75 Years of Marvel Comics, from the Golden Age to the Silver Screen

The Strangest Super-Heroes of All. The foundation of a pop-culture phenomenon. When Marvel publisher Martin Goodman asked Stan Lee to deliver another new team book for his line of comics, he had no idea he’d be getting something like The X-Men. In fact, nobody could have imagined the extraordinary phenomenon the X-Men would eventually grow into—not Goodman, not Lee, not even the forward-thinking futurist Jack Kirby. What they started out as was a charming, ragtag team of misfits, devised by Lee and Kirby to be mutants—youngsters born with “X-tra” powers thrust upon them not by accidentally crossing paths with cosmic rays or a nuclear blast, but by the fate of birth—led by a no-nonsense professor who trained them to become heroes that could protect the world from menaces, mutant and otherwise. The first years of storytelling laid the foundation for much of what has put the X-Men at the crossroads of comics and popular culture: Hounded by a public that fears and misunderstands them, mutantkind find themselves at the heart of their own civil rights struggle; Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Beast, and Iceman found safety amongst themselves despite the challenges that set them apart from others in society; and Professor Xavier lined up against his ideological foe, Magneto, who had assembled a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to take the fight for their self-preservation directly to humankind. Along the way, Lee and Kirby—who were on fire taking comics into the Marvel Age—introduced a menagerie of villains and supporting characters that would become mainstays of Marvel and its lore: the super-powered siblings Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch; the formidable Blob; the unstoppable Juggernaut; the jungle dweller from the Savage Land, Ka-Zar; the demigod from the stars, the Stranger; and Bolivar Trask and his army of mutant-hunting Sentinels. And as Lee and Kirby gave way to new talents so they could move on to new corners of the Marvel Universe, Atlas era art veteran Werner Roth teamed with writing newcomer and future X-Men legend Roy Thomas...

The Strangest Super-Heroes of All. The foundation of a pop-culture phenomenon. When Marvel publisher Martin Goodman asked Stan Lee to deliver another new team book for his line of comics, he had no idea he’d be getting something like The X-Men. In fact, nobody could have imagined the extraordinary phenomenon the X-Men would eventually grow into—not Goodman, not Lee, not even the forward-thinking futurist Jack Kirby. What they started out as was a charming, ragtag team of misfits, devised by Lee and Kirby to be mutants—youngsters born with “X-tra” powers thrust upon them not by accidentally crossing paths with cosmic rays or a nuclear blast, but by the fate of birth—led by a no-nonsense professor who trained them to become heroes that could protect the world from menaces, mutant and otherwise. The first years of storytelling laid the foundation for much of what has put the X-Men at the crossroads of comics and popular culture: Hounded by a public that fears and misunderstands them, mutantkind find themselves at the heart of their own civil rights struggle; Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Beast, and Iceman found safety amongst themselves despite the challenges that set them apart from others in society; and Professor Xavier lined up against his ideological foe, Magneto, who had assembled a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to take the fight for their self-preservation directly to humankind. Along the way, Lee and Kirby—who were on fire taking comics into the Marvel Age—introduced a menagerie of villains and supporting characters that would become mainstays of Marvel and its lore: the super-powered siblings Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch; the formidable Blob; the unstoppable Juggernaut; the jungle dweller from the Savage Land, Ka-Zar; the demigod from the stars, the Stranger; and Bolivar Trask and his army of mutant-hunting Sentinels. And as Lee and Kirby gave way to new talents so they could move on to new corners of the Marvel Universe, Atlas era art veteran Werner Roth teamed with writing newcomer and future X-Men legend Roy Thomas...

The First Family of the Marvel Age. The ultimate collection of the world’s greatest comic magazine. Hoping to break out of a sales slump at Marvel in the early 1960s, veteran comic...

Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Assembling the definitive Marvel Age Avengers anthology By early 1963 the foundations of the Marvel Universe had been laid. Following the introduction of the Fantastic Four in 1961 came the amazing (Spider-Man), the astonishing (Ant-Man), the strange (Doctor, that is), the incredible (Hulk), the invincible (Iron Man) and the mighty (Thor). Still, Marvel editor in chief Stan Lee realized something was missing. “I was writing these characters and I thought it would fun to put them together in a team,” he recalled. So Lee and artist Jack Kirby assembled Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Thor, and the Hulk...