1960's

The 1960’s was a time of significant growth in the comics industry. There would never again be the heyday of the Golden Age but the now well underway Silver Age was allowing more and more comics to be published.

The 60’s saw the first major comic book conventions start up and gain popularity. There was no major media presence or movie previews also absent were the panels and special guests or any kind of celebrity status for industry people. The cons were all about dealer’s tables and selling/buying comics. It would be several years before there was even an Artist Alley at most cons. Today San Diego and New York’s comic cons are huge events and multimedia showcases with comics being pushed to the side in favor of movies, video game, toys and celebrities. In print, Atlas comics became Marvel comics and began publishing a new group of titles like Fantastic Four, The Avengers, Hulk and Spider-Man. Trying to pick the most important of the Marvel books of the 60’s is like nailing Jell-O to a tree. What is clear about this time in the history of comics is that Marvel was starting to grow and develop while DC was starting to falter. The restrictive distribution arrangement Marvel had for its books (A company owned by DC was in charge of the distribution and restricted Marvel to eight titles a month) kept them from exploding in popularity but the writing was on the wall for DC.

In 1967 something very odd happened; National Periodical Publications (not yet officially named but often called DC) was purchased by a parking lot company called Kinney National. Along with NPP, Kinney also purchased a talent agency, Panavision and Warner Brothers-Seven Arts. It didn’t take Kinney long to dump the parking lots in favor of the media arm and Warner Communications was born. Today, the Warner empire is huge and the comics end of the business is responsible for a major portion of the company’s success in the last two decades. As for the most important character of the 60’s I think the clear choice is Xemnu from Journey into Mystery. (Just kidding. I’m just trying to give the D-list 60’s characters some love.)

Picking the most important character of the decade is nearly impossible; there are just too many great and lasting ones. I think a likely candidate from that time would be Spider-Man. Spidey was a huge success for Marvel and remains a major draw today. The sleeper of the era was X-Men, a title that limped along for many years until it was canceled. Once revived in the 1970’s however, the Uncanny X-Men was a sleeper again but this time the fans were starting to notice. Eventually the X-Men franchise would become Marvel’s largest and most recognizable but it took a long time to get there.