Marvel is one of the biggest success stories in all of comics and entertainment, but that ascension didn't happen without making a few enemies — and doing some pretty shady things — along the way.
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00:00Marvel is one of the biggest success stories in all of comics and entertainment, but that
00:04ascension didn't happen without making a few enemies — and doing some pretty shady things
00:08along the way.
00:10The publishing house that began as Timely Comics eventually became known as Atlas Comics,
00:14which focused on quick, formulaic work that followed safe commercial trends. But Atlas
00:19was actually a division of a larger publishing company known as Magazine Management that
00:23remained the parent company of Marvel until well into the 1960s, and the flagship section
00:29was the Men's Magazine division. The magazines published by this division included such titles
00:33as Male, Stag, and Swank. The features on their pages included adventure stories, sports
00:39and lifestyle coverage, sexual advice columns, and, of course, pin-up photographs and illustrations.
00:44Some of these magazines even evolved into straight-up pornographic publications in later
00:48decades, although by that point they no longer had any corporate connection with Marvel.
00:53Stan Lee is in many ways the face of Marvel Comics, but he wasn't the company's founder.
00:58Instead, Timely Comics, the company that would later become Marvel, was founded by Martin
01:02Goodman in 1939. Lee's imprint on the brand came later, when he spent two decades as its
01:08creative head and oversaw its transformation into the giant that we know today. But a little
01:12less well-known is how Lee benefited from some family connections to get his foot in
01:17the door at Timely.
01:18Although accounts of his career beginnings have varied over the years, Lee himself wrote
01:22in his autobiography that his uncle, Robbie Solomon, an employee at Marvel in 1940, suggested
01:27that his nephew apply for a position there when he was 16 or 17. Solomon even personally
01:32introduced Lee to editor Joe Simon. Even more noteworthy is that Lee was the cousin of Gene
01:38Davis, Martin Goodman's wife. According to Simon, Goodman had Solomon ask him to put
01:42his wife's teenage cousin to work, and Lee then began to work as Simon's assistant.
01:47Martin was actually my cousin-in-law. I learned that he had an opening in the comic book department."
01:55In 1956, Martin Goodman decided to stop self-distributing Atlas Comics magazines, instead striking
02:01a deal with the American News Company. Alas, A&C ended up going out of business shortly
02:06afterwards, due to a Justice Department lawsuit, and Atlas Comics found itself in need of a
02:10new distributor. So Atlas turned to the only company that would agree to distribute its
02:14titles, National Comics, the publisher that would later be known as DC Comics.
02:19Now slotted into the portfolio of independent news distributors, National Comics' distribution
02:24the Atlas team found itself doubly humiliated. In addition to having to rely on the distribution
02:29services of its biggest competitor, the company was also forced to accept the stifling terms
02:34imposed by independent news. Monthly production was drastically reduced, reportedly dropping
02:38from about 80 titles per month to fewer than 12. This arrangement with National Comics
02:43didn't last long, but it was certainly one of the roughest patches in Marvel history.
02:48Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were central figures in Marvel's evolution, but they both eventually
02:52left the company under bitter circumstances, largely due to their strained work relationships
02:57with Stan Lee. Kirby left Marvel for DC in 1970, and in later years he frequently made
03:03negative remarks about Lee. This included accusing him of delegating scripting work
03:07to other writers and then taking credit for it, and disputing Lee's claims that he, not
03:12Kirby, was the primary mastermind behind the creation of Fantastic Four.
03:16Following Kirby's death in 1994, his estate had legal battles with Lee that extended until
03:212014. Ditko, meanwhile, made no secret of the reasons that drove him to leave Marvel
03:26in 1966. He accused Lee of fostering an environment in which only his artistic contributions and
03:32ideas were deemed essential, while everyone else's were merely ancillary.
03:35I'm the guy who said, I have an idea for a strip called Spider-Man, and so forth.
03:42Marvel films and TV shows have a spotty track record with LGBTQ representation, and although
03:47the comics division has contributed many openly queer characters, there have been serious
03:52issues there as well. As it turns out, there may have actually been a corporate mandate
03:56expressly banning such characters. Jim Shooter worked as Marvel's editor-in-chief from 1978
04:02to 1987, and his tenure was controversial in many respects. But perhaps the most disquieting
04:07part of his time in charge was the widely reported allegation that he explicitly forbade
04:12gay characters. For instance, North Star, a member of the Alpha Flight team from the
04:16X-Men comics, was intended by his co-creator John Byrne to be gay, but Byrne has also stated
04:21that Shooter banned explicit mentions of the character's sexuality. To make matters worse,
04:26Shooter himself wrote a Hulk comic in 1980 that featured the first openly queer characters
04:30in Marvel history, but it wasn't exactly positive representation, as they were two men who attempt
04:35to sexually assault Bruce Banner in the shower at a YMCA.
04:40In the late 1980s, Marvel Comics reached the height of its commercial success with issues
04:44of Spider-Man and X-Men basically printing money. Then, in 1989, Revlon executive Ronald
04:49Perlman bought Marvel Entertainment for over $82 million. Perlman took Marvel Entertainment
04:55public in 1991. It was a decision that fell in line with the growing comic speculation
04:59bubble, in which collectors were accumulating issues in hopes of later reselling them at
05:04exorbitantly high values. In addition to buying Marvel, Perlman also shelled out massive amounts
05:09of money to buy trading companies.
05:11Marvel, meanwhile, turned its focus more and more aggressively toward making as much money
05:15as possible. This included increasing the volume of publication, betting big on crossovers,
05:20mining extra coins through variant covers, and producing more merchandise than ever.
05:25But the quality of the comics themselves didn't remain at a high level, and Marvel basically
05:29cheapened its brand and wore out its fan base through sheer saturation.
05:34In 1992, seven of the greatest Marvel artists of the era defected to start their own comics
05:39publishing company. The artists in question were Todd McFarlane, Eric Larson, Rob Liefeld,
05:45Wills Portacio, Mark Silvestri, Jim Valentino, and Jim Lee. The company they founded was
05:50none other than Image Comics, which would be responsible for envelope-pushing influential
05:54titles like Invincible and The Walking Dead.
05:56How are many guys gonna break away and start their own thing?
06:00These seven men left Marvel because of a pronounced dissatisfaction with how talent was being
06:05treated at the company. Their founding of Image changed the face of the industry forever
06:10and left Marvel floundering creatively even more than it already was. And it happened
06:14specifically because Marvel had begun to take its artists for granted.
06:19All booms come to an end, and by the mid-'90s, it was clear that growing exponentially forever
06:23was not a viable business strategy for Marvel Entertainment Group. Nor was it for the comics
06:28industry as a whole, for that matter. Just as quickly as it had grown to utterly unreasonable
06:33proportions, the comic speculation bubble burst dramatically and spectacularly. Suddenly,
06:38comics were no longer viable investments, and the market of collectors looking to resell
06:42in the future evaporated, leaving the entire industry in a massive slump. And Marvel had
06:47the hardest fall of all.
06:49In 1996, the company found itself over $600 million in debt. Ronald Perlman filed for
06:55Chapter 11 bankruptcy that year, initiating a legal scuffle for control of Marvel that
06:59ended with toy manufacturer Toy Biz buying the company in 1997. The period leading up
07:05to and immediately following the bankruptcy was the darkest ever for Marvel. It still
07:09had a stable of characters that were beloved around the world, but it was in such dire
07:13financial straits that it had to license those characters at a bargain, which included selling
07:18the Spider-Man movie rights to Sony and the X-Men movie rights to Fox.
07:22Marvel eventually recovered from its near-death in the 90s by betting everything on the Marvel
07:27Cinematic Universe. While that turnaround is extremely impressive, the MCU era hasn't
07:32been without its controversies. For one thing, it may have been dispiriting to fans who espouse
07:37progressive values to see former Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter develop a close political
07:42relationship with Donald Trump and act as an unofficial advisor to his administration.
07:46But those who had been paying attention to Perlmutter's history probably weren't exactly
07:51shocked by that development.
07:52When people show you who they are, believe them.
07:56After all, this was the same Perlmutter who appeared to seriously oppose the idea of making
08:01a female-led superhero movie, which was revealed in one of the various emails leaked following
08:06the Sony Pictures hack of 2014. In a message to Sony exec Michael Linton, Perlmutter noted
08:11the poor financial performances of Elektra, Catwoman, and 1984's Supergirl as examples
08:16of something he'd discussed with Linton. Presumably, the idea that superhero flicks centered around
08:21women were bad business. It could be charitably interpreted that Perlmutter was suggesting
08:25that the MCU could buck this trend with female-led films of its own, but that would seem extremely
08:30unlikely considering his political affiliations and the fact that it took Marvel 10 years
08:35and the end of Perlmutter's tenure to finally release Captain Marvel.
08:39Like a lot of contemporary American action blockbusters, Marvel Cinematic Universe films
08:43are frequently made in collaboration with the American military. The Department of Defense
08:48and the Armed Forces don't officially contribute any direct funding to Marvel productions,
08:53but they have repeatedly struck deals in which they lend real military equipment and bases
08:57in exchange for script approval. This has led to a depiction of the U.S. military in
09:01Marvel movies that some fans and critics have called out as biased, if not outright propaganda.
09:06The first two Iron Man films, the first two Captain America films, and Captain Marvel
09:10all were made under such collaboration deals with the military. In the case of the latter,
09:15the plot focuses heavily on Carol Danvers' life as an Air Force pilot, and several training
09:19montages were shot in a style reminiscent of recruitment ads. This was compounded by
09:24the film also being explicitly used in Armed Forces social media marketing, and by Brie
09:29Larson shooting promos for the military.
09:31It's exciting to me to think that perhaps this film will spark something in little girls
09:38to see that they can fly.
09:40The way that MCU movies are economically positioned and theatrically distributed has also attracted
09:45heavy criticism. For example, the release of 2019's Avengers Endgame stirred up controversy
09:50over Disney's practice of laying claim to as many theater screens as possible in international
09:55markets. In Brazil and South Korea, journalists, politicians, and film industry professionals
09:59all called attention to the fact that the box office success of Endgame might not have
10:03been entirely organic. In both countries, Disney took advantage of the film's expected
10:08success by occupying more than half of all available theater screens, and as much as
10:1280 percent in Brazil's case. This resulted in local and smaller films getting crowded
10:17out of the marketplace.
10:19It's difficult to restrain this practice without robust, effectively enforced regulation. By
10:23banking on the fact that films like Endgame are presumed to be guaranteed moneymakers,
10:28Disney can easily persuade theater owners to give them disproportionate space in the
10:31schedule.
10:33Visual effects artists are among the film workers subjected to some of the harshest
10:36labor conditions in Hollywood. Most VFX work is done by contracting, as firms bid on a
10:41certain number of shots, and whichever company can offer the quickest turnaround time for
10:45the lowest rate will have the upper hand. In practice, this results in VFX artists being
10:50saddled with unrealistic deadlines and limited resources, which in turn leads to long, stressful
10:55hours.
10:56And Marvel has a reputation in the VFX industry for being a particularly overbearing client.
11:01There have been reports of Marvel imposing conditions on VFX contracts that forced workers
11:05into multiple months of 60- to 80-hour work weeks. The studio is also known for demanding
11:10near-complete visualizations very early on, and then requesting numerous changes, even
11:16to finished and approved effects, sometimes up to the final weeks of post-production.
11:21After years of chatter among industry workers about how Marvel projects should be avoided,
11:25if possible, the VFX workers at Marvel Studios moved to unionize in 2023. Although the in-house
11:30VFX workers are only a fraction of the hundreds of artists who work on the visual effects
11:35for MCU productions, it was still a crucial and symbolic step for a workforce that's in
11:39dire need of sturdier protections.