Shorter Super-Hero Stories in JiM, ST, ToS, and TtA 1 1

[Math Teacher]

I always wondered why heroes such as Thor, the Human Torch, Iron Man, and Ant-Man never had any full-length-stories during the Silver Age.

I have a couple of theories, but they are just that: theories with no factual evidence to back them up.

First, all of the books that I have listed in the title had their roots with horror/science fiction/Marvel monsters. My guess is that Stan didn't want to completely alienate fans of these books when they switched over to super-heroes. Granted, JiM replaced these types of stories with Tales of Asgard in JiM #97.

Second, by keeping the super-hero stories shorter, it allowed Jack Kirby to draw many more of the early issues and/or covers as the Marvel Age expanded.

During the Silver Age, Fantastic Four had only one non-full-length story issue, which was FF #11. However, many of the early FF issues had multiple parts, similar to DC. Amazing Spider-Man had had only one non-full-length story issue, which was ASM #2. The Avengers, the X-Men, Daredevil, and Sgt. Fury always had full-length story issues, at least to my (limited) knowledge.

Since I have brought up DC, has anyone noticed that in books with multiple stories, the story pictured on the cover was rarely (if ever) the first story in the issue. Why was that, I wonder?

 

[MattTheDuck]

Not to shave your point too finely, but Thor had full-length stories in most issues in 1968-1969 - #153 - #171.

I don't know enough about Marvel's finances in this era (or, really, any era) to draw any firm conclusions.  For instance, if they reran a story that they had previously published, I assume it made the issue less expensive to produce because they didn't have to pay anyone to write or draw it.  I also don't know if they paid the writers and artists "by the page" which would mean that a Thor issue with 30 "new" pages and 6 reprint pages was cheaper than a Thor issue with 36 new pages.  It doesn't seem like a lack of creativity.

[Readcomix]

Partly financial, partly evolution of their use of the medium (well, not exactly evolution as one way is not necessarily better than another, just different forms of storytelling)

I can’t recall where I read it or the specifics, but I think there was a limited # of titles they could swing print runs for in the early days. That’s part of the reason the 1968 expansion was such a big deal. Trying to remember where I read Stan on this topic.

The “always full-length titles” of Avengers, X-Men, Sgt Fury and DD are all mid-1963 and onward (DD is ‘64) launches. 

[Math Teacher]

On 2/17/2023 at 6:30 PM, MattTheDuck said:

Not to shave your point too finely, but Thor had full-length stories in most issues in 1968-1969 - #153 - #171.

I should have been more specific. I meant during the early Marvel Silver Age.

[Math Teacher]

On 2/18/2023 at 7:22 AM, Readcomix said:

I can’t recall where I read it or the specifics, but I think there was a limited # of titles they could swing print runs for in the early days. That’s part of the reason the 1968 expansion was such a big deal. Trying to remember where I read Stan on this topic. 

You're correct about the limited number of titles in the early days. From The 1957 Atlas Implosion’s effect on Marvel’s Silver Age by Alex Grand | Comic Book Historians:

Martin Goodman Comics (later known as Marvel) had an Atlas logo which represented Goodman’s distribution company, not the actual comic book line.

In 1957, Martin Goodman closed Atlas distribution to use the cheaper American News Distribution company. Unfortunately, American News Distribution subsequently went out of business (Due to many factors, but one of them was losing Dell comic book company as a client).

Goodman realized what a mistake this was and ended up having to use Independent News (IND) instead to distribute his comic books. IND was owned by what was later known as DC Comics and viciously limited Goodman from a heavy comic book load to a small fraction of its output to 8 monthly titles and lost 1-2 month of publication. Stan Lee the editor decided to make 16 bimonthly titles instead for diversity and used up inventory of already made comics putting many artists and writers out of work. This is called the “Atlas Implosion.” This explains why the Atlas logo 8/1957 on the top left changed to the initials, IND 11/1957. IND held this contract until 1968, but rising profits from the later Marvel caused IND to allow 11 monthly titles in 1963.

I had not thought of this, but perhaps the horror/science fiction/Monster stories that appeared in JiM, ST, ToS, and TtA were some of the unused inventory from the "Atlas Implosion." However, I think a closer examination of the work numbers (X-***) might not bear this out.

[bc]

On 2/18/2023 at 10:07 AM, Math Teacher said:

You're correct about the limited number of titles in the early days. From The 1957 Atlas Implosion’s effect on Marvel’s Silver Age by Alex Grand | Comic Book Historians:

Martin Goodman Comics (later known as Marvel) had an Atlas logo which represented Goodman’s distribution company, not the actual comic book line.

In 1957, Martin Goodman closed Atlas distribution to use the cheaper American News Distribution company. Unfortunately, American News Distribution subsequently went out of business (Due to many factors, but one of them was losing Dell comic book company as a client).

Goodman realized what a mistake this was and ended up having to use Independent News (IND) instead to distribute his comic books. IND was owned by what was later known as DC Comics and viciously limited Goodman from a heavy comic book load to a small fraction of its output to 8 monthly titles and lost 1-2 month of publication. Stan Lee the editor decided to make 16 bimonthly titles instead for diversity and used up inventory of already made comics putting many artists and writers out of work. This is called the “Atlas Implosion.” This explains why the Atlas logo 8/1957 on the top left changed to the initials, IND 11/1957. IND held this contract until 1968, but rising profits from the later Marvel caused IND to allow 11 monthly titles in 1963.

I had not thought of this, but perhaps the horror/science fiction/Monster stories that appeared in JiM, ST, ToS, and TtA were some of the unused inventory from the "Atlas Implosion." However, I think a closer examination of the work numbers (X-***) might not bear this out.

They may have been limited to 8 titles a month in '58, but by late '60 & '61 they were up to almost 10 titles a month on average. This increases almost a title or 2 every year until they break away in '68. The "8 titles a month" has become more of an Urban Legend than actual fact as the contracts/terms between IND and Atlas have not been posted anywhere to my knowledge.

While they could have well been retellings of earlier stories (I don't see a lot of that at all), the job codes line up with current content. Most of the pre-Implosion inventory was used in ST, World of Fantasy & later JIM in '58 and early '59.

Just my opinion, but since the staff had been producing this stuff for years by the time the superheroes emerged, it was easy to generate these 5 page sci-fi/fantasy stories to fill out the issue.

-bc

[LowGradeBronze]

On 2/17/2023 at 11:40 PM, Math Teacher said:

 

Since I have brought up DC, has anyone noticed that in books with multiple stories, the story pictured on the cover was rarely (if ever) the first story in the issue. Why was that, I wonder?

 

I can't answer your specific question, but I generally feel that a DC cover was less likely to depict anything in the story it was meant to relate to.

Edited February 18, 2023 by LowGradeBronze

[Frisco Larson]

Going by cover date, from December of 1957 until September of 1960, Atlas/Marvel only put out 8 issues a month. For October of 1960, they released 11 issues. So, as Stan has said in many interviews, there was a limit to the titles Marvel could put out a month and he remembers it being 8 issues. Now, could something have changed and perhaps they were allowed a little wiggle room after almost 3 solid years of doing business with Independent News? Maybe. Would Stan necessarily remember that and include it in every single interview so that those who seem to enjoy harshly criticizing him at every single opportunity would have that information? Probably not. It's important to remember here, these are just comic books!!! Nobody could've foreseen that nearly every single aspect of them would be endlessly scrutinized in the future, often by people who only seem to know how to convey information in a negative, divisive way. I'm sure if they'd have known how huge comics would become and how much their comic line would influence popular culture, they would've taken more care in documenting the who, why, what & where of every important detail ... but there was no way for them to know that! Comics had been around for decades, and Marvel itself was almost completely extinguished! All one has to do to grasp a better understanding of this, is imagine someone asks you about something you did 25 years ago, in an average workday, that held no special importance to you. Would your memory be perfect? Would you estimate something, just to be able to answer their question? 

  I wish someone would've asked Stan, Martin Goodman, Jack or anyone else who may have been able to remember, why the superhero stories were shorter and why they kept producing the short back up stories. It'd be interesting to know if there was an actual reason or if it was just the way it worked out. I personally like that era in Marvel and like getting both types of stories in the books! SO much creativity going on there at that time, in such a tiny comics division.  

 Oh, btw, Spidey #8 has two stories in it.