Magazine Management

Founded by Martin Goodman, who had begun his career in the 1930s with pulp magazines published under a variety of shell companies, Magazine Management existed as of at least 1947. By the early 1960s, the company occupied the second floor at 60th Street and Madison Avenue. It published men's-adventure magazines with such writers as Bruce Jay Friedman, David Markson, Mario Puzo, Martin Cruz Smith, Mickey Spillane, and Ernest Tidyman; film magazines with writers including Rona Barrett; and humor publications, among other types. By the late 1960s, its men's-adventure magazines such as Stag and Male had begun evolving into men's magazines, with pictorials about dancers and swimsuit models replaced by bikinis and discreet nude shots, with gradually fewer fiction stories, and eventually into pornographic magazines.

One division of the company was the Marvel Comics Group. As one-time Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas recalled, "I was startled to learn in '65 that Marvel was just part of a parent company called Magazine Management."

In late 1968, Goodman sold all his publishing businesses to the Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation, which made the subsidiary Magazine Management Company the parent company of all the acquired Goodman concerns. Goodman remained as publisher until 1972. Perfect Film and Chemical renamed itself Cadence Industries and renamed Magazine Management as Marvel Comics Group in 1973, the first of many changes, mergers, and acquisitions that led to what became the 21st century corporation Marvel Entertainment.

Humor magazines

Best Cartoons from the Editors of Male & Stag, Magazine Management—published at least from 1973 to 1975)

Cartoon Capers—published at least from vol. 4, #2 (1969) to vol. 10, #3 (1975)

Cartoon Laughs—confirmed extant: vol 12, #3 (1973)

Humorama titles