The Comic Book Title Marvel Came Up With Due to a Cartoon

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and ninety-second installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.

Click here for Part 1 of this week's legends. Click here for Part 2 of this week's legends.

NOTE: If the CSBG Twitter page hits 11,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow the CSBG Twitter page!

COMIC LEGEND:

Marvel Super-Heroes debuted because Martin Goodman wanted Marvel to have a title that tied in with then-current Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon series.

STATUS:

True

There are certain things that are standard operating procedure in the world of comics nowadays that wasn't even a consideration back in the day because things were completely different. For instance, nowadays comic book companies seemingly go out of their way to adapt their comic books to the films and TV shows that are based on the comics. Heck, I even have a specific column, Follow the Path, for just these sorts of things.

However, while comic books have been adapting themselves to other media for decades (Captain Marvel did a comic book sequel to his original film serial, Batman's butler Alfred became skinny due to the Batman serial and Perry White, Jimmy Olsen and the Daily Planet in general all owe their existence to the Superman radio series of the 1940s), it was still a bit more of a rarity than it is today, so when something like Marvel Super-Heroes occurred, it was a bit of a shock.

Marvel Super-Heroes was a licensed cartoon series that adapted five Marvel heroes (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk and Namor) into seven minute clips that would be packaged together as the main series (Spider-Man and Fantastic Four had been licensed for their own separate cartoon series).

It ran in first-run syndication from September 1966 to December 1966 and then the clips continued to pop up in various formats for years afterwards (most cartoon series of the era only did 65 episodes, as the theory was that that gave you enough episodes that you could run them five days a week four times a year. Kids were presumably not paying enough attention to differentiate between new episodes and old ones and thus making new episodes would be a waste).

Martin Goodman, the head of Marvel Comics, insisted that Stan Lee (then Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics) put out a comic book that could tie-in with the cartoon, so Lee launched Marvel Super-Heroes #1, which reprinted a bunch of stories, including a number of characters who appeared in the cartoon. It was done as an extra-sized, double-priced book...

Meanwhile, Marvel had launched a book earlier in 1966 called Fantasy Masterpieces, which reprinted stories from before the "Marvel Age of Comics" began, partially to say, "Hey, you know all of those star artists you like so much? They've been working her for years!"

By the third issue, they realized that they had to tie the reprint series in with superheroes...

In 1967, Martin Goodman once again made a demand of Stan Lee. He needed Stan Lee to put out a Captain Marvel character so that Marvel could obtain the trademark as Goodman was irked at the idea that Marvel might now own the name Captain MARVEL.

Goodman figured it would help the whole trademark deal if the character was released in a book CALLED Marvel Super-Heroes, and so Fantasy Masterpieces was re-named Marvel Super-Heroes with #12, Captain Marvel's first appearance...

The book had new material mixed with reprints but eventually went all reprint and actually lasted a pretty long time. Longer than the Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon series lasted on the air, that's for sure!

Check out my latest TV Legends Revealed - What is the bizarre origin for one of the most bizarre Saturday Morning cartoons of the 1970s, Partridge Family 2200 A.D.?

OK, that's it for this week!

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually use on the CBR editions of this column, but I do use them when I collect them all on legendsrevealed.com!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well!

Here's my brand-new book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know And Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books.

If you want to order a copy, ordering it here gives me a referral fee.

Here's my second book, Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? The cover is by Kevin Hopgood (the fellow who designed War Machine's armor).

If you want to order a copy, ordering it here gives me a referral fee.

Follow Comics Should Be Good on Twitter and on Facebook (also, feel free to share Comic Book Legends Revealed on our Facebook page!). Not only will you get updates when new blog posts show up on both Twitter and Facebook, but you'll get some original content from me, as well!

Here's my book of Comic Book Legends (130 legends. -- half of them are re-worked classic legends I've featured on the blog and half of them are legends never published on the blog!).

The cover is by artist Mickey Duzyj. He did a great job on it...