| Martin Goodman | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Moe Goodman (1908-01-18)January 18, 1908 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died | June 6, 1992(1992-06-06) (aged 84) Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. |
| Area | Publisher |
Notable works | Marvel Comics Magazine Management Company Atlas/Seaboard Comics |
| Spouse | Jean Davis |
| Children | 3 |
Martin Goodman (alsoMorris Goodman;[1] bornMoe Goodman;[2] January 18, 1908 – June 6, 1992[2][3]) was an Americanpublisher ofpulp magazines,digest sized magazines,paperback books,men's adventuremagazines, andcomic books, who founded the comics magazine companyTimely Comics in 1939. Timely Comics would go on to becomeMarvel Comics, one of the United States' two largest comic book publishers along with rivalDC Comics.
Moe Goodman, who would later adopt the name Martin, was the oldest son of 17 recorded children of Isaac Goodman (b. 1872) and Anna Gleichenhaus (b. 1875). His parents were immigrants who had met in the United States after separately moving from their nativeVilna,Lithuania, then part ofRussian Empire. The family lived at different homes in theNew York City borough ofBrooklyn.[4] As a young man, Moe traveled around the country during theGreat Depression, living inhobo camps.[5][6]
Circa late 1929, futureArchie Comics co-founderLouis Silberkleit, then circulation manager at the magazine distribution companyEastern Distributing Corporation, hired Goodman for his department, assigning him clients that included publisherHugo Gernsback.[6] Goodman later became circulation manager himself,[4] but the company wentbankrupt in October 1932.[7] Goodman then joined Silberkleit and other investors as part owner of Mutual Magazine Distributors, and was named editor of Silberkleit's new sister company, the publisher Newsstand Publications Inc., at 53 Park Place, also known as 60 Murray Street, inManhattan.[8][a]
Goodman's first publication was the Newsstand Publications pulp magazineWestern Supernovel Magazine, premiering withcover-date May 1933.[10] After the first issue he renamed itComplete Western Book Magazine, beginning with cover-date July 1933.[11] Goodman's pulp magazines includedAll Star Adventure Fiction,Complete Western Book,Mystery Tales,Real Sports,Star Detective, thescience fiction magazineMarvel Science Stories and the jungle-adventure titleKa-Zar, starring itsTarzan-like namesake. These were published under a variety of names, all owned by Goodman and sometimes marked as "Red Circle".
In 1937, returning from his honeymoon in Europe, Goodman and his wife had tickets on theHindenburg, but were unable to secure seats together, so they took alternative transportation instead, avoiding theHindenburg disaster.[12][better source needed]
In 1939, with the emergingmedium of comic books proving hugely popular, and the firstsuperheroes setting the trend, Goodman contracted with newly formedcomic book packagerFunnies, Inc. to supply material for a test comic book,Marvel Comics #1, cover-dated October 1939 and published by his newly formedTimely Publications.[13] It featured thefirst appearances of the hit characters theHuman Torch and theSub-Mariner,[14] and quickly sold out 80,000 copies. Goodman produced a second printing, cover-dated November 1939, that then sold an approximate 800,000 copies.[15] With a hit on his hands, Goodman began assembling an in-house staff, hiring Funnies, Inc. writer-artistJoe Simon aseditor, and Timely's first official employee.[1] Goodman then formed Timely Comics, Inc., beginning with comics cover-dated April 1941 or Spring 1941.[16] Timely Comics became the umbrella name for the several paper corporations that comprised Goodman's comic-book division, which in ensuing decades would evolve intoMarvel Comics.[17]
In 1941, Timely published its third major character, the patriotic superheroCaptain America by Simon and artistJack Kirby. The success ofCaptain America #1 (March 1941) led to an expansion of staff, with Simon bringing freelancer Kirby on staff and subsequently hiring inkerSyd Shores "to be Timely's third employee."[18] Simon and Kirby departed Timely after 10 issues ofCaptain America, and Goodman appointed his wife’s cousin,Stan Lee, already there as an editorial assistant, as Timely's editor, a position Lee would hold for decades.
With the post-war lessening of interest in superheroes, Goodman established a pattern of directing Lee to follow a variety of genres as the market seemed to trend, such as romance in 1948, horror in 1951,Westerns in 1955 andKaiju monsters in 1958. He could be highly derivative In this regard, such as ordering the title character ofPatsy Walker, America's #1 Teenager to have similarcrosshatching in her hair as that ofArchie Comics' popularArchie Andrews.[19]
The name "Timely Comics" went into disuse after Goodman began using the globe logo of the newsstand-distribution company he owned, Atlas, starting with the covers of comic books dated November 1951. This united a line put out by the same publisher, staff and freelancers through 59 shell companies, from Animirth Comics to Zenith Publications.[20] Throughout the 1950s, the company formerly known as Timely was calledAtlas Comics.
Goodman, whose business strategy involved using several corporate names for various publishing ventures, sometimes attempted branding his line with the logo "Red Circle," which comics historianLes Daniels calls "a halfhearted attempt to establish an identity for what was usually described loosely as 'the Goodman group' ... a red disk surrounded by a black ring that bore the phrase 'A Red Circle Magazine.' But it appeared only intermittently, when someone remembered to put it on [a pulp magazine's] cover.[21] HistorianJess Nevins, conversely, writes that, "Timely Publications [was how] Goodman's group [of companies] had become known; before this, it was known as 'Red Circle' because of the logo that Goodman had put on his pulp magazines. ... "[22] TheGrand Comics Database identifies 21 Goodman comic books from 1944 to 1959 with Red Circle, Inc. branding,[23] and one 1948 comic under Red Circle Magazines Corp.[24]
As the market for pulp magazines waned, Goodman, in addition to comic books, transitioned to conventional magazines—published through a concern dubbedMagazine Management Company at least as far back as 1947[25]—and in 1949 founded Lion Books, a paperback line. Goodman used the name Red Circle Books for the first seven titles plus an additional two later. Most were novels, but there was a smattering of mostly sports-oriented nonfiction. Goodman eventually developed two lines, the 25¢ Lion and the 35¢ Lion Library.[26]
The August 5, 1957 issue ofPublishers Weekly contained a notice on page 32 of the proposed sale of Lion Books toNew American Library, but the sale was never completed. The "Summer 1957 Book Index" in the May 27, 1957 issue included 30 titles to be published by Lion between May and September of 1957, but Goodman ceased publication with the April 1957 titles. Most of the forecast titles eventually appeared between 1957 and 1959 as paperbacks from other publishers, includingSignet,Pyramid Books, and Zenith Books.[27]
Authors that Lion published included such notables asRobert Bloch,David Goodis andJim Thompson.[26] The first Lion editor wasArnold Hano.[28]
In mid-1961, following rivalDC Comics's successful revival of superheroes a few years earlier, Goodman assigned his comics editor,Stan Lee, to follow the trend again. He said, "Stan, we gotta put out a bunch of heroes. You know, there's a market for it."[29] Lee's wife suggested that Lee experiment with stories he preferred, since he was planning on changing careers and had nothing to lose. In response, Lee and artistJack Kirby createdThe Fantastic Four #1 (cover-dated Nov. 1961), giving their superheroes a flawed humanity in which they bickered, worried about money and behaved more like everyday people than noble archetypes.[30][31][32] That series became the first major success of what would becomeMarvel Comics. The newly naturalistic comics changed the industry. Lee, Kirby, such artists asSteve Ditko,Don Heck,Dick Ayers,John Romita Sr.,Gene Colan, andJohn Buscema, and eventually writers includingRoy Thomas andArchie Goodwin, ushered in a string of hit characters, includingSpider-Man,Iron Man, theHulk,Daredevil, and theX-Men.
In fall 1968, Goodman sold Magazine Management to thePerfect Film & Chemical Corporation. Goodman remained as publisher[33] until 1972, which included supporting Lee's decision to disregard theComics Code Authority's disallowance of an anti-drug themed story-arc featured inThe Amazing Spider-Man requested by theUS Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which discredited the censor.[34] Two years later he founded a new comics company,Seaboard Periodicals, which published under a new Atlas Comics imprint and is known to collectors as "Atlas/Seaboard Comics".[35] It shut down the following year.
Perfect Film & Chemical renamed itself Cadence Industries in 1973, the first of many post-Goodman changes, mergers, and acquisitions that led to what became the 21st-century corporationMarvel Entertainment Group.
Goodman's Magazine Management Company also published suchmen's adventure magazines asBachelor,For Men Only,Male,Stag andSwank, edited during the 1950s by Noah Sarlat. As well, there was such ephemera as aone-shot black-and-white "nudie cutie" comic,The Adventures of Pussycat (Oct. 1968), that reprinted some stories of the sexy, tongue-in-cheek secret-agent strip that ran in some of his men's magazines. Marvel/Atlas writersStan Lee,Larry Lieber andErnie Hart and artistsWally Wood,Al Hartley,Jim Mooney andBill Everett and "good girl art"cartoonistBill Ward contributed.[36][37]
By the late 1960s, these titles had begun evolving into erotic magazines, with pictorials about dancers and swimsuit models replaced bybikinis and discreet nude shots, with gradually fewer fiction stories.
Another division,Humorama, publisheddigest-sized magazines of girlie cartoons by Ward,Bill Wenzel andArchie Comics greatDan De Carlo, as well as black-and-whitephotos ofpin-up models includingBettie Page,Eve Meyer,stripperLili St. Cyr and actressesJoi Lansing,Tina Louise,Irish McCalla,Julie Newmar and others. Titles includedBreezy,Gaze,Gee-Whiz,Joker,Stare, andSnappy. They were published from at least the mid-1950s to mid-1960s.
In addition to men's adventure magazines andHumorama, Goodman also published many other magazines covering a plethora of topics including several male-oriented glossy 5" × 7" digests in the early to mid-1950s (e.g.Focus,Photo, andEye) prior to the development ofHumorama, as well as many romance, film and television, sports and other general interest magazines spanning several decades.
Goodman was married to Jean Davis, with whom he had three children. He died on June 6, 1992, at his home inPalm Beach, Florida, aged 84.[38]
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Launched pre-1970
1970s and later
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Birth year given as 1910, Brooklyn, inDaniels, Les (1991).Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics'.Harry N. Abrams. p. 17.ISBN 0-8109-3821-9. Bell, Vassallo note (p. 290), "Daniels's book gets several facts [about Goodman] wrong, including Goodman's date of birth, the name of his very first pulp, and the name of his first publishing company." Birth year also appears as 1910 at"Reading Room Index to the Comic Art Collection, 'Goo' to 'Goodman'".Michigan State University Libraries Special Collections Division. Archived fromthe original on September 9, 2010. Birthdate is given as January8, likely a typographical error, atRo, Ronin (2004).Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and the American Comic Book Revolution. Bloomsbury.
... worked for Independent News [partly founded by Eastern Distributing founder Paul Sampliner] alongside future [Archie Comics] publishers and rivalsJohn Goldwater and Louis Silberkleit [as well as with] Frank Armer, who helped distributeHarry Donenfeld'sDetective Comics. In 1932, Goodman and Silberkleit left Independent News, borrowed money, and formed Western Fiction Publishing, where they published the pulp magazineComplete Western Book [Magazine]. Decent sales inspired two of the same:Best Western andQuick Trigger Western Novel. Two years after forming Western Fiction, however, Silberkleit left."
I was the managing editor of Bantam Books from 1947 to '49 ... until I tried to unionize the shop and they fired me in 1949. I answered an ad to start a paperback line and I started Lion Books. ... [T]hat was until 1954. There was an Eisenhower recession then, and Martin Goodman, the boss there, cut everybody's salary ten percent. Well, I had an ex-wife and two kids and Bonnie and the kid, and that was my margin ... so I quit.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)| Preceded by n/a | Publisher ofMarvel Comics 1939–1972 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by n/a | Publisher ofMagazine Management 1947–1972 | Succeeded by n/a |
| Preceded by n/a | Publisher ofAtlas/Seaboard Comics 1974–1975 | Succeeded by n/a |
Authority control databases: National |
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