How did Marvel Studios become the most successful movie franchise in film history?

It certainly didn't happen overnight.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is the product of 80 years' worth of successes, failures, and ideas made by people who couldn't let go of their Marvel visions, for better or for worse.Most people are pretty familiar with how the MCU changed after 2008's release of Iron Man, which turned Marvel Studios into a household name, but what about the deeper history of Marvel Studios that stretches over the course of several decades?

The history of Marvel Studios begins long before the existence of MCU films, when televisions weren't even household staples yet. The Marvel Universe had its big bang in Martin Goodman’s McGraw Hill office in October 1939 with the first issue of Timely Comics, titled Marvel Comics. The first issue of the comic debuted characters such as the Human Torch, the Angel, Namor the Sub-Mariner, the Masked Raider, and Ka-Zar the Great. The first issue sold 80,000 copies, allowing Timely Comics to release Marvel Comics the following month, and securing the publication’s success for years to come.

Many of our favorite Marvel characters were created early in the publication’s career. We first met Captain Marvel, for example, in a 1940 issue of the comic, and Captain America Comics #1 was also released in 1940. Both of them were hits. Republic Pictures debuted The Adventures of Captain Marvel as a TV series in 1941, and released Captain America three years later.The timing isn't a coincidence. Although the Captain America comic was released a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, readers loved seeing Hitler getting beaten up by a superhero. I mean, what better way to reach the hearts of Americans than to show superheroes hurting real-life, wartime enemies?Interestingly, Americans lost interest in superheroes after World War II, leading Timely Comics to rebrand as Atlas Comics in the 1950s. In doing so, they dropped a bunch of their superhero stories to focus on a wider range of genres.