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70 Facts You Didn't Know About Marvel
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6892313.ece
Jacko tried to buy Spider-man: 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
As Marvel Comics celebrates its 70th anniversary, we present a
'timely' list of trivia about the entertainment giant
To celebrate 70 years of Marvel Comics we have dug up 70 nuggets about
the comic company - one, however, is an outright fib. Try to guess
which one. The answer appears at the end of the piece.
1 Marvel was first known as Timely Comics. It was set up in 1939 by
New York magazine publisher Martin Goodman. He changed the company's
name to Atlas in 1951 and then to Marvel in 1961. The first comic to
appear under the Marvel Comics brand was Amazing Adventures No 3.
2 X-Men No 1, published in 1991, is the world's biggest-selling comic
book. It sold close to 8 million copies.
3 Goodman thought that Spider-man was a rotten idea for a superhero.
He told Stan Lee that the character would fail because readers hated
spiders. He changed his mind when the sales figures came in.
4 Stan Lee became Editor-in-Chief of Timely aged 18 in 1941. He stayed
in the role until 1972. Timely's first Editor-in-Chief was Joe Simon.
5 Michael Jackson once came close to owning Marvel. According to Stan
Lee's former business partner, Peter Paul - who was jailed in 2005 for
stock fraud - Jackson had agreed to buy Marvel on behalf of Lee. Paul
had met Lee in 1989 and had brought him onboard the American Spirit
Foundation, a charitable organisation he ran with the actor James
Stewart.
Spotting the worth of Marvel's superhero properties, Paul
hatched a plan to bring in investors to buy Marvel and install Lee as
company's head. In 1991-92, he put together a Japanese American
investment group and approached Marvel with an offer to buy the
company from its owner, Ron Perelman, for about $28 million. Perelman
decided instead to take Marvel public. Paul tried again several years
later, this time lining up Jackson as an investor. Jim Salicrup, a
former Marvel editor who was present at the meetings Jackson had with
Lee and Paul, remembers Jackson saying to Lee: "If I buy Marvel,
you'll help me run it, won't you?" Paul said that Marvel's owner at
the time, Ike Perlmutter, was unwilling to take less than $1 billion
for the company and Jackson eventually lost interest.
Lee has a different take on Jackson's interest in Marvel. "I had been
to his place in Neverland ... and he wanted to do Spider-Man," he told
MTV News in July. "I'm not sure whether he just wanted to produce it
or wanted to play the role, you know? Our conversation never got that
far along." Lee said that the singer had hoped to buy the rights to
Spider-man. "He thought I'd be the one who could get him the rights
and I told him I couldn't, he would have to go to the Marvel company."
6 The Seventies Fantastic Four cartoon series was missing the Human
Torch, not because NBC executives feared he would inspire children to
douse themselves in petrol, strike a match and shout "flame on", but
because the rights to the character belonged to Universal Studios.
Universal would not allow NBC to use the Torch so he was replaced by a
cute talking robot named H.E.R.B.I.E
7 Casablanca Records helped to create the X-Men hero Dazzler. The
record label, which produced hits for Cher, Donna Summer and the
Village People, had approached Marvel with the idea of a Disco super-
hero that they could cross promote. According to Marvel editor Louise
Simonson, Casablanca said, "Hey, you make a singer and we'll create
someone to take on the persona." However, the collaboration proved
fraught and ended with both parties walking away from the deal.
8 Marvel went bankrupt in 1996. The financier Ron Perelman bought
Marvel for $82.5 million in 1989, putting up $10.5 million of his own
money and borrowing the rest. After taking the company public he went
on a buying spree, hovering up trading card companies and taking a
controlling interest in a toy company. It was a bad move - the trading
card and collectible market tanked - and Marvel became swollen with
debt. In 1996 Marvel missed an interest payment, putting it
technically in default. Perelman offered to rescue Marvel by injecting
$350 million but only if Marvel creates more shares and gives them to
him. Carl Icahn, a bondholder and corporate raider, buys Marvel's
bonds and vows to block Perelman. Marvel then filed for Chapter 11
protection in the bankruptcy court.
9 Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant once worked for Marvel. Between
1975 and 1977, Tennant was an editor at Marvel's UK division, a job
that required him to anglicise American spellings and indicate when
the more scantily-dressed superheroines needed to be redrawn decently.
10 Disney agreed to buy Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in August.
Fans have expressed concen that Spider-man will soon be fighting crime
wearing Mickey Mouse ears.
11 The word 'sex' was concealed in the illustrations of New X-Men
issue 118 at least 18 times - one almost every page. It
surreptitiously appears in hair strands, bottles of whisky, a hedge, a
puddle, tree branches, protest signs and, thanks to some conveniently
placed garden tools, a lawn. The book's artist, Ethan Van Sciver, has
said that he scattered the word throughout the book because Marvel was
annoying him at the time and he thought it would be fun to inject a
little mischief into his work. Weirdly, this was the sort of activity
that the psychologist Fredric Wertham railed hysterically against in
the Fifties. He thought that comics were corrupting America's youth,
with their overt and covert depictions of sex and drugs, and his book
on the subject, Seduction of the Innocent, led to Senate hearings and
a strict moral code being imposed on the comic industry.
12 Jack Kirby, the artist who co-created the Fantastic Four with Stan
Lee, was removed from the cover of the Fantastic Four's 20th
anniversary issue. The issue's artist, John Byrne, had originally
included both Kirby and Lee among the cast of characters squeezed onto
the cover but at the behest of Marvel executives Kirby was erased from
the final artwork. This may have had something to do with arguments
Kirby was having with Marvel at the time over the ownership of his
artwork.
13 The escape artist hero of Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay is based on the
Marvel artist Jim Steranko. Steranko, who memorably drew Doctor
Strange and Nick Fury during the Sixties, was himself an accomplished
escape artist before he joined Marvel. Chabon says that he was
wrestling with how to get his Jewish hero Joe Kavalier out of Nazi-
occupied Czechoslovakia when he started reading about Steranko's feats
during the Fifties and the solution came to him.
14 Spider-man co-creator Steve Ditko sometimes uses his original
artwork as cutting boards. The comic historian Greg Theakston told the
comic industry magazine Wizard that when he last visited Ditko's
studios he saw a piece of illustration board leaning against a wall
that had been slashed to pieces. "He'd been using it as a cutting
board. I looked a little bit closer and I detected a comics code stamp
on it." Not only was Ditko not displaying, preserving or prizing his
artwork, he was using it as a cutting board. Theakston said that he
quickly offered to go down to the nearest art supply store and buy
Ditko "the finest cutting board on the block" but Ditko refused. Ditko
then pointed to a curtain next to Theakston's chair and asked him to
lift it up. Behind it was a large stack of original artwork from
Marvel. Theakston asked if he could look at them but Ditko replied no.
Theakston believes the reason for Ditko's odd behaviour lay in his
bitter dispute with Marvel over who ownership of original artwork.
Marvel believed that all artwork produced for its comics belonged to
it but after years of fighting with its artists and the bad publicity
that this was causing it decided to give the artists back their
original work - but as gift. Ditko did not agree with this mock
generosity.
15 The idea for Spider-man's black costume came from a comics fan. In
1982 Marvel asked its readers for ideas for new Spider-man stories.
Randy Schueller, a 22-year-old reader from Chicago, spent two weeks
writing a story in which Spider-man ditches his red and blue threads
for a sleek black costume. "It occurred to me that Spider-man is this
character that creeps around in the shadows looking for bad guys, so
why is he wearing this bright red and blue costume?" Schueller told
the New York Post in 2007. "It seemed like he should have more of a
stealth mode." A few months after sending his idea to Marvel, he got a
letter from Jim Shooter, Marvel's Editor-In-Chief, offering to buy it
for $220. The film Spider-man 3, which conspiciously features the
black costume, made almost a billion dollars at the box office.
16 The Spider-man villain Venom was originally supposed to be a woman,
not the Daily Bugle journalist Eddie Brock. Venom's creator, David
Michelinie, said that woman was heavily pregnant and on her way to
hospital when a cab driver, distracted by a fight between Spider-man
and some super goon in the sky above, accidentally runs over her
husband infront of her, causing her to go into labour. She loses the
baby and goes crazy as a result. The black alien costume that Spider-
man had tried to destroy several issues before because it was taking
control of his mind seeks her out and bonds with her. Although Spider-
man editor Jim Salicrup liked the idea of an "evil Spider-man", he did
not think a woman could be a credible threat to the hero. Michelinie
then came up with the idea of Eddie Brock.
The question of who created Venom, one of Spider-man's most iconic
foes, has been fiercely contested over the years. Michelinie has taken
exception to claims that he co-created the villain with artist Todd
McFarlane. McFarlane did the art for Michelinie's Amazing Spider-man
plots during the late Eighties, including Venom's first appearance,
issue 298, March 1988. In 1993 Michelinie wrote a letter to Wizard in
response to an article that referred to him as the co-creator of
Venom. He said that he was Venom's sole creator, although he accepted
that without McFarlane Venom would not have been the success that he
was.
However, not long after McFarlane's successor on Amazing Spider-man,
Erik Larsen, disputed Michelinie's version of events in a letter to
Wizard. He said that Michelinie had swiped the alien costume and its
powers and simply placed them on a poorly conceived and one-
dimensional character. It took an artist of McFarlane's calibre to
make Venom commercial. (Larsen himself added several characteristics
to Venom, including the monstrous tongue and drool.)
In 2004 McFarlane admitted that Michelinie had indeed come up with the
idea of Venom and the character's basic design - "a big guy in the
black costume" - but that it was he who gave Venom his monster-like
features: "I just wanted to make him kooky and creepy, and not just
some guy in a black suit."
17 The Hulk that appeared in the classic TV series starring Bill Bixby
and Lou Ferrigno was almost made red in colour. In an interview with
film website IGN, the show's executive producer, Kenneth Johnson,
said: "I asked Stan Lee, 'Man, what's the logic of green? Is he the
envious Hulk? Is he green with envy or jealousy?' The colour of rage
is red, which I was pushing for because it's a real human colour - you
know, when people get flushed with anger."
Lee told him that the Hulk had in fact started out grey but due to problems
with colour separation, grey would simply not print the same way each time.
"Our printer came to us and said we can do a pretty consistent green, so we
decided to go with green," Lee said. Thus the Hulk was coloured green
from issue two of the Incredible Hulk onwards, although without any
explanation. On hearing this, Johnson remembers telling Lee: "That's
not really very organic! But that was a battle I could not win. I
couldn't make the Hulk red because he was just too iconic already in
the comic books."
18 One change Johnson did get to make was to the name of the Hulk's
alter ego, Bruce Banner. He switched it to David Banner because of his
antipathy towards alliterative names, not because, as some fans had
claimed, he thought the name Bruce sounded too gay. "I don't recall
feeling that way at the time, because Bruce Wayne was a pretty
straight guy.
But it was more the alliteration that bothered me, the
Lois Lane, Clark Kent, that sort of thing. I was trying to get as far
away from the comic book origins as I possibly could. Virtually the
only thing I kept from the comic book were gamma rays, the green Hulk
and the metamorphosis. When you put somebody into a story whose name
is Bruce Banner, it just immediately starts to sound comic booky, and
I was very anxious to attract an adult audience because I knew that we
could not have a hit show if we just had kids watching us."
19 This was not the first time Banner's name was changed. For a short
period Lee himself accidentally started calling him Bob Banner. At the
time Lee was juggling dozens of titles and often had difficulty
keeping track of all the characters he was writing. He said that
alliterative names made them easier to remember. However, he did slip
up from time to time, most noticeably in Fantastic Four 25, where he
introduced the Hulk as Bob Banner. Marvel's ever-vigilant fans did not
shy away from pointing out his mistake and in the letters page three
issues later, Lee responded in true showman style: "There's only one
thing to do - we're not going to take the cowardly way out. From now
on his name is Robert Bruce Banner - so we can't go wrong no matter
WHAT we call him!"
20 'She Hulk' was Stan Lee's last major creation for Marvel. The
female version of Marvel's grumpy green giant first appeared in Savage
She Hulk No 1 in February 1980. By that time Lee had retired as
Marvel's Editor-In-Chief and was the company's frontman in Hollywood
but he returned to the bullpen one last time and, with artist John
Buscema, produced another winning hero. But the origins of the
character more to do with trademark issues than Lee's need to get
behind the typewriter. Because the Incredible Hulk TV series airing at
the time was a hit, Marvel knew that it wouldn't be long before the
show's executives started pitching a female Hulk, after the manner of
the Bionic Woman TV show. To make sure it owned the rights to any such
character, it had to act fast and publish a She Hulk comic straight
away. As Buscema said: "They were protecting themselves."
21 Captain America's shield changed shape because of legal fears. When
the sentinel of liberty first appeared in March 1941 in Captain
America Comics No 1, his shield was not the familiar disc shape it is
now but a heraldic edged shield, of the sort knights would carry.
However, this shield was similar to the one that appeared on the chest
of a patriotic superhero produced by rival comic publisher MLJ. The
Shield, by Harry Shorten and Irv Novick, had been entertaining readers
for a year before Joe Simon and Jack Kirby came up with the idea of
Captain America so when MLJ's bosses saw the new hero they made their
objections plain. Timely, as Marvel was known then, did not put up a
fight and ordered Simon and Kirby to change the shield.
22 The mayor of New York personally promised to protect Simon and
Kirby from death threats after Captain America Comics appeared,
although this had nothing to do with legal threats from MLJ. The first
issue showed Cap punching Hitler on the kisser, the second had him
smacking the Fuhrer with his trusty shield. The books were a hit, but
not with America's isolationists and Nazi sympathisers, and America
was not yet at war with Germany. Simon, who was like Kirby Jewish,
says in his autobiography: "Hitler was a marvellous foil; a ranting
maniac ... [but] no matter how hard we tried to make him a threatening
force, Adolf invariably wound up as a buffoon - a clown.
Evidently, this infuriated a lot of Nazi sympathisers. There was a substantial
population of anti-war activists in the country. 'American Firsters'
and other non-interventionist groups were well-organised. Then there
was the German American Bund. They were all over the place, heavily
financed and effective in spewing their propaganda of hate; a fifth
column of Americans following the Third Reich party line. We were
inundated with a torrent of raging hate mail and vicious, obscene
telephone calls. The theme was 'death to the Jews'. At first we were
inclined to laugh off their threats but people in the office reported
seeing menacing-looking groups of strange men in front of the building
and some of the employees were fearful of leaving the office for
lunch. We reported the threats to the police department and the result
was a police guard on regular shifts patrolling the halls and office.
No sooner than the men in blue arrived than the woman at the telephone
switchboard signalled me excitedly. 'There's a man on the phone says
he's Mayor La Guardia. He wants to speak to the editor of Captain
America Comics.' I was incredulous as I picked up the phone but there
was no mistaking the shrill voice. 'You boys over there are doing a
good job,' the voice squeaked, 'The City of New York will see that no
harm will come to you.' I thanked him."
23 Marvel came up with the Transformer names Optimus Prime and
Megatron. In the early Eighties the toy manufacturer Hasbro asked
Marvel for help with its new action figure line, Transformers. The
robots that disguised themselves as cars and planes were Japanese in
origin and needed new names and backgrounds. Marvel Editor-In-Chief
Jim Shooter and writers Denny O'Neil and Bob Budiansky were given the
task. In an interview in 2004 Budiansky said: "Shooter and O'Neil came
up with the backstory. Shooter brought me in when most of the initial
names and at least some of the character profiles were rejected by
Hasbro. For whatever reason, Denny declined to revise them. So, facing
an imminent deadline, Shooter scoured the Marvel editorial offices
looking for someone who could write at least basic English. The first
few Marvel editors Shooter approached, all with more writing
experience than me, wanted nothing to do with Transformers. I was
probably Shooter's third or fourth choice. I turned around the
revisions over a couple of days - right before Thanksgiving of 1983 -
and Hasbro was very pleased with what I wrote. I renamed most of the
characters - Optimus Prime was Denny's, Megatron was mine - and
revised some character profiles."
24 Marvel once owned the rights to the word zombie. As improbable as
it sounds, Marvel attempted to trademark the word zombie in comic book
titles after publishing Tale of the Zombie in 1973. By the time the
trademark was approved two years later, the series was coming to an
end. Marvel lost the trademark in 1996 but it wasn't long before it
was once again trademarking the armies of the undead, registering the
words Marvel Zombies to protect its comic series of the same name.
With DC, Marvel also trademarked the phrase 'Super Hero'.
25 Marvel has attracted some of the hottest writers in Hollywood.
Among those who have penned its superhero adventures are: the indie
director Kevin Smith, who had Stan Lee appear in his film Mallrats; OC
and Sex and the City script writer Allan Heinberg; Lost writers and
producers Brian K Vaughan and Damon Lindelof; Heroes producer and
Teenwolf creator Jeph Loeb; and Babylon Five creator and Changeling
writer J Michael Stracynski.
26 The writer Tom Wolfe once appeared in the pages of the Incredible
Hulk. The author of Bonfire of the Vanities was a great admirer of
Marvel and had even made reference to its hero magician Dr Strange in
his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Three years later
Marvel returned the favour by adapting his short story Those Radical
Chic Evenings for the Hulk. In Radical Chic Wolfe tears into New
York's white liberal elite for espousing radical causes they didn't
actually believe in. In issue 142 of the Hulk, titled They Shoot
Hulks, Don't They?, the writer Roy Thomas took the premise and, with
his tongue firmly in his cheek, ran with it. He has a rich couple from
New York host a fund-raising party for the Hulk so he can buy a place
of his own. In doing so they upset their feminist daughter who had
wanted them to host a party for women's rights. One of the Hulk's
villains appears and gives the girl superpowers so she can beat up the
Hulk in the name of feminism (the book's cover shows the girl holding
a defeated Hulk above her head and shouting to the world: "Every male
chauvinist pig will tremble when he sees the Hulk thrown to his death
- by a woman!"). Wolfe himself appears at the fundraising party in his
trademark white suit.
27 Daredevil/Matt Murdock once pretended to his own twin brother to
get out of a tight spot. The introduction of Mike Murdock, the
swinging hipster who was guaranteed to never miss a party - or your money
back!, injected an element of cornball comedy into the pages of
Daredevil. When Matt's legal partner and secretary, Foggy Nelson and
Karen Page, accuse him of being Daredevil, Matt is forced to come up
with a plausible excuse. He can't so he makes up a story about a twin
brother no one has ever heard of. Foggy and Karen then demand to see
this mystery brother... Uh oh! Matt does a quick change several panels
later and Mike Murdock's makes his big debut at the office. "What's
Matt doing with those loud clothes - and sun-glasses?" gasps Karen.
"Say! Wait a minute! Foggy! That ... that isn't Matt Murdock!"
The lounge lizard replies: "You can say that again, doll! Ol' Matt's
the one with the brains - but I'm the family pussycat! The name's
Mike, gang - and try not to applaud - I'm almost as shy as I am
glamorous! Say! No wonder Matthew likes working here! Any more at home
like you, baby?"
Mike hangs around for a few issues - wearing pork pie hats, laying
cheesy lines on Karen and living it up in ways the square Matt Murdock
couldn't possibly imagine - but the strain of living two secret lives
takes a toll on Matt and the character is quietly brushed aside.
28 One of the heroes in the Eighties cartoon series Spider-man and his
Amazing Friends was created from scratch because of licensing issues.
The original plan was for Spider-man to have Iceman and the Human
Torch as teammates but because the Human Torch was still wrapped up
with Universal, the producers created Firestar instead. Marvel soon
made her a part of its comic universe and gave her a starring role in
its New Warriors book.
29 Paul Simon wrote the lyrics and theme song to the Sixties Spider-
man cartoon as a favour to head of the ABC network. Because he didn't
want to be associated with kiddie material, he asked that the music be
credited to his old stage name, Jerry Landis. Spider-man's pop
pedigree is set to continue next year in the Broadway musical Spider-
man: Turn Out the Dark, with Bono and The Edge providing the music and
lyrics.
30 Tobey Maguire wasn't the first actor to play Spider-man on screen.
Between 1977 and 1979 CBS aired a live-action Spider-man TV series
with Nicholas Hammond in the title role.
31 The line most associated with the Hulk TV series, "Don't make me
angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry", appears in both the 2003
and 2008 Hulk films, although in the latter it is played for laughs.
When Edward Norton, as Bruce Banner, is surrounded by a group of
Brazilian thugs, he tries to warn them off with some very ropey
Portugese: "Don't make me hungry, you wouldn't like me when I'm
hungry."
32 Samuel L Jackson makes a surprise appearance in Iron Man after the
end credits have rolled. He plays the one-eyed, Government super-spook
Nick Fury and tells the newly outed Iron Man that he's putting
together a team. Fans drool in anticipation at the hinted Avengers
movie.
33 The strip Stan Lee is most proud of is the one he wrote for the
Incredible Hulk/Spider-man toilet paper.
34 Artist John Romita Jr based the Daredevil villain Typhoid Mary on
his ex-wife.
35 Artist Dave Cockrum's resignation letter to Marvel surreptitiously
appeared in Iron Man No 127. In the issue, Tony Stark's butler,
Jarvis, resigns after a drunk and out of control Stark verbally
abuses. The letter reads:
Anthony Stark,
I am leaving because this is no longer the team-spirited "one big
happy family" I once loved working for. Over the past year or so I
have watched Avengers' morale disintegrate to the point that, rather
than being a team or a family, it is now a large collection of unhappy
individuals simmering in their own personal stew of repressed anger,
resentment and frustration. I have seen a lot of my friends silently
enduring unfair, malicious or vindictive treatment.
My personal grievances are relatively slight by comparison to some,
but I don't intend to silently endure. I've watched the Avengers be
disbanded, uprooted and shuffled around. I've become firmly convinced
that this was done with the idea of "showing the hired help who's
Boss".
I don't intend to wait around to see what's next.
Three issues later Iron Man's writer, David Michelinie, explained to
readers that this was the not the letter Jarvis had intended to write
and that due to a production error the wrong text had been published.
The letter that appeared was none other than Cockrum's own resignation
letter, only someone had swapped "Marvel" for "Avengers".
36 One of the X-Men was killed off because Marvel's Editor-In-Chief at
the time didn't think she should get away with eating a planet. Jean
Grey was never supposed to die at the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga but
when Jim Shooter saw that she had annihilated a planet in one of the
issues he ordered the writer Chris Claremont to change the ending.
37 Stan Lee came up with the idea of a superhero version of Thor while
wrestling with problem of how to create a character that was stronger
than the Hulk. He decided that the only solution was to make his new
hero a god so he went delving into Norse mythology to find a suitable
candidate.
38 Wolverine was created as a punching bag for the Hulk. He was
introduced in issue 180 of the Incredible Hulk as a pint-sized
Canadian superhero charged with bringing the Hulk down. The book's
writer Len Wein created Wolverine with artist John Romita and although
Wolvie is different from the lone brawler he is now, many of his
trademark characteristics appear in the issue: the claws, the rough
temperament, the yellow and blue costume and the strange mask with
pointy ears. Although he was a secondary character, Wein thought he
would be able to use him again in the revived X-Men book he was
planning.
39 Captain America made a brief return to comics 1953 as a "Commie
Smasher". The hero was retired in 1950 but he was brought back to
purge America of Reds and traitors in the pages of Young Men Comics,
just as the country was coming to terms with the horrors of
McCarthyism. The Red-bashing adventures did not last long and when
Marvel revived Captain America again in 1964, it forgot the
embarrassing Fifties, and created a story that he had lain frozen in
ice since the end of the Second World War.
40 Sylvester Stallone's ex-wife Brigitte Nielsen was to appear in a
movie version of She Hulk. Although the film never got off the ground,
Marvel did get as far as taking pictures of Nielsen dressed as She
Hulk. The disastrous results can be viewed here
41 Marvel was the first comic company to give a black superhero his
own comic book. Created by Archie Goodwin and John Romita, Luke Cage
was a streetwise hero whose skin was as hard as steel. He made his
first appearance in Luke Cage: Hero for Hire No 1 in June 1972 and was
clearly an attempt by Marvel to cash in on the popular Blaxpoitation
genre.
42 He was not, however, Marvel's first black superhero - that title
belongs to the Black Panther, who first appeared in 1966 in Fantastic
Four No 52. Although born in the same year, the Black Panther has no
connection to the militant Black Panther Party. However, it what seems
like a clumsy attempt to distance the character from the party, Marvel
briefly changed his name to the Black Leopard in the early Seventies.
The first African-American superhero was the Falcon, who first
appeared in Captain America No 117 in 1969.
43 Stan Lee sued Marvel. Lee filed a $10 million lawsuit against his
employer in 2002, saying it had cheated him out of millions of
dollars. He claimed that Marvel had signed a deal giving him 10 per
cent of any profits made from films and TV shows that used his
characters. Marvel settled the suit. Last month the children of the
late Jack Kirby, who created the Fantastic Four and scores of other
superhero titles with Lee, began a legal fight with Marvel and Disney
to recapture the copyright to Kirby's creations.
44 A Fantastic Four film exists that is so terrible it will never
reach a screen. In 1992 the production company Constantin Film was in
danger of losing the film rights to the Fantastic Four unless it
started production on the movie by the end of the year. Lacking the
$40 million it needed to make a full-budget film, it turned to low-
budget movie supremo Roger Corman for help. He spent just $1.98
million to crank a quickie Fantastic Four movie. Constantin never
intended to release the film but it never told the director or the
actors this. "Oh, that was a tragic event. I feel so sorry for the
people involved," Stan Lee remembered years later. "The director
really tried his best, and so did the actors.
They all thought that this was their big chance. But the movie was never supposed to be seen. Most people thought, "Jesus, what a terrible job that is! How corny! How cheap!" They didn't realize that it wasn't meant to be any
better than that. Unfortunately, the people working on the project
didn't know that, and they tried their best. Really, I feel so bad for
all of them." Other low-budget Marvel misfires include the 1989
Punisher film starring Dolph Lundgren and the 1990 Captain America
film - starring no one you've ever heard of.
[NOTE: you can download this shit-flick via bittorrent]
45 Death in the Marvel Universe has to be by the rules. In the preface
to the Marvel Universe Book of the Dead, editor Mark Grunewald touches
on the phenomenon of dead heroes and villains miraculously coming back
to life. "Characters such as Doctor Doom have made it their stock in
trade to escape one seeming death after another," he writes. He
handily draws up a rough guide to sorting out the fake deaths from the
real ones. For a death to be real it has to take place in the comic
panel, and not simply referred to in dialogue. The remains must be
seen by two qualified witnesses and must be destroyed - burial is not
enough in a universe where zombies and vampires exist. Of course all
these rules have been wilfully ignored by writers at some time or
another. The other abiding rule of the Marvel Universe was that
Captain America's sidekick, Bucky, and Spider-man's uncle, Ben, had to
stay dead. This rule has also been broken.
46 Marvel is home to the first openly gay superhero. Northstar, a
French-Canadian mutant, came out in Alpha Flight No 106 in 1992.
47 Daredevil artist Wally Wood once corrupted the morals of Mickey
Mouse. Wood, who came up with Daredevil's signature red costume, also
drew the Disneyland Memorial Orgy, which shows Disney favourites
engaged in some very unDisney activities. Dumbo has never looked so
shocked.
48 Stan Lee officiated at Spider-man's wedding. In 1987 Marvel decided
to let Peter Parker get hitched to his model girlfriend, Mary Jane
Watson. The event took place in Amazing Spider-man Annual No 21 and,
bizarrely, in real life at the Shea Stadium in New York with Lee
presiding. You can see footage of the ceremony here. Although the
marriage generated the publicity Marvel hoped it would, later writers
and editors rued the event, believing a married Peter Parker limited
them creatively. They eventually got round the marriage in 2007 by
having the devil Mephisto erase it from everyone's memory - the ctrl
alt delete approach to storytelling.
49 Steve Ditko was sharing a studio with the fetish artist Eric
Stanton when he came up with the designs for Spider-man's costume and
webbing. Before fetish fans get excited and moralists over flow with
outrage, Stanton has said that his influence on Ditko's designs was
"almost nil". Still, there's something kinky about that mask.
50 Barack Obama appeared on the cover of Amazing Spider-man No 583 in
celebration of his inauguration but he is not the first US president
to feature in a Marvel comic. His predecessor, George W. Bush, turned
up to congratulate Captain America in The Ultimates while Jimmy Carter
appealed to the Avengers for help in Uncanny X-Men No 135 after a
super-villain destroyed a swanky part of down-town New York. The most
controversial presidential appearance was one made by Richard Nixon.
In Captain America No 175, published a month before Nixon resigned the
presidency, the Cap uncovers the identity of a high-ranking government
official who has been directing an evil plot to enslave America. On
being exposed, the villain kills himself infront of the Cap. We never
see his face, nor is he explicitly named but it is clear that the
villain is Nixon. The comic's writer, Steve Englehart, recalled:
"America was moving from the Vietnam War toward the specific crimes of
Watergate. I was writing a man who believed in America's highest
ideals at a time when America's President was a crook. I could not
ignore that. And so, in the Marvel Universe, which so closely
resembled our own, Cap followed a criminal conspiracy into the White
House and saw the President commit suicide."
51 Spider-man once went on a double date with Superman. Marvel and DC
decided to put their flagship characters together for the first time
in the 1976 special Superman v Amazing Spider-man. Although the two
heroes joined forces to battle the combined villainy of their nemeses,
they did spent a fair amount of the comic knocking each other about.
Both won a round each but this being comics, friendship was declared
the eventual winner. The two defeated their foes and celebrated by
going on a double date with Lois Lane and Mary-Jane. Superman and
Spider-man crossed paths again in 1981, when Superman was clobbered by
the Hulk, but the ultimate cross-universe slug-fest was the 1996
series DC v Marvel Comics, in which reader votes determined the
outcome of the fights.
52 The Comics Code Authority forbade the use of werewolves in comics
so Marvel writers had to come up with ingenious ways of including the
classic villain archetype. For X-Men No 60 (1969) Roy Thomas and Neal
Adams created Sauron, a were?pterodactyl to get round the code.
53 The final issue of Captain America Comics didn't feature even
feature Captain America. By 1950 the title was known as Captain
America's Weird Tales and bore little resemblance to the sentinel of
liberty's first adventures. The final issue, No 75, contained four
horror stories: Hoof Prints of Doom, A Cigarette Stamped Death, The
Thing in the Chest and The Bat!
54 Spider-man got his very own car, the Spider-Mobile, as a result of
merchandising deal between Marvel and Corona Motors. The ludicrous
beach buggy, which was eventually modified to imitate Spidey's powers,
made its debut in Amazing Spider-man No 130 in 1974. Shamelessly, the
issue features Corona Motors offering Spidey a lot of loot to endorse
a new non-polluting car it has developed. A few issues later he
ditched the buggy into the river.
55 Mario Puzo, the author of The Godfather, found writing comics too
difficult. Before he found fame as a novelist, Puzo eked a living
writing for men's adventure magazines for Marvel's publisher. Short of
cash one month he asked Stan Lee if he could try his hand writing a
comic script. Lee readily agreed but Puzo couldn't deliver the goods.
"He said it was too difficult," Lee recounts in his autobiography.
Puzo told him: "I could write a novel in the time it would take me to
figure this damn thing out." Puzo did eventually crack the superhero
nut, writing the screenplays for the first two Superman movies.
56 The X-Men comic was originally going to be titled The Mutants but
Marvel publisher Martin Goodman hated the name, telling Lee that
readers would be clueless as to what a mutant was. Lee says that the
new name came from the fact that the heroes had extra powers.
57 Stan Lee was prepared to cancel Daredevil if there was any hint the
book caused offence to blind people.
58 Terminator director James Cameron tried to make a Spider-man film
in the Nineties but was frustrated by a complicated rights battle
between studios over who owned the character. However, his idea to
have Spidey's webs shoot out of him organically was kept in the 2002
film made by Sam Raimi.
59 In Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., S.H.I.E.L.D. stands for Supreme
Headquarters International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division. In the
Iron Man movie the awkward acronym is changed to the similarly
preposterous Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and
Logistics Division.
60 Readers who alerted Marvel to mistakes in their comics were awarded
a No-Prize. This would be empty envelope sent back to the reader on
which would be written: "Congratulations! This envelope contains a
genuine Marvel Comics No-Prize, which you have just won!" The No-Prize
has become a much sought-after item for fans.
61 Spider-man revealed his identity to the world in 2006. As part of
the huge Marvel crossover series Civil War in which secret identities
are banned Spidey is forced to unmask himself in front of TV cameras.
Everything goes back to normal a year later after The Devil magically
erases everyone's memories.
62 One of the first superhero graphic novels was The Silver Surfer
(1978), by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
63 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby often appeared as themselves in the
Fantastic Four. They first did so in issue No 10 in 1963, which
established that they were producing the comic as a newsletter to
recount the heroes' 'real' adventures. Artist and writer John Byrne
revived the conceit 20 years later by inserting himself into his own
story, The Trial of Galactus.
64 The Fantastic Four is never short of surreal moments. The second
issue of the comic set the tone when the team hypnotises an invading
army of shape-shifting aliens into beginning life anew as cows.
65 Britain got its own team of Marvel superheroes with Excalibur. The
comic made its debut in 1987 and featured Captain Britain alongside
former X-Men Nightcrawler and Shadowcat. Marvel's presence in Britain
stretched back to 1972, when it set up Marvel UK to reprint its
American stories for the weekly British comic market. Captain Britain
was created in 1976 by Chris Claremont and Herbe Trimpe specifically
for British readers.
66 Fantasy author Neil Gaiman transported the Marvel Universe to the
Elizabethan Age in his acclaimed series Marvel 1602. The Fantastic
Four were reimagined as a group of sea-faring explorers and the X-
Men's arch-enemy Magneto was depicted as a leading member of the
Spanish Inquisition.
67 Luke Skywalker saved Spider-man. Marvel's comic book adaptation of
Star Wars in 1977 was a runaway success and the only highlight of very
dismal sales year for Marvel. Roy Thomas, who wrote the adapatation,
has said that Marvel almost lost the chance to do the comic series
because Stan Lee, Marvel's then publisher, wasn't interested in the
idea of doing adaptations of other people's work. "Stan whose memory
about such matters is generally just this side of amnesiac, has since
said since that he was sold on the idea the second time around because
Alec Guinness was starring in it," Thomas said. "Still, adapting a
movie into a comic because Alec Guinness was in it would hardly have
been a logical move. His name had no marquee value to Marvel's
readers."
68 Stan Lee wanted to play Jonah J Jameson in Canon Films's abortive
late Eighties Spider-man movie project but did not get his wish. He
has, however, appeared in almost all of Marvel's movies since 2000.
His last cameo role, in Iron Man, saw him surrounded by Penthouse
pets.
69 Wolverine's origin story was kept a mystery for 26 years. Most
superhero comics deal with origin stories in the first few issues but
Wolverine was different. His writers fed readers only snippets of his
past - he fought in the Second World War, sinister government
scientists erased his memories and covered his bones with an
indestructible metal alloy, he may have been the first mutant, his
real name is not Logan but James - but these served only to make him
mysterious. Marvel eventually relented to fan pressure in 2001 and
published Wolverine Origin. The series is set in late 19th century and
tells the story of a servant girl who befriends a frail, pampered boy
from a rich family. After a series of Bronte-like tragedies, the boy
eventually turns into the rough, beer-swilling clawed killer fans know
and love.
70 Stan Lee has trademarked his catchphrase "Excelsior!"
* The theme to the Spider-man cartoon was in fact written by Bob
Harris and the Academy Award-winning lyricist Paul Francis Webster.
Unfortunately Webster didn't win any awards for "Spider-man, Spider-
man, does whatever a spider can".
Sources: Marvel Database and Brian Cronin's Comic Book Urban Legends
on the website Comic Book Resources
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6892313.ece
Jacko tried to buy Spider-man: 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
As Marvel Comics celebrates its 70th anniversary, we present a
'timely' list of trivia about the entertainment giant
To celebrate 70 years of Marvel Comics we have dug up 70 nuggets about
the comic company - one, however, is an outright fib. Try to guess
which one. The answer appears at the end of the piece.
1 Marvel was first known as Timely Comics. It was set up in 1939 by
New York magazine publisher Martin Goodman. He changed the company's
name to Atlas in 1951 and then to Marvel in 1961. The first comic to
appear under the Marvel Comics brand was Amazing Adventures No 3.
2 X-Men No 1, published in 1991, is the world's biggest-selling comic
book. It sold close to 8 million copies.
3 Goodman thought that Spider-man was a rotten idea for a superhero.
He told Stan Lee that the character would fail because readers hated
spiders. He changed his mind when the sales figures came in.
4 Stan Lee became Editor-in-Chief of Timely aged 18 in 1941. He stayed
in the role until 1972. Timely's first Editor-in-Chief was Joe Simon.
5 Michael Jackson once came close to owning Marvel. According to Stan
Lee's former business partner, Peter Paul - who was jailed in 2005 for
stock fraud - Jackson had agreed to buy Marvel on behalf of Lee. Paul
had met Lee in 1989 and had brought him onboard the American Spirit
Foundation, a charitable organisation he ran with the actor James
Stewart.
Spotting the worth of Marvel's superhero properties, Paul
hatched a plan to bring in investors to buy Marvel and install Lee as
company's head. In 1991-92, he put together a Japanese American
investment group and approached Marvel with an offer to buy the
company from its owner, Ron Perelman, for about $28 million. Perelman
decided instead to take Marvel public. Paul tried again several years
later, this time lining up Jackson as an investor. Jim Salicrup, a
former Marvel editor who was present at the meetings Jackson had with
Lee and Paul, remembers Jackson saying to Lee: "If I buy Marvel,
you'll help me run it, won't you?" Paul said that Marvel's owner at
the time, Ike Perlmutter, was unwilling to take less than $1 billion
for the company and Jackson eventually lost interest.
Lee has a different take on Jackson's interest in Marvel. "I had been
to his place in Neverland ... and he wanted to do Spider-Man," he told
MTV News in July. "I'm not sure whether he just wanted to produce it
or wanted to play the role, you know? Our conversation never got that
far along." Lee said that the singer had hoped to buy the rights to
Spider-man. "He thought I'd be the one who could get him the rights
and I told him I couldn't, he would have to go to the Marvel company."
6 The Seventies Fantastic Four cartoon series was missing the Human
Torch, not because NBC executives feared he would inspire children to
douse themselves in petrol, strike a match and shout "flame on", but
because the rights to the character belonged to Universal Studios.
Universal would not allow NBC to use the Torch so he was replaced by a
cute talking robot named H.E.R.B.I.E
7 Casablanca Records helped to create the X-Men hero Dazzler. The
record label, which produced hits for Cher, Donna Summer and the
Village People, had approached Marvel with the idea of a Disco super-
hero that they could cross promote. According to Marvel editor Louise
Simonson, Casablanca said, "Hey, you make a singer and we'll create
someone to take on the persona." However, the collaboration proved
fraught and ended with both parties walking away from the deal.
8 Marvel went bankrupt in 1996. The financier Ron Perelman bought
Marvel for $82.5 million in 1989, putting up $10.5 million of his own
money and borrowing the rest. After taking the company public he went
on a buying spree, hovering up trading card companies and taking a
controlling interest in a toy company. It was a bad move - the trading
card and collectible market tanked - and Marvel became swollen with
debt. In 1996 Marvel missed an interest payment, putting it
technically in default. Perelman offered to rescue Marvel by injecting
$350 million but only if Marvel creates more shares and gives them to
him. Carl Icahn, a bondholder and corporate raider, buys Marvel's
bonds and vows to block Perelman. Marvel then filed for Chapter 11
protection in the bankruptcy court.
9 Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant once worked for Marvel. Between
1975 and 1977, Tennant was an editor at Marvel's UK division, a job
that required him to anglicise American spellings and indicate when
the more scantily-dressed superheroines needed to be redrawn decently.
10 Disney agreed to buy Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in August.
Fans have expressed concen that Spider-man will soon be fighting crime
wearing Mickey Mouse ears.
11 The word 'sex' was concealed in the illustrations of New X-Men
issue 118 at least 18 times - one almost every page. It
surreptitiously appears in hair strands, bottles of whisky, a hedge, a
puddle, tree branches, protest signs and, thanks to some conveniently
placed garden tools, a lawn. The book's artist, Ethan Van Sciver, has
said that he scattered the word throughout the book because Marvel was
annoying him at the time and he thought it would be fun to inject a
little mischief into his work. Weirdly, this was the sort of activity
that the psychologist Fredric Wertham railed hysterically against in
the Fifties. He thought that comics were corrupting America's youth,
with their overt and covert depictions of sex and drugs, and his book
on the subject, Seduction of the Innocent, led to Senate hearings and
a strict moral code being imposed on the comic industry.
12 Jack Kirby, the artist who co-created the Fantastic Four with Stan
Lee, was removed from the cover of the Fantastic Four's 20th
anniversary issue. The issue's artist, John Byrne, had originally
included both Kirby and Lee among the cast of characters squeezed onto
the cover but at the behest of Marvel executives Kirby was erased from
the final artwork. This may have had something to do with arguments
Kirby was having with Marvel at the time over the ownership of his
artwork.
13 The escape artist hero of Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay is based on the
Marvel artist Jim Steranko. Steranko, who memorably drew Doctor
Strange and Nick Fury during the Sixties, was himself an accomplished
escape artist before he joined Marvel. Chabon says that he was
wrestling with how to get his Jewish hero Joe Kavalier out of Nazi-
occupied Czechoslovakia when he started reading about Steranko's feats
during the Fifties and the solution came to him.
14 Spider-man co-creator Steve Ditko sometimes uses his original
artwork as cutting boards. The comic historian Greg Theakston told the
comic industry magazine Wizard that when he last visited Ditko's
studios he saw a piece of illustration board leaning against a wall
that had been slashed to pieces. "He'd been using it as a cutting
board. I looked a little bit closer and I detected a comics code stamp
on it." Not only was Ditko not displaying, preserving or prizing his
artwork, he was using it as a cutting board. Theakston said that he
quickly offered to go down to the nearest art supply store and buy
Ditko "the finest cutting board on the block" but Ditko refused. Ditko
then pointed to a curtain next to Theakston's chair and asked him to
lift it up. Behind it was a large stack of original artwork from
Marvel. Theakston asked if he could look at them but Ditko replied no.
Theakston believes the reason for Ditko's odd behaviour lay in his
bitter dispute with Marvel over who ownership of original artwork.
Marvel believed that all artwork produced for its comics belonged to
it but after years of fighting with its artists and the bad publicity
that this was causing it decided to give the artists back their
original work - but as gift. Ditko did not agree with this mock
generosity.
15 The idea for Spider-man's black costume came from a comics fan. In
1982 Marvel asked its readers for ideas for new Spider-man stories.
Randy Schueller, a 22-year-old reader from Chicago, spent two weeks
writing a story in which Spider-man ditches his red and blue threads
for a sleek black costume. "It occurred to me that Spider-man is this
character that creeps around in the shadows looking for bad guys, so
why is he wearing this bright red and blue costume?" Schueller told
the New York Post in 2007. "It seemed like he should have more of a
stealth mode." A few months after sending his idea to Marvel, he got a
letter from Jim Shooter, Marvel's Editor-In-Chief, offering to buy it
for $220. The film Spider-man 3, which conspiciously features the
black costume, made almost a billion dollars at the box office.
16 The Spider-man villain Venom was originally supposed to be a woman,
not the Daily Bugle journalist Eddie Brock. Venom's creator, David
Michelinie, said that woman was heavily pregnant and on her way to
hospital when a cab driver, distracted by a fight between Spider-man
and some super goon in the sky above, accidentally runs over her
husband infront of her, causing her to go into labour. She loses the
baby and goes crazy as a result. The black alien costume that Spider-
man had tried to destroy several issues before because it was taking
control of his mind seeks her out and bonds with her. Although Spider-
man editor Jim Salicrup liked the idea of an "evil Spider-man", he did
not think a woman could be a credible threat to the hero. Michelinie
then came up with the idea of Eddie Brock.
The question of who created Venom, one of Spider-man's most iconic
foes, has been fiercely contested over the years. Michelinie has taken
exception to claims that he co-created the villain with artist Todd
McFarlane. McFarlane did the art for Michelinie's Amazing Spider-man
plots during the late Eighties, including Venom's first appearance,
issue 298, March 1988. In 1993 Michelinie wrote a letter to Wizard in
response to an article that referred to him as the co-creator of
Venom. He said that he was Venom's sole creator, although he accepted
that without McFarlane Venom would not have been the success that he
was.
However, not long after McFarlane's successor on Amazing Spider-man,
Erik Larsen, disputed Michelinie's version of events in a letter to
Wizard. He said that Michelinie had swiped the alien costume and its
powers and simply placed them on a poorly conceived and one-
dimensional character. It took an artist of McFarlane's calibre to
make Venom commercial. (Larsen himself added several characteristics
to Venom, including the monstrous tongue and drool.)
In 2004 McFarlane admitted that Michelinie had indeed come up with the
idea of Venom and the character's basic design - "a big guy in the
black costume" - but that it was he who gave Venom his monster-like
features: "I just wanted to make him kooky and creepy, and not just
some guy in a black suit."
17 The Hulk that appeared in the classic TV series starring Bill Bixby
and Lou Ferrigno was almost made red in colour. In an interview with
film website IGN, the show's executive producer, Kenneth Johnson,
said: "I asked Stan Lee, 'Man, what's the logic of green? Is he the
envious Hulk? Is he green with envy or jealousy?' The colour of rage
is red, which I was pushing for because it's a real human colour - you
know, when people get flushed with anger."
Lee told him that the Hulk had in fact started out grey but due to problems
with colour separation, grey would simply not print the same way each time.
"Our printer came to us and said we can do a pretty consistent green, so we
decided to go with green," Lee said. Thus the Hulk was coloured green
from issue two of the Incredible Hulk onwards, although without any
explanation. On hearing this, Johnson remembers telling Lee: "That's
not really very organic! But that was a battle I could not win. I
couldn't make the Hulk red because he was just too iconic already in
the comic books."
18 One change Johnson did get to make was to the name of the Hulk's
alter ego, Bruce Banner. He switched it to David Banner because of his
antipathy towards alliterative names, not because, as some fans had
claimed, he thought the name Bruce sounded too gay. "I don't recall
feeling that way at the time, because Bruce Wayne was a pretty
straight guy.
But it was more the alliteration that bothered me, the
Lois Lane, Clark Kent, that sort of thing. I was trying to get as far
away from the comic book origins as I possibly could. Virtually the
only thing I kept from the comic book were gamma rays, the green Hulk
and the metamorphosis. When you put somebody into a story whose name
is Bruce Banner, it just immediately starts to sound comic booky, and
I was very anxious to attract an adult audience because I knew that we
could not have a hit show if we just had kids watching us."
19 This was not the first time Banner's name was changed. For a short
period Lee himself accidentally started calling him Bob Banner. At the
time Lee was juggling dozens of titles and often had difficulty
keeping track of all the characters he was writing. He said that
alliterative names made them easier to remember. However, he did slip
up from time to time, most noticeably in Fantastic Four 25, where he
introduced the Hulk as Bob Banner. Marvel's ever-vigilant fans did not
shy away from pointing out his mistake and in the letters page three
issues later, Lee responded in true showman style: "There's only one
thing to do - we're not going to take the cowardly way out. From now
on his name is Robert Bruce Banner - so we can't go wrong no matter
WHAT we call him!"
20 'She Hulk' was Stan Lee's last major creation for Marvel. The
female version of Marvel's grumpy green giant first appeared in Savage
She Hulk No 1 in February 1980. By that time Lee had retired as
Marvel's Editor-In-Chief and was the company's frontman in Hollywood
but he returned to the bullpen one last time and, with artist John
Buscema, produced another winning hero. But the origins of the
character more to do with trademark issues than Lee's need to get
behind the typewriter. Because the Incredible Hulk TV series airing at
the time was a hit, Marvel knew that it wouldn't be long before the
show's executives started pitching a female Hulk, after the manner of
the Bionic Woman TV show. To make sure it owned the rights to any such
character, it had to act fast and publish a She Hulk comic straight
away. As Buscema said: "They were protecting themselves."
21 Captain America's shield changed shape because of legal fears. When
the sentinel of liberty first appeared in March 1941 in Captain
America Comics No 1, his shield was not the familiar disc shape it is
now but a heraldic edged shield, of the sort knights would carry.
However, this shield was similar to the one that appeared on the chest
of a patriotic superhero produced by rival comic publisher MLJ. The
Shield, by Harry Shorten and Irv Novick, had been entertaining readers
for a year before Joe Simon and Jack Kirby came up with the idea of
Captain America so when MLJ's bosses saw the new hero they made their
objections plain. Timely, as Marvel was known then, did not put up a
fight and ordered Simon and Kirby to change the shield.
22 The mayor of New York personally promised to protect Simon and
Kirby from death threats after Captain America Comics appeared,
although this had nothing to do with legal threats from MLJ. The first
issue showed Cap punching Hitler on the kisser, the second had him
smacking the Fuhrer with his trusty shield. The books were a hit, but
not with America's isolationists and Nazi sympathisers, and America
was not yet at war with Germany. Simon, who was like Kirby Jewish,
says in his autobiography: "Hitler was a marvellous foil; a ranting
maniac ... [but] no matter how hard we tried to make him a threatening
force, Adolf invariably wound up as a buffoon - a clown.
Evidently, this infuriated a lot of Nazi sympathisers. There was a substantial
population of anti-war activists in the country. 'American Firsters'
and other non-interventionist groups were well-organised. Then there
was the German American Bund. They were all over the place, heavily
financed and effective in spewing their propaganda of hate; a fifth
column of Americans following the Third Reich party line. We were
inundated with a torrent of raging hate mail and vicious, obscene
telephone calls. The theme was 'death to the Jews'. At first we were
inclined to laugh off their threats but people in the office reported
seeing menacing-looking groups of strange men in front of the building
and some of the employees were fearful of leaving the office for
lunch. We reported the threats to the police department and the result
was a police guard on regular shifts patrolling the halls and office.
No sooner than the men in blue arrived than the woman at the telephone
switchboard signalled me excitedly. 'There's a man on the phone says
he's Mayor La Guardia. He wants to speak to the editor of Captain
America Comics.' I was incredulous as I picked up the phone but there
was no mistaking the shrill voice. 'You boys over there are doing a
good job,' the voice squeaked, 'The City of New York will see that no
harm will come to you.' I thanked him."
23 Marvel came up with the Transformer names Optimus Prime and
Megatron. In the early Eighties the toy manufacturer Hasbro asked
Marvel for help with its new action figure line, Transformers. The
robots that disguised themselves as cars and planes were Japanese in
origin and needed new names and backgrounds. Marvel Editor-In-Chief
Jim Shooter and writers Denny O'Neil and Bob Budiansky were given the
task. In an interview in 2004 Budiansky said: "Shooter and O'Neil came
up with the backstory. Shooter brought me in when most of the initial
names and at least some of the character profiles were rejected by
Hasbro. For whatever reason, Denny declined to revise them. So, facing
an imminent deadline, Shooter scoured the Marvel editorial offices
looking for someone who could write at least basic English. The first
few Marvel editors Shooter approached, all with more writing
experience than me, wanted nothing to do with Transformers. I was
probably Shooter's third or fourth choice. I turned around the
revisions over a couple of days - right before Thanksgiving of 1983 -
and Hasbro was very pleased with what I wrote. I renamed most of the
characters - Optimus Prime was Denny's, Megatron was mine - and
revised some character profiles."
24 Marvel once owned the rights to the word zombie. As improbable as
it sounds, Marvel attempted to trademark the word zombie in comic book
titles after publishing Tale of the Zombie in 1973. By the time the
trademark was approved two years later, the series was coming to an
end. Marvel lost the trademark in 1996 but it wasn't long before it
was once again trademarking the armies of the undead, registering the
words Marvel Zombies to protect its comic series of the same name.
With DC, Marvel also trademarked the phrase 'Super Hero'.
25 Marvel has attracted some of the hottest writers in Hollywood.
Among those who have penned its superhero adventures are: the indie
director Kevin Smith, who had Stan Lee appear in his film Mallrats; OC
and Sex and the City script writer Allan Heinberg; Lost writers and
producers Brian K Vaughan and Damon Lindelof; Heroes producer and
Teenwolf creator Jeph Loeb; and Babylon Five creator and Changeling
writer J Michael Stracynski.
26 The writer Tom Wolfe once appeared in the pages of the Incredible
Hulk. The author of Bonfire of the Vanities was a great admirer of
Marvel and had even made reference to its hero magician Dr Strange in
his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Three years later
Marvel returned the favour by adapting his short story Those Radical
Chic Evenings for the Hulk. In Radical Chic Wolfe tears into New
York's white liberal elite for espousing radical causes they didn't
actually believe in. In issue 142 of the Hulk, titled They Shoot
Hulks, Don't They?, the writer Roy Thomas took the premise and, with
his tongue firmly in his cheek, ran with it. He has a rich couple from
New York host a fund-raising party for the Hulk so he can buy a place
of his own. In doing so they upset their feminist daughter who had
wanted them to host a party for women's rights. One of the Hulk's
villains appears and gives the girl superpowers so she can beat up the
Hulk in the name of feminism (the book's cover shows the girl holding
a defeated Hulk above her head and shouting to the world: "Every male
chauvinist pig will tremble when he sees the Hulk thrown to his death
- by a woman!"). Wolfe himself appears at the fundraising party in his
trademark white suit.
27 Daredevil/Matt Murdock once pretended to his own twin brother to
get out of a tight spot. The introduction of Mike Murdock, the
swinging hipster who was guaranteed to never miss a party - or your money
back!, injected an element of cornball comedy into the pages of
Daredevil. When Matt's legal partner and secretary, Foggy Nelson and
Karen Page, accuse him of being Daredevil, Matt is forced to come up
with a plausible excuse. He can't so he makes up a story about a twin
brother no one has ever heard of. Foggy and Karen then demand to see
this mystery brother... Uh oh! Matt does a quick change several panels
later and Mike Murdock's makes his big debut at the office. "What's
Matt doing with those loud clothes - and sun-glasses?" gasps Karen.
"Say! Wait a minute! Foggy! That ... that isn't Matt Murdock!"
The lounge lizard replies: "You can say that again, doll! Ol' Matt's
the one with the brains - but I'm the family pussycat! The name's
Mike, gang - and try not to applaud - I'm almost as shy as I am
glamorous! Say! No wonder Matthew likes working here! Any more at home
like you, baby?"
Mike hangs around for a few issues - wearing pork pie hats, laying
cheesy lines on Karen and living it up in ways the square Matt Murdock
couldn't possibly imagine - but the strain of living two secret lives
takes a toll on Matt and the character is quietly brushed aside.
28 One of the heroes in the Eighties cartoon series Spider-man and his
Amazing Friends was created from scratch because of licensing issues.
The original plan was for Spider-man to have Iceman and the Human
Torch as teammates but because the Human Torch was still wrapped up
with Universal, the producers created Firestar instead. Marvel soon
made her a part of its comic universe and gave her a starring role in
its New Warriors book.
29 Paul Simon wrote the lyrics and theme song to the Sixties Spider-
man cartoon as a favour to head of the ABC network. Because he didn't
want to be associated with kiddie material, he asked that the music be
credited to his old stage name, Jerry Landis. Spider-man's pop
pedigree is set to continue next year in the Broadway musical Spider-
man: Turn Out the Dark, with Bono and The Edge providing the music and
lyrics.
30 Tobey Maguire wasn't the first actor to play Spider-man on screen.
Between 1977 and 1979 CBS aired a live-action Spider-man TV series
with Nicholas Hammond in the title role.
31 The line most associated with the Hulk TV series, "Don't make me
angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry", appears in both the 2003
and 2008 Hulk films, although in the latter it is played for laughs.
When Edward Norton, as Bruce Banner, is surrounded by a group of
Brazilian thugs, he tries to warn them off with some very ropey
Portugese: "Don't make me hungry, you wouldn't like me when I'm
hungry."
32 Samuel L Jackson makes a surprise appearance in Iron Man after the
end credits have rolled. He plays the one-eyed, Government super-spook
Nick Fury and tells the newly outed Iron Man that he's putting
together a team. Fans drool in anticipation at the hinted Avengers
movie.
33 The strip Stan Lee is most proud of is the one he wrote for the
Incredible Hulk/Spider-man toilet paper.
34 Artist John Romita Jr based the Daredevil villain Typhoid Mary on
his ex-wife.
35 Artist Dave Cockrum's resignation letter to Marvel surreptitiously
appeared in Iron Man No 127. In the issue, Tony Stark's butler,
Jarvis, resigns after a drunk and out of control Stark verbally
abuses. The letter reads:
Anthony Stark,
I am leaving because this is no longer the team-spirited "one big
happy family" I once loved working for. Over the past year or so I
have watched Avengers' morale disintegrate to the point that, rather
than being a team or a family, it is now a large collection of unhappy
individuals simmering in their own personal stew of repressed anger,
resentment and frustration. I have seen a lot of my friends silently
enduring unfair, malicious or vindictive treatment.
My personal grievances are relatively slight by comparison to some,
but I don't intend to silently endure. I've watched the Avengers be
disbanded, uprooted and shuffled around. I've become firmly convinced
that this was done with the idea of "showing the hired help who's
Boss".
I don't intend to wait around to see what's next.
Three issues later Iron Man's writer, David Michelinie, explained to
readers that this was the not the letter Jarvis had intended to write
and that due to a production error the wrong text had been published.
The letter that appeared was none other than Cockrum's own resignation
letter, only someone had swapped "Marvel" for "Avengers".
36 One of the X-Men was killed off because Marvel's Editor-In-Chief at
the time didn't think she should get away with eating a planet. Jean
Grey was never supposed to die at the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga but
when Jim Shooter saw that she had annihilated a planet in one of the
issues he ordered the writer Chris Claremont to change the ending.
37 Stan Lee came up with the idea of a superhero version of Thor while
wrestling with problem of how to create a character that was stronger
than the Hulk. He decided that the only solution was to make his new
hero a god so he went delving into Norse mythology to find a suitable
candidate.
38 Wolverine was created as a punching bag for the Hulk. He was
introduced in issue 180 of the Incredible Hulk as a pint-sized
Canadian superhero charged with bringing the Hulk down. The book's
writer Len Wein created Wolverine with artist John Romita and although
Wolvie is different from the lone brawler he is now, many of his
trademark characteristics appear in the issue: the claws, the rough
temperament, the yellow and blue costume and the strange mask with
pointy ears. Although he was a secondary character, Wein thought he
would be able to use him again in the revived X-Men book he was
planning.
39 Captain America made a brief return to comics 1953 as a "Commie
Smasher". The hero was retired in 1950 but he was brought back to
purge America of Reds and traitors in the pages of Young Men Comics,
just as the country was coming to terms with the horrors of
McCarthyism. The Red-bashing adventures did not last long and when
Marvel revived Captain America again in 1964, it forgot the
embarrassing Fifties, and created a story that he had lain frozen in
ice since the end of the Second World War.
40 Sylvester Stallone's ex-wife Brigitte Nielsen was to appear in a
movie version of She Hulk. Although the film never got off the ground,
Marvel did get as far as taking pictures of Nielsen dressed as She
Hulk. The disastrous results can be viewed here
41 Marvel was the first comic company to give a black superhero his
own comic book. Created by Archie Goodwin and John Romita, Luke Cage
was a streetwise hero whose skin was as hard as steel. He made his
first appearance in Luke Cage: Hero for Hire No 1 in June 1972 and was
clearly an attempt by Marvel to cash in on the popular Blaxpoitation
genre.
42 He was not, however, Marvel's first black superhero - that title
belongs to the Black Panther, who first appeared in 1966 in Fantastic
Four No 52. Although born in the same year, the Black Panther has no
connection to the militant Black Panther Party. However, it what seems
like a clumsy attempt to distance the character from the party, Marvel
briefly changed his name to the Black Leopard in the early Seventies.
The first African-American superhero was the Falcon, who first
appeared in Captain America No 117 in 1969.
43 Stan Lee sued Marvel. Lee filed a $10 million lawsuit against his
employer in 2002, saying it had cheated him out of millions of
dollars. He claimed that Marvel had signed a deal giving him 10 per
cent of any profits made from films and TV shows that used his
characters. Marvel settled the suit. Last month the children of the
late Jack Kirby, who created the Fantastic Four and scores of other
superhero titles with Lee, began a legal fight with Marvel and Disney
to recapture the copyright to Kirby's creations.
44 A Fantastic Four film exists that is so terrible it will never
reach a screen. In 1992 the production company Constantin Film was in
danger of losing the film rights to the Fantastic Four unless it
started production on the movie by the end of the year. Lacking the
$40 million it needed to make a full-budget film, it turned to low-
budget movie supremo Roger Corman for help. He spent just $1.98
million to crank a quickie Fantastic Four movie. Constantin never
intended to release the film but it never told the director or the
actors this. "Oh, that was a tragic event. I feel so sorry for the
people involved," Stan Lee remembered years later. "The director
really tried his best, and so did the actors.
They all thought that this was their big chance. But the movie was never supposed to be seen. Most people thought, "Jesus, what a terrible job that is! How corny! How cheap!" They didn't realize that it wasn't meant to be any
better than that. Unfortunately, the people working on the project
didn't know that, and they tried their best. Really, I feel so bad for
all of them." Other low-budget Marvel misfires include the 1989
Punisher film starring Dolph Lundgren and the 1990 Captain America
film - starring no one you've ever heard of.
[NOTE: you can download this shit-flick via bittorrent]
45 Death in the Marvel Universe has to be by the rules. In the preface
to the Marvel Universe Book of the Dead, editor Mark Grunewald touches
on the phenomenon of dead heroes and villains miraculously coming back
to life. "Characters such as Doctor Doom have made it their stock in
trade to escape one seeming death after another," he writes. He
handily draws up a rough guide to sorting out the fake deaths from the
real ones. For a death to be real it has to take place in the comic
panel, and not simply referred to in dialogue. The remains must be
seen by two qualified witnesses and must be destroyed - burial is not
enough in a universe where zombies and vampires exist. Of course all
these rules have been wilfully ignored by writers at some time or
another. The other abiding rule of the Marvel Universe was that
Captain America's sidekick, Bucky, and Spider-man's uncle, Ben, had to
stay dead. This rule has also been broken.
46 Marvel is home to the first openly gay superhero. Northstar, a
French-Canadian mutant, came out in Alpha Flight No 106 in 1992.
47 Daredevil artist Wally Wood once corrupted the morals of Mickey
Mouse. Wood, who came up with Daredevil's signature red costume, also
drew the Disneyland Memorial Orgy, which shows Disney favourites
engaged in some very unDisney activities. Dumbo has never looked so
shocked.
48 Stan Lee officiated at Spider-man's wedding. In 1987 Marvel decided
to let Peter Parker get hitched to his model girlfriend, Mary Jane
Watson. The event took place in Amazing Spider-man Annual No 21 and,
bizarrely, in real life at the Shea Stadium in New York with Lee
presiding. You can see footage of the ceremony here. Although the
marriage generated the publicity Marvel hoped it would, later writers
and editors rued the event, believing a married Peter Parker limited
them creatively. They eventually got round the marriage in 2007 by
having the devil Mephisto erase it from everyone's memory - the ctrl
alt delete approach to storytelling.
49 Steve Ditko was sharing a studio with the fetish artist Eric
Stanton when he came up with the designs for Spider-man's costume and
webbing. Before fetish fans get excited and moralists over flow with
outrage, Stanton has said that his influence on Ditko's designs was
"almost nil". Still, there's something kinky about that mask.
50 Barack Obama appeared on the cover of Amazing Spider-man No 583 in
celebration of his inauguration but he is not the first US president
to feature in a Marvel comic. His predecessor, George W. Bush, turned
up to congratulate Captain America in The Ultimates while Jimmy Carter
appealed to the Avengers for help in Uncanny X-Men No 135 after a
super-villain destroyed a swanky part of down-town New York. The most
controversial presidential appearance was one made by Richard Nixon.
In Captain America No 175, published a month before Nixon resigned the
presidency, the Cap uncovers the identity of a high-ranking government
official who has been directing an evil plot to enslave America. On
being exposed, the villain kills himself infront of the Cap. We never
see his face, nor is he explicitly named but it is clear that the
villain is Nixon. The comic's writer, Steve Englehart, recalled:
"America was moving from the Vietnam War toward the specific crimes of
Watergate. I was writing a man who believed in America's highest
ideals at a time when America's President was a crook. I could not
ignore that. And so, in the Marvel Universe, which so closely
resembled our own, Cap followed a criminal conspiracy into the White
House and saw the President commit suicide."
51 Spider-man once went on a double date with Superman. Marvel and DC
decided to put their flagship characters together for the first time
in the 1976 special Superman v Amazing Spider-man. Although the two
heroes joined forces to battle the combined villainy of their nemeses,
they did spent a fair amount of the comic knocking each other about.
Both won a round each but this being comics, friendship was declared
the eventual winner. The two defeated their foes and celebrated by
going on a double date with Lois Lane and Mary-Jane. Superman and
Spider-man crossed paths again in 1981, when Superman was clobbered by
the Hulk, but the ultimate cross-universe slug-fest was the 1996
series DC v Marvel Comics, in which reader votes determined the
outcome of the fights.
52 The Comics Code Authority forbade the use of werewolves in comics
so Marvel writers had to come up with ingenious ways of including the
classic villain archetype. For X-Men No 60 (1969) Roy Thomas and Neal
Adams created Sauron, a were?pterodactyl to get round the code.
53 The final issue of Captain America Comics didn't feature even
feature Captain America. By 1950 the title was known as Captain
America's Weird Tales and bore little resemblance to the sentinel of
liberty's first adventures. The final issue, No 75, contained four
horror stories: Hoof Prints of Doom, A Cigarette Stamped Death, The
Thing in the Chest and The Bat!
54 Spider-man got his very own car, the Spider-Mobile, as a result of
merchandising deal between Marvel and Corona Motors. The ludicrous
beach buggy, which was eventually modified to imitate Spidey's powers,
made its debut in Amazing Spider-man No 130 in 1974. Shamelessly, the
issue features Corona Motors offering Spidey a lot of loot to endorse
a new non-polluting car it has developed. A few issues later he
ditched the buggy into the river.
55 Mario Puzo, the author of The Godfather, found writing comics too
difficult. Before he found fame as a novelist, Puzo eked a living
writing for men's adventure magazines for Marvel's publisher. Short of
cash one month he asked Stan Lee if he could try his hand writing a
comic script. Lee readily agreed but Puzo couldn't deliver the goods.
"He said it was too difficult," Lee recounts in his autobiography.
Puzo told him: "I could write a novel in the time it would take me to
figure this damn thing out." Puzo did eventually crack the superhero
nut, writing the screenplays for the first two Superman movies.
56 The X-Men comic was originally going to be titled The Mutants but
Marvel publisher Martin Goodman hated the name, telling Lee that
readers would be clueless as to what a mutant was. Lee says that the
new name came from the fact that the heroes had extra powers.
57 Stan Lee was prepared to cancel Daredevil if there was any hint the
book caused offence to blind people.
58 Terminator director James Cameron tried to make a Spider-man film
in the Nineties but was frustrated by a complicated rights battle
between studios over who owned the character. However, his idea to
have Spidey's webs shoot out of him organically was kept in the 2002
film made by Sam Raimi.
59 In Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., S.H.I.E.L.D. stands for Supreme
Headquarters International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division. In the
Iron Man movie the awkward acronym is changed to the similarly
preposterous Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and
Logistics Division.
60 Readers who alerted Marvel to mistakes in their comics were awarded
a No-Prize. This would be empty envelope sent back to the reader on
which would be written: "Congratulations! This envelope contains a
genuine Marvel Comics No-Prize, which you have just won!" The No-Prize
has become a much sought-after item for fans.
61 Spider-man revealed his identity to the world in 2006. As part of
the huge Marvel crossover series Civil War in which secret identities
are banned Spidey is forced to unmask himself in front of TV cameras.
Everything goes back to normal a year later after The Devil magically
erases everyone's memories.
62 One of the first superhero graphic novels was The Silver Surfer
(1978), by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
63 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby often appeared as themselves in the
Fantastic Four. They first did so in issue No 10 in 1963, which
established that they were producing the comic as a newsletter to
recount the heroes' 'real' adventures. Artist and writer John Byrne
revived the conceit 20 years later by inserting himself into his own
story, The Trial of Galactus.
64 The Fantastic Four is never short of surreal moments. The second
issue of the comic set the tone when the team hypnotises an invading
army of shape-shifting aliens into beginning life anew as cows.
65 Britain got its own team of Marvel superheroes with Excalibur. The
comic made its debut in 1987 and featured Captain Britain alongside
former X-Men Nightcrawler and Shadowcat. Marvel's presence in Britain
stretched back to 1972, when it set up Marvel UK to reprint its
American stories for the weekly British comic market. Captain Britain
was created in 1976 by Chris Claremont and Herbe Trimpe specifically
for British readers.
66 Fantasy author Neil Gaiman transported the Marvel Universe to the
Elizabethan Age in his acclaimed series Marvel 1602. The Fantastic
Four were reimagined as a group of sea-faring explorers and the X-
Men's arch-enemy Magneto was depicted as a leading member of the
Spanish Inquisition.
67 Luke Skywalker saved Spider-man. Marvel's comic book adaptation of
Star Wars in 1977 was a runaway success and the only highlight of very
dismal sales year for Marvel. Roy Thomas, who wrote the adapatation,
has said that Marvel almost lost the chance to do the comic series
because Stan Lee, Marvel's then publisher, wasn't interested in the
idea of doing adaptations of other people's work. "Stan whose memory
about such matters is generally just this side of amnesiac, has since
said since that he was sold on the idea the second time around because
Alec Guinness was starring in it," Thomas said. "Still, adapting a
movie into a comic because Alec Guinness was in it would hardly have
been a logical move. His name had no marquee value to Marvel's
readers."
68 Stan Lee wanted to play Jonah J Jameson in Canon Films's abortive
late Eighties Spider-man movie project but did not get his wish. He
has, however, appeared in almost all of Marvel's movies since 2000.
His last cameo role, in Iron Man, saw him surrounded by Penthouse
pets.
69 Wolverine's origin story was kept a mystery for 26 years. Most
superhero comics deal with origin stories in the first few issues but
Wolverine was different. His writers fed readers only snippets of his
past - he fought in the Second World War, sinister government
scientists erased his memories and covered his bones with an
indestructible metal alloy, he may have been the first mutant, his
real name is not Logan but James - but these served only to make him
mysterious. Marvel eventually relented to fan pressure in 2001 and
published Wolverine Origin. The series is set in late 19th century and
tells the story of a servant girl who befriends a frail, pampered boy
from a rich family. After a series of Bronte-like tragedies, the boy
eventually turns into the rough, beer-swilling clawed killer fans know
and love.
70 Stan Lee has trademarked his catchphrase "Excelsior!"
* The theme to the Spider-man cartoon was in fact written by Bob
Harris and the Academy Award-winning lyricist Paul Francis Webster.
Unfortunately Webster didn't win any awards for "Spider-man, Spider-
man, does whatever a spider can".
Sources: Marvel Database and Brian Cronin's Comic Book Urban Legends
on the website Comic Book Resources
