The Marvel Universe starts with Martin Goodman, born in Palm Beach, 1908. He had a career in pulp magazines across various genres, including Westerns, science fiction, and adventure. But in 1938, after Superman exploded onto the scene, Goodman launched Timely Comics a year later, and its first publication, called Marvel Comics #1, featured the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner—and it sold almost 900,000 copies.
So Goodman doubled down. He brought in Joe Simon as editor and teamed him with artist Jack Kirby—both of whom would go on to become two of the most influential people in the comic book industry in the 20th century. And the two of them created Captain America. He was bold, brash, punching Hitler in the face on the cover of Captain America Comics #1—a full year before America officially joined World War II. It sold a million copies.
But Simon believed he and Kirby were owed 25% of the profits, per a handshake deal with Goodman. Goodman saw it differently, and so they jumped ship to National Comics—what we now call DC.
So Goodman needed a new editor. Fast. And the job went to his wife’s teenage cousin: 19-year-old Stanley Lieber. Simon had hired him as a gopher. Now, suddenly, the kid was in charge.
For his first comic book debut, Lieber used the pseudonym Stan Lee—a play on Stanley—and years later, he adopted that as his real name.
Captain America had soared during the war, but peace killed the appetite for caped crusaders. By the late ’40s, Timely was in trouble. Goodman responded by abandoning heroes for whatever sold: romance, westerns, alien invasions, jungle queens. He also rebranded Timely Comics as Atlas Comics in 1951.
Then came 1954. A book by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham called Seduction of the Innocent blamed comics for juvenile delinquency. The Senate launched hearings. Publishers panicked. The Comics Code was born—violent, sexual, and supernatural content was banned outright. Atlas, heavy in horror and crime, was gutted. Stan Lee later said he “watched the industry folding up around him.”
On top of that, in 1957, Atlas’s distributor—American News Company or ANC—collapsed. Goodman had switched to them looking for better terms. It backfired catastrophically. With ANC gone, Atlas had no way to get its comics into stores.
So Goodman had to do a deal with Independent News, the distribution arm of DC Comics. DC agreed to carry Atlas’s books—but limited them to just eight titles per month. From dozens of titles every month down to single digits. Goodman didn’t have any other options and had to take the deal and cut costs.
Most of the staff was fired. The company shrank to a skeleton crew. Stan Lee stayed. Barely. And Jack Kirby, having left years earlier, returned.
By 1961, Stan Lee was ready to quit. After two decades, he was burned out. But his wife, Joan, gave him one last push: “Why don’t you do one book the way you would like to do it?” Goodman, meanwhile, saw DC’s Justice League racking up sales and told Lee to make a superhero team. Those two forces—Lee’s creative exhaustion and Goodman’s market instinct—resulted in The Fantastic Four.
And readers loved it. Lee and Kirby kicked into overdrive. The Hulk. Thor. Iron Man. And Spider-Man, created with Steve Ditko.
Now you know the saying that necessity is the mother of invention—well, the following is a prime example of this. Because the DC distribution deal still held—only eight books per month—and Marvel was creating all of these great new superheroes. So Lee and Goodman got clever. They crammed multiple heroes into the same title. The superheroes lived in the same world. They crossed over, fought, teamed up—creating what we now know as the Marvel Universe, which was in stark contrast to the siloed storytelling at DC.
And the fans loved it.
Marvel’s secret weapon was what came to be known as “The Marvel Method.” Lee would sketch a loose plot, the artist would draw the full issue—essentially writing the story visually—and then Lee would come back to add dialogue. It was fast. It was efficient. But it blurred authorship, which would become a problem later.
Marvel’s internal culture, driven by Lee’s showmanship, further set it apart. Lee wrote upbeat editorials and a letters column where he responded directly to readers, cultivating a personal connection. Lee nicknamed himself and his artists (“Stan ‘The Man’ Lee,” “Jack ‘King’ Kirby,” “Jolly Solly Brodsky,” etc.) and peppered comics with in-jokes.
By 1967, Marvel had conquered pop culture—but underneath the surface, creators were getting restless. Steve Ditko, the creator of Spider-Man, had already left in 1966. Contracts didn’t include royalties. Ownership stayed with the company. And the men who built the Marvel Universe were starting to wonder what they had to show for it.
Then in 1968, Goodman sold Marvel to Perfect Film & Chemical for about $15 million.
This conglomerate, later named Cadence Industries, had a plastics company, a mail-order pharmaceutical company, and it was owned by financier Martin Ackerman, who said of the acquisition: “We’re going to make a fortune in publishing.” And to be fair, the numbers backed him up. Marvel was moving 50 million comics a year.
Crucially, in 1969, Marvel was able to end their restrictive distribution arrangement with DC and so now had the freedom to publish as many titles as they wanted.
By 1972, the Comics Code, which had restricted what they could publish since 1954, loosened, and Marvel was churning out horror comics, kung-fu comics, romance, satire, black-and-white magazines—whatever the market could absorb.
But on the business side? Chaos. The editor-in-chief came and went in a blur. The creatives were unhappy—they felt underpaid and overlooked. For example, when Jack Kirby asked for a raise and royalties, what he got instead was a loan. Six percent interest.
That was it. By 1970, Kirby walked for a second time.
And while all of this was going on, Martin Goodman, the man who launched and then sold Marvel, launched a competing comics company with his son Chip in 1974, and he was offering creatives higher pay, ownership of new characters, and return of their original artwork—perks unheard of at Marvel or DC at the time.
And while Goodman’s company collapsed a year later, its legacy forced Marvel to evolve. Soon after, Marvel started returning art. Freelancers gained a little more leverage.
However, the recession in the early 1970s hit circulation, and this combined with rising paper costs and a glut of underperforming titles drove the company to a $2 million loss. Cadence brought in Jim Galton. He slashed titles. He fired staff. He cut overheads. But he also spotted something others missed: licensing.
The Incredible Hulk TV series was a hit in 1977. Spider-Man had his own live-action show. Cartoons were bubbling up. Merchandise was moving. The IP was gold. He sent Stan Lee to L.A. to chase film and TV deals full-time.
Marvel also hired Jim Shooter as the new Editor-in-Chief. He was 26.
He enforced deadlines. Mandated house style. Standardized operations.
And he also pushed for creators to get paid what they were rightly due.
Under Shooter, Marvel launched a formal royalties program. If your book sold big, you got a cut. That was revolutionary. Marvel also launched Epic Comics—a creator-owned imprint—it returned more control to writers and artists. And the results showed.
X-Men exploded. Star Wars comics brought in new readers. The direct market took off. And Marvel leaned in, producing titles for comic shops directly. No returns. Bigger margins.
By 1982, almost half of Marvel’s comics were selling through these specialty stores.
By 1985, Marvel was making $100 million in revenue through licensing, merch, and comics.
And that’s when Cadence sold to New World Pictures, a Hollywood studio, for $50 million.
And then four years later, in 1989, Ron Perelman bought Marvel for $82.5 million. Quick side note for those of you who aren’t aware of who Ron Perelman is—he’s an American billionaire investor renowned for his aggressive leveraged buyouts during the 1980s, most notably his $2.7 billion hostile takeover of Revlon in 1985, which became a landmark case in corporate law. But poor Ron, it looks like he’s suffered a few drawbacks in the last few years—his net worth, which stood at just under $20 billion in 2018, has fallen to just $1.5 billion at the time of recording—and don’t worry, we’re definitely going to do an episode on him.
Perelman took Marvel public, loaded it up with debt, and started expanding through acquisitions—there was a trading card company, a distribution company. Perelman promised synergy. A media empire. He sold junk bonds and used the cash to expand.
And it worked. For a while.
By 1993, Marvel was booming. Comics were collectibles, comic shops were multiplying. But the boom proved unsustainable. As comic collectors realized that hoarded issues wouldn’t make them millionaires overnight, the market crashed hard in 1995.
Comics didn’t flip for profit anymore. Shops closed. Kids moved on. And suddenly Marvel’s ballooning portfolio—overextended, overleveraged, and overvalued—was a problem.
The whole industry tanked. And with comic sales plummeting and debt service mounting, Marvel filed for bankruptcy on December 27th, 1996. It was during these turbulent times that Marvel sold the film rights to Spider-Man and X-Men. Marvel listed assets of roughly $1.3 billion against $1.2 billion in liabilities in its bankruptcy filing.
Perelman still owned Marvel—sort of. His plan was to merge Marvel with Toy Biz (the company that was making the action figures and in which Marvel had a stake), bring in new money, and wipe out most of the debt. But that meant bondholders got crushed.
One of them was Carl Icahn.
Icahn didn’t buy Marvel because he loved superheroes. He bought the bonds when they were cheap—and now he wanted a say in how the company was carved up. When Perelman tried to push his reorg through court, massively diluting Marvel’s existing stockholders and leaving bondholders with pennies on the dollar, Icahn fired back.
“This is reprehensible,” he said. “Ron Perelman is trying to line his pockets at our expense.”
But then Marvel defaulted. Icahn moved to seize control. And in June 1997, Icahn’s group formally wrested control of Marvel’s board, but he still needed to get the company out of bankruptcy. And just when he was about to close a deal negotiated with Marvel’s bank lenders, two guys who were quietly waiting in the wings had been working on their own deal.
Avi Arad and Ike Perlmutter of Toy Biz. They’d been supplying Marvel’s toys for years, and they knew the value of its characters better than anyone.
They proposed a new, eleventh-hour plan: merge Marvel with Toy Biz on friendlier terms for creditors.
Icahn was blindsided. He sued. Called it a scam. Claimed Arad and Perlmutter were colluding with Perelman’s team.
But by mid-1998, with the creditors siding with Arad and Perlmutter, the court had made its call.
Icahn lost.
Marvel exited bankruptcy in October 1998. Perelman was out. Icahn was sidelined. And the company, reborn as Marvel Enterprises, was stripped down and in survival mode.
Ike Perlmutter didn’t waste time. Costs were slashed. Perelman’s acquisitions were sold off.
Marvel wasn’t going to try to print trading cards or run its own distribution. From now on, Marvel was about one thing:
Characters.
It became a licensing company. Let others take the risk. Let Fox make the movies. Let Sony handle the distribution. Marvel would sit back and collect the checks.
And it worked.
The first taste came with Blade in 1998. Then X-Men in 2000. And then Spider-Man in 2002—$821 million at the box office. But Marvel only got a small piece of the action—a licensing fee and a cut of toy sales.
But it was enough, for now.
The toys flew off shelves. By 2006, Marvel was bringing in nearly $230 million annually from more than 500 licensing partners—everything from toys, games, and apparel to hotels and theme parks. Marvel stock had rocketed back—from under $1 in 2000 to over $20. It was one of the best turnarounds on the market. But the big money, i.e., the movies—that was going to Sony and Fox.
So with Avi Arad pushing to get into movies, they took the risk and raised $525 million from Merrill Lynch to finance ten movies. It was a bold move because they were betting on superheroes that had never been in cinemas before—Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Ant-Man. Remember, Perelman had sold off the film rights to many of its most popular characters when the company was in trouble.
In 2006, Avi Arad stepped down—some say it was over money. In interviews, Arad said it was because Marvel was getting too big for him, too many people to deal with. But with him gone, Kevin Feige, a quiet exec who’d been in Arad’s shadow, stepped up to take over their first film—Iron Man with a $140 million budget, Jon Favreau as director, who had never directed a movie of this scale, and Robert Downey Jr., who was just a few years out of rehab, in the lead role.
So this was a huge gamble—but it paid off in spades.
Iron Man was released in 2008—audiences and critics loved it. The film made over $585 million at the box office—blowing past projections for a character most people had never heard of.
And at the very end of the movie, after the credits rolled, came a scene. Samuel L. Jackson. Eyepatch. One line: “I’m here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative.” And with that, they planted the flag. MCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe, was born.
And Disney, led by Bob Iger, who had already bought Pixar a few years earlier and would go on to buy Lucasfilm, saw straight away what this could mean. He saw Marvel as a goldmine in so many ways, because for Disney, Marvel’s superheroes offered more than box office revenue and the merchandise that Marvel was capitalising on. Disney also had their shops, meaning they could rake in huge profits from the sale of merchandise, and they had theme parks, so new superheroes could be leveraged into even more revenue streams while also helping to grow and strengthen the Disney brand, especially among the more elusive young male audience.
So in 2009, Disney bought Marvel for $4 billion, and while with hindsight that may sound like a steal, you have to remember, at that time this was 37 times Marvel's earnings, and many, including Disney’s board, thought it was a huge risk.
And there was one condition. Ike Perlmutter, who got $1.4 billion cash plus stock—he stayed.
Perlmutter was private. Paranoid. Ruthlessly cost-conscious. His nickname inside Marvel was “Uncle Scrooge.”
As part of the deal, Kevin Feige—the producer who’d launched the MCU—still had to report to him.
And that was a problem.
Because Ike didn’t see Marvel as a movie company. He saw it as a licensing engine. He didn’t care about film critics or Oscar campaigns.
At first, it worked. Marvel kept cranking out hits. Iron Man 2. The Avengers. Every film opened at #1. Two of them raked in over a billion dollars.
But behind the scenes, things were tense.
Feige wanted to go bigger. Bolder. He wanted diverse heroes, new directors, more risk. Ike said no. He questioned whether anyone would go see a Black superhero lead a film. Or a woman. He opposed Black Panther. Blocked Captain Marvel. And in 2015, Ike tried to fire Feige.
That was it.
Iger made the call.
Marvel Studios would report directly to Disney. Not Ike. Effective immediately.
Ike lost control of the movies. He kept Marvel’s comics and consumer products, but the crown jewel was gone.
The shift changed everything.
Feige greenlit Black Panther—which grossed $1.3 billion and won three Oscars. Captain Marvel pulled in over a billion. But the feud left scars.
By 2019, with the release of Avengers: Endgame, which became the highest-grossing film of all time—temporarily overtaking Avatar—the MCU had generated over $20 billion in box office alone.
Then came Disney+ in 2019. And there was an explosion of content. WandaVision. Loki. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. But it was Marvel overload. And the cracks started to show.
While some projects did really well (Spider-Man: No Way Home made $1.9 billion)—by this stage Disney had entered into a multi-year “content licensing agreement” with Sony, who still own Spider-Man. Others flopped (Eternals, Quantumania).
In short, there was just too much Marvel content, and not all of it was of the same expected high quality—it diluted the brand.
When Iger, who had retired briefly as Disney CEO, came back in 2022, he didn’t mince words: the output was too high. The quality had slipped.
Meanwhile, good ole Ike wasn’t done.