Mines. From captain america and spiderman. To the x. Men and the whole place. No one else. Even if youve never read the comics will likely recognize these iconic superheroes and that world famous creates a quite accurate to say that marvel revolutionized the superhero comic with thousands of characters and interweaving storylines the marvel universe is one of the most astonishing tales in multan fiction. Doubts it all becomes one rival for the company at the time of the millennium. It was losing sight of what you were trying to sell sell stories it was kind of like a victim of his own success. Its a great story has a points where the hero. Is on his knees seemingly beyond salvation mobbles talk is doubt. Came when it declared bankruptcy followed by an all out war between investors that raged for years. A lot of screaming on top of threats to destroy one another everybody was weak just scared to death this is the inside story of how one of the worlds most beloved pop culture icons real moche from the ruins of its comic book empire. And force its way back to the top. New york. Times of marvels headquarters and so many of its super errands. From dramatic battles a ground central station. To spectacular rescue something starting on an every. Part of the magic of marvel for a long time fans like sean how is that is carts is a set in the wheel wells. To build it i mean for me york city had the feeling that they might. Catch a glimpse of super battle you know in their underwear the post office or something for almost 80 years marvel has captivated comic fans across the globe she sings best selling comic books costumes. Video games. And record breaking books office hits marvel has conquered the entertainment world class bouncer rewinds for 3 decades and model wasnt just bottling comic super villains it was combating bankruptcy stop defections and tied up in a legal battle that threatens destroy the company. While another sure thing. Still. To find out we go back to the beginnings of the marvel universe. 2 the superheroes we next day were born in new york in the late 1930 s. 2 2 in the midst of the Great Depression marvels rival d. C. Comics screeched a character that became an instant hate. Superman who was the inspiration for a lot of kids in the depression he was a crusader for the masses superman was soon followed by mouth like a crusader. The 2 propelled steel see comics popularity well ahead of mom posts then just a small pulp fiction publishing ninus timely from earlier years marvel was always the kind of 2nd Place Company superman and batman and d. C. Comics were were kind of the Industry Standard and marvel was. Through a scrappy other player to cash in on the trends time he hired didnt seem to use its own line of superheroes cartoonists jay simon and so jack toby would go on to create some of marvels must famous characters. And says america and to the 2nd world war. Right. Time these patriotic super heroes i felt real life animes in world war 2 you. Struck a chord with soldiers and their families back home. I think that it was a way to see victory to have an idea of what that would feel like. Imagine such a simple shes with the golden age of comics in the United States and his american soldiers for the comments overseas yes against popularity in korea and japan. This helps influence the development of local magic bullets. But in the 1950 s. There was a growing movement against violence and gore in comic books. And it allowed. With. Everything else is in regulation that severely limited the kind of content publishers could print. The homage to the shortage of vampires from drugs in a comic everything was just completely defanged and no fun so how much else wanted it. By the early 1960 s. Marvel was struggling just to stay in business the companys editor in chief stanley was ready to create. But then marvels old rival d. C. Comics through together its most popular characters into a single super group. Their mission to fight injustice i do search all mankind. The Justice League the can a surprise case and inspired stan ladens artist jack kirby to create their own team of superheroes. Greatest team a super democracy to the world as ever and all fantastic. The 1st issue broke convention with all superhero archetypes of the day unlike the stoic and sneer flawless superman and batman. Movies heroes came not just with superpowers both problems that readers could relate to. It was the beginning of characters having a 3 dimensionality that really set marvel apart. Danny finger off edited some of marvels most famous superheroes for close to 2 decades. Marvel comics gave you a depth of characterization. Where people could Work Together but not like each other or like each other but be angry at each other with the team as far as comic books that was fairly unprecedented. A year later marvel straight even further from comic conventions for the 1st time a teenager became a superhero. Such was marvels impact thats now an exhibit dedicated to its famous character in new york. Spiderman is as my favorite character now hes very complex and yet hes very simple hes hes the most like a regular person peter parker was an introverted didnt have a lot of friends also asked to work 2 or 3 extra. And then has a sick relative and yet wants to excel. And he wants a try to have a social life i mean its really a very modern story side its about the kids who has more responsibilities than any kids especially ability of in spite of very great responsibility. Spiderman became the most popular comic book character since superman but marvels biggest innovation was just around the corner. As more superheros imagine they become sick interact and cross over with each others stories. This collective became known as the marvel universe. The narrative of the marvel universe is just a staggering achievement that i think is really the most complicated narrative that probably exists in history. It wasnt just a new universe that stan lee and his collaborators forward in periodic updates stanley gave readers a glimpse into the you know what its of the marvel office. Featuring brightest. Artists. Even secretaries so you had 2 levels of connection and every comic. You have not just the stories themselves but you have updates what was going on in the office and things you had a sense that you know the people behind the stories they were like almost surrogate family members the team at marvel became most popular with fans as the superheroes they created. I think stanley is one of those figures without whom there might not be accountable industry both creatively and a business and promotional level and he reinvented what the superhero was and could be. By the 1970 s. Marvel was the number one comic book company in the wilds. Releasing 40 different titles every month. And something 50000000 comics a year in more than 100 countries. Its super harrys even became stars on animated chinese. The company traditionally in 2nd place to his rival d. C. Comics is now number one is somehow retained its status as an underdog so you have d. C. Comics with superman batman or wonder woman it Everybody Knows those characters but with marvel we were like the shrugging company we had we had spiderman involved in these guys who had problems and so even though we were the best selling comics we were still the underdog new banks joint vote in the mid 1980 s. As the underdog the guys were fighting the good fight and it felt like we were all fighting the good fight about as the Company Became increasingly successful that changed. The owners of marvel became progressively less knowledgeable and less interested in their comic books. By the 1980 s. The comic industry was booming worldwide with people hungry for heroes once considered cheek and disposable comics have become prized items and speculators were snapping up issues in bulk to resell them to collectors for enormous profits. In the us vintage comics the cost 400. 00 in the 1970 s. Shows up to 5000. 00 u. S. Dollars a decade later. By the early ninetys and some 1st issue comics were west of 40000. 00 u. S. Dollars and up to cash in the number of specialty comic books all surged globally from a few hundreds to over 10000. 00. As rare and new comic books were flying off the shelves marvel attracted the interest of millionaire businessman ron paul mn the book the company for over 80000000. 00 u. S. Dollars in 1909. How men would scream if they changed the way novel ran its business. Probably was kind of a step above cream glamorous owner he was in the corporate raider he was somebody who had no emotional connection to the topics so you know this was marbles the 1st real existence as. Kind of a piece in time once again. I can remember ron coming through the office during that 1st week. And he was he was he may not have been smoking the cigar but he was at least chewing the cigar uses this short little man who looked like he owned the world being toward through the offices by a young woman dressed as spider woman in spandex and to me thats who run pro men will always be this guy who owns the world it can make young women dress up in spandex. New banks joint models he has before the company. When i started it more of all you know i was i was surrounded by the people whose comics i had grown up reading it was really amazing it was fun it was exciting everybody was thrilled to be there when the announcement came that the company was being sold. Everybody was nervous. As we saw perlman walking through the office we became more nervous. To drive growth home and fesa town to raise the price of comic books by appealing to collect says they started marketing their comics as products as collectors items as things that were other than you know the inherent value of. Something you read we had a practice of doing special covers enhanced covers glow in the dark covers well covers for our great covers and adding a glow in the dark cover caused us to take that same 32 page comic book that we sold for a 1. 15 instead make it to 95. 00. In the short term consequences of that were that we would sell 4 times as many copies of economic double the price so 4. 00 times the government lives portrayed on the bottom. Initially polman strategy was dramatically over the next couple of years models revenues grew by 50 percent and its profits multiplied 6 phones. In 9091 the company went public in its market value of our lives to 3000000000 of us don as. We all thought that was hilarious because were just a bunch of guys running around the Office Shooting each other with plastic guns at night but the mood at marvel changed significantly after the initial Public Offering with shareholders now expecting bigger returns the pressure at marvel intensified to. Marvel goes public thats one profits have to be up every quarter. Marvel started just. Increasing production at a crazy rate in 1905 marvel have been publishing 40 titles a month by 993 theyd more than doubled that number. But printing so many comics and specialty covers started to dilute the marvel brand theres all different gimmicks some very nice gimmicks but gimmicks arguments adventure the day they want to get fame. Hellmans Marketing Team also began to dictate the contents of the comics. Artists and writers were told to engineer more crossover stories that featured its best selling superheroes to display a comic book stores like this one in new york. We knew that there were people there were ravenous overeem and punisher and always spiderman collectors and all you got to do is put those characters into or a low selling comic and suddenly you some more copies because people wanted to maintain their complete spiderman collection of the complete wolverine collection. But at some point the guy who collects every appearance of wolverine can no longer afford to collect every appearance of movement at some point you chase the guy away by trying to take too much of this morning. The plots also figured into one another so readers have to buy all related issues if they wanted to make sense of them as production increased the quality and contents of the comics began to suffer. And this started to alienate the companys cool audience. Bounce if marvel was losing readers why was it still seeing a Record Number of sales every month. The problem was the distribution system. Unlike traditional news stands specialty comic book shops comp return unsold copies for a refund. If the issues dont sell retail is a show to the cost. So marvel couldnt tell how many comics the shops were actually sending to customers. And this was about to become a big problem. Bookstore manager jeff as discovered shops that oppose a huge oversupply of comic books would speculate as. I have seen in other stores i worked out the basement long boxes of these millions of books there spawn the one box one box to box 3 parts for as because doors and bought so much of this manufactured trite and sold that thats going to everybodys going to want 50 of those and it just wasnt the case and then i mean a lot of stores are hurting when news got to little bank he went to the comic book stores to find out what was going on. When you had those conversations with comic Book Store Owners about what they were selling or what they were sitting on thats when they started getting very dark conversation was very bleak. And it gave me the sense that something was going on here that we needed to record this new scent field representatives out to survey comic Stores Across the country their findings was shocking. Every time marvel sold its special editions the subsequent issues or a 20 percent decline in sales. Readers were getting tired of expensive and gimmicky comics that were mainly marketed to collect isnt speculators. New sense an urgent memo to marvel senior management. And im sure a c c 6000000 other people showing that we were literally chasing away our long term readers are long term customers by doing these enhanced covers and the reaction to that memo was silent. 2 marvel continued to publish enhanced covers and also began seeing clue Trading Cards to encourage more connect as. A mating even more of their readers. Meanwhile comic book shops unable to cope with unsold stock started to close down. So it just seemed absolutely absurd to me you know now i understand what they were doing they were in it for the long haul they wanted to make as much money as they could make right now right here and be on the consequences the im the to the people who suffered the results of their decision we got what we needed out of them. We dont need them anymore i didnt want to be a part of that strip market i didnt want to be a part of what i saw errors be coming down for. A more. Insatiable drive for profits at marvel was also beginning to westin with its creative team. By. This time Founding Editor in chief stan lee had moved to california to pursue hollywood deals for the company. And the new editors left in charge one being allowed to do their jobs. The editors job was to set direction for the comic and suddenly there was this this Marketing Division that was setting to rich and the editors were not happy they feel like they should have more say in what the stories are at some point that created a conflict and certainly demoralize the people. Working in editorial and thats the devil its sort of being friends with you know this the static feeling for the characters you also know youre in a business and that that constant tug of war and you had all these editors slamming their heads up against the wall to make their comics that they were responsible for spike in sales get really sad and and there was more infighting and people were just unhappy they were having fun. And then in 1902 the inevitable happens. In a mass exodus marvels top talents left to join rivals and to form their own publishing houses. By alienating writers and artists who had developed stories who had popularized the characters marvel ended up setting themselves up for failure. As comic book readers followed their favorite artists to the new labels marvels market share dropped from 45 to 30 percent. Meanwhile the special and collectible comics but over saturated the markets. If you print tens of thousands of a particular kind of comic immediately it cant be worth as much so is it was kind of like a victim of his own success in 1903 when spain. Kilometers and collectors realize that the value of comics have been inflated the comic industry implied it. Publishes sales plummeted by 70 percent. And 9 out of 10 comic book stores in america close their doors. The Comics Division a turn once made up 90 percent of marvel sales was now a 3rd of its business in a desperate attempt to spur growth. Pomona to gone on an acquisition spree. From trading card manufacturers to stick a companys and a toy retailer how montrose marvels debt up to 600000000. 00 u. S. Dollars all the while moving it farther and farther away from its core comic books. By 995 the company was in crisis it reported a 48000000 dollar loss the 1st time since permanent bought the company that they havent turned a profit. Its stock value collapsed shares once where 35. 00 in 1903 that sunk to just 2. 00. Each. As a result marvel announced a company wide cuts. 40 percent of its workforce was necco. After almost 2 decades of the company edited down a finger off made the difficult decision to leave. I was heartbroken to leave more of all things had changed there in such a way that it was very unpleasant for me on a day to day basis but you know id work 18 years it was where i grown up you know id say outside of the end of a romantic relationship with the death of the loved one living moral was the most traumatic thing that ever happened to me. By 996 marvel reported a staggering loss of over 400. 60000000. 00 u. S. Dollars the company desperately needed cash to keep running and so pay back its debts. But its in a disagreement with shareholders over the companys future home undeclared bankruptcy. As majority owner it gave him the power to reorganize marvel without their consent. But interlink so pohlmann dragged the companys reputation through the mud in a series of very public court battles. Surrounded by the small during ruin of its comic book empire marvel was in its darkest hour and the future looks bleak. And a lot of screaming out of phones and threats to destroy another there is something that was so absurd and grotesque about these cold hearted men suing each other to have custody of something that a motion only a lot of card readers thought belonged to that in 1998 after a 2 year battle it was finally over. From coleman sued for diversity over 500000000. 00 u. S. Dollars from marvel to his other businesses. Was ousted from the company. But marvel was still broke surviving on a 200000000. 00 loan that had to be repaid soon.