In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the superhero film is a very common event. Summer, the time of year with the highest amount of movie theater ticket sales, is dominated by several of these films, and there are even a few that are released during the fall, winter, and spring. It is strange to think that only a decade ago, superhero films were practically box office poison. They generally weren’t very well received, save for a few exceptions, and movie studios didn’t want to invest any serious money in such an unstable genre. This all began to change in 2008, when a struggling comic book company took a gamble on a film based on one of their lesser-known characters. 
The company that would become Marvel Comics began in 1939. At the time, it was called Timely Comics. In an Inc.com article, the editor at the time, Stan Lee, describes the vast majority of their output as being imitative stories that copied whatever was popular in the moment. Then, in 1961, Lee created an original property known as The Fantastic Four. Superhero comics did already exist at this point. Superman had been around for a few decades, and DC Comics even had success with their Justice League book. Nevertheless, Fantastic Four proved successful due to its focus on emotional storylines and the family dynamic, and led to the creation of new titles such as X-Men and The Hulk. The name change from Timely to Marvel didn’t occur until the 1960’s, when Lee felt that the name needed a modification to be more consistent with the type of stories that were being produced. 
Marvel Comics enjoyed several decades of success and, along with DC Comics, remained one of the top two biggest selling comic book companies in existence. The 1990s, however, brought a financial slump to the comic book industry as a whole. In 1996, Marvel was forced to file for bankruptcy, at which time they also sold the cinematic rights to the comic books X-Men and Fantastic Four, which were purchased by 20th Century Fox, and Spider-Man, which was acquired by Sony Pictures. All of these properties were successful, and demonstrated that there may be some value to be found in the superhero movie. The only downside was that Marvel’s deal with these companies didn’t leave them in a position to make much profit, even though the films were making money.  
Over the course of the following decade, it seemed that the superhero genre had hit its zenith. Although the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises had been successful, they had largely run their course. Many other films, such as Daredevil, Catwoman, Elektra, Green Lantern, Ghost Rider, and Jonah Hex were regarded as critical failures and earned nowhere near the amount of money as X-Men, Spider-Man, and DC’s Batman movies. It appeared that the movie studios were interested in nothing more than rehashing the same type of stories again and again, and audiences had grown privy to this, opting to skip these films.  
A screencrush.com article recounts that “[i]n 2003, Endeavor talent agent David Maisel pitched Marvel a simple, but radical idea: why continue to give away your best assets to other companies for a paltry fee? Create your own production studio, develop and produce these titles in house and retain 100% of the profits”. This led to the creation of Marvel Studios, and the 2008 release of Iron Man, a movie based on a character who had never appeared on-screen before and who was relatively unknown to much of the non-comic book reading public.  
