Magazine Management should not be confused with Magazine Enterprises.
| Magazine Management Co., Inc. | |
| Type: | Subsidiary |
| Genre: | Men's magazines, humor, romance, comics |
| Fate: | Rebranded as Marvel Comics Group, assets merged with Marvel Comics |
| Successor: | Marvel Comics Group |
| Founder: | Martin Goodman |
| Location City: | New York City, New York |
| Location Country: | United States |
| Industry: | Publishing |
| Products: | Comics, magazines |
| Parent: | Cadence Industries |
| Subsid: | Humorama Marvel Comics |
Magazine Management Co., Inc. was an American publishing company lasting from at least c. 1947 to the early 1970s, known for men's-adventure magazines, risqué men's magazines, humor, romance, puzzle, celebrity/film and other types of magazines, and later adding comic books and black-and-white comics magazines to the mix. It was the parent company of Atlas Comics, and its rebranded incarnation, Marvel Comics.
Founded by Martin Goodman, who had begun his career in the 1930s with pulp magazines published under a variety of shell companies, Magazine Management served as an early employer of such staff writers as Rona Barrett, Bruce Jay Friedman, David Markson, Mario Puzo, Martin Cruz Smith, Mickey Spillane, and Ernest Tidyman.
Subsidiaries of Magazine Management included Humorama, which published digest-sized magazines of girlie cartoons; and Marvel Comics. The company also published black-and-white comics magazines such as Vampire Tales, Savage Tales, and Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction that utilized primarily Marvel writers and artists.
Founded by Martin Goodman, who had begun his career in the 1930s with pulp magazines published under a variety of shell companies, Magazine Management existed as of at least 1947.[1] By the early 1960s, the company occupied the second floor at 60th Street and Madison Avenue.[2] It published men's-adventure magazines with such writers as Bruce Jay Friedman, David Markson, Mario Puzo, Martin Cruz Smith, Mickey Spillane, and Ernest Tidyman; film magazines with writers including Rona Barrett; and humor publications, among other types.[3] By the late 1960s, its men's-adventure magazines such as Stag and Male had begun evolving into men's magazines, with pictorials about dancers and swimsuit models replaced by bikinis and discreet nude shots, with gradually fewer fiction stories, and eventually into pornographic magazines.
One division of the company was the Marvel Comics Group. As one-time Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas recalled, "I was startled to learn in '65 that Marvel was just part of a parent company called Magazine Management."
In late 1968, Goodman sold all his publishing businesses to the Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation, which made the subsidiary Magazine Management Company the parent company of all the acquired Goodman concerns. Goodman remained as publisher until 1972. Perfect Film and Chemical renamed itself Cadence Industries and renamed Magazine Management as Marvel Comics Group in 1973, the first of many changes, mergers, and acquisitions that led to what became the 21st century corporation Marvel Entertainment.[4] [5]
As writer Dorothy Gallagher reminisced in 1998,
Author Adam Parfrey, in his book about men's adventure magazines, described how,
See main article: List of comics magazines published by Magazine Management in the 1970s.
Magazine Management's publications included such men's adventure magazines as For Men Only, Male and Stag, edited during the 1950s by Noah Sarlat. As well, there were such ephemera as a one-shot black-and-white "nudie cutie" comic, The Adventures of Pussycat (Oct. 1968), that reprinted some stories of the sexy, tongue-in-cheek secret-agent strip that ran in some of his men's magazines. Marvel Comics writers Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Ernie Hart, and artists Wally Wood, Al Hartley, Jim Mooney, and Bill Everett and "good girl art" cartoonist Bill Ward contributed.[7]
Published by Canam Publishers at least 1957), Newsstand Publications Inc. (at least 1966–1967), Perfect Film Inc. (at least 1968), Magazine Management Co. Inc. (at least 1970) [10]
Published by Official Communications Inc. (1951), Official Magazines (Feb. 1952 – March 1958), Atlas (July 1958 – Oct. 1968), Magazine Management (Dec. 1970 to end) [12]
Published by Atlas (1964–1968), Magazine Management (1970–1975)