Timely Comics - Creation

Creation

In 1939, with the emerging medium of comic books proving hugely popular, and the first superheroes setting the trend, pulp-magazine publisher Martin Goodman founded Timely Publications, basing it at his existing company. Goodman — whose official titles were editor, managing editor, and business manager, with Abraham Goodman officially listed as publisher — contracted with the newly formed comic-book "packager" Funnies, Inc. to supply material.

His first effort, Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), featured the first appearances of writer-artist Carl Burgos' android superhero, the Human Torch, and Paul Gustavson's costumed detective the Angel. As well, it contained the first generally available appearance of Bill Everett's anti-hero Namor the Sub-Mariner, created for the unpublished movie-theater giveaway comic Motion Picture Funnies Weekly earlier that year, with the eight-page original story now expanded by four pages.

Also included were Al Anders' Western hero the Masked Raider; the jungle lord Ka-Zar the Great, with Ben Thompson adapting the story "King of Fang and Claw" by Bob Byrd in Goodman's eponymous pulp magazine Ka-Zar #1 (Oct. 1936); the non-continuing-character story "Jungle Terror", featuring adventurer Ken Masters, drawn and possibly written by Art Pinajian under the quirky pseudonym "Tohm Dixon" or "Tomm Dixon" (with the published signature smudged); "Now I'll Tell One", five single-panel, black-and-white gag cartoons by Fred Schwab, on the inside front cover; and a two-page prose story by Ray Gill, "Burning Rubber", about auto racing. A painted cover by veteran science-fiction pulp artist Frank R. Paul featured the Human Torch, looking much different than in the interior story.

That initial comic, cover-dated October 1939, quickly sold out 80,000 copies, prompting Goodman to produce a second printing, cover-dated November 1939. The latter is identical except for a black bar over the October date in the inside-front-cover indicia, and the November date added at the end. That sold approximately 800,000 copies. With a hit on his hands, Goodman began assembling an in-house staff, hiring Funnies, Inc. writer-artist Joe Simon as editor. Simon brought along his collaborator, artist Jack Kirby, followed by artist Syd Shores.

There is evidence that "Red Circle Comics" — a name that would be used for an unrelated imprint of Archie Comics in the 1970s and 1980s — may have been a term in use as Goodman prepared to publish his first comic book. As official Marvel historian Les Daniels describes, the name Red Circle was "a halfhearted attempt to establish an identity for what was usually described loosely as 'the Goodman group' when a new logo was adopted: a red disk surrounded by a black ring that bore the phrase 'A Red Circle Magazine.' But it appeared only intermittently, when someone remembered to put it on cover. Pulp historian Richard Paul Hall is more expansive, giving Red Circle as the name for Goodman's pulp and book publishing company, noting that, "Goodman used the Red Circle Group logo between 1937 and 1939 to promote his line." Within this framework, historian Jess Nevins writes that, "Timely Publications Goodman's group had become known; before this it was known as 'Red Circle' because of the logo that Goodman had put on his pulp magazines...." A variation was used as a publishing imprint on some Timely comics, with the Michigan State University's Comic Art Collection Reading Room Index giving Red Circle Magazines as an "American comics publisher, a Timely-Marvel imprint", and listing issues of Comic Capers (1946), Snafu (1956) and My Own Romance (1960) as examples.