To celebrate 70 years of Marvel Comics we have dug up 70 nuggets about the comic company - one, however, is an outright fib. Try to guess which one. The answer appears at the end of the piece.

1 Marvel was first known as Timely Comics. It was set up in 1939 by New York magazine publisher Martin Goodman. From 1951 the company's comics were printed under the name Atlas but this was changed to Marvel in 1961. The first comic to appear under the Marvel Comics brand was Amazing Adventures No 3.

2 X-Men No 1, published in 1991, is the world's biggest-selling comic book. It sold close to 8 million copies.

3 Goodman thought that Spider-man was a rotten idea for a superhero. He told Stan Lee that the character would fail because readers hated spiders. He changed his mind when the sales figures came in.

4 Stan Lee became Editor-in-Chief of Timely aged 18 in 1941. He stayed in the role until 1972. Timely's first Editor-in-Chief was Joe Simon.

5 Michael Jackson once came close to owning Marvel. According to Stan Lee's former business partner, Peter Paul - who was jailed in 2005 for stock fraud - Jackson agreed to buy Marvel on Lee's behalf. Paul had met Lee in 1989 and had brought him onboard the American Spirit Foundation, a charitable organisation he ran with the actor James Stewart. Spotting the worth of Marvel's superhero properties, Paul hatched a plan to bring in investors to buy Marvel and install Lee as company's head. In 1991-92, he put together a Japanese/American investment group and approached Marvel's Ron Perelman. with an offer to buy the company for about $28 million. Perelman decided instead to take Marvel public. Paul tried again several years later, this time lining up Jackson as an investor. Jim Salicrup, a former Marvel editor who was present at the meetings Jackson had with Lee and Paul, remembers Jackson saying to Lee: "If I buy Marvel, you'll help me run it, won't you?" Paul said that Marvel's owner at the time, Ike Perlmutter, was unwilling to take less than $1 billion for the company and Jackson eventually lost interest.

Lee has a different take on Jackson's interest in Marvel. "I had been to his place in Neverland ... and he wanted to do Spider-Man," he told MTV News in July. "I'm not sure whether he just wanted to produce it or wanted to play the role, you know? Our conversation never got that far along." Lee said that the singer had hoped to buy the rights to Spider-man. "He thought I'd be the one who could get him the rights and I told him I couldn't, he would have to go to the Marvel company."

6 The Seventies Fantastic Four cartoon series was missing the Human Torch, not because NBC executives feared he would inspire children to douse themselves in petrol, strike a match and shout "flame on", but because the rights to the character belonged to Universal Studios. Universal would not allow NBC to use the Torch so he was replaced by a cute talking robot named H.E.R.B.I.E

7 Casablanca Records helped to create the X-Men hero Dazzler. The record label, which produced hits for Cher, Donna Summer and the Village People, had approached Marvel with the idea of a Disco super-hero that they could cross promote. According to Marvel editor Louise Simonson, Casablanca said, "Hey, you make a singer and we'll create someone to take on the persona." However, the collaboration proved fraught and ended with both parties walking away from the deal.

8 Marvel went bankrupt in 1996. The financier Ron Perelman bought Marvel for $82.5 million in 1989, putting up $10.5 million of his own money and borrowing the rest. After taking the company public he went on a buying spree, hovering up trading card companies and taking a controlling interest in a toy company. It was a bad move - the trading card and collectible market tanked - and Marvel became swollen with debt. In 1996 Marvel missed an interest payment, putting it technically in default. Perelman offered to rescue Marvel by injecting $350 million but only if Marvel creates more shares and gives them to him. Carl Icahn, a bondholder and corporate raider, buys Marvel's bonds and vows to block Perelman. Marvel then filed for Chapter 11 protection in the bankruptcy court.

9 Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant once worked for Marvel. Between 1975 and 1977, Tennant was an editor at Marvel's UK division, a job that required him to anglicise American spellings and indicate when the more scantily dressed superheroines needed to be redrawn decently.

10 Disney agreed to buy Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in August. Fans have expressed concern that Spider-man would soon be fighting crime wearing Mickey Mouse ears.

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