Whether by accident or design, Marvel’s mid-1960s dual hero titles were subtly thematic.
You had Tales of Suspense featuring Iron Man and Captain America, two out-and-out superheroes. You had Tales to Astonish featuring the Hulk and the Sub-Mariner, two super-antiheroes. And finally you had Strange Tales featuring Dr. Strange and Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, two characters who operated on the periphery of the superhero world.
Fury and Strange were thematically similar and yet opposite. Both operated in secret to protect humanity, but one employed magic and the other super-science.
By 1966, Marvel characters were increasingly popular, and being recognized as such on college campuses and in the national news.
So why, you may well wonder, did such popular characters have to double up in the same magazine? That was because publisher Martin Goodman had made a colossal mistake, one that had forced him into a 1957 distribution deal with DC-owned Independent News. The catch was that Marvel’s titles would be limited to eight per month.
Beginning in 1964, with demand for Marvel obviously exceeding supply, that number was grudgingly increased, little by little. Nevertheless, Marvel’s popular superheroes were forced to bunk together until 1968.
This ad announces that the two characters get their own titles as part of a major expansion of the Marvel line.
“Marvel’s titles had been selling so well that in 1967 Goodman was able to twist Independent News’s arm into allowing him to release even more, “ Reed Tucker noted in his Marvel-DC book Slugfest. “Suddenly the characters who had previous been forced to share the so-called split books got their own stand-alone titles.”
Other among the flood of new titles at Marvel were Captain America, Captain Marvel, Capt. Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders, the western Ghost Rider, Groovy, Incredible Hulk, Mighty Marvel Western, Not Brand Ecch, Silver Surfer, Spectacular Spider-Man and Sub-Mariner.
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| Fighting supernatural menaces all day long leaves you wanting a cigarette, apparently. |
Tom Chesek wrote: The solo books for Captain America, The Hulk, and Doctor Strange were (for purposes of distribution) not “new” in that they were actually continuations of the split-book runs, hence the numbering of the issues...so Subby, Shellhead, and SHIELD were the three newies there...
ReplyDeleteI gotta say that I loved the splitters; they would become my fave Marvel titles, since by the time all those various series really found their groove they represented the best value for your hard-scrounged 12 cents; packed with universe-building work by top talents, and with no sense that one feature was merely a “backup” to the other (like, say, Tales of Asgard was to Thor)...
What bummed me out then and now was that the breakup of those books created a situation that my little-kid self couldn’t handle financially...if I got all six of those titles each month I’d have to forego a Spidey, FF, or any of my competitor favorites (like DC’s war books or Charlton’s ghost titles)...
Personally I wish that they would have retained the three anthology titles, to continue developing new series that might graduate to their own books down the road...they could have kickstarted the Ka-Zar, Doc Doom and Inhumans features that would be sharing split books anyway within a couple of years (and that were already being workshopped in places like MARVEL SUPER-HEROES)...and they could have maybe built up some momentum for Silver Surfer rather than have him start off strong and subsequently wipe out in his short-lived title..
My ideal fantasy-baseball post-expansion lineup for each of those books would be: the Avengers-adjacent Black Widow and Hawkeye in SUSPENSE (both characters had made their debuts there)...the rulers of the realm Ka-Zar (or better still, Black Panther) and Doc Doom In ASTONISH...and the more cosmic Silver Surfer (and either the Inhumans or Guardians of the Galaxy) in STRANGE TALES. Or even better, leave THAT title be, since tragically neither Doc Strange nor Nick Fury were able to sustain their own series for long...
Joel Canfield said: I think this is when I think Marvel jumped a small shark. When they only had a few titles, they could focus on them more.
ReplyDeleteJoel Canfield said: I just remember a big drop in quality with characters like Iron Man and Sub-Mariner. They didn't have enough bench strength at the time.
ReplyDeleteJoseph Lenius said: In regard to the Independent News distribution for Marvel, very early Marvels (as "Marvel") got bad distribution in and around Chicago. You pretty much had to find an outlet that carried Marvels, and those outlets didn't always order a lot of copies of titles, or order all titles, and sometimes an issue of a title would be strangely missing. Woolworth's, for example, did not originally carry Marvels, although they had pretty much all the DC and Gold Key titles.
ReplyDeleteMarvel distribution in and around Chicago gradually increased, and improved big time during the Winter of 1966-67. And during this period Woolworth's also began carrying the Marvel titles -- which is maybe not-so-coincidentally after the syndicated Marvel Super-Heroes began on TV. And Marvel distribution exploded big time in early 1968 with the team-up books splitting out to individual titles, as noted in Dan's post.
Michael Fraley said: I actually preferred the split books, in many ways, although the books which introduced me to Marvel (Capt. Marvel & Silver Surfer) remain beloved in childhood memory, and were a result of that expansion.
ReplyDeleteRon Kasman wrote: I hadn't noticed the similarity of the characters before. Thanks for pointing that out.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the split books. My favourite, though, was Giant-Man.
Melvin Shelton said: Agree with the thematic viewpoint. Truly love the .12 cent split titles.
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