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.

Cook, Minnesota, newsstand, August 1937
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.)

Western Supernovel Magazine Vol. 1 #1 (May 1933). Goodman’s first pulp as an editor. Art by Joseph Cragin.
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 book company — using the initials of their first names. MLJ soon had a comic character who would be the center of their publishing empire — Archie Andrews.)
As a publisher, Martin Goodman had a special gift. He was not an innovator but he could quickly see trends. He studied what sold on the newsstand for other publishers and he rushed out an imitation. And if that sold, he would add more and more of the same. The Lone Ranger was extremely popular on radio, so he published The Masked Rider. Ka-Zar was Tarzan with blonde hair. This was a practice he employed as a publisher the rest of his days in other fields, too.

The Masked Rider Vol. 1 #1 (Apr. 1934). Cover by Chris Schaare.

The only three issues of Ka-Zar: Vol. 1 #1 (Oct. 1936) to Vol. 1 #3 (June 1937). All covers by J.W. Scott.
In 1937, he created a new imprint, Red Circle, and several of his publication titles were gathered under that brand name. Between Red Circle and 80 of his other company entities he created over the years, Goodman published more than 60 different titles, covering every genre imaginable: war, Westerns, science-fiction, sports, romance, and crime.

Covers by J.W. Scott for Star Sports Magazine #1 (Oct. 1936); Sky Devils Vol. 1 #1 (Mar. 1938); Top-Notch Detective (Mar. 1939). Cover by Frank R. Paul for Dynamic Science Stories Vol. 1 #1 (Feb. 1939).
And in his quest to mimic competitors, many of his publications in this early period entered the disturbing field called “shudder pulps,” with covers and interior art featuring bloodcurdling sights of sadistic criminals, Satanists, mad scientists, demented dwarves, and Asian villains torturing bound, scantily-clad women. Goodman was all about business, however, and they sold.
He was tightfisted with money when it came to his line of pulps. He offered accomplished writers an extremely low price per word for stories they were not able to sell to the majors like Street & Smith and Popular Publications, but he did protect their reputations by often using pseudonyms on the stories. He also quietly purchased previously printed stories that had appeared in competitors’ magazines and passed them off as new in his pulps. And it was this that got him into legal trouble with the United States government. Not once, but three times.
Harry Steeger and Henry Ralston (publishers of Popular Publications and Street & Smith, respectively) brought Goodman’s practice of taking stories, changing the titles, the character names and the name of the author without permission, to the attention of the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC brought charges in 1942 against Goodman, accusing him of defrauding the public into spending money on what he listed as new tales, instead of reprints, and ordered him to state very clearly in his magazines which was which. (The FTC cited him again, in 1947 and in 1957, when he repeated the practice.)
Examining his company and its prospects, Goodman realized he had to make changes. He was already experiencing paper rationing due to World War II restrictions and he also saw decreasing overall sales on his pulp magazines. However, the decision to cut back on them was no problem because he was having success with other forms of entertainment he was publishing, including very lurid true-crime magazines, movie magazines, and, oh, comic books, a line of which he had started in 1939, beginning with… Marvel Comics #1.

Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939). Cover by Frank R. Paul.
(Goodman had already used the word “Marvel” in the title of one of his pulp series earlier — Marvel Science Stories. The series then became Marvel Tales starting with the December 1939 issue, but two issues later it was changed to Marvel Stories. He halted production after Vol. 2 #3, April 1941, but resumed publication in 1950 and went back to its original title of Marvel Science Stories with Vol. 3 #1. Then, just as it was barely on the newsstand, he changed the title’s name again, this time to Marvel Science Fiction, which became a digest for a few issues. But that form didn’t stick and he returned it to pulp size by the time of the final issue, Vol. 3 #6, May 1952.)

Marvel Science Stories Vol. 1 #1 (Aug. 1938). The first time Goodman used “Marvel” in a title. Norman Saunders art.

Marvel Science Stories Vol. 1 #3 (Feb. 1939). Hans Wesso art.

Marvel Science Stories Vol. 1 #4 (Apr.-May 1939). Saunders art.

Marvel Tales Vol. 1 #6 (Dec. 1939). J.W. Scott art.

Marvel Stories Vol. 2 #3 (Apr. 1941). Scott art.

Marvel Science Stories Vol. 3 #1 (Nov. 1950). Saunders art.

Marvel Science Stories Vol. 3 #2 (Feb. 1951). Saunders art.

Marvel Science Fiction Vol. 3 #4 (Aug. 1951). Hannes Bok art.
The last pulp Goodman published had a cover date of June 1957 and it was, appropriately, Complete Western Book Magazine, the series he started with 24 years before.

A suitable cover for the end of the trail of Martin Goodman’s pulp line. Complete Western Book Magazine Vol. 21 #5 (June 1957). Artist: Unknown.
A final note: This article has tended to highlight the covers — which is quite natural when it comes to the pulps — but to finish it off without even a little look at the interior art over the years would make you unaware of work by some people you may have heard of, including Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Alex Schomburg, Carl Burgos, Syd Shores, Bill Everett, Roy G. Krenkel, Al Avison, Matt Baker, Joe Maneely, Al Williamson and Gene Colan among them.
Enjoy!

Marvel Stories Vol. 2 #2 (Nov. 1940). Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

This cosmic ray-enhanced Steve Rogers-lookalike appeared in Marvel Stories Vol. 2 #2 (Nov. 1940), a few months before Captain America Comics #1 (Mar. 1941). Art by Simon and Kirby (with Kirby and possible Al Liederman inking on CA#1).

Uncanny Stories Vol. 1 #1 (Apr. 1941) Alex Schomburg.

Complete Detective Cases Vol. 6 #3 (July 1944). Syd Shores.

Marvel Science Fiction Vol. 3 #6 (May 1952). Roy G. Krenkel.

War Stories Vol. 1 #1 (Sept. 1952). Bill Everett.
Oh, and one last thing… Martin Goodman did become rich.
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MORE
— MARVEL COMICS #1 and the Empire That Almost Wasn’t. Click here.
— ROY THOMAS Pays Tribute to Marvel’s MARTIN GOODMAN. Click here.
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13th Dimension contributor-at-large PETER BOSCH’s first book, American TV Comic Books: 1940s-1980s – From the Small Screen to the Printed Page, was published by TwoMorrows. (You can buy it here.) A sequel, American Movie Comic Books: 1930s-1970s — From the Silver Screen to the Printed Page, is due in 2025. (You can pre-order here.) Peter has written articles and conducted celebrity interviews for various magazines and newspapers. He lives in Hollywood.