In 1939, with the emerging medium of comic books proving hugely popular, and the first superheroes setting the trend, pulp-magazine publisher Martin Goodman founded Timely Publications, basing it at his existing company in the McGraw-Hill Building at 330 West 42nd Street in New York City.

[2] His first effort, Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), featured the first appearances of writer-artist Carl Burgos' android superhero, the Human Torch, and Paul Gustavson's costumed detective the Angel.

It also contained the first published appearance of Bill Everett's anti-hero Namor the Sub-Mariner, created for the unpublished movie-theater giveaway comic Motion Picture Funnies Weekly earlier that year, with the eight-page original story now expanded by four pages.

[4] Also included were Al Anders' Western hero the Masked Raider; the jungle lord Ka-Zar the Great,[5] with Ben Thompson beginning a five-issue adaptation of the story "King of Fang and Claw" by Bob Byrd in Goodman's pulp magazine Ka-Zar #1 (Oct. 1936);[6] the non-continuing-character story "Jungle Terror", featuring adventurer Ken Masters, drawn and possibly written by Art Pinajian under the quirky pseudonym "Tohm Dixon" or "Tomm Dixon" (with the published signature smudged); "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 from the interior story.

[8] With a hit on his hands, Goodman began assembling an in-house staff, hiring Funnies, Inc. writer-artist Joe Simon as editor.

Going on sale in December 1940, a year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and already showing the hero punching Hitler, that first issue sold nearly one million copies.

[8] With the hit characters Human Torch and Sub-Mariner now joined by Simon and Kirby's seminal patriotic hero Captain America, Timely had its "big three" stars of the era fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books.

Other Timely characters, many seen both in modern-day retroactive-continuity appearances and in flashbacks, include the Angel, the next-most-popular character in terms of number of appearances; the Destroyer, an early creation of future Marvel chief Stan Lee; super-speedster the Whizzer; the flying and super-strong Miss America; the original Vision, who inspired Marvel writer Roy Thomas in the 1960s to create a Silver Age version of the character; and the Blazing Skull and the Thin Man, two members of the present-day New Invaders.

After the Simon and Kirby team moved to DC late 1941, having produced Captain America Comics through issue #10 (Jan. 1942), Al Avison and Syd Shores became regular pencilers on the title, with one generally inking over the other.

Stan Lee (né Stanley Lieber), a cousin of Goodman's by marriage who had been serving as an assistant since 1939, at age 16,[n 1] was promoted to interim editor just shy of his 19th birthday.

Showing a knack for the business, Lee stayed on for decades, eventually becoming Marvel Comics' publisher in 1972.

Fellow Timely staffer Vincent Fago would substitute during Lee's World War II military service.

Former Fleischer Studios animator Fago, who joined Timely in 1942, headed this group, which consisted through the years of such writer/artists as Hart, Gantz, Klein, Platt, Rule, Sekowsky, Frank Carin (né Carino), Bob Deschamps, Chad Grothkopf, Pauline Loth, Jim Mooney, Moss Worthman a.k.a.

Timely also published one of humor cartoonist Basil Wolverton's best-known features, Powerhouse Pepper.

Additionally, Timely in 1944 and 1945 initiated a sitcom selection of titles aimed at female readers: Millie the Model, Tessie the Typist and Nellie the Nurse.

The company continued to pursue female readers later in the decade with such superheroines as Sun Girl; the Sub-Mariner spin-off Namora; and Venus, the Roman goddess of love, posing as a human reporter.

[18] Patsy Walker, Millie the Model, Tessie the Typist and other Timely humor titles also included Harvey Kurtzman's "Hey Look!"

[19][20] Future Comic Book Hall of Fame artist Gene Colan, a Marvel mainstay from 1946 on, recalled that, "The atmosphere at Timely was very good, very funny.

Dan DeCarlo was there, several other people – Vince Alascia was an inker; Rudy LaPick sat right behind me," with Mike Sekowsky "in another room".

The precise end-point of the Golden Age of comics is vague, but for Timely, at least, it appears to have ended with the cancellation of Captain America Comics at issue #75 (Feb. 1950) – by which time the series had already been Captain America's Weird Tales for two issues, with the finale featuring merely anthological horror/suspense tales and no superheroes.

The Amazing Life of Stan Lee (cited under References, below), he says: My uncle, Robbie Solomon, told me they might be able to use someone at a publishing company where he worked.