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Curated playlist

Marvel Comics adapted into films

  • Iron ManIron Man, the armored Marvel Comics hero, first appeared in Tales of Suspense #39, released in December 1962 with a March 1963 cover date. His creator, Stan Lee, had set himself an awkward assignment during the Vietnam War. His readers…
  • Thor (Marvel Comics)Donald Blake, the surgeon who became Marvel's Thor, was never a real person. Odin invented him to teach Thor humility.
  • Wolverine (character)Wolverine, the Marvel Comics superhero, shares his everyday name with a mountain. Writer Chris Claremont took the name Logan from Canada's Mount Logan for an issue of X-Men in 1977. He liked the idea of the tallest mountain naming the…
  • Spider-ManMarvel's publisher told Stan Lee that Spider-Man would never work. The comic was being canceled anyway.
  • Fantastic FourThe Fantastic Four heroes argued, held grudges and wore no masks. Marvel's 1961 team broke the polished hero mold.
  • Venom (character)Venom, the alien symbiote of Marvel Comics, began as a $220 purchase. In 1982, a Marvel reader from Norridge, Illinois, named Randy Schueller received a letter from Jim Shooter, the company's editor-in-chief. The letter said Marvel liked…
  • HulkThe Hulk is a Marvel Comics superhero who lives as two people in one body, and the two typically resent each other. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created him, and he first appeared in the debut issue of The Incredible Hulk in May 1962. One half…
  • Black Panther (character)Black Panther, the Marvel Comics hero known as T'Challa, made his debut in Fantastic Four #52, published in July 1966. He did not arrive as a sidekick or a soldier. T'Challa was a king, the ruler of Wakanda, a fictional African nation made…
  • PunisherIn 2011, an editor at Marvel Comics revealed that the Punisher had killed 48,502 people on the page since the mid-1970s. That body count belongs to a character whom writer Gerry Conway meant as a second-tier figure. Conway has said the…
  • Miles MoralesMiles Morales makes his first public appearance as Spider-Man by stopping an assault by a villain called Kangaroo. The bystanders are not impressed. They tell him his Spider-Man costume is in bad taste, and he considers changing it. That…
  • X-MenThe X-Men comic was cancelled in 1970 after seven years of weak sales. A new team in 1975 turned it into a hit.
  • Blade (character)Blade, the vampire hunter of Marvel Comics, made his debut in The Tomb of Dracula #10, with a cover date of July 1973. He was only a supporting character there, created by writer Marv Wolfman and penciller Gene Colan. Shortly afterward he…
  • Doctor StrangeDoctor Strange, the sorcerer of Marvel Comics, began life with a lukewarm review from the man who edited him. In a 1963 letter to Jerry Bails, Stan Lee described a five-page filler for Strange Tales and admitted that "The first story is…
  • Ghost RiderGhost Rider is a Marvel Comics character whose first supernatural form was a stunt motorcyclist named Johnny Blaze. Blaze makes a desperate trade. To save the life of his foster father, he agrees to give his soul to a being called "Satan."…

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