From The Archives: Rolling Stone on Marvel Comics, 1971.

Rolling Stone No. 91, September 16, 1971.  This is something I’d been wanting to track down for ages, as an interesting historical document, a missing piece of my pop culture education, and just something fun to read.  When it was published there wasn’t a lot of mainstream attention paid to comics, objective articles on the artform were quite a rarity… And this was a major feature, a cover story in a publication with a reputation for cutting-edge journalism.

So, when I ran across a copy for sale a few weeks ago, I snapped it up.  I was looking forward to finally getting to check this out, and I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect: a snapshot of Marvel Comics at the height of their cultural influence, a look inside a company at a time of expansion and transition.  But in reading it, I found far deeper points of interest.  Profiles and bios of the company’s creators and staff, from the now-revered like Jim Steranko to the now-overlooked like Flo Steinberg; the rather eye-opening female viewpoint on conditions inside an industry that was (and still is, to no small degree) a “boy’s club”; an early look at Stan Lee playing the now-familar STAN LEE impresario/showman character; a look at comic fandom from the industry insider’s perspective, in an era when the mere concept of “fandom” was just getting off the ground.  It’s the sort of contemporary perspective on a subject that often gets lost in hindsight, and as such, a super-valuable counterpoint to the published histories of not just Marvel, but the comics medium in general.

Add that to the rare photos and art accompanying the article, wrap it in an entire issue of Rolling Stone (quite the cultural time-capsule), and it’s invaluable for anyone with an interest in the history and evolution of the american comic book.