What makes a Marvel comic a Marvel comic?

     Note that the elements listed below, while commonplace today, were revolutionary when they first begain appearing in the Marvel titles during the early sixties.  Comic readers of the time had never seen anything quite like it.

Internal Continuity
     All of the books Marvel was releasing in the 1960's shared a single, common continuity, and crossovers between those books were fairly common.   Heroes and villians could (and would) pop up anywhere.  Thor might square off against Magneto, Spider-Man would apply for a job with the Fantastic Four, and Iron Man checks in with the X-Men to see if they've seen anything of the Hulk.  Even non-super hero titles, such as Pasty Walker, would get into the act from time to time (for instance, Patsy and her friend/rival Hedy would show up at the wedding of Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Girl).

Heroes with Problems
     The life of a Marvel Superhero wasn't all fun and games, even beyond the usual superhero problem of maintaining a secret identity.  Spider-Man was hounded by the press, beset with money problems, unpopular at school, and his aunt seemed to be constantly on death's door. The Thing was angry and bitter about his inhuman appearance, Iron Man would die without his life-sustaining armor, Daredevil was blind, and so on.  Throw in arch-enemies like the Red Skull, the Mandarin, and Doctor Doom into the mix, and you have to wonder why anyone would want to be a superhero in the first place!

Heroes Don't Always Get Along
     As if having powerful arch-enemies bent on their destruction wasn't enough, heroes in Marvel Comics frequently found cause to beat each other up.  Sometimes this was because one hero would temporarily "go bad," such as when the Thing was brainwashed by the Frightful Four, or when the Angel was hit with a dose of radiation and battled Iron-Man.  More often than not, however, it was because heroes just got on each other nerves. The rivalry between the Human Torch and Spider-Man is the best example of this, or the constant bickering among Quicksilver, Hawkeye and Captain America in the Avengers.  Just because they were on the same side of the law and justice was no guarantee that two heroes would be pals, let alone be able to stand the sight of each other.

Fuzzy Lines Between Heroes and Villians
     Sometimes it was hard to tell a bad guy from a good guy in a Marvel Comic.  The Avenger Hawkeye, and his love interest The Black Widow, both started their careers as villians; The Hulk, though he has saved the world time and again, was hunted and hounded by the US Army; Namor, although he had mellowed out and become postively heroic by the end of his career in the early fifties, renewed his war on the surface world when his memory was restored in the sixties.

The Stories are Set in the "Real World"
     Marvel heroes don't live in fictitious cities such as Gotham or Metropolis.  Their adventures take place in New York City, where they might run into the Beatles, or get a phone call from President Johnson!

What makes a silver age comic a silver age comic?

• Communist menaces
• frequent use of atomic power (which is seen as beneficial and miraculous, even in regards to weapons)
• American jingoism.
• Mostly single-issue stories. The multi-part continuing story (or indeed, the soap-opera like stories that would continue on for months) would not become a staple until later in the 60's.

The menaces the heroes face are often either: 1) typical costumed villain; 2) communist agents; or 3) weird menaces from outer space.