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Origins of Marvel Comics
A Gallery Book. Gallery Books has a great book for every reader.
- GenresGraphic Novels
368 pages, Hardcover
Published October 1, 2024
3 people are currently reading
2 people want to read
About the author
Stan Lee
7,563 books2,340 followersStan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber) was an American writer, editor, creator of comic book superheroes, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.
With several artist co-creators, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor as a superhero, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, The Inhumans, and many other characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. He subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.
With several artist co-creators, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor as a superhero, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scarlet Witch, The Inhumans, and many other characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. He subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 5, 2024
It’s hard for me to believe that Origins of Marvel Comics, the first major reprinting of Marvel Comics from the 1960s, came out 50 years ago, in 1974. Gallery13 (a company I’ve never heard of, but evidently it’s the comics arm of Simon & Schuster, who originally published Origins under their Fireside Books imprint), has published this commemorative hardbound, edited by former IDW chief Chris Ryall. It includes a foreword by him, an interview with Linda Sunshine—who was the editor of the original Marvel paperbacks—an essay by Marvel senior VP and executive editor Tom Brevoort on the “Marvel Method” of producing comics, Alex Ross’s new version of John Romita’s famous original cover, with a breakdown of how it was created (spoiler alert: I like Romita’s original cover better, and throughout the book, you’ll find his original paintings of the cover characters), and other special features alongside the complete reprinting of the book. (There is also a paperback reissue of the original book for a much cheaper price, minus the special features.) This is famously the book where Stan Lee starts to take more credit than he’s due for the creation of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Doctor Strange. And he’s already making stuff up: Hulk was not a best-seller like FF and Spidey; it was cancelled after six issues, and there’s no way he got the idea for Thor from a radio interview where the interviewer told him he was a modern mythologist—the radio interviews with Stan didn’t come until years later. But it’s also a book that I absolutely loved when it came out, and I bought all the subsequent Fireside Marvel books, whose reproduction went steadily downhill after Origins. Either way, this deluxe edition is worth the price, thanks to the new material, which adds to the book’s history and helps set the record straight as to who actually did what to create these comics book heroes who have stood the test of time, with the essays by Brevoort and Ross.
December 23, 2024
Okay, this one?
This was a TRIP.
Fifty years ago (plus some months, I know it was summer), my parents were planning a trip to drive from Ontario to Winnipeg, Manitoba, roughly a 24-hour straight drive, but we'd be taking a week, then spending a week there, and then a week back home. I was not yet quite 12, and I had what I thought was a sizable comic book collection, and a couple of SF books, but I'd seen Stan Lee's Soapbox talks about this ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS book. But, at a time when the average paperback was somewhere around 75 cents to $1.25, that $7.95 price tag was STEEP. I somehow cajoled my parents into agreeing to allow me to buy it for the trip. It was supposed to last me the entire three weeks.
I still remember my stepfather walking into the living room the night before we were to leave and catching me. I'd just thought I'd read the first couple of pages and leave the rest for the trip, but he'd caught me halfway through it. And man, was he angry that they'd spent all that money and I was almost finished it. "You aren't getting another one, so you'd better be ready to read it a few times!"
Little did he know.
I read it four times over that trip, and enjoyed it every time. I've read it a few times since, too.
Today, I picked up this newly-released 50th anniversary edition, filled with bonus material that's fun, but doesn't match the rollicking tone or the alliterative depths of Stan the Man. Though, it does serve to straighten some of Stan's more self-aggrandizing fables about the creation of some of the most popular comic book heroes on the planet.
I did get a kick out of how everyone—myself included—considered this "just another book" back in those innocent days of 1974. And then, I flip to Stan's prologue, originally on page 9, now on page 47 in this new version, and read some of the things he wrote.
No one else considered this book would be around, read and re-read, fifty years later...no one but the man with the ego, Stan Lee. He called it good, and he called it right.
And then, even more, he foresaw the world fifty years on, "...the endlessly spreading virus of too much reality..."
Nobody writes like Stan wrote, which likely isn't a bad thing. And nobody (at the time) promoted themselves in such a spectacular, yet self-effacing manner as he did. But re-reading this book, fifty years on, I found I enjoyed the heck out of his style. Stan was an idea guy, and he needed the equally impressive geniuses of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and John Romita and all the rest to pull those stories out of his head and give them life.
They do so here.
This is a fun book, and a look back to a mythologized time where all the magic coalesced and the New Age of Marvel was born.
And, unlike that first time I read this book, this time? Yeah, I read it in one sitting, because I don't have a three week trip ahead of me.
But, for that entire time I read this again? I was that skinny little kid in his parents' living room, almost twelve years old, and falling under the magic spell of Ringmaster Stan Lee.
Thank you for that.
This was a TRIP.
Fifty years ago (plus some months, I know it was summer), my parents were planning a trip to drive from Ontario to Winnipeg, Manitoba, roughly a 24-hour straight drive, but we'd be taking a week, then spending a week there, and then a week back home. I was not yet quite 12, and I had what I thought was a sizable comic book collection, and a couple of SF books, but I'd seen Stan Lee's Soapbox talks about this ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS book. But, at a time when the average paperback was somewhere around 75 cents to $1.25, that $7.95 price tag was STEEP. I somehow cajoled my parents into agreeing to allow me to buy it for the trip. It was supposed to last me the entire three weeks.
I still remember my stepfather walking into the living room the night before we were to leave and catching me. I'd just thought I'd read the first couple of pages and leave the rest for the trip, but he'd caught me halfway through it. And man, was he angry that they'd spent all that money and I was almost finished it. "You aren't getting another one, so you'd better be ready to read it a few times!"
Little did he know.
I read it four times over that trip, and enjoyed it every time. I've read it a few times since, too.
Today, I picked up this newly-released 50th anniversary edition, filled with bonus material that's fun, but doesn't match the rollicking tone or the alliterative depths of Stan the Man. Though, it does serve to straighten some of Stan's more self-aggrandizing fables about the creation of some of the most popular comic book heroes on the planet.
I did get a kick out of how everyone—myself included—considered this "just another book" back in those innocent days of 1974. And then, I flip to Stan's prologue, originally on page 9, now on page 47 in this new version, and read some of the things he wrote.
But even as I pen these imperishable words...
...this volume. Call it a sampler if you will. Call it a few delicate drops of literary elixir gleaned from a bottomless sea of superhero sagas. Or call it, perhaps, a remedy, a pictorial tonic to relieve the awesome affliction that threatens us all: the endlessly spreading virus of too much reality in a world that is losing its legends—a world that has lost its heroes. (emphasis mine)
No one else considered this book would be around, read and re-read, fifty years later...no one but the man with the ego, Stan Lee. He called it good, and he called it right.
And then, even more, he foresaw the world fifty years on, "...the endlessly spreading virus of too much reality..."
Nobody writes like Stan wrote, which likely isn't a bad thing. And nobody (at the time) promoted themselves in such a spectacular, yet self-effacing manner as he did. But re-reading this book, fifty years on, I found I enjoyed the heck out of his style. Stan was an idea guy, and he needed the equally impressive geniuses of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and John Romita and all the rest to pull those stories out of his head and give them life.
They do so here.
This is a fun book, and a look back to a mythologized time where all the magic coalesced and the New Age of Marvel was born.
And, unlike that first time I read this book, this time? Yeah, I read it in one sitting, because I don't have a three week trip ahead of me.
But, for that entire time I read this again? I was that skinny little kid in his parents' living room, almost twelve years old, and falling under the magic spell of Ringmaster Stan Lee.
Thank you for that.
February 20, 2025
A classic, now slightly updated to ‘tone down ‘ a bit of Lee’s hysterical hyperbole!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews