Sunday, July 23, 2017

0039: Lancer Corporeal Part 4

The last of the six Lancer Books mass market paperbacks that licensed Marvel stories was 1967's "Here Comes... Daredevil". The physical specs are identical to "The Fantastic Four Returns", profiled in the previous post. It has 160 pages for 50¢, and reprints stories in black and white by breaking up panels and rearranging them sideways on the pages, occasionally omitting some.

The cover was made using a detail from the splash page of DAREDEVIL #15 (04/66). The Spider-man figure in the upper right corner is from the last panel of the second story in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #2 (05/63).

The panel used on the first page (below) was taken from DD#15, p.12 panel 5, but the image on the second page has me stumped. I've checked every page of the first four volumes of the Marvel Masterworks for Daredevil (which actually go into 1968). I've checked his guest appearances in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, FANTASTIC FOUR and a few others. It doesn't match the T-shirt/sweatshirt design I remember from that period. Even Google Image search failed. Maybe it will come to me in a dream. Or, with luck, the comments section.
[L3] has typeset credits, which differs from the title pages of the other volumes. The indicia on [L4] is in the same manner, though.

The first reprinted story is a two-parter from DAREDEVIL #16 (05/66)- 17(06/66), so [L5-6] combines the title from #17 with #16's p.3 panels 4-5.


Page L1

[L7-8] reprints #16, p.4 panels 1-4
[L9-31] reprints #16, pp.5-12 and p.13 panels 1-2
[L32-33] reprints #16, p.14 and has a LaSalle Extension University mail order insert between them in the copy I've found. Classy. If that didn't hurt their distribution to college-operated campus bookstores...
[L34] reprints #16, p.15 panels 1-2
[L35-37] reprints #16, p.16 and p.18 panel 5
[L38-42] reprints #17, pp.5-6
[L43-44] reprints #17, p.7 panels 2-5
[L45-46] reprints #17, p.8 panels 3-5
[L47-60] reprints #17, pp.10-14
[L61-62] reprints #17, p.15 panels 1-2,4-5
[L63-73] reprints #17, pp.16-19
[L74] reprints #17, p.20 panels 5-6

The second reprinted story is the origin portion of the first issue, with the original costume used only in the last panel.
[L75] reprints only the title from #1(04/64)
[L76-77] reprints #1, p.5 panels 3-6
[L78-79] reprints #1, p.6 panels 3-6
[L80-81] reprints #1, p.7, panels 1-2,5-6
[L82-83] reprints #1, p.8, panels 1-2,6-7
[L84-89] reprints #1, pp.9-10
[L90-91] reprints #1, p.11 panels 1-2,6-7
[L92-93] reprints #1, p.12 panels 1-2, 5-7
[L94-98] reprints #1, p.13 and p.14 panels 1-5
Here's the elusive image from page 2
The third reprinted story comes from DAREDEVIL #20 (09/66)- 21(10/66)

[L99-105] reprints #20, pp.1-4
[L106-109] reprints #20, pp.6-7
[L110] reprints #20, p.9 panel 1
[L111-114] reprints #20, p.10-11
[L115-116] reprints #20, p.13 plus the caption from p.12
[L117] reprints #20, p.14 panels 3-5
[L118-122] reprints #20, pp.15-17
[L123] reprints #20, p.18 panel 2[cropped]
[L124-127] reprints #20, pp.19-20
[L128-133] reprints #21, pp.2-4
[L134-136] reprints #21, p.6 and p.7 panel
[L137-139] reprints #21, p.8 and p.9 panel 2
[L140-143] reprints #21, pp.10-11
[L144-158] reprints #21, pp. 13-20
[L159] This is the same ad for Marvel titles that appears in all the paperbacks in this series
[L160] This is a plug for the first four volumes identical to the one in "The Fantastic Four Return"

Some may wonder why I would bother to note what panels are missing from the reprints. The simple answer is that sometimes what is missing is as significant as what is seen. For instance, tens of millions of Americans saw the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan show on each of three nights (two live, one pre-recorded) in February 1964. Not everyone watching was a screaming teen-age girl. Accomplished folk musician and session guitarist Jim McGuinn saw their sound as a way to reinvigorate and sustain the much larger audiences that folk had recently attracted through Peter, Paul and Mary and televised performances the previous August during the March On Washington.

In the liner notes to the 2CD set "The Preflyte Sessions" Sundazed SC11116 (Canada, 2001), I found the following:
...in 1964, folk and rock were separate words and exclusive worlds, divided by a fence of suspicion instead of a hyphen. [Chris] Hillman recalls Troubadour hootenannies...where McGuinn jarred his peers by singing the Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand" with an acoustic twelve-string guitar. "I was thinking, 'What is this guy doing?'" says Hillman, a mandolin prodigy from the San Diego area, then exclusively playing bluegrass. "But he was so committed to it that you just couldn't help but be drawn in."

It was at the Troubadour that McGuinn met two other folk musicians, Gene Clark and David Crosby, pursing the same goal from different directions. Crosby had already recorded demos with producer Jim Dickson, who was keen on recording whatever they eventually came up with. The trio recorded under the working name "The Jet Set" while making demos with Dickson who would get them a one-single deal with Elektra Records, a folk and classical label nervously considering their first rock record. The single was released under the pseudonym The Beefeaters (a condition of the deal, and clearly a reference to British Invasion bands riding the Beatles' coattails). The mixes were submitted in mid-1964 and it would eventually be released in October.

Tens of millions saw the Sullivan broadcasts but what they didn't see is that between the arrival in New York on the 7th and the live transmission on the 9th, Brian C. Hall of the Rickenbacker guitar company had arranged to meet with the Beatles and offer them their pick of a selection of the company's guitars. Because George Harrison had been sick that day, John Lennon suggested they bring him back the electric 12-string. According to Damian Fanelli of the magazine "Guitar World", it was the second 12-string Rickenbacker ever made. Generally, 12-strings are made by matching each of the six strings that would be on a conventional guitar with one an octave higher. However, in most they are strung so that when the guitar is strummed the higher string will be struck first. On Harrison's, the lower string is struck first. After a frantic two weeks in the U.S. they returned to recording almost as soon as they got back to England.The new guitar was used to record the B-side of "Can't Buy Me Love" and the bulk of the songs that would appear in the movie and album "A Hard Day's Night", which they began filming in March.

David Crosby reading AVENGERS #22 (11/65)


After the Jet Set/Beefeaters submitted their single, the film "A Hard Day's Night" was finally released in the U.S., a month after the U.K premiere. By most accounts, McGuinn and Crosby sat through the film several times taking notes. Two major points steered the course of their project. First, the Beatles made frequent use of vocal harmonies, which Crosby had a knack for arranging. Second, according to McGuinn, "we made a laundry list of the instruments we needed, copying all of the instruments the Beatles had." That included the same model electric 12-string. Adding two members (Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke) and switching out a vowel in an animal name, shortly after the Beefeaters single failed The Byrds signed to Columbia. Like the Beatles, they also saw their first charting single go to #1. But don't feel too bad about Elektra. After missing out on the revamped Byrds, they took a whole new attitude towards rock music and, in less than five years, signed The Doors, The Stooges and The MC5.

In the previous post, Marvel had further consolidated its identity by publishing its last short 'suspense' story in what had been anthologies but had since become super-hero comics. The only titles left that hadn't been renovated (aside from trade dress matters) were the 'teen humor' comics. Beginning in the first week of April, that changed as well. PATSY WALKER #115 (06/64) and MODELING WITH MILLIE #31 (06/64) converted from multiple short stories and pin-ups to 18 page lead stories with five single-page features in each issue. The next week MILLIE THE MODEL #121 (07/64) would do the same and in mid-May PATSY AND HEDY #95 (08/64) would become the last Marvel title to abandon the multi-story anthology format. The switch took half the time the westerns took. Once genuinely humor comics, these titles had been drifting more towards more of a soap opera feel for a while. With the cancellation of KATHY (to make way for DAREDEVIL in February), there really weren't any actual humor comics left at Marvel.

At the end of the first week in April, the Beatles made Billboard chart history by occupying all of the top five spots, the only act to do so as of this writing. They also had five other song held over and added two more, "You Can't Do That" (the B-side of "Can't Buy Me Love" featuring the new Rickenbacker, at 65) and "Thank You Girl" (the B-side of "Do You Want To Know A Secret", at 79).

In the second week, the Green Goblin makes his first appearance in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #14 (07/64) where the Hulk guest stars. The X-Men guest star in FANTASTIC FOUR #28 (07/64), where the letters' page mentions plans for a MARVEL ANNUAL that summer. Capitol releases "The Beatles' Second Album", the title a deliberate Orwellian attempt to rewrite Vee Jay and its two versions of "Introducing..." out of history. Like "Meet...", the new album is a patchwork of the second UK LP and various singles, demonstrating the widening gap between the demand for more recordings and the paucity of songs not already in print. The charts had apparently reached their saturation point. Of the first seven U.S. singles only two B-sides ("I'll Get You" and "The Saints") failed to place, but the others bolstered by two Canadian A-sides made for a total of 14 concurrent charting songs. The two new entries were both from Vee Jay subsidiary Tollie: B-side "There's A Place" at 74 and imminent A-side "Love Me Do" at 81 (replacing "My Bonnie"). I say "imminent" because it appears on the charts for Apr. 11th with an official release date of Apr. 27th. I am guessing that later pressings of the Canadian Capitol version became available before the Tollie copies were manufactured. On the charts for Apr. 18th, only MGM's A-side "Why" enters, at 86, ending a three month streak of weekly entries.

Just before the Tollie "Love Me Do" is released, DC comics publishes the 80-page GIANT SUPERBOY ANNUAL #1 (Summer/1964) on Apr. 23rd. In many respects it is much like the 20 DC Annuals which preceded it. However, it is actually the start of a different kind of streak.

And for anybody who thinks that they can help find a source for that Daredevil image, here it is isolated, if that makes it any easier for you:






































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