Marvel Comics: The Untold Story is the story of Marvel Comics, from its beginnings in the late thirties until fairly recently, with all the highs and lows in between.

Confession Time: For most of my life, I've been a comic book fan. I've got around 2000 of them in boxes in my nerd cave and have numerous super hero shirts.

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story was a very gripping read for me. I read the sanitized version of some of the events in [b:Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics|1473362|Marvel Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics (First Impressions)|Les Daniels|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1387733861s/1473362.jpg|740154] but I wasn't completely prepared for some of the things I learned.

The story starts with Martin Goodman cashing in on the comic book craze but really gets interesting when he hires his nephew, a kid named Stan Lee, to do some editing. Once Joe Simon and Jack Kirby create Captain America, things kick into high gear until the 50's, when Seduction of the Innocent nearly kills the industry. Things circle the drain until a fateful golf game with the head of DC comics prompts Goodman to order Lee to create a team of superheroes. The Fantastic Four is created and the Marvel Age of comics kicks into full swing.

The book covers a lot of behind the scenes info, like creators getting fucked out of royalties and original art. Anyone who's into comics has probably heard about that. The things I didn't know about, like a bunch of guys being into drugs, DC and Marvel negotiating for Marvel to license some DC characters, and what a tyrant Jim Shooter was, were much more interesting. It must have been maddening to work with Shooter after Secret Wars.

While it might be boring for some, I found the inner workings of Marvel when it was being bought and sold several times in rapid succession to be fascinating. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of [b:The Death of WCW|188131|The Death of WCW|R.D. Reynolds|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390434240s/188131.jpg|181845]. How could people be handed the golden ticket only to wipe their asses with it?

Jim Shooter seemed like a dictator but I think Tom DeFalco's throw everything against the wall and see what sticks strategy played a bigger part to the near death experience the comics industry suffered in the 90's. Also, Stan Lee seems even more like a hack and a tool than he did before I read the book.

Speaking of the 1990s, Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefield come of as huge pieces of crap. I think we're all quite lucky Marvel survived the black hole of the 1990's comic market. It's crazy to think how many half-brain dead tyrants Marvel had at the helm before Quesada and Palmiotti finally turned things around.

For a lifelong comic nerd, this book was one hell of a read. 4 out of 5 stars.

I made my usual trek to the used bookstore on Friday, but I haven't been online much lately due to stress headaches. Found some cool stuff, though.

Większości znanych mi osób Marvel kojarzy się wyłącznie z początkowymi sekwencjami popularnych ostatnio filmów z Thorem, Iron Manem i Kapitanem Ameryką. Niektórym nawet obiło się o uszy, że postacie te pochodzą z gigantycznego uniwersum, które od dziesiątek lat tworzą scenarzyści, rysownicy i cała ferajna osób związanych z Marvel Comics - jednego z największych wydawnictw komiksowych, o jakich mogli usłyszeć mieszkańcy Ziemi. Do znerdziałych fanów się nie zaliczam ale mam swoje typy i swoich faworytów w tym pokręconym świecie, który przecież nie ogranicza się wyłącznie do naszego ziemskiego podwórka. Z dużą ciekawością sięgnęłam więc po historię samego wydawnictwa, pióra Seana Howe.

Książkę czyta się jak dobry thriller polityczny Johna Grishama. Głównie dlatego, że firma Marvel, która zaczynała jako Timely Publications w 1939 roku, przez wszystkie lata swego rozwoju dopuściła się wielu, niezbyt przyjemnych posunięć wobec swoich pracowników. Osoby zatrudnione, niejednokrotnie narażone były na potężne straty finansowe i moralne ponieważ odmawiano im praw do postaci, które stworzyły. Oczywistym jest, że kilka dziesięcioleci wstecz nie można było przewidzieć, iż rynek komiksowy osiągnie tak ogromną wartość a bohaterowie kolejnych zeszytów staną się ikonami popkultury. Niemniej jednak nie można odmawiać artystom prawa do stworzonych przez nich dzieł.

Przez Marvel przewinęły się tak znamienite osobowości jak Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Frank Miller, Todd McFarlane, Jim Shooter czy Steve Ditko.  Niejednokrotnie okoliczności ich rozstania w wydawnictwem nie należały do przyjemnych. A to dzięki nim Fantastyczna Czwórka, Spiderman czy Daredevil na stałe zagościli w wyobraźni milionów nastolatków. Niezwykłą historia Marvel Comics to książka o tych wszystkich niezwykłych ludziach, którzy od podstaw tworzyli niesamowite uniwersum superbohaterów.

 

 

Autor skupił się na wydawnictwie, nie pomijając samego produktu, jakim były komiksy. Czytelnik ma więc okazję prześledzić koleje losu dobrze znanych postaci jak Wolverine, Galactus czy Red Skull. Dla mnie ważnym elementem była próba przybliżenia postaci Dardevilla (na którym popełniono kinowe harakiri) czy Punishera (który zaginął gdzieś w szumie medialnym wokół Avengers). Sean Howe najwięcej uwagi poświęca ikonom Marvela, delikatnie zaniedbując postacie drugoplanowe, a wcale przez to nie mniej ciekawe. Tu nastąpi prywatny przytyk - gdzie jest Deadpool? Jedna z najciekawszych i najbardziej kontrowersyjnych postaci Marvela, tak koszmarnie zaprezentowana ( kolejne medialne harakiri) w X-Men: Geneza.

Niezwykłą historia Marvel Comics to bardzo dobra książka nie tylko dla fanów komiksu. Z całą pewnością przypadnie do gustu wszystkim tym, którym leży na sercu historia kultury. Bo ciężko zaprzeczyć, że wokół komiksowego uniwersum takowa się nie wytworzyła. I myślę, że po książkę mogą sięgnąć osoby, które z zapartym tchem czekają na kolejne kinowe przygody superbohaterów. Warto wiedzieć skąd pochodzą i dokąd zmierzają.

 

 

Seen at Scott Reads It! Keep in mind that I'm not a die-hard Marvel fanboy while reading this review. I love reading Marvel graphic novels and comics but I don't really follow their story-lines. I also have seen numerous Marvel movies and I used to have a Spider-Man obsession when I was little. I really wasn't sure what to expect with Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. Marvel Comics is an extremely detailed and interesting history of the world's most famous comic book company. Marvel Comics: The Untold Story essentially is Marvel's "The Social Network" because it really goes behind the scenes and shows the ugly aspects of the comic book business. Honestly before this book, I didn't know that Marvel is a company that is based on lies, stealing, and deceit. Marvel has been accused of stealing artist's rights to characters multiple times. This book is filled with countless drama between Stan Lee and the other employees of Marvel. I would have liked to see how the creators came up with the characters and the story lines This book is extremely focused on the business of Marvel and how they survived through so many bankruptcies. It's amazing how Marvel is still around after all of it's financial troubles. I was extremely engrossed in this book towards the beginning and the ending of this novel. During the middle segments, I wasn't so interested in the plot of this book and at times I was kind of bored. This book took me 8 days to read which is an extremely long time, I usually finish books in 3-4 days. This book doesn't have that "read-me" quality that makes you want to continue reading. I felt like at times The Untold Story went on some random tangents. There were times when Sean Howe was explaining something and then he brought up something extremely irrelevant. The author would continue with the irrelevant topic and then he would cut himself off. There were a few things that I feel like the author never fully finished explaining to the reader. I definitely wanted to read more about the Marvel Films and Marvel's current state. Marvel Comics: The Untold Story is an interesting book but it doesn't really have a page-turning quality. I had to force myself to continue reading some segments and I just decided to skim some pages because I was so bored. I would definitely recommend reading this book for die-hard Marvel and comic book fans. If you're not a die-hard comic book aficionado, I'd probably only recommend this book for a report or a research paper.

[Here's the beginning of my review, which you can read here:]

It was realism in ways that only comics readers defined the term: pessimistic, violent, and more concerned with repercussions than with moments of transcendence
- page 414

For my birthday last year, my parents bought me, independently, copies of Sean Howe's Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. I started reading it a few days ago, and tore through it at a speed that employed, married, video-game-owning me doesn't usually reach. I am directly in this book's target audience, is what I'm trying to say here. So while I'd like to think Marvel Comics... would interest someone with no knowledge on the subject, I honestly don't know if that's true. I hope it is.

Not only do I love a huge number of the comics that Marvel has put out in its lifetime, I also love Stan Lee immeasurably. There was a time when I bought entirely into the image that he's carefully crafted for himself and believed that he, as the writer, had basically created everything. Later I read Jack Kirby's Fourth World books and realized just how great The King was not just as a comics artist, but as a creator. I soon became aware of the "Kirby created everything and got fucked over for it" version of events that many Kirby fans prefer, but I could never find it in myself to vilify Lee.

[And another excerpt:]

...generation gaps are one of the major themes of this history. The clash between Lee and Kirby's WWII generation and the artsy new writers who started to take over in the 1970s is particularly fascinating. In the early '70s Marvel's coastal and metropolitan blue collar types, who started working in comics to get through the Depression, are slowly supplanted by young men (and yes, almost all men) who had grown up in other parts of the country, loving comics desperately, and were much pricklier about their artistic expression.

[I also take some cheap shots at early 90s Marvel, as is my God-given right as a comics fan.]