It’s really such a shame Michael Jackson never got a chance to play Spider-Man.
Marvel
1. Hulk was originally grey when he was introduced, but became green to compensate for poor color separations used to print comics in the '60s.
2. Stan Lee put a hyphen in Spider-Man's name so it would look different from Superman in print.
3. Marvel Comics and DC Comics have co-owned the trademark for the phrase “super hero” since 1981. They pursued this action because the toy company Mego, which made licensed toys of DC characters, had beat them to it. Mego gave up the trademark when the two companies threatened legal action.
4. Wolverine was originally intended to be a genetically mutated wolverine rather than a human mutant. Stan Lee himself vetoed the idea.
5. Marvel had a rule in the mid-'70s that Wolverine did not have arm hair while in costume, but could have arm hair when he was in regular clothing.
6. Marvel published the first issue of their adaptation of Star Wars in March 1977 with a July cover date, about two months before the movie was released in theaters.
Marvel/Lucasfilm
7. Bill Sarnoff, the head of DC Comics' parent company Warner Communications, approached Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim Shooter in 1984 about licensing the publishing rights to the entire DC Universe. Sarnoff figured that Marvel, who dominated the market at the time, were better suited to making successful comics featuring Batman, Superman, and the Justice League. Marvel's publisher at the time, Jim Galton, declined Sarnoff's offer, thinking that those comics weren't selling well because the characters weren't very good.
8. Marvel Comics founder Martin Goodman was meant to be aboard the Hindenberg on the day the ship famously crashed, but changed his travel plans at the last minute.
9. Martin Goodman tried to talk Stan Lee and Steve Ditko out of introducing Spider-Man because he insisted that kids hate spiders.
10. Neal Tennant, the lead singer of the Pet Shop Boys, was an editor at Marvel's U.K. office in the late '70s.
11. Jim Shooter, Marvel's editor-in-chief in the '80s, bought the idea for Spider-Man's black costume from a fan for $ 220, and gave the fan a shot at writing the comic, though that didn't work out. The black costume was introduced as an alien “symbiotic” and eventually became one of Spider-Man's most famous villains, Venom.
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