Stan, Jack, and Steve - The 1960's (1963) Butting Heads, Unexpected Success and Not Expected Failures! 3 3

[Zonker]

On 7/25/2023 at 5:20 AM, Prince Namor said:

 

The most biographical information of Goodman’s life that Marvel has ever put forward in print is that he spent a great part of the depression hoboing train-to-train around the country, a fascinating aspect of any self-made millionaire’s life that is frustratingly and bizarrely never followed up on. 

 

This strikes me as a bit of myth-making worthy of Funky Flashman himself!  

[Dr. Haydn]

On 7/26/2023 at 7:33 AM, Steven Valdez said:

Alter Ego #165 features a lengthy cover story on Goodman by Will Murray. I have it, been getting around to reading it for awhile.

Just read it. In my opinion, Murray relies a bit too heavily on Lee for the article to be terribly insightful. And Roy Thomas gives us yet another spin on the "golf game" legend.

[The humble Watcher lurking]

On 7/25/2023 at 1:40 PM, Prince Namor said:

It really is. Though from the sound of it, he may've went out of his way to NOT be interviewed...

@Prince Namor

Here are some pictures of Martin Goodman from the article you shared with us.

Martin Goodman doesn`t seem to be the boogie man Stan Lee alluded

.

 

 

 

[Mmehdy]

Top pic..she looks said in her eyes and he wears sunglasses...not a good vibe here...maybe Stan is correct

[The humble Watcher lurking]

On 7/26/2023 at 4:11 PM, Mmehdy said:

Top pic..she looks said in her eyes and he wears sunglasses...not a good vibe here...maybe Stan is correct

My vibe was she was introverted and shy for the camera, while he seems extroverted and liked the camera that`s why the shades.

I guess we'll never know, but kudos to @Prince Namor for starting one of the most interesting threads I ever read.

 

Edited July 27, 2023 by The humble Watcher lurking

[Dr. Haydn]

On 7/26/2023 at 3:11 PM, Mmehdy said:

Top pic..she looks said in her eyes and he wears sunglasses...not a good vibe here...maybe Stan is correct

Martin Goodman looks like someone who liked to schmooze, no doubt a useful skill for a publisher. Once Stan Lee learned that skill in the 1960s, his career took off. 

Edited July 27, 2023 by Dr. Haydn
typo

[Steven Valdez]

I wonder what Goodman thought of the comics part of his operation? Just a bunch of trash that turned a profit?

[Zonker]

One time that Goodman was quoted was in the May 2nd 1971 New York Times article Shazam Here Comes Captain Relevant

Quote

Martin Goodman, president of the Magazine Management Company, which puts out the Marvel line, recalls that the golden age of comics was the war years and immediately afterwards. By the late forties, he says, “everything began to collapse. TV was kicking the hell out of a great number of comics. A book like Donald Duck went from 2¼ million monthly sale to about 200,000. You couldn't give the animated stuff away, the Disney stuff, because of TV. TV murdered it. Because if a kid spends Saturday morning looking at the stuff, what parent is going to give the kid another couple of dimes to buy the same thing again?

“Industrywide,” says Goodman sorrowfully, “the volume is not going up. I think the comic‐book field suffers from the same thing TV does. After a few years, an erosion sets in. You still maintain loyal readers, but you lose a lot more readers than you're picking up. That's why, we have so many superhero characters, and run superheroes together. Even if you take two characters that are weak sellers and run them together in the same book, somehow, psychologically, the reader feels he's getting more. You get the Avenger follower and the Submariner follower. Often you see a new title do great on the first issue and then it slide off...”

Goodman recalls with avuncular diffidence the arrival of Stan Lee at Marvel, then called Timely Comics. “Stan started as a kid here; he's my wife's cousin. That was in 1941, something like that. He came in as an apprentice, to learn the business. He had a talent for writing. I think when Stan developed the Marvel superheroes he did a very good job, and got a lot of college kids reading us. They make up a segment of our readership, but when you play it to them you lose the very young kids who just can't follow the whole damn thing. We try to keep a balance. Because I read some stories sometimes and I can't even understand them. I really can't!”

 

[Steven Valdez]

Martin Goodman said, "I read some stories sometimes and I can't even understand them. I really can't!”

Welcome to the club, sir.

[The humble Watcher lurking]

On 7/28/2023 at 9:10 AM, Zonker said:

One time that Goodman was quoted was in the May 2nd 1971 New York Times article Shazam Here Comes Captain Relevant

 

Thanks first time I ever heard Martin Goodman comment, but he still is a mystery man. 

[Dr. Haydn]

“Industrywide,” says Goodman sorrowfully, “the volume is not going up. I think the comic‐book field suffers from the same thing TV does. After a few years, an erosion sets in. You still maintain loyal readers, but you lose a lot more readers than you're picking up."

Goodman was 100% correct about this in 1971, although it took over two decades, with the speculator crash of 1993, for the industry to truly feel the negative impact. 

 

[Dr. Haydn]

On 7/28/2023 at 8:18 AM, Steven Valdez said:

Martin Goodman said, "I read some stories sometimes and I can't even understand them. I really can't!”

Welcome to the club, sir.

Maybe Goodman was reading Gerry Conway's early Marvel stuff?

[sfcityduck]

Congrats to the OP for the CGC recognition of his very lengthy thread and the time consuming efforts he took to generate his analysis and collate the IP which he posts here for free viewing.

While I think he's on the wrong side of the argument, it is only through point - counterpoint process that ideas get sharpened and assertions get tested. Someone's got to have the courage and willingness to put the effort in to starting the debate and getting others interested enough to jump in. So kudos for that.

[sfcityduck]

On 7/28/2023 at 6:10 AM, Zonker said:

One time that Goodman was quoted was in the May 2nd 1971 New York Times article Shazam Here Comes Captain Relevant

 

Goodman's quote is unintentionally prescient: "I think when Stan developed the Marvel superheroes he did a very good job, and got a lot of college kids reading us. They make up a segment of our readership, but when you play it to them you lose the very young kids who just can't follow the whole damn thing."  

Not just the shift to adult content, but also the shift in focus to the comic collector direct market and demise of newsstands and spinner rack sales, ultimately shrank the audience.

[Zonker]

On 7/28/2023 at 4:14 PM, sfcityduck said:

Goodman's quote is unintentionally prescient: "I think when Stan developed the Marvel superheroes he did a very good job, and got a lot of college kids reading us. They make up a segment of our readership, but when you play it to them you lose the very young kids who just can't follow the whole damn thing."  

Not just the shift to adult content, but also the shift in focus to the comic collector direct market and demise of newsstands and spinner rack sales, ultimately shrank the audience.

The discussion about the rise of the direct market versus newsstand distribution is a very big and interesting topic, though way outside the scope of this thread.  My own view is the publishers didn't intentionally de-emphasize newsstand distribution, they were just chasing whatever audience still existed, wherever they could find it, and by the 1980s where they could find an audience willing to pay the cover price needed to support the enterprise was at the direct market catering to collectors and older readers.  I doubt anybody working at Marvel or DC in the 1980s wanted to favor one distribution method at the expense of the other. 

[sfcityduck]

On 7/25/2023 at 2:20 AM, Prince Namor said:

“THE NARRATIVE WOULDN’T EXIST WITHOUT HIM AS A FOIL”- THOUGHTS ON MARTIN GOODMAN" (<--- Link to original article)

 

 

One of the crucial and history making components of the Spider-Man story in Martin Goodman’s apparent rejection of Spider-Man is that he simply couldn’t function since he wasn’t an adult. This is something rarely questioned or dwelled upon which I find interesting, considering the fact that Goodman regularly published teenaged heroes– whether in anthology titles or their own solo series.

Terry Vance. Marvel Boy of the Forties and Marvel Boy of the Fifties. The Young Allies. You might argue this isn’t a huge list, but the fact remains that Goodman certainly didn’t shy upon publishing teenaged characters in the past. I will play Devil’s Advocate and admit that it’s possible that Goodman did say this to Lee in response to possible poor sales of those earlier characters- I generally tend to shy away from speculative theories, you know- but the fact of the matter is that this seems much more a case of ol’ Stan inventing and cultivating an entertaining tale for the collected journalists that visited with him over the years. Otherwise, Goodman’s philosophy on teen heroes is a blatant contradiction of Lee’s apparent recollection.

 

I like your posts best when you offer history, so I really appreciate the tidbits of history in the article you link.  But despite that the author states he tries to shy away from "speculative theories" there sure seems to be a lot of speculation in the article and some outright laughable leaps of faith. The quoted passage above is an example. Here's the problems with the author's assertions:

* It is a strange assertion that  "Goodman regularly published teenaged heroes", based on the Young Allies WWII run from 1941-1946 and Marvel Boy's two issue self-titled comic (a failure) or subsequent phasing out five issue run when the title was changed to Astonishing. "Regularly"?  No.

* It is even more strange that the author would assert that Goodman's views would be shaped by those publications. Martin Goodman was the head of a reasonably sized publishing "empire." He was putting out a lot of publications. We can assume that many made more than the comics did. It is highly unlikely he was reading every one of his publications cover to cover. The pictures of Goodman in his office don't support that he did so with comics. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears there's not a comic in sight:

* The reference to Captain Marvel is also strange. Captain Marvel was not a "teen superhero." He was a teen who became an adult superhero. Is there any evidence that Goodman paid any attention to Fawcett?  Timely sure didn't emulate any of their characters that I can recall. No characters like CM at all, and an entirely different tone for the comics. (Marvel Boy was certainly not a "boy" either. He was born prior 1934, appeared about two or so when he fled to Uranus, and spent 17 years on Uranus before becoming Marvel Boy).

* The reference to "Goodman’s philosophy on teen heroes" is even more of a stretch.  What's the evidence that he even had one. I've not read that Toro and Bucky, Timely's only teen superheros, were championed by Goodman. They were just Robin imitating sidekicks. Toro came first. S&K came up with CA and Bucky independent of any influence from Goodman. I've never heard Goodman had any influence in the creation of Toro or Young Allies. While its true that Goodman appears to have been a trend follower who was most comfortable doing what others did. As far as I can tell those trends were defined broadly because there's not a lot of evidence that Goodman was micromanaging content. It's a pretty easy call to say "Lets get into crime (or horror or superheroes)" when other publishers are making hay in those areas first.  But  in 1961 there weren't a lot of teen superheroes, and none in the Peter Parker vein. The LSH looked like 20 year-olds, not High Schoolers. The TT didn't appear until the 1960s. So there wren't really any "teen superheros" trend for Spider-man to follow. It's by no means unbelievable that if Goodman was paying some attention to comics he voiced some opposition to a teen hero just because it was not a trend at the time.

* There's no evidence that Stan made anything up about his Uncle and Spiderman. And given he was a family member, that's a bit far-fetched as there were plenty of people who could have disagreed if they felt Stan was treating Goodman unfairly at the time. Did that happen?

This article took what could have been a nice factual look and immediately pivoted to garbage speculation devoid of factual support. Its too bad. Critical readers should be able to spot the many other flaws with the article. This argument is no help to finding the truth about the creation of Spider-Man.

 

  

 

Edited July 28, 2023 by sfcityduck

[Steven Valdez]

On 7/29/2023 at 5:58 AM, Dr. Haydn said:

Maybe Goodman was reading Gerry Conway's early Marvel stuff?

Or Don McGregor's or Steve Gerber's.

[Steven Valdez]

On 7/29/2023 at 8:47 AM, sfcityduck said:

I like your posts best when you offer history, so I really appreciate the tidbits of history in the article you link.  But despite that the author states he tries to shy away from "speculative theories" there sure seems to be a lot of speculation in the article and some outright laughable leaps of faith. The quoted passage above is an example. Here's the problems with the author's assertions:

* It is a strange assertion that  "Goodman regularly published teenaged heroes", based on the Young Allies WWII run from 1941-1946 and Marvel Boy's two issue self-titled comic (a failure) or subsequent phasing out five issue run when the title was changed to Astonishing. "Regularly"?  No.

* It is even more strange that the author would assert that Goodman's views would be shaped by those publications. Martin Goodman was the head of a reasonably sized publishing "empire." He was putting out a lot of publications. We can assume that many made more than the comics did. It is highly unlikely he was reading every one of his publications cover to cover. The pictures of Goodman in his office don't support that he did so with comics. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears there's not a comic in sight:

* The reference to Captain Marvel is also strange. Captain Marvel was not a "teen superhero." He was a teen who became an adult superhero. Is there any evidence that Goodman paid any attention to Fawcett?  Timely sure didn't emulate any of their characters that I can recall. No characters like CM at all, and an entirely different tone for the comics. (Marvel Boy was certainly not a "boy" either. He was born prior 1934, appeared about two or so when he fled to Uranus, and spent 17 years on Uranus before becoming Marvel Boy).

* The reference to "Goodman’s philosophy on teen heroes" is even more of a stretch.  What's the evidence that he even had one. I've not read that Toro and Bucky, Timely's only teen superheros, were championed by Goodman. They were just Robin imitating sidekicks. Toro came first. S&K came up with CA and Bucky independent of any influence from Goodman. I've never heard Goodman had any influence in the creation of Toro or Young Allies. While its true that Goodman appears to have been a trend follower who was most comfortable doing what others did. As far as I can tell those trends were defined broadly because there's not a lot of evidence that Goodman was micromanaging content. It's a pretty easy call to say "Lets get into crime (or horror or superheroes)" when other publishers are making hay in those areas first.  But  in 1961 there weren't a lot of teen superheroes, and none in the Peter Parker vein. The LSH looked like 20 year-olds, not High Schoolers. The TT didn't appear until the 1960s. So there wren't really any "teen superheros" trend for Spider-man to follow. It's by no means unbelievable that if Goodman was paying some attention to comics he voiced some opposition to a teen hero just because it was not a trend at the time.

* There's no evidence that Stan made anything up about his Uncle and Spiderman. And given he was a family member, that's a bit far-fetched as there were plenty of people who could have disagreed if they felt Stan was treating Goodman unfairly at the time. Did that happen?

This article took what could have been a nice factual look and immediately pivoted to garbage speculation devoid of factual support. Its too bad. Critical readers should be able to spot the many other flaws with the article. This argument is no help to finding the truth about the creation of Spider-Man.

 

  

 

Grown men (especially white collar businessmen) weren't reading comics in the '50s and '60s, unless they had some professional imperative for doing so. The guys who worked on them tended to have 'fallen into it' and were always looking for a way out. Most of them would have preferred to have been working on novels, movies or the far more lucrative (and respectable) newspaper strips.

Stan Lee often wrote about how he was so embarrassed about 'writing' comics that he wouldn't tell people that's what he did for a living.

I'm fairly sure that when/if Goodman questioned Lee about bringing in Spider-Man, it was very cursory. They'd already been publishing stories about monsters, aliens and misfits for years, so it seems unlikely Goodman would have balked at the idea of a spider guy appearing in half an issue. Stan just naturally liked to dramatize things. After all, that was his job as a writer of fiction and it carried over into his storytelling about the origins of Marvel Comics.

Edited July 29, 2023 by Steven Valdez

[The humble Watcher lurking]

On 7/28/2023 at 11:33 PM, Steven Valdez said:

Or Don McGregor's or Steve Gerber's.

I had long conversations with Steve Gerber on AOl.Great conversations with him. The man was in a hospital dying and he still responded to me. Love Steve Gerber. He was Alan Moore before Alan Moore.

[Steven Valdez]

On 7/29/2023 at 3:40 PM, The humble Watcher lurking said:

I had long conversations with Steve Gerber on AOl.Great conversations with him. The man was in a hospital dying and he still responded to me. Love Steve Gerber. He was Alan Moore before Alan Moore.

I enjoyed his work too. It was always really out there.