Marvel Comics: The Untold Story

Sean Howe

Jan 2013 · HarperAudio · Narrated by Stephen Hoye

About this audiobook

The defining, behind-the-scenes chronicle of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and dominant pop cultural entities in America’s history -- Marvel Comics – and the outsized personalities who made Marvel including Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby.  

“Sean Howe’s history of Marvel makes a compulsively readable, riotous and heartbreaking version of my favorite story, that of how a bunch of weirdoes changed the world...That it’s all true is just frosting on the cake.”  —Jonathan Lethem

For the first time, Marvel Comics tells the stories of the men who made Marvel: Martin Goodman, the self-made publisher who forayed into comics after a get-rich-quick tip in 1939, Stan Lee, the energetic editor who would shepherd the company through thick and thin for decades and Jack Kirby, the WWII veteran who would co-create Captain America in 1940 and, twenty years later, developed with Lee the bulk of the company’s marquee characters in a three-year frenzy. Incorporating more than one hundred original interviews with those who worked behind the scenes at Marvel over a seventy-year-span, Marvel Comics packs anecdotes and analysis into a gripping narrative of how a small group of people on the cusp of failure created one of the most enduring pop cultural forces in contemporary America.

Ratings and reviews

I read the book already but couldn't resist buying it on audiobook too. It's such a good book, particularly if you're a marvel fan. You learn alot about what was going on behind the scenes during some of your favorite eras. The Shooter era was a particularly good read. Pick this up, it's worth it.

I was amazed at the original concepts of the first comic books I began collecting in 1964 ,truly thrilled,and fantastic stories , I was addicted to marvel comics. Thank you ,STAN LEE ,JACK KIRBY,AND STEVE DILKO, FOR A REVOLITIONARY SERIES ,OF SPECIAL COMIC MAZAGINES.:= MAKE MINE MARVEL=!!!>''' MAKE MINE MARVEL''' !!! FROM M.H.T.III THANK YOU!!!

I love this audio 😍

About the author

Sean Howe is the editor of Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers!: Writers on Comics and the Deep Focus series of film books. He is a former editor and critic at Entertainment Weekly, and his writing has appeared in New York, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, Spin, and The Village Voice. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.