Marvel Fan Life: Memes That Know The Fandom Too Well

Comic books, the medium that originally made Marvel famous, has been around longer than many people might expect. The Swiss cartoon Histoire de Mr. Vieux Bois (also known as Les amours de Mr. Vieux Bois, or, in English "The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck") was first published in 1827.

Interestingly, many of the elements in this comic were derived from political cartoons of the 17th and 18th century, including exaggerated images and speech bubbles. While the subject matter is at this point hardly comprehensible, the format and look of these two centuries old comics would still be familiar to a modern audience.

While we tend to associate comic books with superheroes, at the time, it was a very common format for all sorts of content. Detective stories, science fiction and adventure comics were all quite popular. It was Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman, published in 1938, that really started the “Golden Age” of comic book heroes.

This “Golden Age” of American comics lasted about two decades and saw the creation of many of the heroes we still think about today, from the aforementioned Superman, to Captain America, Wonder Woman and Batman. Marvel was one of the more successful publishing houses, but it wasn’t the only player.

For example, many of the most famous superheroes, Batman and Robin, Superman and Wonder Woman, were all created by Detective Comics in the 1940s. Yes, DC stands for “Detective Comics,” another bit of evidence that superheroes were just one common genre at the time.

Marvel saw its own heyday (if we discount the present) in the 60s and 70s, with Stan Lee’s Fantastic Four and the iconic Spiderman. Marvel itself, unlike its biggest rival, DC, did start with comic books, although its creator, Martin Goodman, made his fortune in pulp westerns.

Marvel actually switched to horror, Westerns, humor, crime and even Bible stories in the 50s, as superheros seemingly fell out of fashion. Much of the company's later success has to be attributed to Stan Lee who focused on creating heroes and stories that were more appealing to older audiences.

However, many modern people recognize the iconic red logo not from a comic book, but from the intro to the many blockbusters, produced by the Walt Disney Company. Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, including its filmmaking branch, Marvel studios, hot off of the success of 2008s Iron Man.

Since then, with some misses, the world of superheroes has been dominated by cinema. Indeed, a fifth of Marvel Studios' films are among the fifty highest-grossing films of all time, easily surpassing the comic books in terms of readership. Like with anything that has mass appeal, it didn’t take long for netizens to turn their favorite heroes and moments into memes.

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