With The Comics Code in full force, Marvel began aggressively creating more and more superheroes, drawn from the considerable energy and talents of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko. This team subverted many existing superhero tropes by eschewing secret identities (and, for some time, costumes), having a monster as a member of the team, and having the personalities of the members clash regularly. On the advice of his wife, Joanne Lee, to try writing something the way he liked before quitting, Lee, in cooperation with Jack Kirby who liberally borrowed from his older Challengers of the Unknown concept, took his notions of deeper characterisation and created their own superhero team, the Fantastic Four. Following DC's successful revival of superheroes in 1958-1960, Goodman had Stan Lee, follow the Super Hero trend again. The fact that Lee had to obey Goodman's relentless Follow the Leader dictates of genre trends was another frustration to him.Ītlas changed its name to Marvel Comics in 1961, and the first comic published under the new name was issue 3 of the scifi anthology Amazing Adventures. The fact that Goodman's long-serving editor/writer, Stan Lee, had to be the one to break this bad news to the staff that they were all dismissed outside himself was just one of the grievances that was driving him to consider quitting himself. This, plus a recession in 1957, forced Atlas to retrench, and for a time relied on art they had commissioned but not yet published. This drastically reduced the number of comics Atlas was able to get onto shelves: 16 bimonthly titles was the dictated limit. Unfortunately, ANC was shortly thereafter forced out of business due to unlawful business practices, and Atlas was forced to turn to Independent news, owned by their rival, National Periodical Publications, now known as DC Comics, for distribution. In 1956, Atlas switched from distributing comics itself to going via the American News Company, the biggest and most powerful magazine and comic distributor in the USA.

Marvel comic maker