Out Oct. 9
“Sean Howe’s history of Marvel makes a compulsively readable, riotous
and heartbreaking version of my favorite story, that of how a bunch of
weirdos changed the world. That it’s all true is just frosting on the
cake.” (
Jonathan Lethem )
“A warts-and-all, nail-biting
mini-epic about the low-paid, unsung ‘funnybook men’ who were
unwittingly creating twenty-first century pop culture. If you thought
the fisticuffs were bare and bloody on the four-color page, wait ‘til
you hear about what went down in the Marvel bullpen.” (
Patton Oswalt )
“Exhaustively researched and artfully assembled,
Marvel Comics
is a historical exploration, a labor of love, and a living illustration
of how the weirdest corners of the counterculture can sometimes become
the culture-at-large.” (
Chuck Klosterman )
“Page after page, Sean Howe’s
Marvel Comics
manages to be enchantingly told, emotionally suspenseful and totally
revelatory. If I knew more about superpowers, I’d be able to explain how
he did it.” (
Sloane Crosley )
From a tiny office on Madison Avenue in the early 1960s, a struggling
company named "Marvel Comics" introduced a series of bright-costumed
superhero characters distinguished by smart banter and compellingly
human flaws. "Spider-Man", "The Fantastic Four", "Captain America", "The
Incredible Hulk"," The Avengers", "Iron Man", "Thor"," The X-Men",
"Daredevil" - these superheroes quickly won children's hearts and
sparked the imagination of pop artists, public intellectuals, and campus
radicals. Over the course of half a century, Marvel's epic universe
would become the most elaborate fictional narrative in history and serve
as a modern American mythology for millions of readers. Interweaving
history, anecdotes, and analysis, Sean Howe traces Marvel's decades -
long rise to a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, revealing how it
weathered "Wall Street" machinations, Hollywood failures, legal battles,
and the collapse of the comic book market. He shows how Marvel's
identity has continually shifted, careening between scrappy underdog and
corporate behemoth. He also introduces the men behind the magic,
including self-made publisher Martin Goodman, energetic editor Stan Lee,
and Jack Kirby, the WWII veteran and co-creator of many of the
company's marquee characters. A story of fertile imaginations, lifelong
friendships, action-packed fistfights, reformed criminals, unlikely
alliances, and third-act betrayals that incorporates more than one
hundred original interviews with Marvel insiders then and now, "Marvel
Comics: The Untold Story" is a gripping narrative of one of the most
dominant pop cultural forces in contemporary America.
