MARVEL COMICS: REAL FRANTIC ONES 2009!

Face Front, True Believers! Back in the day, DC’s comics felt like they were put together in a giant office that might have resembled an insurance company or a tightly-packed Mad Men set. Think guys with buzzcuts, white shirts, ties and shiny shoes, occasionally having a cigarette while trying to create comic books for 12-year-olds. Marvel Comics presented themselves as the anti-DC: hipsters and cool cats who were tapped into the youth of today and their crazy scene, man.

One of the great things that Marvel did to cement its relationship with the fans and start building the mythology of the Marvel offices – the bullpen - as the original frat party for comics nerds was to get more personal. Stan Lee gave everyone snappy and with-it nicknames – Stan “The Man” Lee, Jack “The King” Kirby, “Darlin’” Dick Ayers, “Jolly” Solly Brodsky, “Our Pal” Sal Buscema, and dozens more. You can find a fairly complete list over at the Wikipedia.

(Comic book and TV writer Paul Cornell – Captain Britain and Doctor Who - recently collected a list of snappy nicknames for modern comics creators.)

In the 1967 Bullpen Bulletins page that ran in Marvel’s comics, then-fan Mark Evanier suggested some equally snappy “nicknames” in the form of honorary titles for Marvel fans. You can see that original page over here.

That letter sparked what became known as The Hallowed Ranks of Marveldom, a list of aspirational titles that ran on the letters pages in Marvel’s comics. Here’s the original list:

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