Reading Golden Age Marvels isn’t like reading mid-’60s Fantastic Four. If you expect that you’re going to be disappointed. In fact if you read too many Golden Age or Atlas Era stories in a row you might feel your brain turning into pablum. But what you will find is history. This is how Marvel began. This is how it evolved. This is what set the stage for everything that came later.

The Golden Age Marvel Comics Omnibus starts with a long and informative introduction by Will Murray: Martin Goodman was born in Brooklyn and only had a fourth grade education, but he was fascinated by magazines; as a child he created his own ersatz magazines. As an adult he worked first in Hugo Gernsback’s circulation department, then with Eastern Distribution. Through the ups and downs of Depression era publishing and distribution this led to the founding of Independent News.

Goodman founded his own company, Newsstand Publications, and did reprint pulp magazines (later with new material) with names like All Star Detective, All Star Fiction, Best Love, Best Sports, Best Western, Black Book Detective, Black Rider Western, Complete Adventure, Complete Sport, Complete Western Book, Detective Mysteries, Detective Short Stories, Dynamic Science Stories, Gunsmoke Western, Ka-Zar, Marvel Science Stories, Mystery Tales, Quick-Trigger Western Novel, Real Confessions, Real Sports, Romantic Love Secrets, Six-Gun Western, Sky Devils, Sports Action, Star Sports, Top-Notch Detective, Top-Notch Western, True Crime, Two-Gun Western Novels, Uncanny Tales, Western Fiction, Western Novels and Short Stories, Western Short Stories, Western Supernovel, Wild Western Novels, and perhaps others.

I thought it would have been a kick if Goodman had published Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian), since Conan was later a big hit for Marvel. Howard appeared in Complete Stories, Sport Story, Star Western and Top-Notch among many other titles; but these sound like they might have been Goodman pulps.

Goodman became aware of the large print-runs (and sales) being racked up by the comic book industry and was put in touch with Lloyd Jacquet of Funnies, Inc., that had just published Motion Pictures Funnies Weekly.

Together they created and published Marvel Comics #1. The initial print run was 80,000 copies and it sold out within a week!

Murray’s article goes on for some pages (I’ve paraphrased it); but I wanted to layout the history of what came first. Onward!

Anarchy and Chaos are the natural state of the human race. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And Chaos must always ultimately triumph.
Last Edited By: Joseph William Marek Dec 25 12 6:38 AM. Edited 1 times.