"Make Mine Marvel": When brand loyalty trumps the facts

(Note: The following post was written on May 15, 2022. I later added some paragraphs to clarify my points or address reader objections. You can read the original version of this post here. The most recent update was on May 18, 2022 at 11:22 am.)

There was a thread in a comics history Facebook group last week that I found interesting because to me it was an example of "buying into the myth" when it comes to Stan Lee's claims about Marvel's unique qualities and its success compared to its competitors in the 1960s. Even though everyone accepts that Lee was a constant salesman and self-promoter (which is often cited as one of his strengths by his many fans) it's mystifying to me that so many accept what Lee claimed even in cases where the facts suggest otherwise.

I don't want to pick on the Facebook poster that prompted this blog post since at least he seemed sincere and well-meaning. But here's what happened... Comics historian Bob Beerbohm started a thread pointing out that Marvel didn't begin to overtake DC in sales until 1972, when the cover price (and page count) of DC titles was raised to 25 cents while Marvel stayed at the lower page count for 20 cents. (It should be noted that sales were generally in decline for most magazines in the 1970s. While Marvel's sales had increased during the late 1960s, their gains did not approach the numbers of DC's former heights.)

Anyway, this fact is at odds with the conventional fan wisdom (but false belief) that Marvel was outselling DC during the 1960s. The fan mentality is that since Marvel had some creative momentum in the early-to-mid 1960s with the introduction of new characters like Spidey and Hulk, this surely meant that they were beating DC in sales. This myth even appeared in a Hollywood Reporter article in 2017 which claimed "the once-struggling Marvel did surprise the comic book industry when it began outselling DC in the mid-1960s, thanks in large part to the colorful, interconnected universe of characters such as Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, The Avengers and X-Men." But comic book sales in the 1960s had little to do with what collectors and fandom (which was dominated by Marvel fans by the 1970s) cared about. So, the facts contradict the fannish assumption that Marvel was besting DC sales-wise during the Silver Age, despite Lee's boasts early on about the "Marvel Age of Comics" and taking the world by storm.

See, for example, page 73 of Lee's book Origins of Marvel Comics, where he writes "As each succeeding issue of The Fantastic Four increased in sales and in popularity, we felt it behooved us no longer to deny a breathlessly waiting mankind the indescribable pleasure of another mighty Marvel superhero." On its face, such a sentence is not meant to be taken seriously, just Lee exaggerating for humorous effect. In this way, Lee was able to make a claim about the extent of Marvel's popularity without its substance being questioned or scrutinized because he's obviously just kidding around. The problem is that many of Lee's readers took his claims seriously, and then have continued to repeat them to others with a straight face. It happened in the 1960s when the comics were coming out, as many young fans became "faithful" Marvelites, urged on by Lee's partisan cheerleading, and then entered the industry as professionals or prominent fans in the decades that followed, helping to promulgate the notion of 1960s Marvel as the gold standard in comics. As other companies (including DC) tried to emulate Marvel in later decades, catering to the interests of the obsessive fan market, the industry was remade in Marvel's image -- arguably to its detriment.

One person who replied to Bob's Facebook post wrote the following: "I was always a Marvel collector. Not sure why DC didn’t appeal to me. Even when I reached the stage where I was collecting books for the art, Marvel seemed to have the artists I liked. I felt Superman was stale artistically compared to what was going on with Spiderman. You had Curt Swan on Supes (I have the greatest respect for Curt) and Romita, Kane doing Spidey. There’s a big difference as far as impact of the art goes."

There are a few things to examine in the above quote. Firstly, the poster asserts that he was "always a Marvel collector," but is "not sure" why he preferred them to Marvel. Perhaps it was the art, he says, which ignores the fact that many artists worked for both publishers. His "Romita, Kane doing Spidey" comment suggests that he is referring to the late 1960s or early 1970s -- a small window in time. (Romita drew Amazing Spider-Man, off and on, from 1966 to 1973. Gil Kane's tenure on ASM was much shorter, off and on from 1970 to 1973.) During that same period, Jim Mooney was often inking the series. Romita's successor on ASM was Ross Andru, who drew the series from 1973 to 1978. All four of these artists came to Marvel from DC: Romita had drawn for their romance line, Kane was the main Green Lantern and Atom artist, Mooney was the main Supergirl artist (for her backup strip in Action Comics) and Andru was the main Wonder Woman artist. One could argue that their art was better at Marvel than it had been at DC. And of course their art evolved over the years regardless of whether it was for Marvel or DC, possibly even influenced by the reduction in size of original art pages in the late 1960s. But for one to argue that "Marvel seemed to have the artists I liked," and to cite Gil Kane as an example of this, is a bit odd given that Kane is better known for his DC work than his Marvel work. It would be like citing Neal Adams as a Marvel artist and ignoring his work at DC. (Of course it should be acknowledged that both Romita and Kane drew numerous covers for Marvel in the 1970s, even when they didn't draw the inside pages. Just like how Neal Adams drew numerous covers for DC even when he didn't draw the comic inside.)

"I felt Superman was stale artistically compared to what was going on with Spiderman. You had Curt Swan on Supes (I have the greatest respect for Curt)..." This was another common sentiment within fandom back then, where on the one hand they have "the greatest respect" for Curt Swan, and on the other hand they would rather have someone else drawing the comic, perhaps a more dynamic fan-favorite artist like Neal Adams (who, incidentally, was often drawing the covers). "You had Curt Swan on Supes (I have the greatest respect for Curt) and Romita, Kane doing Spidey. There’s a big difference as far as impact of the art goes." Let's contemplate that thought... "There's a big difference as far as impact" when it comes to Curt Swan vs. John Romita. Really? (You can compare the two artists right here. The Amazing Spider-Man cover shown above is #87 from 1970, drawn by Romita. The Superman cover is #201 from 1967, penciled by Swan and inked by George Klein.) If we are talking about the 1969-1973 period, which the above comment about "Romita, Kane doing Spidey" indicates, one might recall that Curt Swan's pencils were being teamed with Murphy Anderson's inks around this time, and the results were not "stale artistically" as the poster describes. The regular inker (of penciler Bob Brown) on Superboy in 1969 was Wally Wood, one of the all-time greats. And of course the artist on Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen in 1970 to 1972 was Jack Kirby. These facts suggest that the poster is being selective or misleading by implying that Marvel employed superior artists. But what is the purpose of championing Marvel over DC in this manner (when they shared many of the same artists) and how did he come to hold such views? The poster continued to explain his preference for Marvel: "I saw DC as being dogmatic in their presentation of heroes. All the heroes had to fit into a mold. Marvel seemed more diverse."

It's a bit unclear what "mold" the poster is referring to here, since DC's heroes changed over time. Even Superman changed, if one compares an early 1960s Superman comic with an early 1970s Superman comic (when, for example, Denny O'Neil was writing the comic, and Clark Kent was a TV newsman for WGBS). Batman's evolution throughout the 1960s is well-documented, changing direction in 1964 and yet again in 1969. Wonder Woman ditched her traditional superhero identity entirely in 1968 and wouldn't wear her familiar costume again until 1972. And those three characters -- Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman -- are DC's three most famous superheroes. "Marvel seemed more diverse" than that? When Marvel didn't even publish a female superhero series (like Wonder Woman) during the 1960s? The poster then wrote: "Of course Marvel was getting into teenagers’ heads with teenage characters like Peter Parker. That was something DC didn’t do." This comment was the kicker for me, because it was so obviously untrue. I wrote a one-sentence reply: "DC published more teenage-age superhero characters than Marvel ever did in the 1960s and 1970s." I could have elaborated, but didn't. However, the more that I thought about it, I wondered how the poster could have ever thought such a thing. Was he really unaware of Superboy, Supergirl, Robin (and the rest of the Teen Titans), the Legion of Super-Heroes, Hawk & Dove, Kamandi, etc.? In trying to figure out an explanation for this, it occurred to me that perhaps such fans are simply parroting Lee's hype about Marvel, how their comics were reaching the youth in college, when the evidence for such an impact is primarily anecdotal -- and mainly coming from Lee. In this way Lee was able to flatter his young impressionable readers that their decision to read a Marvel comic distinguished them from other comic book readers. The tactic can be traced to the debut of Amazing Adult Fantasy in late 1961, which was billed on its covers as "The Magazine That Respects Your Intelligence" despite its simple-minded five-page fare. Its first letters page appeared in issue #12 (May 1962) which contains (as its GCD entry describes it) a "letter from 'John Doe' supposedly an anonymous 16-year old from Texas [who] asks if he broke the law by buying the book. This may be a planted letter by Lee to explain that Amazing Adult Fantasy is a title that can be read by all ages."

Lee's response to the letter deserves to be repeated here, to demonstrate his method of bashing the competition as he praises his own efforts: "No, seriously, the only reason we put the word ADULT on the cover, is to distinguish our carefully-edited, and literately-written mag from the usual crop of comics which seem to be slanted for the average 6 year old with a 3 year old mentality! Anyone with brains enough to appreciate Amazing Adult Fantasy is our type of reader."

A letter in the next issue (signed by one "B. Franklin") complimented the comic in this way: "Do you want to know what I like best about Amazing? It's the fact that the stories are DIFFERENT from all your so-called competitors! Even when you write a clinker, it's still better than any other mag because it's done in a refreshingly different, mature style. It's the one comic I'm not embarrassed to be seen reading in public. And my teacher agrees with me." It's possible that this letter was also a manufactured letter, like the one immediately above it on the same page that was written by one "Joan Boorcock, Newcastle, England." (Boorcock was the maiden name of Lee's British-born wife Joan.)

Eventually Lee was able to receive genuine letters expressing similar sentiments without having to manufacture them himself, as readers followed the template that was set before them in the letters page of what other people were saying and how they were saying it. (Lee noted near the end of this video that he finally began getting the kinds of letters he wanted after changing the readers' "Dear Editor" introductions to the chummier "Dear Stan.") The final "Adult" issue of AAF (#14, July 1962) featured many more letters than the previous two issues, including one from a self-described UCLA English Major who says that the only "fella who tops you [Lee] was named Wm. Shakespeare! But in my book, you haven't any OTHER competition!" Another reader claims "For the first time I've found a comic mag which I'm proud to be seen carrying in public!" (It should be understood that the covers at this time featured such alien-monster tales as "The Terror of Tim Boo Ba!" and "The Coming of the Krills!")

When Lee would later recount the origin of Spider-Man (who first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15, the word "adult" having been dropped from the series title), he would often portray Marvel's then-publisher Martin Goodman as being astonished at Lee's proposal of a teenage superhero, saying that teenagers could only be sidekicks not the hero. Again, this is a baffling claim given that Superboy had been starring in two DC comics (Adventure Comics and his own series) since the late 1940s. Also, one must ignore the teenage superheroes of the past like Captain Marvel, Jr., Golden Lad and even Marvel's own Marvel Boy of the 1950s.

It could be argued that Marvel's innovation was introducing a teenage hero who nonetheless was called "Spider-Man" instead of "Spider-Boy" or "Spider-Lad." And also that, unlike Superboy and Supergirl, this teenage Spider-Man was not a spin-off of an adult character. Billy Batson was a teenager who turned into an adult superhero called Captain Marvel, and Archie's The Fly (which debuted in 1959) was about a teenager named Tommy Troy who turned into an adult superhero called The Fly when rubbing a magic ring. The teenage Peter Parker turned into a "-Man" simply by wearing a costume and presenting himself as an adult rather than what he was, a nerdy high school student. (When the core concept is put into plain words like that, the absurdity of the strip is made more obvious. But according to fandom's conventional wisdom, DC was "silly" and juvenile, while Marvel was "serious" and grown-up.) So why create a teenage character who calls himself "Man" instead of "Boy"? The explanation is understandable if "Spider-Man" originated with Jack Kirby presenting to Lee the idea of "Spiderman," recycled from Joe Simon's Silver Spider idea that later evolved into The Fly. The rejected "Spiderman" name is already attached to the teenager who magically transforms into an adult hero (which explains the "man" in his name). For that idea to proceed into production, making it onto penciled pages that are then shown to its prospective inker (Steve Ditko) causes one to wonder about how light was Lee's creative involvement in the early stages of not only this aborted version of the character, but in what actually got published in the years that followed. Lee's hand seems heavier after the fact -- after the pages have been penciled, after the characters have been conceived and are expressing their personalities on the penciled pages -- than it is early on, when a blank white page is staring the "illustrator" in the face and the heavy lifting of creation must be done.
But, in the gospel according to Lee, it was he who came up with the name and the concept and had to convince and outwit his own publisher to allow this (successful in retrospect) character to be given life. In the telling of the tale, Lee looks like a visionary and Martin Goodman looks like a dope. This is a common Lee tactic, where he is the lovable hero of the story ("our fearless leader"), having to put up with the resistance of his unimaginative boss, and the quirks of artists like Kirby and Ditko, who seem to hold a grudge against his charming self for some mysterious reason. Before fandom even considered the Marvel superhero line to be the best thing since sliced bread, it was Lee who promoted that view through hyperbole and hype. Eventually fans came around to thinking Marvel comics as "masterpieces," just like Lee said.

A letter in Fantasy Masterpieces #10 (Aug. 1967) offers an example of how the fans began to sound like Stan himself: "After all, who but Mighty Marvel could have dreamed up..." "who says this isn't the Merry Marcher's age of redundant puns?" "I'll just toss a big 'hang loose' at you..." etc., etc. Lee's talent was in giving the Marvel titles a breezy tone that many readers evidently embraced so fully that this Lee voice became their own, and was fed back to him in a kind of shared language. The writers that followed Lee like Roy Thomas came out of this group which became a self-perpetuating factory of Stan soundalikes. Maybe that's why they love him so much; he gave them their voice and made them want to be like him.

Lee's book Origins of Marvel Comics rewrote comics history so that "nothing much was happening" until The Fantastic Four made the scene in 1961. Fans who didn't know any better (and some who should have) internalized this distorted view of what was going on in the comics industry in 1961, and the rest of that decade. Even Alan Moore, in an interview published in the Dec. 1985 issue of Mile High Futures, was quoted saying the following: "If Fantastic Four #1 hadn't come out when it did, then the comics field would probably have died a lot sooner because DC was stagnant at that time and the readership was falling, slowly but surely. It wasn't what it was in the Fifties. Of course, it is a lot less today. But the thing is, before Fantastic Four #1 came out, I doubt that anybody could have sat down and given you an intellectual blow by blow account of what was needed to save the comic book industry. It was just one of those quantum jumps that comes along."

When one looks at what DC was publishing in 1960-1962, it's baffling that anyone would characterize it as "stagnant." If anything, it was Marvel that was stagnant prior to FF #1, not DC. Also, we are supposed to believe two conflicting ideas at the same time: that Marvel doing FF was prompted by DC introducing the Justice League of America in 1960, but that somehow "DC was stagnant" nonetheless. When asked how exactly DC was stagnant, fans will often answer in terms that criticize the comics for not being like what Marvel would become: continuing stories, bickering heroes, etc. This is like criticizing Laurel and Hardy for not being like the Three Stooges, i.e., judging one thing by the standards of some other thing that had its own style and approach.

It's interesting, however, that such fans rarely do the reverse, criticizing Marvel in terms of DC's characteristics, pointing out the lack of imaginary stories or teenage sidekicks as missed opportunities on Marvel's part. Stan Lee claimed to have hated sidekicks (let's ignore Rick Jones for the moment) but many of DC's teenage sidekicks have had long runs in their own titles, as members of long-running group titles, or as backup strips, which indicates that many readers don't share Lee's negative opinion about them. I'm hesitant to deny the "lived experience" of people who were there, but I think that their perception may have been influenced by a naive fandom that was swallowing and regurgitating Lee's biased view of the industry. This isn't to deny the explosion of classic characters that debuted at Marvel between 1961 and 1964, but one ought not to deny the likewise impressive innovations that occurred at DC between, say, 1959 and 1963.

In Origins (pages 71-72), Lee provided a specific example that supposedly set Marvel apart from the competition: "For example, in the early strip [FF#1] we tried to give some dimension to the melancholy Moleman. Remember when he explains how he reached his underground kingdom on Monster Isle -- and why? Didn't you find yourself sympathizing with him, just a bit? There he was, ostracized by his fellow man -- and woman -- because his physical appearance left a little something to be desired. He couldn't find acceptance in our world, so he set out to find another -- one which might have a place for him. Now this was hardly reaching the dramatic heights of a Kafka, but it was almost unheard of in a comic book. Heretofore, villains were villains just because they were villains. Comics merely had good guys and bad guys, and nobody ever bothered with the whys or wherefores. But here, in the first fateful issue of The Fantastic Four, our readers were given a villain with whom they might empathize -- a villain who was driven to what he had done by the slings and arrows of a heartless, heedless humanity. It was a first. It was an attempt to portray a three-dimensional character in a world that had been composed of stereotypes. To comicbookdom, it was tantamount to the invention of the wheel."

And yet, when Adventure Comics #271 (April 1960) told the origin of Lex Luthor, we learn that he started out as Superboy's biggest fan. It was only after his hair fell out after a lab accident that he blamed Superboy and became his enemy. (You can read the story in full here.) But DC's sympathetic backstory for Luthor is ignored (Lee likely never knew about it) and the credit for "the invention of the wheel" is given to Lee's own work (which came later) by Lee himself. Another example is when fans credit Lee with showing Peter Parker having money problems, claiming this to an unheard-of innovation in comics, when DC's Star Hawkins (who debuted in 1960) also had money problems, regularly forced to pawn his robot companion. But chances are that you've never heard of him.

I think a lot of people believed the things that Lee claimed to have pioneered because many of them didn't know what came before. It's like with Lee's oft-repeated claim in the 1960s that he received as much fan mail as the Beatles; it's a claim that most people accept at face value because contradicting it would involve having information from both sides, weighing the evidence and arriving at an informed conclusion. Sometimes reading Lee's claims about his own achievements makes me wonder if he really knew what he had achieved. Marvel's superhero comics did have merits that other superhero comics of the time did not. The main thing was that there were often consequences to actions in one story which weren't forgotten or ignored in the next. This eventually extended across the entire line. If former villains like Hawkeye and The Black Widow turned into good guys, it wasn't just a trick or a one-story novelty as it likely would have been at DC. There were in fact permanent changes made in DC comics -- for example, the de-aging of Ma and Pa Kent in Superboy #145 (March 1968) -- but a unified continuity across multiple series was less consistently applied (nor would that have been always desirable given DC's variety of styles). Marvel's superhero comics were presented to the reader as meaningful "epics" taking place within a cohesive universe at a time when young audiences were looking for more ambitious (or pretentious) approaches, from pop-music concept albums to paperback book trilogies to cult TV series like Star Trek. Marvel fit in with that overall trend in the late 1960s/early 1970s, at least among those willing to pick up a funnybook.

Early on, DC editor Mort Weisinger rejected the idea of presenting such an ordered universe. In the letters page of Adventure Comics #264 (Sept. 1959), a reader wondered why Aquaman's mother didn't have a fish tail like Lori Lemaris. Weisinger responded, "Are you serious? We publish fiction, not documented history. Different stories present different conditions on different worlds. If not, all stories would be monotonously alike. The Atlantis [that] Aquaman's mother came from has a different set-up than the Atlantis presented in the Superman story. We try to be consistent in our 'ground rules' for each of our characters. For example, Ma and Pa [Kent] own a general store in every issue. It isn't a general store this month and a bowling arena the next. If we show the Green Arrow visiting Mars, it is entirely likely he'll meet inhabitants and creatures different from those encountered by Jimmy Olsen or Batman. If writers didn't use their imagination to vary conditions, all comic book stories and science fiction movies would become so repetitious you'd soon lose interest." Marvel being a smaller company in the 1960s, with only one editor in charge, allowed Lee to satisfy such reader demand for story consistency in a way that DC couldn't or wouldn't do -- at least not until the 1980s when company-wide crossovers (and even encyclopedic character guides) became the norm throughout the industry.

But rather than settle for accepting the plaudits that one has deserved, for many fans (and for Lee himself) credit is given beyond what is justified and in the process claims are made about Marvel's merits that are misleading or provably untrue. For example, back in 2019, a longtime Marvel fan wrote the following on his blog regarding the merits of the "Marvel method" of creating comics compared to the traditional "full script" method employed at DC: "At most other companies the story and dialogue was written and then the comic was drawn. Since the writer could not see the images yet, he had to highlight the description in dialogue. For example, when Superman is jumping out the window the panel would show someone below saying, 'Look, there is Superman jumping out the window.' Or the description would read, 'One day, as Superman jumped out of a window.' Uniquely at Marvel that did not happen."

Let's examine the evidence. To begin with, since no example of a published Superman panel with a caption reading "One day, as Superman jumped out of a window" was shown in the blog post, we can probably assume that the blogger simply invented this for the purposes of providing an example of how such a panel might have appeared. (In other words, he made it up.) Shown below is an actual page from a Marvel comic written by Stan Lee using the "Marvel method": Captain America #100 (April 1968). As you can plainly see, the page does precisely those things that the blogger says that the "Marvel method" prevents (i.e., the words repeating what is already shown in the artwork).

More quotes from the poster on Bob Beerbohm's Facebook group: "I’m just saying there was a period of time where DC was a little stale. I guess it was the direction they were giving artists and writers. During the period of time I started collecting Marvel was great. DC too had titles I followed. The Shadow was one of them. Sword & Sorcery. Some Batman." The Shadow and Sword & Sorcery were both short-lived series. The Shadow lasted 12 issues, from 1973 to 1975. Sword of Sorcery lasted only 5 issues, all cover-dated 1973. So, this gives us another clue about the time period we are talking about -- 1973, 1974. This was the period when Marvel began to dominate sales, particularly in the fan/collector market. So, it's possible that the poster's views about Marvel and DC were formed in this environment and have imprinted on him because of his own young age at the time. And the opinions formed back then remain to this day. It might be noted, by the way, that Origins of Marvel Comics by Stan Lee was published in August 1974. The poster continued: "I’m just saying DC was doing the same thing with its major lineup it had been doing since the ‘50s during the ‘70s with few exceptions." Again, this echoes Lee's characterization of what was happening in comics prior to The Fantastic Four, as detailed in Origins of Marvel Comics. I doubt that Lee was much aware of what any comics publisher was doing, so his comment about "nothing much happening" ought to be interpreted as concerning only his own company, and in that respect Lee may be right. Nothing much was happening at Marvel prior to FF #1 -- especially compared to other comic book publishers. Marvel itself was late to the superhero game, with even Archie and Charlton beating them to it.

But Lee is not one to create an impression of Marvel being dead last; the condition must be spread throughout the industry. And so therefore we read in Origins (page 15) the following: "Yep, there we were blithely grinding out our merry little monster yarns. At the same time National Comics [DC] was still featuring Superman, Batman, and all their other costumed cuties. The Archie group was likewise doing business as usual with Archie, Jughead, and their fun-loving friends. Meanwhile, Harvey Publications was holding its own with Casper the Ghost and his capricious cohorts. Also in contention were the Charleton [sic] line of assorted comic-book titles, as well as the Dell and Gold Key offerings. We were turning out comics by the carload, but nothing much was happening." So, not only was Marvel moribund prior to FF #1, so was everyone else, based on Lee's dismissive description of their output. (It might be noted here that Gold Key was not actually created until 1962, following Western's split from Dell.) No mention, of course, that Archie was publishing The Fly, Charlton was publishing Captain Atom (in the Space Adventures anthology) drawn by Steve Ditko, or that DC's superhero revival was helping to inspire the creation of comics fandom. As a result, many fans buy into Lee's revisionist version of events, and accept that "T'was Marvel that led the way." I replied to the poster in that thread: "So "DC was doing the same thing with" Batman, Green Lantern, Legion of Super-Heroes, JLA, JSA, House of Mystery, etc., etc. that "it had been doing since the '50s during the '70s"?" Clearly DC was not doing the same thing in the 1970s that they had been doing in the 1950s, despite the poster's claim. Where would he have gotten such an idea? Lee's characterization of the industry in Origins reflects that idea of DC suffering from a lackluster status quo, of a lack of progress and momentum. Yes, DC must have been just spinning its wheels, waiting for something to happen. Never mind all of the new concepts and comics that were created at DC in the early 1960s. Per Lee, "nothing much was happening," and per the poster, "DC was doing the same thing with its major lineup it had been doing since the ‘50s." DC was stagnant, and Marvel was on the move. Why? Because Stan said so.

Anyway, after my reply to him, the poster wrote "Did I really say that? Yes, so let me explain. That really was my attitude back then. What did I know? Now I have much more all encompassing attitude. I still don’t like the stuff you know I’m talking about. But I didn’t mean to include the good stuff." Well, I guess that's that. "That really was my attitude back then." But even though the poster's tastes have grown in subsequent years, "I still don't like the stuff you know I'm talking about." Presumably he means the Superman comics drawn by Curt Swan, for whom he has the "greatest respect." (Incidentally, another Swan-Klein cover is at left: Adventure Comics #300, Sept. 1962.)

On another Facebook post a while back, former comics editor and writer Danny Fingeroth stated "Without Stan and Marvel's success, unlikely there would have been a Batman show in '66. So maybe comics would just have petered out." This was a strange remark, where even a 1960s DC success in other media is somehow attributed to Marvel, but since I wasn't even alive back then (born in 1970) and Fingeroth (born in 1950) was, I was reluctant to offer a contrary point of view.  

The argument is sometimes made that since someone wasn't around (or even alive) reading comics back then, they don't really know what happened.  While I can appreciate that sentiment, since I value the recollections of those who were there to witness history being made in real time, there is also an argument to be made that close proximity can distort one's judgment, too.  A judgment made from a sentimental or nostalgic perspective may not be as clear and objective as someone coming to it without that emotional bias.  

Last year on his podcast, Scott Edelman interviewed comics writer Jo Duffy, and around the 21-minute mark, about Duffy's comics reading preferences growing up, the following exchange occurred (transcript by me):

EDELMAN: So the eternal question that we always ask each other as young fans, Marvel vs. DC, you were on the Marvel side primarily.

DUFFY: Oh, absolutely.

EDELMAN: Yeah.

DUFFY: You know, well, I mean, for one thing -- the Marvel characters seemed to actually be involved in inter-personal relationships with each other.  The DC characters, everything was static.  I loved it, but every issue you would come into the same status quo, and you would leave and the status quo would not have changed.  I mean, occasionally there was a continued story, but things didn't go that far forward.  Spider-Man dated Betty, and then, you know, they broke up, and then he graduated from high school and you know....

Once again, "everything was static" at DC according to these Marvel readers, despite the evidence of the comic books themselves. Duffy mentions Peter Parker's graduation from high school, which happened in Amazing Spider-Man #28 (Sept. 1965). However Supergirl (Linda Danvers) graduated high school the previous year in Action Comics #318 (Nov. 1964). So much for "everything" being "static."

DUFFY: I was so excited that every month you felt like a Marvel character could conceivably lose and be heard from no more, and they could lose the people they loved, either to tragedy or to "Well, Peter, you've deceived me for the last time! Whatever's going on here, I don't want to know!" -- hmph, hmph, hmph, flounce, flounce, flounce.  So, I was more invested because it wasn't just about fighting bad guys.  It's what's going to happen to these people and why are they being so mean.

EDELMAN: There's something additional about being a Marvel fan of a certain age, and you or I are of a similar age, that we were there to see it being born, and coming in to a universe that is totally constructed with all the characters, the whole cast there, all the subplots there, is a heck of a lot different from coming in and saying "Oh, there's Fantastic Four," "Oh now here's Spider-Man," "Oh, now here's the Hulk," or, it's... little by little, and the pieces coming together.... 

[snip]

EDELMAN: To watch something being born, there's a special thrill that could not occur, could not possibly occur, over at DC which was already constructed, the whole city was built...

DUFFY: You know, what did we get at DC?  Go-go checks. We mostly did not get many new characters, or developments that could take the characters completely off the rails.

EDELMAN (sarcastically): Hey, they gave Batman a yellow circle around his bat, how do you like that? I mean, that was... And then they took it away years later [chuckles].

In the podcast, Duffy also talked about Reed and Sue getting married when asked about why she preferred Marvel (which I cut from my transcript above because it went on & on). But the first superhero wedding occurred a year before FF Annual #3 (Oct. 1965) -- in Aquaman #18 (Nov./Dec. 1964). DC's Elongated Man got married earlier, but the marriage ceremony itself wasn't shown on the pages. His honeymoon was depicted in The Flash #119 (March 1961), long before Reed and Sue first appeared in The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961).

As Edelman says above, this material was especially important to readers "of a certain age" -- and it's safe to say that the fans who have the strongest affection/loyalty for 1960s Marvel comics are ones who were born in the 1950s, who were kids in the 1960s as the comics were originally coming out.  

If they were ten years old in 1960 (as Fingeroth was) or ten years old in 1965 (as Edelman was) or ten years old in 1964 (as Duffy was), then they were the perfect age to be the most impressed by that brief window of time that saw a parade of new characters coming from the "House of Ideas" and the growth of the characters within the stories at that time.  

In 2020, Tom Orzechowski, a well-regarded letterer of Uncanny X-Men in the 1980s, wrote the following on Bob Beerbohm's Facebook wall: "A great many were not reading the comics in 1960, as I was, and were not in a position to perceive, in real time, how the Marvel scripting was more inviting than that at Charlton or at DC. Each person contributed to the best ability. That's the legacy. Marvel was a better read." According to a Google search, Tom was born in 1953, so he would have been 7 years old in 1960. When Kirby left Marvel in 1970, he would have been 17 years old. Obviously he was at the right age at the right time to glom onto the "Marvel Age of Comics." That Marvel was more "inviting," "a better read," is presented as a statement of fact rather than a personal opinion. If you don't understand or agree, then you "were not reading the comics" at the time and not qualified to know or criticize.

Had these fans-turned-pros been born a decade or two earlier, or a decade or two later, their preferences and judgments might be entirely different.  To rely, therefore, on the feelings of "those who were there" -- how they felt about the work at the time it came out -- would mean relying on the critical judgment of 10 year olds or, at best, teenagers.  

Because Kirby and Ditko were a part of their childhood enthusiasm for Marvel superhero comics in the 1960s, Kirby and Ditko are forever viewed by them through that particular lens.  Absent Lee's dialogue and captions, their other work is "missing" something for these readers (the familiar Lee style that they grew up with).  Never mind that both men had careers before and apart from their 1960s Marvel work (a fraction of their body of work overall), it is that beloved 1960s Marvel work that is the standard by which all the rest of their work is judged.  And the less it is like that work, the less it is loved by them.

One might then conclude that those who grew up reading the stuff might be the least reliable people to evaluate 1960s Marvel comics, since their judgment of them may be colored by memories of their youthful responses to it.  But people can change, and I've seen some older readers begin to change their minds about certain comics based on reacquainting themselves with it.  Whereas a longtime fan might have turned up his nose at a Lois Lane comic as a teenager, the same fan today might find it charming and refreshing to read -- finally able to see merits in the work that were ignored before.  

Because Stan Lee made himself synonymous with Marvel, with "Stan Lee Presents" appearing on their pages long after he was no longer personally involved, brand loyalty by fans to the publisher Marvel is attached to loyalty to Lee as well.  But as fans branch out beyond Marvel, and follow creators not publishers, Lee's accomplishments may appear more limited and his claims of originality less credible as one's knowledge of earlier comics grows.  Perhaps then a critical assessment of Lee can be made without being called an attack, or a challenge to the conventional wisdom offered without cries that one "wasn't there." 

When I wrote my original version of this post on a Facebook group, a poster there offered some pushback to my premise. He wrote: "It may be 'received wisdom' or Stan’s propaganda or whatever, but I get the guy. Marvel’s was a more approachable world, for sure. Saying DC had teenage strips before Marvel, though, is like saying the Sears Catalog had women before Playboy. The Legion or Superboy or whoever made zero attempt to reflect the zeitgeist, ignoring culture to a degree that was off putting, as they did in most of their universe. I’m 62, and I bought into Marvel in the 60s, completely. You can organize historical facts all you like, but the two companies felt different to kids, to me and my friends. Nothing counted in DC books -- no memories, no regrets, no lingering personal issues. 'What if Lois Lane could shit diamonds?' imaginary stories read like exactly what they were -- old, tired admen punching a clock. Not that Marvel was that different in that sense ... but it seemed different to kids at that time, and that difference was real. Maybe it WAS Stan’s phony enthusiasm, but it was real."

In my response, I pointed out that The Legion of Super-Heroes takes place in the 30th century, and Superboy took place in the 1930s, so naturally those two strips weren't going to necessarily comment on what was happening in the 1960s. And yet, even there it can be said that they reflect the times in which they were made. Shown here, for example, is the cover of Superboy #149 (cover-dated July 1968), featuring Bonnie & Clyde. The trend-setting movie based on the famous outlaws had been released in August 1967. When it comes to a DC comic like Batman, it might be said that he WAS the zeitgeist. I recall somewhere someone remarking that the pop culture of the 1960s was the three B's: Beatles, Bond and Batman. I think there is a tendency by many fans to overstate the impact of Marvel on the culture in the 1960s.

Regarding teen heroes, although Bob Haney's Teen Titans is notorious for its poor attempt at hip youth lingo, DC also had the teenage Hawk & Dove who debuted in Showcase #75 (June 1968) and were soon awarded their own series. Surely Hawk & Dove reflected the zeitgeist of the times, if that is the standard by which we are wishing to judge DC's efforts?

As for Marvel being more "approachable," this echoes what Tom Orzechowski was quoted above about them: "the Marvel scripting was more inviting than that at Charlton or at DC." And yet, for many fans (like Barry Pearl, for example, or myself) they read DC before moving on to Marvel. So, for many young readers, it was DC that was more "approachable" because of self-contained stories and more familiar characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman). If DC's approach was so "off putting," and that "it seemed different to kids at that time, and that difference was real," then how come DC was selling more than Marvel?

The poster answered that "DC sold more because of distribution, largely," without citing any evidence or data to support this belief. It's a circular argument, in my opinion: DC sold better than Marvel in the 1960s "because of distribution," but when Marvel sold better in the 1970s, "better distribution" is never offered as an explanation. What is interesting is the fact that so many fans "of a certain age" (to quote Edelman) would characterize Marvel favoritism as universal among their age group growing up, despite DC's (and Archie's, for that matter) higher sales in the 1960s. This suggests to me that Marvel fans became more engaged with comics than the readers of other companies, many entering the comics industry professionally and imposing their fannish taste on the comics to come.

Normally, readers would outgrow reading comic books for more substantial literary books, but evidently a large number of Marvel readers stuck with comics (and mainly Marvel comics) long after they would have ordinarily moved on to better things. Perhaps Lee's tongue-in-cheek characterization of his comics as "masterpieces" led to some young readers taking his words to heart, concluding that they need not look elsewhere for genuine literary masterworks and therefore have spent the rest of their lives holding those comics in the highest regard. To suggest that their original youthful assessment could be mistaken is akin to implying that their entire life is a lie, which understandably prompts a spirited defense.

Despite the length of this post, I really don't mind if any of the people I've mentioned above don't like the same comics I do, or have the same opinions as me. A lot of it comes down to personal taste, and we like what we like. And our present views can often be shaped by what we thought of them in our youth, when we read a comic book for the first time. What annoys me is the received opinion of fandom, echoing the self-serving words of Stan Lee, that dismisses the output of other publishers for reasons that are factually unsound. That's what grates.