Martin Goodman (also Morris Goodman; born Moe Goodman; January 18, 1908 – June 6, 1992) was an American publisher of pulp magazines, digest sized magazines, paperback books, men's adventure magazines, and comic books, who founded the comics magazine company Timely Comics in 1939. Timely Comics would go on to become Marvel Comics, one of the United States' two largest comic book publishers along with rival DC Comics.

Moe Goodman, who would later adopt the name Martin, was the oldest son of 13 recorded children of Isaac Goodman (b. 1872) and Anna Gleichenhaus (b. 1875). His parents were Jewish immigrants who had met in the United States after separately moving from their native Vilna, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. The family lived at different homes in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. As a young man, Moe traveled around the country during the Great Depression, living in hobo camps.

Circa late 1929, future Archie Comics co-founder Louis Silberkleit, then circulation manager at the magazine distribution company Eastern Distributing Corporation, hired Goodman for his department, assigning him clients that included publisher Hugo Gernsback. Goodman later became circulation manager himself, but the company went bankrupt in October 1932. Goodman then joined Silberkleit and other investors as part owner of Mutual Magazine Distributors, and was named editor of Silberkleit's new sister company, the publisher Newsstand Publications Inc., at 53 Park Place, also known as 60 Murray Street, in Manhattan.

Goodman's first publication was the Newsstand Publications pulp magazine Western Supernovel Magazine, premiering with cover-date May 1933. After the first issue he renamed it Complete Western Book Magazine, beginning with cover-date July 1933. Goodman's pulp magazines included All Star Adventure Fiction, Complete Western Book, Mystery Tales, Real Sports, Star Detective, the science fiction magazine Marvel Science Stories and the jungle-adventure title Ka-Zar, starring its Tarzan-like namesake. These were published under a variety of names, all owned by Goodman and sometimes marked as "Red Circle".

In 1937, returning from his honeymoon in Europe, Goodman and his wife had tickets on the Hindenburg, but were unable to secure seats together, so they took alternative transportation instead, avoiding the Hindenburg disaster.^{[better source needed]}

In 1939, with the emerging medium of comic books proving hugely popular, and the first superheroes setting the trend, Goodman contracted with newly formed comic book packager Funnies, Inc. to supply material for a test comic book, Marvel Comics #1, cover-dated October 1939 and published by his newly formed Timely Publications. It featured the first appearances of the hit characters the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, and quickly sold out 80,000 copies. Goodman produced a second printing, cover-dated November 1939, that then sold an approximate 800,000 copies. With a hit on his hands, Goodman began assembling an in-house staff, hiring Funnies, Inc. writer-artist Joe Simon as editor, and Timely's first official employee. Goodman then formed Timely Comics, Inc., beginning with comics cover-dated April 1941 or Spring 1941. Timely Comics became the umbrella name for the several paper corporations that comprised Goodman's comic-book division, which in ensuing decades would evolve into Marvel Comics.

In 1941, Timely published its third major character, the patriotic superhero Captain America by Simon and artist Jack Kirby. The success of Captain America #1 (March 1941) led to an expansion of staff, with Simon bringing freelancer Kirby on staff and subsequently hiring inker Syd Shores "to be Timely's third employee." Simon and Kirby departed Timely after 10 issues of Captain America, and Goodman appointed his wife’s cousin, Stan Lee, already there as an editorial assistant, as Timely's editor, a position Lee would hold for decades.

With the post-war lessening of interest in superheroes, Goodman established a pattern of directing Lee to follow a variety of genres as the market seemed to trend, such as romance in 1948, horror in 1951, Westerns in 1955 and Kaiju monsters in 1958. He could be highly derivative In this regard, such as ordering the title character of Patsy Walker, America's #1 Teenager to have similar crosshatching in her hair as that of Archie Comics' popular Archie Andrews.