talking, amongst other things, about his not being married, as a personal failure. Something that was taken from him and Mary Jane Watson by Mephisto, you […]
Nick Spencer's run on Amazing Spider-Man, currently being drawn by classic Spider-Man artist Mark Bagley, has featured the demon Kindred, who has been torturing Peter Parker through his friends. Revealed to be his old friend Harry Osborn, how he became Kindred is unknown. It is Bleeding Cool's conjecture that this is the old Harry Osborn […]
Justin Fenton of the Baltimore Sun has conducted the first interview with the rather controversial Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Perlmutter in 35 years. Perlmutter arranged and approved the interview as part of the Presidential pardon of West Baltimore citizen Jawad Amir Musa who had his sentence commuted. At the time of the most recent Presidential […]
It looks like it will be Stephanie Hans Day on Bleeding Cool today! She has created a pentatych of covers for the upcoming Black Knight: Curse Of The Ebony Blade. And Marvel comics is showing off the first three. "When I was offered the opportunity to do these five iconic covers for Black Knight: Curse […]
There have been a lot of delays to comic book deliveries of late, with current weather issues hitting all manner of aspects of the industry. Both Diamond Comic Distributors and Lunar Distribution have faced delays to comic book stores and we now have the latest. Last week, Bleeding Cool reported that "Diamond Comic Distributor's Olive […]
This is the Top Ten Bleeding Cool Bestseller List, as compiled by a number of comic stores from their sales on Wednesday and Thursday. It measures what is known as the "Wednesday Warriors", those who can't wait till the weekend to get this week's comics. Though thanks to DC, Tuesday Titans too. If any other […]
Gary Frank has been a major comic book artist and occasional writer for decades. From Hulk through Justice League to Doomsday Clock, original artwork from his career is represented in the new Heritage Auction 2021 February 21-22 Sunday & Monday Comics, Animation, Video Games & Art Weekly Online Auction #122108. And there are some rather […]
Bleeding Cool has looked at the changing credits of WandaVision, and the thanks they gave to the comic creators that inspired the TV show on Disney+. It began with a list of names, then broke out the creators of Scarlet Witch and The Vision into their own tier, and added the creators of Monica Rambeau […]
Chris Claremont is the man who made the X-Men what they are today. Even if he only gets to rarely write them these days. And doesn't seem to have a lot of time for the current take on the mighty mutants. But he has been watching WandaVision with both excitement and trepidation. On Facebook, he […]
The longest-running, most epic feud in the history of comics has once again reignited! What? No, not Marvel vs. DC Comics. No, no Alan Moore's beard vs. the astrally projected disembodied head of Grant Morrison. No, not Donny Cates vs. an empty can of hair mousse. We're talking way more epic than that: Matthew Rosenberg […]
So, what's this about Captain Marvel? The appearance of Monica Rambeau in the WandaVision show has sent her first appearance from The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16 in 1982 and created by Roger Stern and John Romita Jr rocketing in value on eBay, naturally. The second Captain Marvel, she gained her superpowers after being bombarded by […]
For reasons unknown to most, the recent boom in sports card sales has carried over into comic book trading cards from the nineties. Comic book trading cards, once collected and speculated upon, saw the bottom fall out of the market in the noughties. But now, those values are on the rise again. A full box […]
As this mega-crossover comes to a climax, things look pretty dire for the citizens of planet Earth. Dylan Brock, son of longtime symbiote partner Eddie Brock (doing business as Venom or Anti-Venom most of the time), has been captured by Knull, the ancient interstellar god of symbiotes and being boring. It is at this time […]
There's no real way to tiptoe around the truth here: this issue is stupid. Everybody involved is all skilled craftspeople who have made impressive comics work before … but this? Thor #12 is a mess, with issues of internal logic that ring false as well as visually muddy sequences that are supposed to be combat, but […]
Marvel Comics has been in receipt of plenty of sales based on the success of TV show Wandavision. And whether or not the following comic books have anything to do with Wandavision, they have sold out and are going back to a new printing from Marvel. Vision: The Complete Collection, collecting the Vision-makes-a-suburban-home story, as […]
