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.