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Marvel Comics: The Untold story by Sean Howe is a really good book that tells the stories of the comic industry and its growth and change objectively. I strongly suggest it for those interested in this sort of thing.
The 1960s Marvel bullpen would make a far more fascinating story. If any of you guys are interested in this stuff, I'd strongly recommend Sean Howe's Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. It's a fascinating portrait of how Marvel formed, the role it had on talent within the industry, and the pretty tragic ending a lot of those guys (especially Kirby) faced.
I'm not really into being a doomsayer when it comes to collecting records, but I read this book recently, and keep coming back to the end of Marvel Comics' (printed comic) glory days as a reference.
http://www.amazon.com/Marvel-Comics-The-Untold-Story/dp/0061992119
Basically, Rob Liefeld (the creator of Deadpool – and general idiot), took control of the company and was responsible for generating an over abundance of special editions, limited runs, cover variations for the same comic, etc. They knew they would cash in short term because collectors would feel inclined to buy everything they made, but they ignored the long term effects of this kind of strategy. It eventually burned out not only comic collectors but comic readers as well (because the characters and concepts just kept getting dumber). The same thing happened to baseball cards. And, slow but surely, it's happening with records right now too.
Sean Howe has a fascinating reading. The Meryl Lynch deal mentioned below is key here, is a bet against all Marvel film rights if the first movies failed they would lose everything. According to Feige, he realized they could bring back some properties [from other studios] and start slowly building the Universe. Somewhere it is mentioned that a fan dropped a nerd question when these characters will meet well before they were on screen. They don't acknowledge this as the spark that initiated all of this, but I guess that frequent question plus the committee assembled for advising the MCU [which was recently dissolved] could came up with such route easily.
It evolved over time because Marvel books started to sell.
Before the '57 collapse, Marvel was one of the top three publishers in the business (behind only Western/Dell and possibly National). But that was mostly due to the astonishing number of titles. Lee and company cranked out 40-50 titles per month.
The 8 title limit stuck up until around 1964 when sales of Marvel comics were just too high and Independent News couldn't continue to hold them back. They went up by one or two titles every six months or so, until right before the contract ended, they were around 16.
As soon as Marvel went with Cadence, however, they started to split their two-story titles (Tales of Suspense becomes Captain America and Iron Man starts up with #1; Strange Tales becomes Dr. Strange and Nick Fury starts up with #1; etc.).
You also have to remember that DC still never thought that Marvel was a real competitor. In DC's eyes, Marvel books were ugly.
I would highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Marvel-Comics-The-Untold-Story/dp/0061992119
Stan Lee was the first editor that credited the penciler, colorist, inker as well as the letterer and writer on the cover. He insisted on that. u/myqhunt gets a lot of his facts wrong.
Source: https://www.amazon.com/Marvel-Comics-Untold-Sean-Howe/dp/0061992119
If anyone wants to delve into the crediting and creative side: http://comicsalliance.com/stan-lee-legacy-jack-kirby-steve-ditko-marvel-history/
Edit: looking at myqhunt other replies makes it worse. They're not only wrong on their facts, they are willfully and negligently wrong.
Stan Lee didn't create all those characters by himself. In fact, many of them were outright created by Kirby and Ditko. Either way, when it came time for Stan Lee to become the face of Marvel he would virtually ALWAYS say that he created those characters by himself, which is insane. Back in the day, and for a long time, the way that Marvel would produce the comics was that the artistic would draw the story and then the writer would write the dialog in the word balloons or captions. So the story was effectively written by the artist. All those classics Spider-Man stories? Yeah, they're mostly written by Ditko. Sometimes Lee would give Kirby or Ditko a very rough notion for what he wanted from a character or story, but most of the time Kirby or Ditko would just come up with that stuff themselves. When Kirby was completely broke after years and years of churning out classic, iconic material that put Marvel on the map (because the creators of these characters and stories don't OWN any of the material) Lee had the opportunity to go to his bosses at Marvel and try to get them to negotiate a better deal with Kirby so that he wouldn't be fucking destitute after making them millions. He didn't bother. He refused to go to bat for Ditko as well.
To this day Lee runs around saying he created the X-Men, or he created Spider-Man, or he created the Hulk, and never bothering to credit the people who actually created, co-created, or wrote all the classic stories that made these characters famous.
Do you know how many iconic characters Lee created without Ditko and Kirby?
None. (Oh, wait. Stripperella. My bad.)
Do you know how many iconic characters Ditko and Kirby created without Lee?
Tons.
Kirby created a shitload of characters that persist to this day, like Darkseid and the New Gods. Ditto created characters for Charleston like Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, and The Question, who would eventually become Nite Owl, Dr. Manhattan, and Rorschach in Watchmen. Shade the Changing Man. Man-Bat. Hawk and Dove.
If you ask me, Kirby and Ditko were the geniuses and Lee was just a guy who helped out and then hogged all the credit once he got the opportunity. I fucking hate seeing his face in all these movies, and I hate that fans keep calling him THE MAN. He's not the Man. He's an asshole. Kirby is King.
Here's a good, and REALLY entertaining place to start reading about Marvel history.
http://www.amazon.com/Marvel-Comics-The-Untold-Story/dp/0061992119
Comics in the sixties were very different from today. Read Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, or even do research (the whole Batman ownership thing is a good example).
Rights are a complicated thing when dealing with decades-old characters. But freshly-created and unique characters, the road of rights is much less complicated. It only gets as complicated as you want it to.
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