Timely Overview

[Adminenkainen]

I've written a lot about Timely elsewhere, including a review of Marvel Firsts: WWII Super Heroes in The Trophy Case, a review of Marvel Comics #1 on my blog, and a more ambitious plan for what a Timely imprint could look like at Marvel today, also on my blog.

In many ways, Timely was a lot like Fox -- hire the best to create winning characters, and then hand them off to cheaper labor. In Timely's defense, Bill Everett, Joe Simon, and Jack Kirby were not fired, but quit so they could go find better work elsewhere. The Sub-Mariner and Captain America never reached the same heights in other hands and we are left to only imagine how great they would have stayed with their original creators.

Often, Timely would try out new characters, only to toss them if they didn't seem popular enough -- sometimes after just single appearances! Here too is ample room for idle flights of fancy of what could have been. Several characters I read for the first time in Marvel Firsts certainly deserved more chances.

[Adminenkainen]

Five years later...I've learned that Bill Everett never worked directly for Timely, but was on staff for Funnies Inc., a company like Chesler that created prepackaged content for both Centaur and Timely. That's why you see so much creator overlap between the two companies -- Carl Burgos, Bill Everett, and Paul Gustavson.

I suspect Carl and Bill preferred being published by Timely because their characters there, Human Torch and Sub-Mariner, were so much more popular than Iron Skull and Amazing Man. I'm less sure of Paul, who got to churn out lots of Angel stories over the years, but never seemed to put much effort into making him an interesting character.

Anyway, because of this linkage, if I was to combine any two companies' universes into a merged campaign setting for H&H, I think Centaur and Timely would make the most sense. Of course, Marvel Comics would never allow that, so...