Marvel Comics

The Untold Story

By: Sean Howe

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

The defining, behind-the-scenes chronicle of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and dominant pop cultural entities in America’s history -- Marvel Comics – and the outsized personalities who made Marvel including Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby.

“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

For the first time, Marvel Comics tells the stories of the men who made Marvel: Martin Goodman, the self-made publisher who forayed into comics after a get-rich-quick tip in 1939, Stan Lee, the energetic editor who would shepherd the company through thick and thin for decades and Jack Kirby, the WWII veteran who would co-create Captain America in 1940 and, twenty years later, developed with Lee the bulk of the company’s marquee characters in a three-year frenzy. Incorporating more than one hundred original interviews with those who worked behind the scenes at Marvel over a seventy-year-span, Marvel Comics packs anecdotes and analysis into a gripping narrative of how a small group of people on the cusp of failure created one of the most enduring pop cultural forces in contemporary America.

love it!

for anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes happenings of the comic industry this book is a must. I've always considered myself pretty knowledgeable about the industry and it's sometimes dirty side but this book offered new and interesting information. Great book!

Awesome!

the history being what I enjoyed so much as a youth...come alone in a unique way. very delightful

Business side of Marvel

Very interesting and well researched though more business related, would have liked more artistic history

Bias at times, but overall solid!

A great overview of the history of Marvel! At times, I felt the author was a little heavy handed when trying to sway the reader's opinion about people or situations and it was off-putting.

Airing out Marvel's dirty laundry

Excellent, informative, entertaining, not afraid to tell us the scummier side of Marvel history