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By 1961, By 1961, 92 FROM KRAKOW TO KRYPTON: JEWS AND COMIC BOOKS Stan Lee had reached a career crossroads as the chief writer/editor of Martin Goodman’s comic-book company. The Goodman line had had success with a trio of superheroes back during World War II—Captain America, the SubMariner , and the Human Torch—but World War II was in the past, and so were the company’s salad days. By 1957, Lee, formerly the overseer of a bullpen of artists and writers who worked happily from within the Empire State Building, had been shoved into a tiny, two-office space on Madison Avenue that was home to Magazine Management, the parent company of Goodman’s publishing concerns. Goodman’s comics company, originally called Timely, had dropped the name Atlas Comics, being an officially nameless comic book company for the next few years. The Goodman line worked hard to pump out over a dozen bimonthly western and romance titles, becoming one of the industry’s most prolific comic book houses. But because of constant budget slashing and downsizing, it frequently fell on the editorial director Lee to fire, then later rehire, many of the cartoonists. The stress was starting to get Lee down. One bright spot was the sciencefiction books Lee edited and wrote starting in late 1958, many in collaboration with his brother Larry Lieber. These were stories of giant monsters, clearly influenced by the Godzilla-style movies then proliferating at drive-in movie theaters. Lee would later dub the creatures in these books BEMs, which stood for Bug-Eyed Monsters. Jack Kirby, who had ironically been Lee’s boss in 1940 when Lee started his comics career, had by the late 1950s fallen into something of a professional slump, and so returned to Timely/Atlas as a hired gun working for Lee. So, also in late 1958, Kirby started delineating some of the giant monster stories Lee wrote. By 1960, Kirby became a genuine fan favorite for his illustrations of slime-dripping BEMs and could be counted on to contribute artwork to at least one monster story per issue in titles like Tales of Suspense, Journey Into Mystery, and Strange Tales. The delight Lee took in spinning these yarns is evident in the daffy names he gave to the monsters, like Fin Fang Foom, Grottu, and Vandoom. But despite the fun he was having with the monster books, Stan Lee still felt comics were no medium for a serious writer. He had even Stan and Jack Chapter Twelve The cartoonist Jack Kirby at his drawing table. Courtesy of Lisa Kirby. changed his name early on because he was so ashamed of being associated with the comic-book field. “Comics in those days, everybody looked down their nose at them,” Lee remembers today. “They were at the bottom of the cultural totem pole. And I figured, ‘Someday I’m going to be a great writer. I don’t want to use the name Stanley Martin Lieber for these lousy comics.’ Little dreaming I’d stay in comics forever.” Now he was feeling like comics were an albatross around his neck, and he wanted to be relieved of the burden as soon as possible. He seriously considered a career change. Then one day in 1961, fate beckoned. Martin Goodman called Stan Lee into his office and demanded that Lee come up with a superhero book. Lee didn’t understand; superheroes were on their way out, or so he had thought. It seemed that Goodman had been playing golf with DC’s publisher Jack Liebowitz, and the latter was bragging about the success of DC’s new book, The Justice League of America, which combined the revamped Flash and Green Lantern with mainstays like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman and newer heroes like Martian Manhunter to form a team of superheroes. Superhero teams such as DC’s Justice Society of America and Timely’s All Winners Squad had been popular during the Golden Age, but by the early 1950s, most superhero groups had disbanded due to lack of interest. Now it seemed the pendulum had started to swing the other way, partially because of reader interest in the Barry Allen Flash and the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, and partially because superhero team books had been absent for so long that, to the new crop of kids reading comics in the early 1960s, the very concept of a superhero team was fresh and exciting. Everything old, it seemed, was new...

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