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from captain america and spiderman. to the x. man and the hulk. anyone else. even if you've never read the comics so much you recognize these iconic superheroes memes that wells famous creates a quite accurate to say that marvel that evolution is the superhero comics with thousands of characters and in so weaving storylines the marvel universe is one of the most astonishing tales in modern fiction. thoughts it all becomes one rival for the company at the time of the millennium. it was losing sight of what you were trying to sell sell stories it was kind of like a victim of his own success. it's a great story has a points where the hero is on. is nice seemingly beyond salvation mobbles talking

style. can when it declared bankruptcy followed by an all out war between investors that raged for years and a lot of screaming on telephone and threats to destroy one another everybody was just scared to death this is the inside story of how one of the world's most beloved pop culture icons reemerge from the ruins of its comic book empire. and force its way back to the topic. of. new york. times for marvel's headquarters and so many of its super errands. from dramatic battles a grand central station. to spectacular rescues on the staten island ferry. part of the magic of marvel for long time fans like sean how is that is correct is

a set in the real world. people that i meet the new york city they have the feeling that they might. catch a glimpse of a superhero battle there on the where the post office or something for almost 80 years marvel has captivated comic fans across the globe she sings best selling comic books costumes. video games. and record breaking ups office hits marvel has come could the entertainment world. bazza rewinds for 3 decades and smallville wasn't just a fling comic super villains it was combating bankruptcy stuff defections and tied up in a legal battle the threatens to destroy the company. to

find out we go back to the beginnings of the marvel universe. 2 superheroes we next day were born in new york in the late 1930 s. 2. 2 in the midst of the great depression marvel's rival d.c. comics created a character that became an instant hit. superman who was an inspiration for a lot of kids in the depression he was a crusader for the masses superman would soon follow john not like a true saida. the 2 propelled d.c. comics popularity well ahead of marvel sen just a small pulp fiction publisher ninus tellingly from earlier years marvel has ovaries that kind of 2nd place company superman and batman and d.c. comics were were kind of the industry standard and marvel was. through a scrappy other player to cash in on the trends time he hired didn't seem to

produce its own line of superheroes cartoonists jay simon and so jack kirby would go on to create some of marvel's must famous characters. and this is america and the 2nd world war. right right. time is patriotic super hero i think the fake real life anime's in world war 2 you . struck a chord with soldiers and their families back home. i think that it was a way to see victory to have an idea of what that would feel like. 930 s. and forty's for the golden age of comics in the united states and as american soldiers brought my comics overseas nasa games popularity in korea and japan has helped.

influence the development of local manga comics. but in the 1950 s. there was a growing movement against violence and gore in comic books. and it was allowed. and with. everything else is in regulation that severely limited the kind of content publishers could print. the homage to ensure that a vampire dreads in a comic everything was just completely be fagged and no fun so comic shell's wanted it. by the early 1960 s. marvel was struggling just to stay in business the company's editor in chief stan lee was ready to create. but then marvel's old rival d.c. comics threw together its most popular characters into a single super group. their mission to fight do justice to serve all mankind. the justice league became

a surprise case and inspired stanley and his jack kirby to create their own team of superheroes. greatest genius super the laws of the world as ever and all fantastic. the 1st issue broke convention with all superhero archetypes of the day unlike the stoic and sniff lawless superman and batman. and kirby's heroes came not just with superpowers but with problems that readers could relate to. it was the beginning of characters having a 3 dimensionality that really set marvel apart. jamey finger off edited some of marvel's most famous superheroes for close to 2 decades. marvel comics gave you a depth of characterization where. people could work together but not like each

other or like each other but be angry at each other or quit the team as far as comic books that was fairly unprecedented. a year later marvel straight even further from comic conventions for the 1st time a teenager became a superhero. such was marvel's impact there's now an exhibit dedicated to its famous character in new york. spider-man is as my favorite character now he's very complex and yet he's very simple he's. he's the most like a regular person peter parker was an introverted didn't have a lot of friends also asked to work 2 or 3 extra. and then has a sick relative and yet wants to excel and he wants a try to have a social life i mean it's truly a very modern story right it's about the kid who has more responsibilities than any

kid should have especially as ability of being spider-man and consequently. spider-man became the most popular comic book characters since superman but marvel's biggest innovation was just around the corner. a small superheroes emerged they began 2nd ceramics and cross-eyed built each of the stories. this collective became known as the marvel universe. the narrative of the marvel universe is just a staggering achievement that i think is really the most complicated narrative that probably exists in history. it wasn't just a new universe that stanley and his collaborators forward in periodic updates stanley gave read as a glimpse into the inner workings of the awful office. featuring crisis. autists. and even secretaries so you had 2 levels of connection

and every comic. you have not just the stories themselves but you have updates of what was going on in the office and you had a sense that you knew the people behind the stories they were like almost surrogate family members the team at marvel became is popular with fans as the superheroes they created. i think stanley is one of those figures without whom there might not be account. industry both creatively and a business and promotional level he reinvented what the superhero was and could be. by the 970 s. marvel was the number one comic book company in the world. releasing 40 different titles every month away and selling 50000000 comics

a year in more than 100 countries. it's super harry's even became stars on animated shanny's. the company traditionally in 2nd place to its rival d.c. comics was now number one but somehow retained its status as an underdog so you had d.c. comics with superman batman wonder woman it everybody knows those characters but with marvel we were like the shrugging company really and we had spider-man involved in these guys who had problems even though we were the bestselling comics we were still the underdog new banks joined marvel in the mid 1980 s. . as the underdog guys were fighting the good fight and it felt like we were all fighting the good fight about so as the company became increasingly successful that changed healers of marvel became progressively less knowledgeable and less

interested in their comic books. by the 1980 s. the comic industry was booming worldwide with people hungry for heroes once considered chic and disposable comics have become prized items and speculators was snapping up issues in bulk to resell them to collectors for indoor must profits. in the us vintage comics that cost $400.00 in the 1970 s. shop to for. $5000.00 us dollars a decade later. by the early ninety's and some 1st issue comics well worth of $40000.00 u.s. dollars and up to cash in the number of specialty comic books all surged globally from a few 100 to over $10000.00. as rare and new comic books were flying off the shelves marvel attracted the interest of millionaire

businessman run home on the book the company for over $80000000.00 u.s. dollars in 1990. hellman would signal a change the way marvel ran its business. proving he was kind of a step above conglomerate owner he was in a corporate raider he was somebody who had no emotional connection to the tonics so you know this was marvel's 1st real existence as. kind of a piece in someone's game. i can remember ron coming through the office during that 1st week. and he was he was he may not have been smoking the cigar but he was at least chewing the cigar uses this short little man who looked like he owned the world being toward through the offices by a young woman dressed as spider woman in spandex and to me that's who run pro men

will always be this guy who owns the world it can make young women dress up in spandex. new bank joint marvel 2 years before. the company. when i started at marvel you know i was i was surrounded by the people whose comics i had grown up reading it was really amazing it was fun it was exciting everybody was thrilled to be there when the announcement came that the company was being sold . everybody was nervous and as we saw perlman walking through the office we became more nervous. to drive growth home and fesa town to raise the price of comic books by appealing to collect says they started marketing their comics as products as collector's items as things that were other then you know the inherent value of. something you read we had a practice of doing special covers enhanced covers glow in the dark others will

covers how a great covers and adding a glow in the dark cover caused us to take that same 32 page comic book that we sold for a $1.15 instead make it to $95.00. in the short term consequences of that were that we would sell 4 times as many copies of back comic double the price so $4.00 times the government looks portrayed on the bottom. initially polman strategy watched dramatically over the next couple of years models revenues grew by 50 percent and its profits multiplied 6 followed. in $99.00 he won the company went public and its market value balloons to $3000000000.00 us dollars. we all thought that was hilarious because we're just a bunch of guys running around the office shooting each other with plastic guns at night but the mood at marvel changed significantly after the initial public

offering but shareholders now expecting bigger returns the pressure at marvel intensified. marvel goes public that's one profits have to be of every quarter marvel started just. increasing production at a crazy rate in 1905 marvel had been publishing 40 titles a month by 993 they did more than doubled that number. but printing so many comics and specialty covers started to dilute the marvel brand there's all different gimmicks some of them very nice gimmicks but gimmicks arguments a venture they do they want to get fame. hellman's marketing team also began to dictate the contents of the comics. artists and writers were told to engineer more crossover stories that featured its best selling superheroes to display a comic book stores like this one in new york. we knew that there were people there were ravenous wolverine and punisher and always spider-man collectors and all you

got to do is put those characters into or a low selling comic and suddenly you some more copies because people wanted to maintain their complete spider-man collection or the complete wolverine collection . but at some point the guy who collects every appearance of wolverine can no longer afford to collect every appearance of movement at some point you chase the guy away by trying to take too much of this morning. the plots also figured into one another so readers have to buy all related issues if they wanted to make sense of them as production increased the quality and contents of the comics began to suffer. and this started to alienate the company's cool audience. bounce if marvel was losing readers why was it still seeing a record number of sales every month. the problem was

the distribution system. unlike traditional news stands specialty comic book shops cannot return unsold copies for a refund. if the issues don't south retail is shown to the cost. so marvel couldn't tell how many comics the shops were actually signings of customers. and this was about to become a big problem. bookstore manager jeff as discovered shops that are both a huge oversupply of comic books for speculators. i had seen in other stores i worked out in basement long boxes of this millions of books there spawn the one box one box to box $3.00 for as because dollars and bought so much of this manufactured trade. and sold that that's going to everybody's going to want 50 of those and it just wasn't the case and then i mean a lot of stores are hurting when news got to little bank he went to the comic book

stores to find out what was going on. or when you head those conversations with comic book store owners about what they were selling or what they were sitting on that's when they started getting very dark the conversation was very bleak. and it gave me the sense that something was going on here that we needed to record this new center field representatives out to survey comic stores across the country their findings was shocking. every time marvel saw that special edition of the subsequent issues or a 20 percent decline in sales. raises were getting tired of expensive and gimmicky comics that were mainly marketed to collectors and speculators. who sent an urgent memo to marvel senior management. and i'm sure a c c 6000000 other people showing that we were literally chasing away our

long term readers a long term customers by doing these enhanced covers and the reaction to that memo was site which. 2 marvel continued to publish enhanced covers and also began to include trading cards to encourage more connect as. a mating even more of their readers. meanwhile comic book shops unable to cope with unsold stock started to close down. so it just seemed absolutely absurd to me you know now i understand what they were doing they weren't in it for the long haul they wanted to make as much money as they could make right now right here and damn the consequences. of the people who suffered the results of their decision we got what we needed out of them. we don't need them anymore i didn't want to be a part of that strip i didn't want to be

a part of what i saw heirs be coming down for. a more. insatiable drive for profits at marvel was also beginning to westin with its creative team. by the. time founding editor in chief stanley had moved to california to see hollywood deals for the company. and the new editors left in charge one being allowed to do that jobs. the editor's job was to set direction for the comic and suddenly there was this this marketing division that was setting direction and the editors were not happy they feel like they should have more say in what the stories are at some point that created a conflict and certainly demoralize the people. working in editorial and that's the double it sort of being thing and you have this the static

feeling for the characters you also know you're in a business and that's that constant tug of war and you had all these editors slamming their heads up against the wall to make their comics that they were responsible for spike in sales get really sad and and there was more infighting and people were just unhappy they were having fun. and then in 1902 the inevitable happens. in a mass exodus marvel's top talents left to join rivals and to form their own publishing houses. by alienating writers and artists who had developed stories who had popularized the characters marvel ended up setting themselves up for failure. as comic book readers followed their favorite artists of the new labels marvel's market share dropped from 45 to 30 percent. meanwhile

the special and collectible comics had oversaturated the markets. if you print tens of thousands of a particular kind of comic immediately it can't be worth as much so it's it was kind of like a victim of his own success in 1903 wins picture. later is a collectors realize that the value of comics have been inflated the comic industry implied it. publishes sales plummeted by 70 percent. and 9 out of 10 comic book stores in america closed their doors. the comics division that had once made up 90 percent of marvel sales was now a 3rd of its business in a desperate attempt to spur growth. pomona to gone on an acquisition spree. from trading card manufacturers to stick a company's on a toy retailer how montrose marvels debts up to $600000000.00 u.s. dollars all the while moving it further and further away from its core comic books

. by 995 the company was in crisis it reported a full she 8000000 dollar loss the 1st time since permanent bought the company that they haven't turned a profit. is stock value collapsed shares once worth $35.00 in 1903 that sunk to just $2.00. each. as a result marvel announced company wide cuts. 40 percent of its workforce was in that going. after almost 2 decades at a company editor danny finger also made the difficult decision to leave. i was heartbroken to leave more things have changed there in such a way that it was very unpleasant for me on a day to day basis but you know i'd work there are 18 years it was where i growing up you know i'd say the end of

a romantic relationship or the death of the loved one living moral was the most traumatic thing that ever happened to me. by 996 marvel reported a staggering loss of over 400. eckstein 1000000 u.s. dollars the company desperately needed cash to keep running and to pay back its debts. but in a disagreement with shareholders over the company's future poland declared bankruptcy. as majority owner it gave him the power to reorganize marvel without their consent. but interest so prominent drag the company's reputation through the mud in a series of very public court battles. surrounded by the small during ruin of its comic book empire marvel was in its darkest hour and the future looks bleak. and a lot of screaming out our phones and threats to destroy another there is something

that was so absurd in grotesque about these whole hearted men suing each other to have custody of something that emotionally a lot of college readers thought belonged to that in 1998 after a 2 year battle it was finally over. from coleman sued for diversity over $500000000.00 u.s. dollars from marvel to his other businesses. was ousted from the company. but marvel was still broke surviving on a $200000000.00 loan that had to be repaid soon. it now needed a super hero of his own to save the day. in 1909 the company brought in peter cuneo known as the turnaround king he successfully guided 6 businesses through tough times including cosmetics company claire old and security hardware group black and decker. about hiring cuneo to rescue marvel was

a huge risk he knew nothing about the comic book industry was not a particularly a comic book fan i wasn't a nurse at all in the comic book world comical community sad to learn that. but a crash course is all. kunio would have time for. the company's stock could fall into a dismal $0.96 a share. with marvel in disarray and investors impatient for results the pressure on cuneo is intense currents are not for everybody they're really in fact you have to be a little nuts to do what i do really it's not normal my experience has been that things are always worse than you thought they were and they'll be sleepless nights with barely $3000000.00 in the bank the 1st thing that kept cuneo up at nights was how to get marvel the cash it desperately needed. for $26000000.00 u.s. dollars marvel sold its ticker and trading card companies

a mere fraction of the $400000000.00 pound and it spent on them. while cuneo search for ways to settle the company's remaining debts he also had to start reviving marvel's lifeline its comic books. they have to get their readers back for years of gimmicks had left the stories in a sorry state. to reinvigorate them he would have to convince some of the creatives who had left marvel to return. a lot of the creative people particularly comic book industry felt that they had been mistreated frankly by the company obviously wanted to get the best back and so that's what i was doing was basically courting people the creative people in most business are the ones that actually make you money. and so the people working in the creative jobs have to feel wanted needed and rewarded. immediately instigated

a complete change of atmosphere he gave his artist the freedom to walk. from he also tasks for my us both executive and comic fans bill janus with reviving marvel's superhero comics. at the time the company was publishing 60 monthly titles that were filled with convoluted plots threating back to the 960 s. . he recognized i think it is very difficult to get new readers into the comic book industry because if you want to get. emotionally attached to a character or set of characters let's say spider-man you had to come in at issue $475.00 so you have 40 years of story telling. so bill recognizer we had to start telling the stories of our major characters all over again from there are regions and he started a new series of comic books that did that. last also gave the series an upgrade for the new millennium. park and became

a technique with an instantiation of the. the 1st issue of the ultimate spider-man became an instant hits. by the cutting to thousands marvel hit re kind is a lead in the comic industry's market share. meanwhile cuneo and his team mates thought of another way to translate the company's cash problems and pay back its loans. they would focus on models most valuable assett its unique library of comic book characters. we need a business that would generate a lot of cash and this is why we adapted as a business model a licensing model in licensing it does not require us to put up much capital. marvel began licensing out his characters for toys clothes school supplies and video games. but to generate more revenue the companies characters needed to appeal to a much wider market not just hardcore comic fans so marvel turned to hollywood movies

were just always just out of reach for stanley. although he has been trying to get them made for decades. i'm out here hoping to put the use and other properties into movies and television shows unfortunately for marvel's famous editor in chief previous licensing deals with studios have been anything but successful. partly due to the limits of technology. and partly because marvel had no creative control over the movies. films like howard the duck in 1986 and my friend happiness in animal kingdom becky were critical and financial disasters. cuneo and his team decided that marvel would from now on tightly control how their movies were made they would commission the scripts hire good quality directors can

find the right cost for the characters themselves and then condo with large hollywood studios to produce and distribute the movie so. marvel was finally moving in a new direction toward dealing in intellect. profits instead of selling products. we have to look at our characters as talent and we had to treat them as if they were living people but we had also run them like brands spider-man as a brand model's hope was that a successful film would transform is other businesses. if someone goes to your movies it probably going to buy toys for their kids someone plays you video games are going to go and movies kids like the toys you're going to buy back to school products from and on and on and on. we are now seeing the beginnings of another stage of human evolution. x.-men was released in the year 2000 to critical acclaim

and grossed over $290000000.00 u.s. dollars worldwide x.-men one proves something very important to marvel and i think the rest of the entertainment industry and that is that you could have a big success financially if you made a good film even if the general public did not know the characters 99 percent never heard of the x.-men before they started seeing trailers and then you had people lining up around the block when the film was opening. suddenly superheroes what the range and big budget adaptations like spider-man. on the hulk and devil also became massive hits. marvel's movies like x.-men had been a smashing success but the company wasn't getting the full profits from its partnership with hollywood studios. and sony's 2 spider-man films made a combined $3000000000.00 worldwide marvel only received $6000000.00 from selling

the current to rights. the new management came up with a radical idea. should produce its own films and keep 100 percent of the profits. it was a bonus plan. not everyone agreed it was a good one. marvel had never produced a film before and a flop in hollywood could cost the new limbs. the idea of us taking some financial risk and films was not initially particularly popular with some of our investors. but i think the people me outside didn't understand as we had been apprenticing and 12 films we learned how to make it. in 2005 the company's board gave marvel studios the green knight to finance its films marvel struck a risky deal with wealth management firm merrill lynch it offered up its hand of its most prized carrick's is including captain america 4 and iron man as collateral

for a massive $520000000.00 cash reservoir to make 10 movies bounce if marvel studios failed all of the superheroes would belong to the bank. as marvel studios went into production for its 1st film and man it decided to take an even thicker risk and break with hollywood convention. hollywood has a tendency when they're worried about a film to chaos very well known and often highly paid actors and actresses because they will quote guarantee the box office we didn't believe in insurance and we thought that the characters were so strong the company really view these characters as the stars. they found their tiny stock in robert downey jr bounce at the time he was best known for his past problems with addiction rather than his acting talent

the choice was seen as a big gamble. it had some ups and downs in his life and his career so there was certainly some natural questioning about doubt well is is there a cast. well the people running marvel studios showed marvel board robert downey jr screen test. in this whole dition in 2006 robert downey jr is reading from one of the 1st scenes in iron man working out what's going through the called my time don't ask don't tell to much of a about ago he's on script for the 1st couple of minutes and then he just goes off as robert can do and he right in front of us became tony stark done you're still buckingham palace where we go but out of break out the psyops there it is there's a smile it's ok yes it's a natural bust left muscles just. i am and of course became

a massive success largely cheered to danny genius onil to doc's take on tony stark defender of the fear of respect i say is it too much to ask for book it ranks number one of the box office and grossed over $580000000.00 on a budget of $140000000.00 a good look economic. security holmes and long were in on man's post credits scene novels set up not only the next movie the avengers the whole new world of overlapping characters big few directorship. here talking about the of injury. the marvel cinematic universe was born. realizing the huge potential in marvel's library of superheroes disney punches the company for a full 1000000000 u.s. dollars in 2009. with disney's global reach the

top catapulted a whole galaxy of marvel stock characters to a new level. to date it's movies have grossed over $12000000.00 u.s. dollars worldwide thank you. at the biggest film franchise in history. if you think you can play. marvel's remarkable turnaround was in large part helped spice bajan in popularity in asia. as time progresses is proving to asia's very important to companies that marvel movies for example like men which was one of my was relatively unknown characters that did very well in china a few movie grossed somewhere around 140000000 more white and about one 3rd was contributed to the chinese market. but most of marvel's business it's comic books is in decline. in the heyday publishers could sell

a 1000000 copies per issue. these days selling $40000.00 is considered a success. now a new battle is brewing in the comic book industry. marvel is looking to expand its business in asia and that means it's barely serious mistake on the ensuring a popular starry eyed girls of monga. but it went be that easy. monger is a form of comics that originates from japan is very different to some because in the fact that a lot of the characters are very young the start is very unique and the story types of very different to western comics as well among generally speaking in asia it's much more popular in a western genre. manga dominates almost every major city in the region. and it's more than 50 percent of the market share in taiwan and hong kong while western

comics take less than 11 percent here. to compete at marvel knows it has to build a stronger emotional connection to asian readers. to securely us regional events like the singapore comic convention. modern. exciting event of the year of hollywood cakes and movie buffs alike. singaporean illustrator and avid marvel fan gary chu comes here every year. in a way this is so brush and off people with like minded obviously the interest of her interest in american superheroes has grown the characters on display here don't really reflects marvel's new target audience was always at issue characters but you know she's been told they've always been a little bit stereotypical they were created by writers based mainly in the west and it was a japanese character is based on a ninja or a samurai or a geisha it was a chinese character was always on food. c.b.

sapolsky as marvel's man in the east responsible for bringing the marvel universe to asia and divisive ursa he's here scouting for local artists to incorporate deeper asian influences in the comics we're looking for now is a pretty little more open to city to it since our fan base is going global we want the people to feel like that well this outside their window so that the characters are authentically asian from the actual cities and that the writers were hiring the artist or eric or a a piece of their lives to those characters to make them feel you know just really real to the readers who marvel's new characters are now gradually starting to reflects the diverse readers the company wants to connect with and for the 1st time in the history. of muslim superheroes headlining happen in comic books this fall choose muslim books on american i think it's great because right no they're getting fans to understand that hey there's a bigger it's a bigger picture here this more people there's a lot of other different cities living together. gary chu cause his big break here

4 years ago when he met marvel's talent scout c.b. supposed to our supernovas but looked at my hopefully oh you felt like. we were just going to actually each other after so we also also the 1st couple i drool form lovel. floors excellent special i was really happy with their love that i couldn't wait for it to be printed. today gary continues to work as a freelance artist for marvel. as a last trade irish level where i've delivered this exportable. to me that is very sense for those films and licensing deals remain marvels main business it continues to develop its comics for a more global audience based on the strong tradition of storytelling stanley and

his collaborators began in the 1960 s. i think any good story appears to anyone anywhere and usually it's a case of someone being dumb and they're not having a problem somewhere they're going to give a great polish and what it is they do without power thus a pretty universal kind of um story model has a wealth of characters that have never been explored in any shape or form. but should they get that white they will be here for many many many years to come. after. her lawyer. culture. hair. superman. superfood stylish dialogue.

don't let o's. life style you're a hero. 30 minutes. each still tells my story. of the people who planned to me build dedicated to me. i'm not too dumb to play. on this list of mine. in the centuries they built me they created something troubling the relatives of the 2 moms as i was destroying it. i have mocked my city's days for centuries and accompanied my country transferring the hours until the day i mean they've done. nothing done to.

dance april and. this is the w. new slide from president trump announces a major change in u.s. policy on the coronavirus to unleash the full power of the federal government is this effort today i am officially declaring a national emergency the announcement frees up billions to pay for measures to contain the virus is spread also coming up in w.i. choses europe is now the.