User blog comment:20thCentFopp/The Parodic Creation of The Marvel Universe/@comment-24308873-20131106201559/@comment-23748647-20131106203117

Yes. He has been decidedly unclear about this. In a talk he gave a comic con, he stated that the Martin Goodman tasked him with creating a Marvel JL. But as I said in my review, this claim apocryphal. None the less, their is a decided parodic tone to the early Marvel universe. I mean when you think about it. Tony Stark is a direct parody of Batman, Thor is a parody of Superman and Spider-Man has some very close traits of the Flash. I like to think, this what makes Marvel fantastic. It points out the pretension of DC. Modern Marvel has largely forgotten this and is suddenly taking on that pretension.