ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Marvel’s approach to world-building during the publisher’s rise to popularity in the 1960s, helmed by writer Stan Lee, artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and various other contributors. By focusing on the first twenty-five issues of the comic book that jump-started this “Marvel Age,” The Fantastic Four, and the first sixteen issues of continuity-heavy book The Avengers, the chapter explores the intricacies of how Lee and his collaborators added a sense of realism to superhero comic books that had been lacking, and how that realism attracted an older audience than competitor DC Comics. The desire for realism from those readers fed back into the books themselves, creating a demand for ever more intricate continuity and discussion of real-world political issues, setting the stage for a history of tension between those desires in the ensuing decades.
