These days, it’s all about the pop — movies, TV and comics, but particularly the movies — when it comes to Marvel. But in 1933, it was pulp.
Before comic books, Martin Goodman jumped into the pulp magazine world in 1933 with Western Supernovel Magazine, which became Complete Western Book Magazine with its next issue. In a few years he was publishing a wide range of pulp magazines — from Black Book Detective Magazine and Best Love Magazine, to Ka-Zar and Complete Sports, to Star Detective Magazine and Sky Devils — under a variety of companies, including Newsstand Publications, Manvis Publications, Atlas News Co., and Stadium Publishing, all loosely under his Red Circle Magazine group.
In 1938, the popularity of comic books leaped as Superman bounded into the skies. Goodman joined in the superhero genre the next year with Marvel Comics featuring the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, a title echoing his short-live pulp Marvel Science Stories. His Funnies Inc. comics soon became Timely, then Atlas, and eventually, in 1961, the familiar Marvel.
ABC airs “Marvel: 75 Years, From Pulp to Pop!” at 9 p.m. tonight here in the east. (Check your local schedule for time in your area.) Let’s hope there’s a segment on the pulps in the hour-long show — since they are mentioned in the title.
Below is a little teaser for Marvel’s 75th anniversary celebration.
