USA TODAY Review

'Marvel Comics: The Untold Story': A superpowered must-read

The iconic superheroes of Marvel Comics have had grand adventures for decades, yet their tales pale in comparison to the behind-the-scenes drama involving their creators.

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story is a compelling, exhaustive history featuring various trivia, memorable moments, a cast of real-life characters both ordinary and oddball, and the kind of backstabbing and intrigue one usually only finds on a daytime soap opera.

Author Sean Howe takes both true believers and comic-book neophytes from the beginnings of Marvel and of comics themselves in the early 20th century up to the start of the company's box-office stranglehold with the boffo success of the X-Men, Spider-Man and Avengers movies.

In between, Howe deftly explains how the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, Wolverine and many others were created and follows them through their important story lines — along with those of the creators, writers and artists responsible for them.

For longtime comic fans, it's intriguing to hear new stories of how greats such as Frank Miller, John Byrne, Len Wein, Chris Claremont and others dealt with each other and what led to the passing of different characters from person to person — sometimes it was voluntary, other times and not so much — as well as how Marvel and its heroes and villains changed with the times. From the start, the X-Men reflected racism and the fight for civil rights, and Captain America was an all-American hero at times when patriotism was the right stuff for the American mind-set.

Two separate eras that Howe focuses on prove the most interesting in Marvel history: the epic team-up of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the early 1960s, and the exodus of the company's top art talent in 1992.

On the outside, the partnership of Lee and Kirby was truly legendary. Lee, who began with Marvel (then Timely Comics) in 1939 when just a teen and later became a bit of a control freak as its president, and Kirby, arguably the most influential artist in comics history, birthed the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Incredible Hulk and much more in the earliest days of the Marvel Universe in the '60s.

But like with their own bickering super teams, the pair never agreed on who created what — a tumultuous issue for the two for decades, as Kirby fought for royalties and Lee went from mild-mannered writer to Marvel's resident carnival barker who couldn't get to Hollywood fast enough.

That situation mirrors aspects of the current work-for-hire vs. creator-owned debate in the comics industry, and it's similar in theme to the other infamous moment in Marvel history in the 1990s, when its most popular artists banded together, quit Marvel and began their own company, Image Comics. A few were company men, others were brash and cocky, but all wanted what Marvel wouldn't give them: more control and complete ownership of characters they created.

Ultimately, through his research and many interviews, Howe shows that many of the mighty mavens at Marvel were just about as megalomaniacal as Doctor Doom. It might surprise some fans to hear how cutthroat some of their favorites were, or give new respect to those whose work they may not have enjoyed all that much.

For those looking for a primer on how Marvel came to rule movies in recent years, you won't find it in here. Howe spends much more time in the past, and although it's enlightening to see just how much the company struggled in bringing its characters to a mass audience, the book does tend to bog down in the business-heavy sections.

But Howe's tome is a superpowered must-read for anyone hooked on comics, as well as a gripping story for someone merely enlightened by a genre that's always had to fight for respect. In the end, it's much more about ordinary, flawed humans than super men and women, and therein lies its excellence.

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