Do not permit Hammer Time to continue! Is that all right?20250118

DC Comics originally started as two separate companies, National Periodicals [it used multiple names so that's the one I'm going with for convenience] and All-American Comics.  They were closely related, promoting each other's comics and putting their IPs together, at least in the Justice Society comic.  The characters would get together as a team, then split up for their own adventures, usually done by their respective creative teams, and get back together to solve whatever that issue's mystery was.

DC's basic practices were probably formed in this time.  The two companies merged in 1946.  Justice Society was cancelled in 1951 for low sales.  DC had also been establishing its legal policies, most notably suing Fawcett over Captain Marvel, which they claimed was a rip-off of Superman.

The lawsuit had taken place over years.  One court said Captain Marvel was a rip-off but that DC had not protected its own copyright.  Another court said this or that Captain Marvel story might be a rip-off, the character was not.  But by then the business was going bad anyway, so Fawcett settled in 1953.  They didn't lose in court so much as DC had bullied them into surrender by suing them.  Eventually Fawcett would sell all their IPs to DC.

Superheroes had lost interest by then, but a few years later, DC decided to try them again.  It's not clear why they didn't just bring back the Justice Society characters, instead they did a reboot.  They started with the Flash in 1956, then Green Lantern, Hawkman and more corporate IPs.  In 1960, they would reboot the Justice Society as the Justice League.  The company owned their own printer and distributor, so they were leading the industry.  They had built their policies through multiple companies and IPs with lawsuits, so they were ready for the next generation.

The official story is that in 1961, a DC executive was playing golf with Marvel publisher Martin Goodman and told him about the success they were having with Justice League.  When Goodman went back to the office, he told editor Stan Lee to do a rip-off, which is how we got the Fantastic Four and, from there, the whole Marvel Universe.  

DC already had some control over Marvel.  In the 1950s, Goodman had tried to start his own distributor, which failed.  So he had moved to the American News distributor, just before they were sued out of business by the Justice Department.  With nowhere else to go, Goodman had to turned to DC's distributor.  DC didn't want its competitor to become too big, so Marvel was limited to eight books a month, a small percentages of the copycat titles they had cranked out before.

As if that wasn't enough, DC had shown how litigious it was, so the usual rip-offs wouldn't work.  But I don't think that explains how copying the Justice League became the Fantastic Four.  It is noted that the early Marvel characters didn't have much in common with the superhero genre.  The Fantastic Four didn't have secret identities or costumes, and little in the way of love interests.  The Hulk was a monster book with the monster as the title character so he needs to win every issue.  Thor was a take on Norse mythology and it would be a while before any of them fought standard supervillains.

Spider-Man was the first new Marvel character who actually fit the standard tropes and he's frikkin' Spider-Man!  The whole point of the character is that he's different from the others!  It's believable that Marvel just didn't want to be sued by the company that owned their distributor, but that doesn't fully explain how you get the Fantastic Four and subsequent titles if you're just doing a rip-off of the Justice League.

I think the discussion with Goodman at the golf course - if that's where it actually happened - was more about the creation of a franchise.  DC was using its influence over another company to do this, either as part of its long-range plans or just to try out a convenient experiment.  They didn't depend on Goodman or owe him anything, so why not give it a try?

Just as this was happening, DC was developing the concept of 'multiverse.'  This was started when the rebooted Flash met the original version in "The Flash of Two Worlds," cover-dated September 1961.  Marvel's first release was cover-dated two months later, so Flash #123 led to Fantastic Four #1.  That can't be a coincidence.

These weren't the only purposes.  I don't know how likely it is, but it's possible the goal for DC was to get more work from Jack Kirby.  The industry didn't have much in the way of stars, but he was one of the biggest.  The Fantastic Four look more like a rip-off of the last title he had done for DC, Challengers of the Unknown.  They were all explorers and adventurers, just put the girl secretary on the team and give them superpowers, there you go.  That was the actual rip-off/inspiration going on.

While working on Challengers, Kirby had tried to move into newspaper strips, where the real buck are, but didn't succeed.  DC editor Jack Schiff had claimed co-creative rights to the strip and they had sued each other.  Kirby lost which is why he couldn't get any work at DC.  So pushing new Marvel books may have been a way for DC to get more work from Kirby, beyond the monster books he was already cranking out.

There's no evidence but my guess is that Schiff was the one playing golf with Martin Goodman.  He was editing Superman and Batman at the time, as well as handling DC's adaptations of movies and tv.  That means he was connected to Hollywood, which provided access to how other companies handle their IPs, as well as the agendas to push them through society.  It might have been someone else and we'll probably never know the truth, so that's what I'm going with.  DC was a big enough company that they didn't just have a bunch of artists, editors and a guy in charge.  They would have people whose job was to plan years in advance with other companies.

So the plan wasn't just about doing a rip-off of Justice League.  It was to set-up a franchise.  Marvel did have superheroes back in the 1940s but only Captain America stood out, and he wouldn't be brought back until the Avengers - the actual Justice League rip-off - was already established.  Submariner would appear as a villain early on and the Human Torch was the main example of Marvel re-booting an old character, as one of the Fantastic Four.  There would also be the Vision but he wouldn't be used until much later on, and most of the other characters stayed buried.

Marvel moved slowly because of the limits set by DC.  As distributor, DC would be able to track Marvel's sales.  Fantastic Four was their only superhero title for almost a year.  Then several more were added, those are the ones I'm looking at here.  After that, Marvel would clearly be a success and moving on a new path, whether influenced by DC or not.  The new characters were added in comics cover-dated around Fall 1962.

The Hulk was established but his series didn't sell and was cancelled after six issues.  But the character was used to expand the franchise, appearing in other titles to develop an interactive 'Marvel universe.'  Thor was showing Kirby's interest in mythology, although he just fought monsters and space aliens.  Ant-Man and Spider-Man were strange examples, showing that something else was going on here.

Ant-Man's first appearance was just after Fantastic Four #1, in a one-shot science fantasy story that made no sense.  A scientist wanted to show how great he was by inventing a shrinking ray which he used to investigate ants.  Seriously.  Stan Lee usually took all the credit but I'd swear he said once or twice that Goodman was the one pushing Ant-Man, who was brought back several months later, just after Amazing Fantasy #15 brought Spider-Man to the world.

Spiders are not insects but otherwise they are bugs, just like ants.  Why were these being pushed at the same time?  Others would soon be used as heroes or villains although they couldn't use The Fly because Kirby had already done that title for Archie Comics.  In one sense, it seems like a basic way to establish IPs, but it does make me wonder if Goodman and the unnamed DC executive had some other plan in mind, like they were at some underground meeting and just told others it was a golf game.

Then there's Spidey.  His use of the standard superhero tropes shows that something else was going on here.  The creation was also strange.  Stan Lee gave Jack Kirby the initial idea.  It's not known how many pages Jack drew of the story but Lee didn't think it worked, so he turned to Steve Ditko who created the character we know today.

But Kirby's story has never been seen by the public.  Reportedly it featured a teenager who lived with his aunt and uncle, had a web-shooting gun and fought an evil scientist who lived just down the block.  Based on the descriptions we've heard, Ditko's version was obviously superior, but why wasn't Kirby's story ever printed?

Marvel wouldn't waste those pages.  Goodman was insistent that he wouldn't buy new material when there was old material he'd already paid the artist for.  Kirby was definitely paid for the work or he'd have made sure to bring that up during his fight with Marvel in the 1970s and 80s.  Marvel's lawyers would want to make sure he can't claim creation of a character he was never paid for.  Kirby's version may not have been what Stan was looking for but they still need to fill up the books every month.

Even after Spider-Man became successful, why wouldn't Marvel just publish this version as a novelty?  Another detail about the character's creation, using Jack Kirby art the fans have never seen before!  Kirby did the cover for Amazing Fantasy #15 because Stan rejected Ditko's version for some reason, but they've repeatedly published Ditko's attempt ever since.

Not sure how much Lee, Kirby or Ditko thought about this, given that they were busy producing a lot of work on a regular basis.  But Martin Goodman would have been paying more attention to the overall product, as would DC.  We also don't know how far in advance they made these plans, or how things changed over time.  But I'm increasingly convinced that the corporate "multiverse" is a specific use of IP and that DC had extensive plans for this through other companies, which they'd been developing since their own founding.

The following is just notes on the first appearances of Marvel characters and the remaining paragraphs of a previous attempt at this article, just so I can keep track of what didn't get used.

Fantastic Four November 61
Ant-Man January 62
Hulk May 62
Thor, Spider-Man August 62
Ant-Man (second appearance) September 62
Iron Man March 63
Nick Fury (WWII) May 63
The Wasp June 63
Dr. Strange July 63
X-Men, Avengers September 63
Nick Fury (modern) December 63
Daredevil April 64

Marvel also has a range of ‘who created what’ arguments.  Stan Lee always gets his name on everything and freely admitted that he demanded credit but was also willing to let others do the work.  This is why Kirby and Ditko could do so much brilliant work.  Unlike Lee, they made comics they’ll be remembered for outside of Marvel.  They took more creative control, most notably Ditko with Spider-Man and Kirby with Fantastic Four and Thor, but they created new characters their own way.

Ditko created the first Doctor Strange story on his own and then brought it in.  Lee never liked writing the character, probably because he was the type who needed some connection to the starting point, even if it was just a conversation and someone else had all the ideas.  Kirby wanted to do war stories so he created Nick Fury, who was also useful as an older man who still had adventures in the modern day.  Daredevil is the only major Marvel character not co-credited to Kirby or Ditko and shows that on his own, Stan could only create someone who wouldn’t be interesting for a couple decades.  

The X-Men were minor characters that just seem to have been a need to create yet-another title, so just give them all superpowers for the same reason.  Kirby would quickly leave the title but he had started developing ideas he would build on later in his career.  Iron Man stands out as having the least contribution by Lee or Kirby, the only major character with others co-credited creators.  After giving Ant-Man a girl sidekick, Marvel could finally get the Justice League rip-off they’d been aiming for all along.

The multiverse was a way to use corporate intellectual property.  Both Marvel and DC would exploit this in many ways for decades.  In the late-70s, they were finally able to work together on crossovers, until Marvel’s editor-in-chief Jim Shooter ruined that as they planned for Avengers/Justice League.  Twenty years later, the companies started working together again and would finally make that happen.  Then they split up again.  They’re still separate but both companies are pushing the multiverse yet-again.

They’ve worked on this for a long time, arguably since “Flash of Two Worlds.”  The audience has a certain view of multiverses, then get tired of them and move on to something else.  The corporations have a different view.  They can connect with each other to exploit their decades-old intellectual property.  They plan this in private, at golf games or wherever the elites get together, and everyone else is expected to pay for it.