A behind-the-scenes chronicle of a beloved American media empire and the men behind it, including Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby.

A New York Times–Bestseller

“A definitive portrait of comics in American culture.” —The Wall Street Journal

In the early 1960s, a struggling company called Marvel Comics presented a cast of brightly costumed characters distinguished by smart banter and compellingly human flaws: Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men. Over the course of a half a century, Marvel’s epic universe would become the most elaborate fiction narrative in history and serve as a modern American mythology for millions of readers.

For the first time, Marvel Comics reveals the outsized personalities behind the scenes, including Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and generations of editors, artists, and writers who struggled with commercial mandates, a fickle audience, and—over matters of credit and control—one another. Marvel Comics is a story of fertile imaginations, lifelong friendships, action-packed fistfights, and third-act betrayals—a narrative of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and beleaguered pop-culture entities in America’s history.

“Sean Howe’s history of Marvel makes a compulsively readable, riotous and heartbreaking version of my favorite story, that of how a bunch of weirdoes changed the world . . . That it’s all true is just frosting on the cake.” —Jonathan Lethem