Marvel Mystery Comics

Marvel Mystery Comics
First cover appearance, the Sub-Mariner: Marvel Mystery Comics #4 (Feb. 1940). Art by Alex Schomburg.
Publication information
Format	Ongoing series
Publication date	October 1939 – August 1957
Number of issues	159

Marvel Mystery Comics (first issue titled simply Marvel Comics) is an American comic book series published during the 1930s–1940s period known to fans and historians as the Golden Age of Comic Books. It was the first publication of Marvel Comics' predecessor, Timely Comics, a division of Timely Publications.

In 1939, pulp-magazine publisher Martin Goodman expanded into the newly emerging comic book field by buying content from comics package Funnies, Inc. His first effort, Marvel Comics #1 (cover-dated Oct. 1939), from his company Timely Publications, featured the first appearances of writer-artist Carl Burgos' android superhero, the Human Torch, and Paul Gustavson's costumed detective the Angel. As well, it contained the first generally available appearance of Bill Everett's mutant anti-hero Namor the Sub-Mariner, created for the unpublished movie-theater giveaway comic, Motion Picture Funnies Weekly earlier that year, with the eight-page original story now expanded by four pages.

Also included was Al Anders' Western hero the Masked Raider; the jungle lord Ka-Zar the Great, with Ben Thompson adapting over the first five issues the story "King of Fang and Claw" by Bob Byrd in Goodman's eponymous pulp magazine Ka-Zar #1 (Oct. 1936); the non-continuing-character story "Jungle Terror," featuring an adventurer named Ken Masters, written by the quirkily named Tohm Dixon; "Now I'll Tell One", five single-panel, black-and-white gag cartoons by Fred Schwab, on the inside front cover; and a two-page prose story by Ray Gill, "Burning Rubber", about auto racing. A painted cover by veteran science fiction pulp artist Frank R. Paul featured the Human Torch, looking much different than in the interior story.