How THE AVENGERS Really Came Together!

I know that it is a hot topic of debate, I am going to place myself on one side of the fight.  I am a Marvel fan through and through.  DC has a lot of cool characters and I do not avoid reading their comics, I am just partial to the Marvel Universe.  

With that out of the way, some interesting info came out of the Marvel camp.  Senior VP of Publishing, Tom Brevoort has been answering questions over on formspring.  blastr found this little gem in one of his answers.  Enjoy:

Bill Everett, with whom Stan co-created Daredevil, had both a day job and a drinking problem. And so production on DAREDEVIL #1 fell way behind. In those days, you booked print time way ahead of time--and if your book wasn't ready, you paid for the printing time anyway. So it was vital to get something to press on time. But Bill Everett was a favorite of Martin Goodman, stemming back to the 40s when he created the Sub-Mariner. Regardless, there was suddenly a hole in the schedule, with no book where a book should be. In trying to solve this problem, Stan hit on the notion of doing a strip that brought all of the heroes together JLA-style--that would be a book that wouldn't require any ramp-up time, because the characters (and even the villain) all existed already. So he and Jack Kirby brainstormed the first issue, Kirby drew it up hastily, Dick Ayers inked it in what looks like no time flat, and it came out the same month as X-MEN #1. (DAREDEVIL #1 followed around six months later--with Steve Ditko pitching in to help finish it up, and with a different artist on it beginning with #2.)

The real story is never as glamorus as what you think that it would be.  Thanks to a dude with a drinking problem, we have THE AVENGERS.  Let us know what you think.

McMurphy Out!