After being relegated to the realm of children’s literature for the first 25 years of its history, the comic book industry experienced an unexpected flowering in the early 1960s. A celebration of that emergence, Marvel Comics in the 1960s: An Issue-by-Issue Field Guide to a Pop Culture Phenomenon presents a step-by-step look at how a company that had the reputation of being one of the least creative in a generally moribund industry, emerged as one of the most dynamic, slightly irreverent, and downright original contributions to an era when pop-culture, from Tom Wolfe to Andy Warhol, emerged as the dominant force in the artistic life of America.
In scores of handy, easy-to-reference entries, Marvel Comics in the 1960s takes the reader from the legendary company’s first fumbling beginnings as helmed by savvy editor/writer Stan Lee (aided by such artists as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko), to the full maturity of its wild, colorful, offbeat grandiosity. With the history of Marvel Comics in the 1960s divided into four distinct phases, author Pierre Comtois explains just how Lee, Kirby, Ditko, et. al. created a line of comic books that, while grounded in the traditional elements of panel-to-panel storytelling, broke through the juvenile mindset of a low brow industry and provided a tapestry of full-blown, pop-culture icons.