Moe Goodman, who would later adopt the name Martin, was the oldest son of 13 recorded children of Isaac Goodman (b. 1872) and Anna Gleichenhaus (b. 1875). His parents were immigrants who had met in the United States after separately moving from their native
Vilna,
Lithuania, then part of the
Russian Empire. The family lived at different homes in the
New York City borough of
Brooklyn. As a young man, Moe traveled around the country during the
Great Depression, living in
hobo camps.
Pulp magazines and Timely Comics Circa late 1929, future
Archie Comics co-founder
Louis Silberkleit, then circulation manager at the magazine distribution company
Eastern Distributing Corporation, hired Goodman for his department, assigning him clients that included publisher
Hugo Gernsback. Goodman then joined Silberkleit and other investors as part owner of Mutual Magazine Distributors, and was named editor of Silberkleit's new sister company, the publisher Newsstand Publications Inc., at 53 Park Place, also known as 60 Murray Street, in
Manhattan. '' (May 1940), bearing Goodman's
Red Circle logo Goodman's first publication was the Newsstand Publications pulp magazine
Western Supernovel Magazine, premiering with
cover-date May 1933. After the first issue he renamed it
Complete Western Book Magazine, beginning with cover-date July 1933. Goodman's pulp magazines included
All Star Adventure Fiction,
Complete Western Book,
Mystery Tales,
Real Sports,
Star Detective, the
science fiction magazine
Marvel Science Stories and the jungle-adventure title
Ka-Zar, starring its
Tarzan-like namesake. These were published under a variety of names, all owned by Goodman and sometimes marked as "
Red Circle". In 1937, returning from his honeymoon in Europe, Goodman and his wife had tickets on the
Hindenburg, but were unable to secure seats together, so they took alternative transportation instead, avoiding the
Hindenburg disaster. In 1939, with the emerging
medium of comic books proving hugely popular, and the first
superheroes setting the trend, Goodman contracted with newly formed
comic book packager Funnies, Inc. to supply material for a test comic book,
Marvel Comics #1, cover-dated October 1939 and published by his newly formed
Timely Publications. It featured the
first appearances of the hit characters the
Human Torch and the
Sub-Mariner, and quickly sold out 80,000 copies. Goodman produced a second printing, cover-dated November 1939, that then sold an approximate 800,000 copies. With a hit on his hands, Goodman began assembling an in-house staff, hiring Funnies, Inc. writer-artist
Joe Simon as
editor, and Timely's first official employee. Goodman then formed Timely Comics, Inc., beginning with comics cover-dated April 1941 or Spring 1941. Timely Comics became the umbrella name for the several paper corporations that comprised Goodman's comic-book division, which in ensuing decades would evolve into
Marvel Comics. . In 1941, Timely published its third major character, the patriotic superhero
Captain America by Simon and artist
Jack Kirby. The success of
Captain America #1 (March 1941) led to an expansion of staff, with Simon bringing freelancer Kirby on staff and subsequently hiring inker
Syd Shores "to be Timely's third employee." Simon and Kirby departed Timely after 10 issues of
Captain America, and Goodman appointed his wife’s cousin,
Stan Lee, already there as an editorial assistant, as Timely's editor, a position Lee would hold for decades. With the post-war lessening of interest in superheroes, Goodman established a pattern of directing Lee to follow a variety of genres as the market seemed to trend, such as romance in 1948, horror in 1951,
Westerns in 1955 and
Kaiju monsters in 1958. He could be highly derivative In this regard, such as ordering the title character of ''
Patsy Walker, America's #1 Teenager'' to have similar
crosshatching in her hair as that of
Archie Comics' popular
Archie Andrews. The name "Timely Comics" went into disuse after Goodman began using the globe logo of the newsstand-distribution company he owned, Atlas, starting with the covers of comic books dated November 1951. This united a line put out by the same publisher, staff and freelancers through 59 shell companies, from Animirth Comics to Zenith Publications. Throughout the 1950s, the company formerly known as Timely was called
Atlas Comics.
Red Circle Goodman, whose business strategy involved using several corporate names for various publishing ventures, sometimes attempted branding his line with the logo "
Red Circle," which comics historian
Les Daniels calls "a halfhearted attempt to establish an identity for what was usually described loosely as 'the Goodman group' ... a red disk surrounded by a black ring that bore the phrase 'A Red Circle Magazine.' But it appeared only intermittently, when someone remembered to put it on [a pulp magazine's] cover. Historian
Jess Nevins, conversely, writes that, "Timely Publications [was how] Goodman's group [of companies] had become known; before this, it was known as 'Red Circle' because of the logo that Goodman had put on his pulp magazines. ... " The
Grand Comics Database identifies 21 Goodman comic books from 1944 to 1959 with Red Circle, Inc. branding, and one 1948 comic under Red Circle Magazines Corp.
Magazine Management and Lion Books As the market for pulp magazines waned, Goodman, in addition to comic books, transitioned to conventional magazines—published through a concern dubbed
Magazine Management Company at least as far back as 1947—and in 1949 founded Lion Books, a paperback line. Goodman used the name Red Circle Books for the first seven titles plus an additional two later. Most were novels, but there was a smattering of mostly sports-oriented nonfiction. Goodman eventually developed two lines, the 25¢ Lion and the 35¢ Lion Library. The August 5, 1957 issue of
Publishers Weekly contained a notice on page 32 of the proposed sale of Lion Books to
New American Library, but the sale was never completed. The "Summer 1957 Book Index" in the May 27, 1957 issue included 30 titles to be published by Lion between May and September of 1957, but Goodman ceased publication with the April 1957 titles. Most of the forecast titles eventually appeared between 1957 and 1959 as paperbacks from other publishers, including
Signet,
Pyramid Books, and Zenith Books. Authors that Lion published included such notables as
Robert Bloch,
David Goodis and
Jim Thompson.
Marvel Comics In mid-1961, following rival
DC Comics's successful revival of superheroes a few years earlier, Goodman assigned his comics editor,
Stan Lee, to follow the trend again. He said, "Stan, we gotta put out a bunch of heroes. You know, there's a market for it." Lee's wife suggested that Lee experiment with stories he preferred, since he was planning on changing careers and had nothing to lose. In response, Lee and artist
Jack Kirby created
The Fantastic Four #1 (
cover-dated Nov. 1961), giving their superheroes a flawed humanity in which they bickered, worried about money and behaved more like everyday people than noble archetypes. That series became the first major success of what would become
Marvel Comics. The newly naturalistic comics changed the industry. Lee, Kirby, such artists as
Steve Ditko,
Don Heck,
Dick Ayers,
John Romita Sr.,
Gene Colan, and
John Buscema, and eventually writers including
Roy Thomas and
Archie Goodwin, ushered in a string of hit characters, including
Spider-Man,
Iron Man, the
Hulk,
Daredevil, and the
X-Men. In fall 1968, Goodman sold Magazine Management to the
Perfect Film & Chemical Corporation. Goodman remained as publisher until 1972, which included supporting Lee's decision to disregard the
Comics Code Authority's disallowance of an anti-drug themed story-arc featured in
The Amazing Spider-Man requested by the
US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which discredited the censor. Two years later he founded a new comics company,
Seaboard Periodicals, which published under a new Atlas Comics imprint and is known to collectors as "
Atlas/Seaboard Comics". It shut down the following year. Perfect Film & Chemical renamed itself Cadence Industries in 1973, the first of many post-Goodman changes, mergers, and acquisitions that led to what became the 21st-century corporation
Marvel Entertainment Group.
Men's magazines Goodman's Magazine Management Company also published such
men's adventure magazines as
Bachelor,
For Men Only,
Male,
Stag and
Swank, edited during the 1950s by Noah Sarlat. As well, there was 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/Atlas 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. By the late 1960s, these titles had begun evolving into erotic magazines, with pictorials about dancers and swimsuit models replaced by
bikinis and discreet nude shots, with gradually fewer fiction stories. Another division,
Humorama, published
digest-sized magazines of girlie cartoons by Ward,
Bill Wenzel and
Archie Comics great
Dan De Carlo, as well as black-and-white
photos of
pin-up models including
Bettie Page,
Eve Meyer,
stripper Lili St. Cyr and actresses
Joi Lansing,
Tina Louise,
Irish McCalla,
Julie Newmar and others. Titles included
Breezy,
Gaze,
Gee-Whiz,
Joker,
Stare, and
Snappy. They were published from at least the mid-1950s to mid-1960s. In addition to men's adventure magazines and
Humorama, Goodman also published many other magazines covering a plethora of topics including several male-oriented glossy 5" × 7" digests in the early to mid-1950s (e.g.
Focus,
Photo, and
Eye) prior to the development of
Humorama, as well as many romance, film and television, sports and other general interest magazines spanning several decades.
Personal life Goodman was married to Jean Davis, with whom he had three children. He died on June 6, 1992, at his home in
Palm Beach, Florida, aged 84. == Goodman's magazines ==