


In tracing Marvel’s story from its origins as a pulp magazine publisher founded by Martin Goodman in 1933 through its alternating decades of boom and bust and onto its acquisition by Disney in 2009, Howe introduces a cast of characters that includes Captain America creator Joe Simon, the inventive and prickly Jack Kirby, the dour but brilliant Steve Ditko and cerebral Chris Claremont, who transformed the second-tier X-Men into a hit.
