Marvel Comics: The Untold Story Hardcover – October 9, 2012

Howe’s in-depth account of Marvel’s business history, revered personalities, and pop-culturally ingrained characters boasts exhaustively researched and intricately integrated information. And loads of it, as this isn’t just one story—it’s a bunch of knotted tales strung together. It’s Stan Lee and Jack Kirby creating a pantheon of modern American superheroes. It’s the rote staff changes and personnel quirks that made Marvel the company it was. It’s the siren call of Hollywood cash that made it the company it is today. It’s a look at the American comic-book industry as a whole over the last half-century. It’s a priceless collection of anecdotes about the artists and writers reflecting and filtering the eras they worked in. The most timely strand threads through issues of creators’ rights and intellectual property, an argument that’s heating up today’s comics climate. Casual fans may find more than they bargained for, but for the Marvel faithful, this is the definitive book on the company responsible for aligning the cosmos in their favorite fictional universe. --Ian Chipman

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

“A warts-and-all, nail-biting mini-epic about the low-paid, unsung ‘funnybook men’ who were unwittingly creating twenty-first century pop culture. If you thought the fisticuffs were bare and bloody on the four-color page, wait ‘til you hear about what went down in the Marvel bullpen.” (Patton Oswalt)

“Exhaustively researched and artfully assembled, Marvel Comics is a historical exploration, a labor of love, and a living illustration of how the weirdest corners of the counterculture can sometimes become the culture-at-large.” (Chuck Klosterman)

“Page after page, Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics manages to be enchantingly told, emotionally suspenseful and totally revelatory. If I knew more about superpowers, I’d be able to explain how he did it.” (Sloane Crosley)

“Sean Howe is to Marvel Comics what Procopius was to the Byzantine Empire: a court gossip of breathtaking thoroughness and exactitude, and a sly and nuanced writer. It is imperative that this work not fall into the hands of alien species, or we’re done for.” (Luc Sante)

“A jittery, hilarious, anecdotal, and exhaustive history of the company. . . . If you’re a comics fan, this is essential reading. If you’re not, then it’s merely fascinating. Howe has written a biographical history of modern America’s id.” (GQ)

“Sean Howe’s gripping new history lays out five decades of Marvel adventures and insanity, and will make you believe that comic-book creators have even weirder lives than their mutant creations.” (Rolling Stone)

“Marvel Comics is a meticulous chronicle of the real secret origins of the superhero, a tragic love story about the relationship between a long parade of passionate, talented superhero devotees and the company that didn’t love them back.” (The Los Angeles Times)

“It’s about time somebody wrote Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, and it looks like Sean Howe was the right guy for the job. Howe’s clear-eyed history. . . is as full of colorful characters, tragic reversals and unlikely plot twists as any book in the Marvel canon.” (Newsday)

“Exhaustively researched and extraordinarily compelling. . . . A quasi-Shakespearean portrayal of Marvel as it moves from spirited upstart to ruthless corporate colossus.” (Salon)