Martin Goodman would be amazed. In 1933, he started up Timely Comics in New York City and began publishing pulp-fiction Westerns. According to Maxim.com the company was run on a shoestring “staffed by a skeleton crew of teens and twentysomethings…Far from hoping to build a multimedia empire, staffers…just wanted to make a living.”
Marvel Comics Launched
In August 1939, Marvel Comics put out its first issue starring the Human Torch, Masked Raider, Sub-Mariner, and other superheroes. Its cover price was a dime and it quickly sold out, giving Goodman the happy news that he had a hit on his hands.
That first edition is now worth a little more, comicbookrealm.com reports that a mint condition copy of that August 1939 issue will now cost collectors $460,000.
The Human Torch graced the cover of that first Marvel Comic. Heritage Auctions sold a pay copy of the first edition in 2007 for $205,000 in which the artists and writers fees were marked up against the stories they produced. “For instance,” says the auctioneer, “the handwritten notation on the cover tells us that cover artist Frank R. Paul received $25 to draw this now-legendary cover.”
The Human Torch is Marvel’s First Superhero
Marvel Comics gives a brief background sketch of the Human Torch: “Growing up in suburban Glenville, Johnny Storm was drawn to automobiles despite his mother's death in a car accident, and became quite a mechanic at a young age. While still a teenager he selflessly rescued two of his friends from a burning building.”
He was joined by a whole pantheon of superheroes, more than 5,000 of them. But few reached the popularity of Captain America. First introduced in 1941, Captain America tapped into the patriotic wave that came with World War II.
In March 2007, Marvel Comics killed off Captain America and MSNBC reported “Over the years, an estimated 210 million copies of ‘Captain America’ comic books, published by New York-based Marvel Entertainment Inc., have been sold in a total of 75 countries.”
However, MSNBC noted that dead comic book heroes do sometimes come back to life.
What Disney Gets for its Money
For $4 billion Disney gets the rights to such money spinners as Spider-man, the Hulk, X-Men, and all the other popular characters created by Marvel Comics over the years.
The Disney offer for the company is $30 a share and 0.745 of a Disney share; this amounts to exactly $50 a share. On the day before the offer Marvel shares were trading at $38.65, so Disney is proposing to pay a 29.4% premium.
The Daily Telegraph (August 31, 2009) reports on some of Marvel Entertainment’s blockbuster successes. “Spider-Man, starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst,…grossed just over £500m ($821m). It has since spawned two sequels. Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr., released last year, has grossed more than $585m (£359m) worldwide.”
Look for more superheroe movies to come out of the Disney studios. Says the British newspaper, “Captain America, Thor and The Avengers are expected over the next five years.”
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