Two new books from Bloomsbury Academic’s Marvel Age of Comics series look back at key moments in Marvel’s history, one of them from a man who spent decades at the competition. Marvel Explodes: From Bullpen to Big Business by Paul Levitz and Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars: The Epic 1980s Saga by Tom K. Mason are out now, as downthetubes reports.
Levitz, the former president and publisher of DC Comics, covers Marvel from 1967 to 1975. The period starts just before the company split its anthology titles to give characters like Iron Man, Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, the Hulk, Doctor Strange and Nick Fury their own books, and runs through Marvel’s rise to become America’s largest comics publisher in 1972.
He tells the story year by year, looking at both the creative side, with new titles and the writers and artists who joined, and the business side, including changes in distributors and owners. “Getting to tell a vital piece of Marvel’s business history from the perspective of a witness, a friend to many of the key players, and a competitor who understood the important factors was a fun challenge,” Levitz said.
Mason’s book goes deep on Secret Wars, the 12-issue 1984 series that Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter built around Marvel’s biggest heroes and villains and that set the template for the modern event comic. “The summer of Secret Wars was to comics like the summer of Jaws or Star Wars was to the movie business,” Mason said.
“It was supposed to be a simple mini-series with a toy tie-in and it became so much more,” he added. “Secret Wars created a brand identity for a specific type of series, it created a new successful character, Venom, out of a costume change that was supposed to be temporary, and it set the stage for all the blockbuster event comics that would follow its example.”
Mason co-founded Malibu Comics, where he edited more than 1,000 comics, and is an Emmy-winning television writer. Levitz’s own comics work includes Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga.
Both books are illustrated with full-color art from the period. The Marvel Age of Comics line now runs to twelve books. Secret Wars is having a moment on shelves, too, with Marvel separately reprinting Jonathan Hickman’s 2015 Secret Wars as facsimile editions.
