Marvel Comics: The Untold Story

by Sean Howe

  Jean Grey’s powerful reincarnation as Phoenix was at the flashpoint of many disagreements, and Byrne labored to eliminate her from the book, preferring instead to showcase Wolverine, his favorite. But although the writer and artist seemed to often be working at cross-purposes, by the time their collaboration reached the printed page, it was a mesmerizing, unified vision of sci-fi extravagance and human-scale tear-jerking. Sales climbed.

  David Anthony Kraft, who’d followed Gerber’s lead and begun to negotiate a royalty for the Beatles comic, soon heard from Sol Brodsky. Even with his VP title, Brodsky couldn’t shake the burden of being the hatchet man, bearing bad news that Stan Lee couldn’t—or wouldn’t—deliver.

  “They’ve decided they’re not going to pay royalties on the Beatles book,” he told Kraft. Then he shut the office door. “I’ll deny this conversation,” Brodsky said, “but between you and me, you’d be a fool to let it go.”

  Kraft visited Lee. “If this was a Marvel character and you did this,” he told his boss, “I’d be kind of stuck, wouldn’t I? But you don’t own the Beatles, and you don’t own me, so I’ll just take this project to another publisher.” He walked back to the office he shared with Shooter, and began making phone calls—to Rolling Stone, to Circus—before Lee shouted for him to come back.

  Lee expressed sympathy. After all, he said, he himself had created so many of Marvel’s properties with no royalties to show for it. He sent Kraft up to meet with Galton. “How about you and Galton fight it out?” he said.

  “It was a Friday afternoon,” Kraft remembered, “and Galton wanted to leave early and go golfing or whatever his weekend plans were. The crux of it was, he had contracts with the top creators, and their contracts said that their rates would automatically adjust upward to the best deal that was going. And his concern was if he paid me royalties, he’d have to start paying royalties to everyone at Marvel Comics.” But if Kraft and artist George Perez did business as an incorporated entity, a royalty deal wouldn’t transgress the other creators’ contracts. Kraft took the name that Gerber was no longer using, Mad Genius Studios, and via this loophole got his royalty deal.

  Marvel, however, wasn’t about to make the same arrangement for its wholly owned The Defenders, which Kraft was also writing (and, rock-and-roll fan that he was, filling with constant references to Rush and Blue Oyster Cult). When it finally came time to sign the work-for-hire agreement, Kraft promptly quit The Defenders.

  In the current climate, such courage was getting harder and harder to come by. On June 22, DC Comics, which had recently undertaken an ambitious but ill-fated expansion campaign, announced staff layoffs—and the cancellation of 40 percent of its line. The next day, Jim Shooter recalled, there was a line at the door of the Marvel offices, and he spent the entire day signing work-for-hire agreements for the resigned masses. Soon afterward he hired Al Milgrom and Larry Hama, both of whom had been editing for DC, to join Marvel’s growing staff of editors. DC’s art director even began sending younger talent over to Shooter. There weren’t a lot of new guys lining up for the dying industry, just the most driven and most in love with the art form, hungry for assignments and happily taking direction. Shooter put twenty-one-year-old Vermonter Frank Miller on a Spectacular Spider-Man story, and twenty-year-old Pennsylvanian Bill Sienkiewicz on stories about Moon Knight, a sort of ersatz Batman, that ran in the back of the Hulk magazine.

  Many of the most provocative and vital writers and artists of the previous generations, chased away by the industry’s paternalistic and/or just plain unfair policies, were off to other pursuits: animating Saturday morning cartoons, writing novels and screenplays, illustrating for ad agencies, producing lithographs for the nerd-collector market. It seemed like the mass exoduses that marked the 1950s might be just around the corner. A year or two earlier, when a teenage fan approached Marv Wolfman at a comic convention and asked for career advice, the candid response was startling: “Confidentially, everyone in the business is looking to get out, so my suggestion to you is . . . do something else,” Wolfman told him. “In five years there aren’t going to be any comics.”

  Those who remained in the field would have to make a go of it within the strictures of the system, waiving royalties and reining in their more esoteric flights of fancy. Jim Shooter’s own stories for The Avengers, illustrated by George Perez, might have doubled as a manifesto of what he saw as the ideal commercial Marvel comic book: banter-heavy dialogue and small medium-shot panels that showcased the colorful costumes, all adding up to a staccato rhythm of adventure and whimsy.

  It wasn’t all cold formula: sneaking into Shooter’s stories, almost helplessly, was a recurring motif of persecuted deities. Most notable was a yearlong Avengers story about “Michael,” a golf-shirt-and-short-shorts-wearing preppy in Forest Hills, Queens. Shooter revealed that Michael was actually the reincarnation of Korvac, a minor villain from Steve Gerber’s Defenders (a kind of techno-centaur, Korvac’s legs were replaced by a mainframe computer) who had transformed himself into an enlightened God. His blond suburbanite form gave way to a glowing, oversized, purple and yellow astral projection.

  Korvac entered the pantheon of Marvel’s most powerful, and trippy, characters, like Kirby’s Watcher and Ditko’s Eternity, both of whom appeared in cameos and took notice of his actions, as if to ratify his very importance. “His position was unique,” the captions in Avengers #175 confided to the reader. “He would be free to make subtle alterations in the fabric of reality, eventually taking control—and correcting the chaos, healing the injustice that civilization had heaped upon a battered universe.”

  But the suspicious Avengers attacked Korvac, tragically preventing him from eradicating the world’s cruelties. “I was in the unique position to alter that, to bring all of existence under my sane and benevolent rule,” he told the super-team. “I am a God! And I was going to be your savior!” Where others saw megalomania, Jim Shooter saw a beleaguered hero who only wanted to bring order to the galaxy.

  By the end of the 1970s, Stan Lee was making over $150,000 as Marvel’s publisher, had signed a lucrative contract with Harper & Row for an autobiography, and was pulling in additional income through speaking engagements and television consultation. A People magazine article noted his self-described workaholism, and his expensive tastes: “On his wrist hangs a heavy link silver bracelet. His feet are contained in thoroughbred Guccis. Piercing green-gray eyes are hidden behind prescription shades, but their hip image is offset by a conservative Paul Stuart herringbone jacket and tan slacks.”

  His wide smile now framed by a silvered mustache and sideburns, Stan Lee’s well-practiced anecdotes were an increasingly regular sight on television talk shows and in newspapers, where he never missed a chance to profess that his chosen medium was worthy of attention and respect. “Comic books are like the last weapon left against encroaching televisionitis, which is making non-readers out of a whole generation,” Lee told one university audience. “Most kids, if not for comics, wouldn’t read anything at all.” But in fact, he wanted nothing more than to change Marvel’s Hollywood fortunes, to get out of publishing, to get his vision of Marvel on television.

  Partnered with DePatie-Freleng, the animation studio that created the Pink Panther cartoons, Marvel began developing more Saturday morning shows, starring Spider-Woman and the Silver Surfer; Hanna-Barbera spun off a member of the Fantastic Four for the unfortunate Fred and Barney Meet the Thing. But when it came time to package a cartoon based on the current X-Men lineup, nearly the entire team was unfamiliar to Lee (“I didn’t know we had any Russian superheroes,” he told one interviewer) and he had to summon Jim Shooter for help.

  “Sol Brodsky got pictures of all the X-Men, old and new,” said Shooter, “and they were sitting on the couches in Stan’s office, but they didn’t have any names on them. And he had a list on paper with the names and powers, but there were no names on the pictures. So he called me in, and he said, ‘Okay, look. I know the old X-Men. Now who are these guys
?’ ”

  “I should have gotten out of this business twenty years ago,” Lee told Circus magazine in 1978. “I would have liked to make movies, to be a director or a screenwriter, to have a job like Norm Lear or Freddie Silverman. I’d like to be doing what I’m doing here, but in a bigger arena.”

  The CBS president who’d purchased rights for Marvel characters had been fired before any shows had aired; the CEO who fired him said he didn’t want “CBS turning into a cartoon network.” Although the Hulk show garnered respectable ratings, plans for other properties began drying up. After Man from Atlantis bombed, a Sub-Mariner series was deemed too similar and scrapped. A Human Torch show was abandoned because CBS feared it would lead children to set themselves on fire. A Doctor Strange pilot aired opposite Roots, and bombed. When indifferent producers ignored Lee’s notes on the Spider-Man show, he publicly complained about the writing.

  Lee and Galton, worried that the days of the comics industry were numbered, wanted an escape hatch. They convinced Cadence to investigate the purchase of a small studio, only to then be told it would be too costly. Finally, after Warner Bros.’ Superman movie became a runaway hit, Lee was sent out to California to work out a permanent partnership with DePatie-Freleng. He stayed in Los Angeles for most of 1979 and fantasized about settling there permanently. While he was there, he shopped around his Silver Surfer treatment—based on the book he’d done with Kirby. It was optioned by producer Lee Kramer, with Kramer’s girlfriend, Olivia Newton-John, attached; a budget was set at $25 million.

  Marvel began taking out a series of full-page ads in Variety, attempting to pimp their characters to the highest bidder . . . or any bidder, really. One featured a head shot of Daredevil: “Daredevil is but one of over 100 exciting Marvel Characters ready right now to star in your next motion picture or television production,” it read. “All Marvel Characters have their own identity—their own personal story—and the potential for outrageous stardom.” Nothing happened.

  Back in New York, Galton and Shooter discussed the launch of Epic, a science-fiction comic magazine in the vein of the popular European publication Heavy Metal. It would continue the trend of high-quality color printing begun with Kiss, and even better, there would be royalties for the creators. If they couldn’t turn around the downward spiral of sales of regular thirty-five-cent comics, maybe they could succeed with higher-profit upscale magazines aimed at readers with disposable incomes and pretensions of sophistication.

  The idea of producing a range of higher-quality product for the fan market had been kicking around for a while. “With a new approach to distribution,” Archie Goodwin had mused three years earlier, “you could think in terms of new formats for comics and start tailoring them for particular audiences instead of producing for the wider mass sales. You could possibly have comics that are right for the bookstores.” Even as overall sales of new comics had slumped, the fan/collector market had grown—Marvel’s nonreturnable sales had increased twentyfold in just five years—and others had figured out how to benefit. Phil Seuling, the former high school teacher who was buying directly from Marvel and DC at a 60 percent discount, had made a small fortune over the past few years; he was now supplying to more than three hundred comic stores, which were popping up at lightning speed. Other dealers had followed his lead of purchasing directly from publishers at a low rate, but no one managed to snag terms quite so favorable. So in November 1978, one such distributor filed a lawsuit against Seuling’s Sea Gate Distribution, as well as Marvel, DC, and other publishers, alleging they’d formed a monopolistic distribution operation.

  While lawyers moved toward settlements in that case, a Denver comic-store owner named Chuck Rozanski wrote a pointed letter to Marvel. The company was missing a great business opportunity, Rozanski said, by refusing to offer other sellers the same deal they’d given Seuling, whose demands of advance payment from store owners was discouraging bulk orders. Rozanski pointed out that industry-wide comic sales had dropped more than 50 percent over the past twenty years, that erratic newsstand distribution was costing the industry readers, and that comic-store retailers should be the publishers’ closest allies. He sent copies of the letters to three hundred of his peers.

  Rozanski’s timing was perfect. He was invited to New York to meet with Galton, Shooter, and circulation director Ed Shukin, who considered his suggestions about setting up a credit line for direct purchasing, cooperative advertising, and better information about upcoming product. Shukin placed an ad for a direct-sales manager who would attend all the major conventions, and who possessed the “ability to structure, instruct, and assist in the opening and operation of new shops.” That summer, Shukin, Shooter, and COO Barry Kaplan flew out to the San Diego Comic-Con, where they met with about fifty retailers. Within months, Marvel announced that a number of “classy” projects with slick paper and cardboard covers were in the works; in time, they’d be called “graphic novels.”

  Shooter’s impact, which not only had expanded the editorial staff but siphoned power from the Bullpen, was undeniable. “With the other editors-in-chief,” he said, “it often seemed like they were sort of an appendix, a necessary evil. The company was really being run by John Verpoorten . . . technically, Verpoorten reported to the Editor-in-Chief, but he was, in fact, the man who was getting the stuff out.”

  Those days were over. Shooter fired the production manager. He stripped Marie Severin of her art director title, and shuffled her over to Sol Brodsky’s Special Projects division.

  Shortly afterward, Dave Cockrum, on staff as a cover designer, sent an excoriating letter to Stan Lee. When the Avengers’ faithful butler, Jarvis, resigned from his post in an issue of Iron Man, editor Jim Salicrup took Cockrum’s letter, changed the names, and inserted it into the comic:

  To: Anthony Stark

  This is to notify you that I am tendering my resignation from my position. This resignation is to take effect immediately.

  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 The 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.

  Sincerely,

  Jarvis

  cc: The Avengers

  No one would mistake Marvel for one big happy family now. Shooter replaced Rick Marschall, the editor of Marvel’s magazine line, with Lynne Graeme, who’d never worked in comics, and directed her to oversee the text features in Tomb of Dracula, on which Marv Wolfman had previously enjoyed autonomy. “I don’t want to continue working with chimpanzees,” Wolfman declared, and stormed off to DC, where his best friend, Len Wein, had recently been hired as an editor. A dispute between Shooter and Gene Colan over rejected Howard the Duck pages nearly ended in Colan’s departure after fourteen years at Marvel, until Lee stepped in and smoothed things over. One Marvel staffer suffered a recurring dream in which he pushed Shooter from an airplane hatch.

  Meanwhile, throughout the line, the creative assignments began to resemble a laconic game of Whac-A-Mole, with each substitution having little effect on the acceptably bland quality that had defined many of the series throughout the 1970s. Bill Mantlo’s Fantastic Four and David Michelinie’s Amazing Spider-Man differed little from Wolfman’s workmanlike renditions; Mantlo’s Incredible Hulk was as aimless as Roger Stern’s had been; every issue of Captain America allowed different writers and artists to showcase nothing much at all. There
was nothing new, of course, about a legion of journeymen filling page after page with standard-formula fight scenes and talky expositions, and, in fact, the bottom level had been brought up slightly. The difference was that, through all the strife with personnel, the high points had been noticeably attenuated.

  By October 1979, morale at Marvel was low enough to attract the attention of The New York Times, which quoted anonymous staffers grousing about middling-quality comics and a focus on licensing toys and Slurpee cups and bath towels. Even Roy Thomas, the last remaining writer-editor, sounded off. “There is a feeling among most of the people I know,” he said, “that Marvel has become more callous and inhuman.” Stan Lee, who was spending most of his time in Los Angeles, had to call a meeting to reassure the staff that Marvel’s focus was still on publishing comic books. “I have the sense that he wants to be like Walt Disney,” said one writer of Lee. “Comics are sort of beneath him.”

  Shooter called the story “garbage” and denied that merchandising deals were overshadowing the comics. The direct-sales market, in fact, was already looking like a bright future; in 1979 the roughly 750 comic stores may have accounted for only 6 percent of Marvel’s gross sales, but those $3.5 million in sales had grown from $300,000 in 1974, and from $1.5 million in 1976. Even as newsstand sales continued dropping—and only 20–40 percent of issues shipped to distributors ended up in the hands of customers—nonreturnable sales to comic stores meant a far greater profit margin.