Six facts I didn’t know about Marvel

With this year being Marvel’s 70th anniversary the TimesOnline published a list of 70 facts that people may not have known about the comic company. Many of us comic fans are aware of numerous items found on the list, there were that I was not aware of or found interesting enough to share.

2 X-Men No 1, published in 1991, is the world’s biggest-selling comic book. It sold close to 8 million copies.

I knew people were buying comics hoping that they would be worth enough to pay for their child’s college education, but come on this stat is ridiculous since most people bought at least five copies of this issue to get one of each variant cover.

17 The Hulk that appeared in the classic TV series starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno was almost made red in colour. In an interview with film website IGN, the show’s executive producer, Kenneth Johnson, said: “I asked Stan Lee, ‘Man, what’s the logic of green? Is he the envious Hulk? Is he green with envy or jealousy?’ The colour of rage is red, which I was pushing for because it’s a real human colour – you know, when people get flushed with anger.” Lee told him that the Hulk had in fact started out grey but due to problems with colour separation, grey would simply not print the same way each time. “Our printer came to us and said we can do a pretty consistent green, so we decided to go with green,” Lee said. Thus the Hulk was coloured green from issue two of the Incredible Hulk onwards, although without any explanation…

I always thought the Hulk was green since nuclear radiation/waste is usually portrayed as green in popular media.

24 Marvel once owned the rights to the word zombie. As improbable as it sounds, Marvel attempted to trademark the word zombie in comic book titles after publishing Tale of the Zombie in 1973. By the time the trademark was approved two years later, the series was coming to an end. Marvel lost the trademark in 1996 but it wasn’t long before it was once again trademarking the armies of the undead, registering the words Marvel Zombies to protect its comic series of the same name. With DC, Marvel also trademarked the phrase ‘Super Hero’.

I knew that Marvel and DC share the rights to ‘Super Hero,’ but had no idea about zombies…

33 The strip Stan Lee is most proud of is the one he wrote for the Incredible Hulk/Spider-man toilet paper.

Hmm… I don’t think I’ll be searching ebay for a used copy of comic!

34 Artist John Romita Jr based the Daredevil villain Typhoid Mary on his ex-wife.

I hope that was after the divorce and all settlements were signed off on.

44 A Fantastic Four film exists that is so terrible it will never reach a screen. In 1992 the production company Constantin Film was in danger of losing the film rights to the Fantastic Four unless it started production on the movie by the end of the year. Lacking the $40 million it needed to make a full-budget film, it turned to low-budget movie supremo Roger Corman for help. He spent just $1.98 million to crank a quickie Fantastic Four movie. Constantin never intended to release the film but it never told the director or the actors this. “Oh, that was a tragic event. I feel so sorry for the people involved,” Stan Lee remembered years later. “The director really tried his best, and so did the actors. They all thought that this was their big chance. But the movie was never supposed to be seen. Most people thought, “Jesus, what a terrible job that is! How corny! How cheap!” They didn’t realize that it wasn’t meant to be any better than that. Unfortunately, the people working on the project didn’t know that, and they tried their best. Really, I feel so bad for all of them.” Other low-budget Marvel misfires include the 1989 Punisher film starring Dolph Lundgren and the 1990 Captain America film – starring no one you’ve ever heard of.

Many of us knew about the FF film and have seen clips from it (if not check out below,) but what I never knew was that the actors and crew never knew that this film was ‘never supposed to be seen.’

Here are the trailers for the 1994 Fantastic Four, the 1990 Captain America, and the 1989 Punisher movies: