Martin Goodman (publisher) - Biography - Pulps and The Golden Age of Comics

Pulps and The Golden Age of Comics

After traveling around the country as a young man during the Great Depression, living in hobo camps, Goodman became a salesperson for New York City publisher Paul Sampliner's Independent News, "alongside future comics publishers and rivals John Goldwater and Louis Silberkleit," as well as "Frank Armer, who helped distribute Harry Donenfeld's Detective Comics." In 1931, Goodman, Silberkleit, and Maurice Coyne formed Columbia Publications, one of the earliest publishers of pulp magazines, which Goodman left in 1932, and (with borrowed money) founded his own companies including Western Fiction Publishing.

Goodman's first publication was Western Supernovel Magazine, premiering May 1933. After the first issue he renamed it Complete Western Book Magazine, beginning with cover-date July 1933.

Goodman's business strategy involved using several corporate names for various publishing ventures, such as Red Circle. Goodman's pulp magazines included All Star Adventure Fiction, Complete Western Book, Mystery Tales, Real Sports, Star Detective, the science fiction magazine Marvel Science Stories and the jungle-adventure title Ka-Zar, starring its Tarzan-like namesake.

In 1939, with the emerging medium of comic books proving hugely popular, and the first superheroes setting the trend, Goodman contracted with newly formed comic-book "packager" Funnies, Inc. to supply material for a test comic book. Marvel Comics #1, cover-dated October 1939 and featuring the first appearances of the hit characters the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, quickly sold out 80,000 copies. Goodman produced a second printing, cover-dated November 1939, that then sold an approximate 800,000 copies. With a hit on his hands, Goodman began assembling an in-house staff, hiring Funnies, Inc. writer-artist Joe Simon as editor, and the first official employee of the new Timely Publications. Timely Comics became the umbrella name for the several paper corporations that comprised Goodman's comic-book division, which would in ensuing decades evolve into Marvel Comics.

In 1941, Timely published its third major character, the patriotic superhero Captain America by Simon and future comics-artist legend Jack Kirby. The success of Captain America #1 (March 1941) led to an expansion of staff, with Simon bringing freelancer Kirby on staff and subsequently hiring inker Syd Shores "to be Timely's third employee." Simon & Kirby departed Timely after 10 issues of Captain America, and Goodman appointed Stan Lee as Timely's editor, a position Lee would hold for decades.

With the post-war lessening of interest in superheroes, Goodman established a pattern of arbitrarily ordering Lee to follow a variety of genres as the market seemed to trend such as romance in 1948, horror in 1951, Westerns in 1955 and Kaiju monsters in 1958. In this regard, he was notoriously derivative such as ordering the title character of Patsy Walker, America's #1 Teenager to have the same crosshatching in the title character's hair like the title character of Archie Comics, published by MLJ.

The name "Timely Comics" went into disuse after Goodman began using the globe logo of the newsstand-distribution company he owned, Atlas, starting with the covers of comic books dated November 1951. This united a line put out by the same publisher and staff through 59 shell companies, from Animirth Comics to Zenith Publications. Throughout the 1950s, the company formerly known as Timely was called Atlas Comics.