Posted by Dan Greenfield on Jan 31, 2025
The Pulp Marvels That Made MARTIN GOODMAN
The Marvel founder’s roots in lurid tales and hard-boiled action… By PETER BOSCH Before January completely passes, we want to take a moment to recognize the birthday of Martin Goodman earlier this month. Before there were comic books, glorious pulp magazines ruled. Mysteries captivated, love conquered, and cowboys shared the newsstands with spacemen. Adventure was to be had wherever a reader could look: The Shadow, The Spider, Doc Savage, G-8 and His Battle Aces — and let’s not forget Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Buck Rogers, Conan, Zorro, and more who originated in pulp magazines. If you liked horror stories, you loved pulps like Weird Tales. Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and other tough guy detectives thrilled readers in Black Mask. Whatever you liked reading, there was a pulp magazine for it. It was a field in which, if successful, a publisher could grow very rich. And, in 1933, Martin Goodman wanted to be that kind of publisher. However, he began on the bottom — and pretty much stayed there (at least when it came to the pulps’ industry). He was born Moses Goodman in Brooklyn on January 18, 1908. In the late 1920s, he got clerical work at Eastern Distributing Company, and after a few years was promoted to the position of circulation manager. When Eastern went bankrupt in 1932 due to the Depression, Goodman partnered with Louis H. Silberkleit, another circulation manager there, and together they fashioned a new distribution company as co-owners. At the same time, Silberkleit created Newsstand Publications, Inc. with himself as president and Goodman as editor. Their first magazine was published in 1933, Western Supernovel Magazine, which reflected Goodman’s favorite genre. (It changed its title with the second issue to Complete Western Book Magazine.) In 1934, however, debts mounted for Silberkleit and the distribution company went bankrupt. He also needed to get out from the publication end and sold his interest to Goodman, who kept it going by working a deal with the printer to whom Silberkleit owed money. Goodman was now 26 years old and a publisher. (Just to note, Silberkleit may have been down but some business leaders are part of a breed that finds new opportunities even after bad times. In 1939, he and two others, Maurice Coyne and John L. Goldwater, founded a publishing venture that created a new comic...
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