Under the ownership of cash-hungry financier Ronald Perelman, Marvel (in collusion with retailers and fan mags) had tried to rapidly boost sales in recent years, not by using compelling content to expand its readership but by hyping the lowly 32-page comic book as a collectible, even as an investment. Holograms, multiple versions of the same issue, new spin-off series with established characters, numbingly complicated cross-over plotlines spread over as many as 70 "Marvel Universe" titles--anything and everything to convince gullible young fans that these cheap newsprint products would quickly appreciate in value. They didn't, of course: anybody who'd ever want a copy already had one (or more), and comic-book stores kept plenty in back-storage just in case.

Perelman then tried to shore up the company's value (he'd made Marvel the first comics publisher with publicly-held stock), he added the indie Malibu Comics and the Fleer and SkyBox trading-card lines to Marvel's assets. He also made Marvel the exclusive wholesaler of its own comics, disrupting the delicate foundations of comics distribution and sales. It didn't help. The comics market, and Marvel's share of that market, have both steadily declined. Marvel's stock, which peaked at $34 a share in 1993, slid down to $1.63 as of Dec. 30. As Times editorial columnist Michelle Malkin pointed out, that's less than the cover price of most Marvel titles.

Now, Perelman's put the Marvel group of companies under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Rival financier Carl Ichan (who drove TWA toward near-demise) is trying a hostile takeover (which would be difficult, since Perelman-controlled companies still hold most of Marvel's stock). News reports about the bankruptcy claim Marvel's most important asset is its stable of characters, which include some of the most famous names in scifi-fantasy entertainment. But these characters only remain valuable if they're effectively presented. Many of Marvel's top freelance artists and writers have defected to outfits like Image and Dark Horse, where they often get to keep the rights to their creations. Marvel's remaining top talent is spread too thinly over too many titles.

Beyond these problems lie the industry's own structural flaws. Despite recent moves toward better paper stock and higher prices, the stapled comic book remains a low-price, low-profit item. It's sold mostly in a few hundred comics stores (many of them mom-and-pop operations in low-profile strip malls), which buy on a nonreturnable basis and hence take a loss on all unsold copies. Meanwhile, the action-fantasy entertainment world has grown and splintered, with video games, online services, role-playing games, movies, TV shows, paperback novels, dolls, and other merchandise competing for the attention spans of young male adventure fans.

Marvel, which publisher emeritus Stan Lee used to call "The House of Ideas," stands a good chance of becoming an also-ran unless it can somehow regain the creative edge that first put it on top in the '60s and '70s. Back then, Lee and his collaborators created engaging stories that still met the then-stringent Comics Code censorship rules. Artists like Jack Kirby and John Romita drew vivid action poses. Lee's plots made readers care about those two-dimensional costumed figures. Sure, the fight scenes were often contrived, the dialogue and teen-soap-opera elements were hokey--but that was made to be part of the fun. Unlike the grim portentiousness of today's adventure entertainments, the old Marvel celebrated its own glorious improbability. Indeed, the first Fantastic Four issue in '61 may have singlehandedly launched the trend of self-aware, self-spoofing art and entertainment still with us in genres other than action-hero comics. Today's bloated, all-too-serious Marvel Universe has no such showbiz-meets-art ambitions. It exists only to feed cash into Perelman's acquisition schemes, and fails even at that.