| Parent company | Magazine Management |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1971 |
| Defunct | c. 1981 |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City, New York |
| Key people | Archie Goodwin, Don McGregor, Doug Moench, Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman, Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber |
| Publication types | Black-and-white comics magazines |
| Fiction genres | Horror, fantasy, martial arts |
| Imprints | Marvel Monster Group, Marvel Magazine Group |
Magazine Management, the magazine and comic-book publishing parent of Marvel Comics at the time, released a number of magazine-format comics in the 1970s, primarily from 1973 to 1977, in the market dominated by Warren Publishing. The line of mostly black-and-white anthology magazines predominantly featured horror, sword and sorcery, and science fiction. The magazines did not carry the Marvel name, but were produced by Marvel staffers and freelancers, and featured characters regularly found in Marvel comic books, as well as some creator-owned material. In addition to the many horror titles, magazines in this group included Savage Sword of Conan, The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Marvel Preview, and Planet of the Apes.
The magazine format did not fall under the purview of the comics industry's self-censorship Comics Code Authority, allowing the titles to feature stronger content than mainstream color comic books, such as moderate profanity, partial nudity, and more graphic violence. In addition to original content, many issues included reprinted material, including a number of horror stories from Marvel's 1950s predecessor Atlas Comics that originally were published before the 1954 introduction of the Comics Code.
Lead editors for the magazine group were Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, and later Archie Goodwin and John Warner. Tony Isabella, Don McGregor, and David Anthony Kraft also spent stints editing magazine titles.
Writer Doug Moench contributed heavily to the magazines, including to the entire runs of Planet of the Apes, Rampaging Hulk, and Doc Savage, while also writing for virtually every other title in the line. The magazines featured fully painted covers by illustrators including Earl Norem, Bob Larkin, Ken Barr, Luis Dominguez, Neal Adams, Frank Brunner, Boris Vallejo, and Joe Jusko. Marvel production manager Sol Brodsky, who in 1970 had helped launch the short-lived Skywald Publications line of black-and-white horror magazines before returning to Marvel, served as production manager here as well.[1]
Initially, the only company brand on the magazines was the "three C's" Curtis Circulation Company logo[2] (Curtis being Marvel's distributor and an affiliated company). The Marvel Comics brand and logo did not always appear on the cover or in the indicia; the only obvious relation to Marvel being the publisher's name, Magazine Management, a name that the four-color comics stopped using in 1973 but was retained for the black-and-white magazines.[3] Nonetheless, Marvel characters appeared regularly in the magazine line, and many of the magazine titles were featured in the four-color comics' house advertisements. The Curtis imprint was reduced to "CC" in 1975.
The magazine line was Marvel's second attempt at entering the black-and-white comics magazines market: in 1968, Marvel had experimented with the format with the two-issue superhero entry The Spectacular Spider-Man[4] and the one-shot The Adventures of Pussycat.
In 1971, attempting to compete in a market dominated by Warren Publishing and smaller publishers like Eerie Publications and Skywald Publications, the company launched Savage Tales, which debuted in the spring — and was immediately canceled. Roy Thomas, a Marvel writer-editor who became the company's editor-in-chief in 1972, recalled that:
...there were several things that led to Savage Tales being canceled after that first issue. [Publisher] Martin Goodman had never really wanted to do a non-Code comic, probably because he didn't want any trouble with the [Comics Magazine Association of America] over it. Nor did he really want to get into magazine-format comics; and [Marvel editor-in-chief] Stan [Lee] really did. So Goodman looked for an excuse to cancel it.[5]
Although Goodman had sold Magazine Management in 1968, he remained as the publisher. But Goodman left in 1972, the same year the company's new owners revived the magazine line. In addition to reviving Savage Tales, now with a new lineup of content, Magazine Management released the new titles Dracula Lives!, Vampire Tales, and Monsters Unleashed, as well as Monster Madness, a humorous fumetti magazine (all published under the Marvel Monster Group brand); Tales of the Zombie; the prose digest Haunt of Horror; and the satirical-comics magazine Crazy.
Editor Wolfman said, "We used to farm the books out to Harry Chester Studios [sic] and whatever they pasted up, they pasted up. I formed the first production staff, hired the first layout people, paste-up people."[6]
1974 saw the debut of The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Monsters of the Movies, Planet of the Apes, Savage Sword of Conan, and Marvel's short-lived entree into underground comix, Comix Book.
Initially, the magazines' page-counts varied among 68, 76, and 84 pages.
By late 1974, Magazine Management was flooding the black-and-white comics magazine market with 11 ongoing titles. Al Hewetson, editor of rival comics-magazine publisher Skywald Publications, which went defunct in 1975, blamed his company's demise on
...Marvel's distributor. Our issues were selling well, and some sold out. Such returns as we received were shipped overseas, mainly to England, where they sold out completely... When Marvel entered the game with countless [black-and-white horror] titles gutting [sic] the newsstand, their distributor was so powerful they denied Skywald access to all but the very largest newsstands, so our presence was minimal and fans and readers simply couldn't find us. ... [We] had a business lunch with our distributor in the fall of '74 and we were given very specific information about the state of affairs on the newsstands — which had nothing to do with Warren's or Skywald’s solid readership base.[7]
Despite this victory, in 1975 the Marvel magazine line was revamped. All the horror titles were canceled (although several would then get an all-reprint, extra-thick "Annual" #1). The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Planet of the Apes, Savage Sword of Conan, and Crazy continued, and quite a few new titles were announced, promoted, and listed in the regular subscription ads, but almost none were released as ongoing publications. Marvel Super Action and Marvel Movie Premiere became one-shots, while Sherlock Holmes and Star-Lord surfaced in the Marvel Preview anthology. Some of the material intended for a self-titled magazine for the martial-arts superhero Iron Fist, whose four-color feature was at this time still appearing under the Marvel Premiere title, saw the light of publishing day in The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #10. Masters of Terror and Doc Savage did manage two and eight issues respectively. The line would never again consist at one time of more titles than could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
1977 saw the debut of Rampaging Hulk (which later changed its title to The Hulk!, which ran through 1981).
Starting with 1981 cover dates, the line bore the name Marvel Magazine Group on such new titles as the Howard the Duck magazine as well as on such surviving titles as Savage Sword of Conan — the longest-lived magazine title, which lasted 235 issues through 1995.
Upon the line's demise, former editor Wolfman asserted that "Marvel never gave their full commitment to it, that was the problem. No one wanted to commit themselves to the staff."[6]
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"Monsters of the Movies" redirects here. For other uses, see Monster movie (disambiguation). |
