ADMIN04 A few notes on the death of Tom Wolfe

If the recent Royal Wedding and school shooting haven't driven you from news coverage, you may have heard that Tom Wolfe died last week (May 14), but it's worth noting here because of the unusual footnote he became in comics history.

Just when Marvel was going through a renaissance with the introduction of The Fantastic Four and subsequent stable of new characters, Wolfe was establishing himself as a journalist and Andy Warhol was gaining national attention for his ideas about how images work on the collective consciousness of a culture. While Roy Lichtenstein famously stole art from panels of comic books to pretend that they were his own ironic commentary, Warhol's paintings of known pop culture figures such as Popeye were about the shared experiences of the viewers. When he revealed his series of soup can paintings in the summer of 1962, Marvel introduced Thor, Ant-Man and Spider-Man, as well as Dr. Doom. In just the few previous years, Wolfe had moved from a newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts to writing for the New York Herald Tribune. By the end of 1962, three things happened to change each of their lives. Marvel's problems with introducing super-hero titles [ see The Post Anniversary ] went away; a gallery owner suggested that Warhol make art using serious subjects, resulting in his "Death and Disaster" series; and a newspaper strike in New York began (lasting until the end of March 1963), prompting Wolfe to seek freelance work for magazines, specifically Esquire.

To give some frame of reference for how these things were significant, let's start with Marvel. From the summer of 1957 on, their situation required them to cancel one title in order to introduce another onto the racks. In 1960, they cancelled two in order to revive two others cancelled in 1957. They also began playing with the frequency of publishing some titles and in 1961 cancelled two but added three new ones, including "Fantastic Four". In 1962, one was cancelled to introduce "The Hulk" and another was cancelled to bring back "Two-Gun Kid". During those three years, of the four new titles and three revivals only "Fantastic Four" and two revived westerns were still published by the end of 1963. Contrast that to the one year period beginning in December 1962. With four cancellations and four new titles, one of them, "Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos", lasted until 1981 and "Amazing Spider-man", "Avengers" and "X-Men" continued (with interruptions and re-numberings) into the present. That's a greatly improved track record, which continued when "Daredevil" was introduced the following year and soon all of their super-hero titles were being published monthly.

Warhol acquired his first Factory workspace in 1962 and in 1963 had it redone in silver and reflective surfaces, making it a notorious hangout for scenesters and creating a network that discussed his work in influential circles. His "Death and Disaster" images were mentioned everywhere, so that when the President was assassinated in November the series made Warhol seem eerily prescient. People who may have previously been amused or charmed by his work in the past would later actively seek to know what he'd work on next.

Tom Wolfe's work for Esquire took on a casual approach he wouldn't have used for newspaper journalism, and when its editor published a personal communication from Wolfe in the place of an article in late 1963, Esquire's readership could read Wolfe almost without a filter for the first time. The title of that letter-turned-magazine-piece was, believe it or not, "There goes (VAROOM! VAROOM!) that Kandy Kolored (THPHHHHHH!) tangerine-flake streamline baby (RAHGHHHH!) around the bend (BRUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM......" The article he was supposed to be submitting at the time was meant to be about customizing cars and amateur racing enthusiasts. That explains the reference to "tangerine-flake"-- metal flake paint was not only sparkly and attention grabbing but at the time it was difficult to apply by spraying (technological advances since then have made it easier), so it was a sign among aficionados of a gear head willing to make the extra effort to carefully apply the temperamental substance by hand. Unfortunately for Wolfe and the Esquire editor, the November 1963 article came in the wake of Timothy Leary (and Richard Alpert) being dismissed from Harvard over their experimentation with LSD earlier that year. As information about the new substance gradually reached the general public through commercial mass media that didn't have the firmest understanding of psychopharmacology, there was a lot of talk about citrus and sugar cubes that left the average Joe Lunchpail thinking that anything colorful and sweet and therefore likely to appeal to children might be hiding a chemical that will melt their brains. Now go back and read that title again. You can begin to see how Tom Wolfe was going to be cast against type as the decade wore on.

Doctor Strange #180 (05/69), page 10

In the article itself, Wolfe profiled (and no doubt introduced to much of Esquire's readership) cartoonist Big Daddy Roth, whose Rat Fink character and others would appear in paid ads in comics during the 60's, and George Barris, who created the Batmobile for television a few years later.
It was collected with 20 other essays into the book "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby", published in 1965. The notoriety fueled a demand for more work written in its more personal "New Journalism" style and in less than two years he had written the pieces that would be compiled as "The Pump House Gang"(1968).

Perhaps giving in to the inevitable, he went on the road with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters to document their antics and speculate on their motives, resulting in the book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" (also 1968, same day in fact-- August 20).

Doctor Strange #180 (05/69), page 11

Both books came out about a month after the U.S. release of the Pink Floyd album "Saucerful Of Secrets" (July 23rd; June 28th in the U.K.) featuring Doctor Strange (and the Living Tribunal) on the cover using art from Strange Tales #158 (07/67). As of the spring of 1968, Strange Tales stopped devoting half its pages to S.H.I.E.L.D. stories when Nick Fury & company moved to their own new series and the old title was renamed after Doctor Strange. Roy Thomas was writing the series and had just completed a Dormammu story (#171-173) that returned Clea to the cast when the Floyd album came out in the U.S. That means that the next story, a multi-parter involving Asmodeus and the Sons Of Satannish (#174-178 and Avengers #61) had already been plotted and the first issue printed when Wolfe's two books were released. The next issue after that would be #179, due to ship in January with an April cover date if the series continued publishing monthly on time. Thomas had a lot on his plate in the late 60's and I'm not sure how far in advance his scripts were written, but the lead couldn't have been too long, since Marvel then seemed much more of the moment than DC, whose idea of counter culture figures at the time was more like beatniks from an episode of "Ozzie and Harriet" or "Dobie Gillis" (whose comics they published). In August of 1968, Warhol revealed his first works since being shot in June. One was a portrait of Happy Rockefeller, the wife of then-Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller. Aside from the unnatural pink color scheme, there didn't seem to be anything ironic or metaphoric about the image at all. In every other sense it was a straightforward portrait of someone who didn't hold any office nor was known for any particular works-- she was famous for being famous, the kind of celebrity Warhol had and would always find fascinating. It was a glimpse into a direction Warhol's work would take in the next decade. Instead of familiar objects and icons or the manufactured celebrity of his Factory denizens, he would reproduce and alter the images of existing celebrities by the score. When Roy Thomas read passages in "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" describing Kesey and his cohorts reading Marvel comics on their bus, he knew he wanted to capitalize on being mentioned in a best selling book, regardless of the context. At any other time he might have given a cameo to the Pranksters (or some fictional proxy group created for that purpose) but the more innovative and up to the minute idea was that of the journalist as participant/celebrity. For the next story, Thomas worked Tom Wolfe himself into the script. It wasn't so far fetched; Wolfe lived and worked in New York, as did Doctor Strange. The two pages above show the extent of his cameo, with Strange mentioning to Clea that he hadn't seen Wolfe since 1964, which sent me scrambling through the first two years of "Strange Tales" to see if Doc interacted with anyone named "Tom", "Mr. Wolfe" or even a newspaper reporter, any disposable background character that Roy Thomas could slyly  imply had been Wolfe all along. I also checked out Doc's guest appearances that year in Fantastic Four #27, Journey Into Mystery #108 and a cameo in the first Spider-Man annual. I could have saved myself some time by reading the introduction Thomas wrote for Marvel Masterworks: Doctor Strange Vol. 4 (12/09).

Did you catch that? Thomas confused Wolfe's first book of essays, "The Kandy-Kolored...", with his book on Kesey, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test". That's probably, as I had suggested above, because in the context of the time in which it came out its title subliminally suggested a connection to LSD and therefore to Doc (by virtue of the psychedelic LP jacket).

By the time the Asmodeus story had played itself out, the sales of "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." and "Doctor Strange" were starting to dwindle. The New Year's Eve story planned for #179 was replaced by a reprint and instead ran in #180, released in February with a May cover date, as was S.H.I.E.L.D. #12. Both titles would get used to skipping a month from that point on. Marvel's other two-feature anthologies, "Tales Of Suspense" and "Tales To Astonish", had each been successfully split into two separate titles but "Strange Tales" hadn't been so lucky. With a price increase looming, a decision was made to reduce each title to bi-monthly status rather than cancel them immediately. The next issue of each came out in April with a July cover date, mere weeks before both Marvel and DC raised their cover prices to 15¢. Each lasted two more issues.

Incredible Hulk #142 (08/71), page 10

A year later, in the spring of 1970, New York Magazine published Tom Wolfe's article "Radical Chic", which by the end of the year was combined with a second piece as the book "Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers". The focus of "Radical Chic" was that after a decade of social problems previously hidden being exposed and targeted both by government and grass roots organizations, Wolfe believed he was witnessing a wealthy leisure class affecting postures of the radical left, not because they had any understanding of or empathy for their causes, but because they found the drama entertaining.

Roy Thomas had taken over scripting "Incredible Hulk" as "Doctor Strange" was winding down. He was still writing it two years later and apparently saw it as the perfect vehicle for a second nod to Wolfe. After all, the one situation the Hulk hadn't yet been in was having a group of socialites making a pet cause out of him. The single issue story from #142 involves a couple named Reggie and Malicia Parrington who throw a fund-raiser for the Hulk's legal defense (which--spoiler-- he completely fails to grasp) in order to one-up Leonard Bernstein's support for the Black Panthers the previous year, which was the basis for Wolfe's article. Their daughter Samantha hates the fact that her parents ignore serious issues impacting more people, such as women's rights, and leaves the party. Meanwhile, the Enchantress (prevented by Odin from leaving Asgard) sees this as an opportunity to get revenge on the Hulk (for issue #101) and imbues Samantha with the identity of a Valkyrie she had previously stolen as a disguise to attack the Avengers [in Avengers #83(12/70), also written by Roy Thomas].
There's several contemporary references going on here. Let's start with the first panel. The stage play "The Effect Of Gamma Rays On Man In The Moon Marigolds" was already five years old when it came to New York (off Broadway) in 1970, but won the 1971 Pulitzer for Drama (probably announced in April when this story should have been already scripted). I'm not sure who "Harold" is supposed to be, but Paul Newman produced and directed the film version, which came out at the end of 1972. Without the Hulk, by the way. The mention of "I Am Furious (Green)" is obviously a take on "I Am Curious (Yellow)"(1967) and lesser known companion film "I Am Curious (Blue)"(1968) by Swedish director Vilgot Sjöman. It wasn't even the most outrageous abuse of the title; that would be Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane #106 (11/70) with its own radical chic cover story, "I Am Curious (Black)", in which Kryptonian technology turns Lois black for a day or so.

Incredible Hulk #142 (08/71), page 16

The second panel shows someone looking to benefit the X-Men "if I can find them". This refers to the fact that Roy Thomas returned to writing the X-Men for it's final year of new stories. The last one, #66 (03/70), guest-starred the Hulk. Marvel wanted to cancel the title. Thomas convinced the owners to remove the X-Men reprints from "Marvel Super-Heroes" (which they shared with Daredevil reprints) and replace them with Iron Man reprints from "Tales Of Suspense" and return to publishing X-Men as a reprint book with #67 (12/70). Thomas would eventually bring back the team as guest stars in various titles he either wrote or edited beginning in 1972. Finally,  Wolfe himself appears in panels 3 and 5.
Wolfe comes back a few pages later after the Enchantress has transformed Samantha and compels her to return to the party to attack the Hulk.
The Valkyrie persona was used once more by the Enchantress in an early Defenders issue, #4 (02/73), this time written by Steve Englehart but edited by Thomas. In that case, the Valkyrie identity completely overwrote that of a woman named Barbara Norris who had been driven insane by one of Doctor Strange's enemies. The Defenders objected, since Norris was unable to consent to the transformation and much of the next ten years of the series was spent trying to reconcile the new Valkyrie character's split identity. Parrington was brought back as the Valkyrie for a 12-issue Defenders series in 2001 and was joined by her parents for the sequel "The Order" in 2002.
Tom Wolfe, however, would only revisit Marvel as a trivia question or in a veiled allusion from mischievous writers to nostalgic fans. Of course, I haven't bothered to reread 40 years of letters pages to see if he wrote in to them. Tell you what; if you find such a letter, let me know in the comments.

0058: "Early Days of Triumph"

[Silver Age Marvel History Part 7 -- see ADMIN03 ]

In the first half of the 1970's, as I entered elementary school and began getting my own comic books, reprints were ubiquitous. Marvel and DC were beginning to dominate the racks. They each published ongoing reprint titles (DC only briefly, mostly in 1973), printed double- and triple-length comics mixing new lead stories with reprint back-up stories, published lines of tabloid-sized treasury editions and on rare occasions licensed select old stories to book publishers. That was the only way you could find comic book stories in a large bookstore; if anyone other than the comic book publishers printed them.

As a teenager I learned more about the histories of the comics published by the two remaining majors, long before I knew the histories of the companies themselves. I found that by organizing a publisher's titles by their cover dates I could get a rough idea of when the  cover prices changed. I also noticed that the trade dress designs weren't just random decorations but that they would change simultaneously across the line and enable me to find other stories by my favorite creators or with my favorite supporting characters. I also learned that the diversity of formats I had grown up with hadn't always been the norm. Just a few years before I started reading, both Marvel and DC had exactly two price points. The standard comics for each had 32 interior pages for 12¢ (from roughly late 1961 to early 1969, then 15¢ until 1971). For DC, the larger price point was 80 interior pages (with a rare exception) for 25¢ and consisted almost entirely of reprints. For Marvel, they began at 72 pages for 25¢ and halfway through the decade dialed back to 64 pages for the same price. Despite the disparity in production costs, they did this with comics that were entirely new, entirely reprints or some combination of both. There was no public rationale for this, no manifesto explaining their reasons; you either bought what was on the rack or you didn't and two months later it wouldn't matter because any unsold comics would be destroyed. The publishers hoped that whatever they offered you was something that you wanted more than you wanted the quarter. However, it could be that Marvel was selling a brand identity as much as Spider-man stories. They had witnessed DC launching the 80pg/25¢ format when standard comics were still 10¢ in 1960 and keeping it even after the standard went up to 12¢. When they introduced their own line of exactly two annuals in 1962, one was all new and the other all reprint. Both were the same length and price: 72pg/25¢.

When the standard price at both companies rose to 15¢ in early 1969, they each chose again to keep the price of their longer format at 25¢ but this time DC was forced to reduce their page count to 64 pages in order to do that. A few had short stories or framing sequences of new material, but they were still primarily reprints. Marvel by that time had both a small line (fewer than ten) of summer annuals with new lead stories and features and reprint back-up stories, but also had several bi-monthly all-reprint series the same length and price. The summer annuals as of that year were all-reprint and wouldn't have new material again until 1976. [The quarterly Giant-Size comics published in lieu of annuals in 1974-1975 are a whole other breed; if I live long enough to cover all the Silver Age reprints, I would love to pick apart the Giants.]

In 1971, with another price increase looming, the 25¢ price point shrank to 48 pages at both companies, but at DC they decided to make that the standard format (for a year, anyway). Their last four Giants were 64pg/35¢, overlapping with the introduction of their 96pg/50¢ "Super Spectacular" format and the introduction of B&W magazines, digests and tabloids at both companies. For me, that diversification of formats is the demarcation between the Silver and Bronze Ages.

The cover above is my personal copy of MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS #3 (06/66). It represented a shift in the role of special format reprints. The first in 1962, STRANGE TALES ANNUAL #1, reprinted all suspense stories. The second in 1963 was STRANGE TALES ANNUAL#2 with a new Human Torch story followed by more suspense reprints, but that same year the first Fantastic Four Annual  included a reprint of the first 13 pages of FF#1, the start of Marvel's Silver Age super-hero roster. By the summer of 1964, suspense stories had just been phased out of the standard Marvel comics, so the reprint special for that year, MARVEL TALES ANNUAL #1, reprinted the super-hero origin stories that followed FF#1. It had the first six pages of the first Hulk story, the first Thor and Spider-man stories and both the first appearances of Ant-Man and Iron Man and excerpts of their upgrades (Giant-Man identity and stream-lined armor, respectively). It also had the first six pages of the first Sgt. Fury story, acting as an origin for his title. While Sgt. Fury wasn't exactly a super-hero title, Nick had already made his present day appearance in FF#21 and was fixed in the new burgeoning continuity. There were also no other war titles at the time; the last one Marvel published had been BATTLE #70, cancelled in 1960 to make way for Archie knock-off MY GIRL PEARL. Speaking of which, the four remaining teen humor titles had been represented by MILLIE THE MODEL and PATSY & HEDY Annuals, but there was no Annual or other reprint title for the three remaining westerns, the only other surviving genre in 1964. There was definitely a concerted attempt to convey the feel of the super-hero books onto the westerns, beyond just having Jack Kirby covers. Letters pages were added to all titles in late 1964. RAWHIDE KID #45 (04/65) presented a newly retold "Origin" story. KID COLT OUTLAW #121 (03/65) featured a crossover team-up with Rawhide Kid and #125 (11/65) had Two-Gun Kid. But in late 1965 the short five page back-up stories were replaced with reprints. By that time there were eleven monthly titles and five bi-monthly titles to put out, not counting the three new reprint series and various specials. Western back-ups weren't the best use of an artist. Then, out of the blue, beginning in the summer of 1966, three consecutive issues of KID COLT OUTLAW #130 (09/66)-132 (01/67) became 64pg/25¢ reprint specials, although only the first used the trade dress common for the annuals at the time. It was one of several "testing the waters" events that both Marvel and DC toyed with in the latter half of the '60's.

Part of the reason for tentative experiments with format surely had to be the zeitgeist of the decade. Asking why and pushing boundaries were the order of the day in business, academics and art; comics had always been an 'adapt or die' industry, jumping on fads and exploiting trends. If you as a publisher didn't look for something new and different in 1966, you could bet your readers would. Another part of the explanation was probably the mid-season television debut of the "Batman" series in January. [For younger readers: before cable and multi-platform viewing there were three(!) American commercial broadcast networks and most of their new shows began in September each year. A typical season was 35 episodes, but if the first dozen of those perform badly in the ratings (and every year a few shows do) then it will be prematurely cancelled and replaced in January with a series reserved for that purpose.] "Batman" was a replacement series and ran two episodes a week for 17 consecutive weeks. The second season was 30 consecutive weeks- 94 episodes in a year and a half. It was a pop culture phenomenon and DC, who were already publishing two 80pg Giants of BATMAN every year responded only by squeezing a third into their schedule in 1966. Most of their capitalization on the success of the TV show took the form of licensed products and increased sales of their existing titles. Bizarrely, they never increased the frequency of the main title. To put things in perspective:

DC Comics began 1955, their implementation of the Comics Code, by publishing:

• Ten monthly comics titles
• Twelve titles that came out eight times a year (the equivalent of eight monthly titles)
• Twenty-two bimonthly comics titles (the equivalent of eleven monthly titles)

44 titles, averaging 29 shipments a month (not counting one Rudolph comic at Christmas),

DC Comics began 1966, when the Batman TV show debuted, by publishing:

• Six monthly comics titles
• Eighteen titles that came out eight times a year (the equivalent of twelve monthly titles)
• Twenty-four bi-monthly comics titles (the equivalent of twelve monthly titles)
• Twelve monthly 80pg Giants (the equivalent of 2.5 monthly titles)

Not counting the giants, that's 48 titles averaging 30 shipments a month. That's not much growth for a pop culture boom and Marvel had nearly doubled their own output since 1958, on top of having increased sales per title. The really bizarre part of this is that the remaining monthly titles were BLACKHAWK, which had been acquired from Quality after 1955, and five pre-Code anthologies, including the three oldest titles they published: ADVENTURE, DETECTIVE and ACTION. Of their other pre-Code titles, all the super-hero titles at that time were published eight times a year. Of the titles introduced since the Code was implemented, only JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, GREEN LANTERN, LOIS LANE and FALLING IN LOVE were eight-per-year titles. Yet, neither DC or Marvel had introduced an anthology title since Marvel's AMAZING ADVENTURES in 1961, excepting reprints [DC acquired the last two titles from the defunct publisher Prize Publications in 1963, both romance anthologies]. LINDA CARTER, STUDENT NURSE and HULK were cancelled, but all Marvel's other new titles since 1961 started as bi-monthly and became monthly before 1966. Why DC had such deference for their anthology titles is curious enough, but denying monthly status to SUPERMAN, BATMAN, JLA, FLASH, etc. is mystifying. The anthology titles by that time weren't still true anthologies anyway. In general, they had a lead story and a back-up. ADVENTURE had been running reprints as back-ups to their Legion of Super-Heroes stories since 1963 and during 1966 would eliminate those to publish issue length LSH stories until 1969. The attention brought by a television series would be the perfection situation for releasing material more frequently, but none of those titles would go monthly until the 1970's, and even then only some of them.

Meanwhile, Marvel was not only producing their super-hero stories more frequently they were repackaging the earliest stories for new readers who came in late. When the first MARVEL TALES came out there was also an all-new AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1 and a second FF Annual reprinting the first appearance of Dr. Doom from FF#5. When the second MARVEL TALES came out in 1965, the third FF Annual (reprinting FF#6 and 11) and second Spider-man Annual (reprinting AS#5, the first story from AS#1 and the second story from AS#2) were joined by the first annuals for JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY (reprinting Thor stories from #'s 85, 93, 95 and 97) and SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS (reprinting #'s 4 and 5, plus a two page feature from #1). The MARVEL TALES itself reprinted the first issues of X-MEN and AVENGERS and the origin story of Doctor Strange from STRANGE TALES #115. There wasn't much else that would fit the 'Secret Origins' format they had carved out for the book. Dr. Droom (who preceded the FF in AMAZING ADVENTURES) had a first appearance they could have used, but not an origin story. More to the point, he never made it to 1962. The Human Torch feature in STRANGE TALES wouldn't have had an origin separate from the one for the rest of the FF already reprinted in their annual. Chronologically, the next new feature would be Daredevil, whose first story wouldn't physically fit in the remaining pages. After that, the origin story of Captain America had just appeared months earlier in TALES OF SUSPENSE #63 (03/65), and the first S.H.I.E.L.D. story more recently in STRANGE TALES #135 (08/65). The Submariner feature had started the same week in TALES TO ASTONISH #70 (08/65), but his origin had been in the first FF Annual and it seemed excessive to reprint a 37-page story just for the flashback sequence. Instead, the remaining pages were filled with the final ten pages of HULK #3, a random suspense story from AMAZING ADULT FANTASY #8 and four in-house ads. It became clear that the titles and features they had were too successful for Marvel to need enough new ones to fill a 72 page special with origins and first appearances every year. Finally, a nice problem to have.

With the summer past, Marvel planned to forego annual specials of reprints and instead publish a regular quarterly special of early stories called MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS. As their first year-round series of specials it would be 64 pages instead of 72. It focused on the best sellers, with the first issue reprinting FF#2 and AS#3 with enough room left over to reprint the second Ant-man story, the first "Tales of Asgard" back-up and a house ad. The second issue reprinted the next installments of FF, Spider-man and Ant-man, but replaced the "Tales Of Asgard" with paid ads and changed the indicia to read "published bi-monthly". While it was on the stands, the Batman TV show debuted, the impact was almost immediate and the third issue (see above scans) was different. When combined with the revised MARVEL TALES, which would ship the following month, they would reproduce all the super-hero features Marvel introduced from the Fantastic Four to before X-Men/Avengers, as close to chronologically as space permitted. They did this by splitting the two best sellers between them: FF stayed with MCIC, Spider-man went with the new MT. They then shuffled the Ditko and Kirby art. Since MCIC had FF, MT got the Human Torch and Thor. Since MT had Spider-man, MCIC got Doctor Strange and Iron Man (which had variable artists, including both Kirby and Ditko). This left enough wiggle room in MCIC for short pieces (like the Watcher back-ups from TALES OF SUSPENSE) and the question of what to do with the short-lived Hulk series answered itself. The six issues, which were originally published with chapter breaks in some issues and short stories in others, would be serialized. The first two MARVEL TALES Annuals had already used such segments, MCIC would just complete them.

As with the first two issues, the third issue would employ a composite cover using the covers of the comics where the reprinted stories originally appeared. MARVEL TALES would also adopt this method starting with its third issue as well as using the inside front cover to describe contents and production credits. The rest of the contents are:

• Reprint FANTASTIC FOUR #4(05/62) "The Coming Of... Sub-mariner!", 23pp
• Reprint TALES OF SUSPENSE #40 (04/63) [Iron Man] "~ Versus Gargantus!", 13pp
• Reprint STRANGE TALES #110 (07/62) [Dr. Strange] "~ Master Of Black Magic!", 5pp
• Reprint TALES OF SUSPENSE #49 (01/64) [Watcher] "The Saga Of The Sneepers!", 5pp
• Reprint INCREDIBLE HULK #3 (09/62) "Banished To Outer Space", 11pp

The remaining seven pages and both sides of the back cover were all paid ads.

0049: All Together Now

NOTE: As promised in the previous post (ADMIN03), this post will be a condensation of the posts 0035-0039, offering information about Silver Age Marvel reprints but without the context of the impact Beatlemania had on pop culture. It will also skip the scans and details of the four Lancer mass market paperbacks. That information is still available in those posts; to find the full versions, click on the label "Beatles" in the list on the right.

First, the notes from #0035, accompanying scans of the cover and inside front cover of MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS #2 (04/66):
As with the first issue, the IFC has production credits and a sort-of table of contents. The publisher is once again listed as "Animated Timely Features" (and will be until 1968). It still features reprints of Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Ant-Man stories. In fact, these are the stories immediately following the ones reprinted in issue #1. And it's also still 64 pages for 25¢. What's different is that where the first issue filled the page count with a "Tales Of Asgard" reprint and an in-house ad, the second issue replaces those with paid ads. It also changes the publishing frequency from 'quarterly' to 'bi-monthly'. in the two months following this issue, MCIC will join MARVEL TALES and FANTASY MASTERPIECES as Marvel's only new titles between DAREDEVIL in 1964 and GHOST RIDER (the western) in 1967. And they were all reprints.

The contents of this issue are:

• Reprint FANTASTIC FOUR #3 (03/62) "The Menace Of The Miracle Man", 23pp
• Reprint TALES TO ASTONISH #37 (11/62) [Ant-Man] "Trapped By The Protector!", 13pp
• Reprint AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #4 (09/63) "Nothing Can Stop...The Sandman!", 21pp
• (seven pages of paid ads)

Any reader who didn't see the scans from MCIC #2 can find them in the previous post. And since  I went on a bit about parallels between the Avengers greeting reporters at the dock in AVENGERS #4 and the Beatles landing at Idlewild, maybe I should share this with you. It comes from STRANGE TALES #119 (04/64) a few months after the Human Torch fought an imposter Captain America in #114. It's an ad for AVENGERS #4 (03/64) with the first Silver Age appearance of Cap, which despite the different cover dates would have shipped the week before ST #119. Because of the Human Torch story, the original version of the cover (this one) had the words "The Real..." over Captain America's name. The first AVENGERS OMNIBUS has this cover in B&W, but I thought you might like to see it as readers at the time would have.

The highlights from post #0036 -0039 are:

Jan. 3rd, 1964-- Captain America returns in AVENGERS #4 (03/64) and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (including Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver) debut in X-MEN #4 (03/64). Later that month, DC's Doom Patrol would introduce the Brotherhood of Evil in #86 (03/63) of their own comic. TALES TO ASTONISH #54 (04/64) runs its last suspense back-up story. It will run Giant-Man lead stories and Wasp back-up stories that will each vary in length.

The following week The Black Widow made her first appearance in TALES OF SUSPENSE #52 (04/64). Two part stories begin in both AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #11(04/64) and FANTASTIC FOUR #25 (04/64) and both advertised the upcoming DAREDEVIL title. The FF story involves the Avengers, now with Cap, searching for the Hulk.

Jan. 23rd-- DC releases SGT. ROCK'S PRIZE BATTLE TALES (Win/64) under the banner "Giant 80 Page War Annual", which serves as an annual for all DC's war comics despite Sgt. Rock's name and picture on the cover. That makes it the only anthology annual besides SECRET ORIGINS in 1961.

[In the first week of February] the Enchantress and Executioner [made] their first appearance in JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #103 (04/64). Also out that week was DAREDEVIL #1(04/64). It would be the last time in a long, long while that Marvel debuted a character in their own title. Since the restructuring in 1957 this had only happened 7 times: Kathy, Linda Carter, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Sgt. Fury, X-Men and Daredevil. All but Kathy were within a three year period. The next three new titles would be the reprint titles I've been posting about. The western Ghost Rider (1967) was transparently a character done for Magazine Enterprises (since defunct) in the 1950's by the same artist but given a different secret identity for legal reasons. Peter the Pest stories were actually recycled Melvin the Monster stories. The Li'l Kids comics reprinted Li'l Willie, Awful Oscar, etc. from the 1950's. Conan wasn't an original Marvel character. As far as I can tell, the winner is... Archie knock-off HARVEY #1(10/70)? Looks like it. And the next candidate is Luke Cage in HERO FOR HIRE #1 (06//72), a full eight years after Daredevil.

Of course, plenty of new characters were introduced and new titles launched in that time, just not simultaneously. In fact, of all the characters granted their own features during that time it wasn't until Captain Marvel was introduced in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #12 (12/67) that a character was even introduced in their own feature. And yet, this was not a creatively or commercially sluggish time for Marvel; they were thriving. By the end of the decade they would be on the verge of overtaking DC in sales. The idea of giving new features and new titles to characters who were introduced in existing features starring other characters was just contributing to their strengthening sense of continuity. This was being done at a time when there were no trade paperbacks in the sense we know them today. If you wanted to know where the character you've just started reading came from, you'd have to keep an eye on the reprint titles until they got around to reprinting it.

During [mid February] Marvel released the conclusions of two-parters in FANTASTIC FOUR #26 (05/64) and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #12 (05/64) (which ran a fan letter from Dave Cockrum). More notably, in TALES OF SUSPENSE #53 (05/64) the Watcher was given an origin and, on the cover, Iron Man's name was printed larger than the actual name of the comic. This was a trend that was going to be repeated.

Initially, of the super-hero titles only FANTASTIC FOUR ran a letters' page, even stating explicitly in an early issue that FF outsold all their other titles by such a margin that they assumed that anyone buying any of their super-hero comics must have bought FF first anyway. (From #9: "...you [fans] seem to feel that the FF mag is sort of the headquarters, or clearing house for the others.") In 1963, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN got a letter's page and in the first week of March, AVENGERS #5(05/64) and X-MEN #5(05/64) got their first letters' pages. They'd be followed by SGT. FURY in May. That same week that AVENGERS and X-MEN got letters' pages, Thor's name became larger on the cover of JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #104(05/64) than the series' title.

In the second week of March, TALES OF SUSPENSE #54 (06/64) ran its last suspense story, "Skrang Strikes Tonight!", which makes it the last such generic anthology story Marvel produces until they bring back the format with TOWER OF SHADOWS and CHAMBER OF DARKNESS in 1969, since JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY ran its last one the week before. The Wasp and Watcher back-up features had not been terribly different up to that point. In fact, at first they had been made by having each character narrate an old suspense story script, but TALES TO ASTONISH #56 (06/64) in the first week of March was the last time that method was used for the Wasp; she would star in short stories in the next three issues in stead of narrating them. The Watcher had already made the same change in TS#53. Newly drawn versions of the narration style would be used for the Watcher back-ups in SILVER SURFER beginning in 1968.

This meant that all the comics that still had science fiction/fantasy titles were now super-hero series with a lead of 13-18 pages and a back-up of 5-9 pages. Thus, STRANGE TALES #121 (06/64) began the perhaps overdue practice of giving Dr. Strange a portion of the cover. He had only been mentioned in blurbs since #117 and only ever appeared before on #118. It was just in time for him to guest star in FF#27 that week.

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.

In the second week [of April], 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. 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.

Wow, that wasn't nearly as much material as I thought it might be. I only hope that the second half of 1964 can be summarized as neatly, since that's when Marvel's and DC's use of their 'annual' formats change.

ADMIN03: Silver Age Marvel Recap

I noticed that I'm approaching the 50th post (or past it if you count the previous two administrative notes). While that's a little early to be patting myself on the back to celebrate, it's a good excuse to reflect and assess. Checking the dashboard, it tells me that seven of the ten most viewed posts involved Marvel and that six of those are from the ongoing Silver Age reprint history I started. However, it also tells me that everyday for the last few weeks there have been one  'view' each for many of the posts, sometimes going back a few weeks. What I can't get from pure stats is a definite explanation for that. It can't tell the difference between one person (a different person every day) discovering the blog and reading backwards or jumping around by using the labels/tags, or, possibly, several people being referred to the blog by a search engine or other link not acknowledged under "traffic sources". For whatever reason, "traffic sources" only accounts for a fraction of readers. Since I rarely link to this blog outside of the G+ Comic Book Community, and I think it's improbable that multiple people are scrolling down past dozens of other CBC posts and each selecting a different post of mine every day, then I think the two best explanations are either different people just 'taking a me hour' or else the blog is turning up in searches which Google/Blogger isn't tracking for some reason.

I haven't forgotten about the Mister X trades. The short verdict is that the volume that shipped in paperback this spring is the best of the bunch, but there is still some apocrypha and other non-essential extras it left out. I'm going to give myself a few more months to dig out some contemporary Vortex comics and see what kind of unique material may have been used for promotional purposes and when.

After spending a week detailing the Beatles chart action looming over the rest of pop culture in 1964 I started to worry about readers burning out on the topic, which is why I wanted to restore a sense of variety since then. Now that I know that I haven't lost the capacity to write about anything but 1960's release schedules I think it's safe to continue the series as one more item in a larger mix of things. To that end, I must be honest with myself about the fact that my inclination to work puns and other gags into the titles of the posts might make it difficult for casual readers to trace the series from its beginnings. Simply clicking on the labels "Publication history" or "Marvel" or "1960's" would call up all of the posts, but in reverse order. As a mea culpa, I'm going to list the links chronologically below.

1. #0016: The Lost Anniversary
2. #0018: The Post Anniversary
3. #0023: "From The Glorious Past..."?
4. #0027: It must be a collectors'item; it says so on the cover
5. #0031: Three Shots, Four Victims

Those first five post include a quick explanation of Marvel's Golden Age and a detailed examination of their development during 1957-1963, giving particular attention to the extra-length format comics from both Marvel and DC during that time. The scans include unique material from the earliest issues of Marvel's three main reprint titles from 1964-early 1966.

These next five posts put changes at Marvel in the first half of 1964 into the chronological context of Beatlemania. I've decided to do a condensed, non-Beatles distillation of these as a single post to start the rest of the series. If you like, you can consider that #6. If you want the full versions, they're still here:

1. #0035: Paar For The Course
2. #0036: Lancer Corporeal Part 1
3. #0037: Lancer Corporeal Part 2
4. #0038: Lancer Corporeal Part 3
5. #0039: Lancer Corporeal Part 4

The scans include the unique parts of MCIC #2 (which I'll reproduce) and four of the six Lancer mass market paperbacks (which I won't).

See you soon.

0044: Plectrum Is Green?

The end of September will be the 50th Anniversary of Captain Scarlet, one of Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation television series. Anderson, in post-war England, had intended to start a movie production company but needed to film television commercials to pay the bills and one with a marionette caught on and created a demand for more. Anderson himself was not a puppeteer and, frankly, never had an interest in them but he wasn't stupid. Anderson and DP Arthur Provis formed AP Films and created three series of fantasy short films (10-15 minutes each) for small children that were broadcast within larger blocks of programming from 1957 to 1960. They hired puppeteers willing to work on a budget consisting of whatever lint they had in their pockets, and that meant people who experimented with their materials, willing to rework and repurpose puppets, sets and everything else. To meet deadlines, a willingness to innovate wasn't enough, they needed a taste for it. By 1960 they were ready for something more ambitious and closer to Anderson's taste in stories: a  half-hour science fiction series about the crew of an advanced vehicle, the first of three successful series, all running 39 episodes. They were SUPERCAR (a high-speed car in the present day), FIREBALL XL-5 (a spaceship 1000 years in the future) and STINGRAY (a submarine 100 years in the future). The next series, the hour-long THUNDERBIRDS, guaranteed their place in pop culture history. With every series, the puppeteers, engineers and cameramen all worked towards the same goal: to make the marionettes look like they were moving as closely to human behavior as practically possible, to create the illusion that the viewer was watching living things act out the story.

The series that followed THUNDERBIRDS was CAPTAIN SCARLET, which took several unusual departures from the formula. Going back to half-hours and, like STINGRAY and THUNDERBIRDS, set 100 years in the future in the 2060's, CAPTAIN SCARLET was their first feature-length science fiction show in which the fantastic vehicles were an afterthought instead of the focus of the plot. The premise is that an organisation called Spectrum (with color-coded top agents) is a peace-keeping authority recognized and supported by countries participating in a World Government. Unbeknownst to them, an alien species had colonized Mars thousands of years earlier, built self-repairing automated cities and at some point disappeared without having contacted Earth. When humans create technology capable of receiving signals from the city on Mars, Spectrum is tasked with investigating to determine if the activity is evidence of a security risk. When the expedition, led by Captain Black, accidentally reacts the the city's automation as an attack and inflicts damage, the city responds with a 'retrometabolism' ray. The ray reconstructs matter to its most immediately previous shape. Thus, if a centuries old building collapses, as long as no one moves the pieces the ray will restore the building. However, when used on living things recently killed it reanimates their corpse, placing it under the control of the city's computers, who identify themselves as the Mysterons (commonly assumed to be the name of the species who built them). Returning to Earth, the now Mysteron-controlled Captain Black arranges a car crash to kill Captains Brown and Scarlet, the Spectrum agents assigned to protect the World Government President, so that they can be reconstructed under Mysteron control and assassinate the President instead. Brown is later blown up in a failed assassination attempt but Scarlet falls hundreds of feet and apparently dies intact. Instead, his synthetic body restores itself to the point before the car crash, with no memory since then and free of the Mysterons' control.

A-side

(The "S.I.G." under the band's name is the phrase often heard during the TV show, an abbreviation for "Spectrum Is Green". It was a phrase Spectrum agents would use to signify to each other that their assignment was understood and that everything was going forward. On the THUNDERBIRDS, characters would similarly use the phrase "F.A.B.", presumably because the slang word "fab"-- short for "fabulous"-- was popular at the time. Anderson admitted years later that, unlike "S.I.G.", "F.A.B." didn't stand for anything. They just needed something that sounded like jargon unique to the show.)

B-side

The first, most obvious difference between the show and its predecessors was the complete design of the puppet heads. Since 1961, the Anderson shows had been using marionettes with radio controlled devices built into the heads that enabled the puppeteers to move move the mouths, eyes and brows by remote control, which minimized the number of strings used and therefore minimized the chances of strings being visible on camera. However, the heads were proportionately too large for the bodies to be convincing as adult humans. Beginning with CAPTAIN SCARLET, the entire bodies, heads included, could be scaled closer to average adult human proportions thanks to transistors and other tools of miniaturization. Of course, this welcome innovation came with the need (and expense) of making all new sets, vehicles, clothes and other accessories.

The other obvious difference was the switch from nearly camp melodrama to a more sober, dark tone and a title character isn't a vehicle and dies during each episode more often than not. The fear of children putting themselves into lethal danger while "playing Captain Scarlet" was not an unreasonable one, leading to the stern message added to opening sequences, "Captain Scarlet is indestructible. You are not. Do NOT try to imitate him." That explains the parody of the phrase that appears on the back of the sleeve for the single in today's post.

I think is the only Hellbillys recording I have. The photo of Captain Black on the sleeve front caught my eye but finding out that they sing the closing theme song sealed the deal for me. That's another departure the series took. Instead of a catchy theme song or the THUNDERBIRDS' adrenaline-pumping march over the opening credits, almost every episode opened with some scene of carnage that enables the Mysterons to create new agents on Earth, represented by two green circles of light gliding over the surface of the affected objects or people. (Note the circles on the sleeve back above.)  The credits consisted of someone unsuccessfully trying to shoot Captain Scarlet followed by the super creepy voice of the Mysterons issuing a new threat over the same footage of the light circles gliding menacingly over various members of Spectrum. It was during the closing credits that the theme song played, a rock pop number played by an anonymous ensemble identified only as "The Spectrum", the same name as a British band releasing singles on RCA Victor in England. According to Discogs, they were the same band and there is a version of the song included on a 2CD compilation of their complete recordings released earlier this year. The Hellbillys would be a little more difficult to compile, having used about a dozen different labels over 25 years and more members than Spinal Tap or Uriah Heep. Bright note? They still have a MySpace page.

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:

0038: Lancer Corporeal Part 3

As I was organizing the scans for today's post I realized that I never credited the image for the cover scan of the Hulk paperback profiled yesterday. The art came from TALES TO ASTONISH #67 (05/65) with new background art. And for the record, the missing Thor volume (72-125) contained the Thor stories from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #'s 97 (10/63), #104 (05/64) and #114 (03/65)-115 (04/65) plus the first Tales of Asgard back-up from #97. I would have to assume that panels from other issues were spliced into those based on what I've seen of the other books in the series.

The third and final pair of Lancer Books mass market paperbacks have only minor distinctions from the first four books. They are still B&W, still made by reprinting disjointed panels from several comics, mostly displayed sideways. They're also still 50¢, but are now only 160 pages, down from 176. The phrase "Mighty Marvel..." was added to "...Collector's Album" on the cover and spine, but otherwise they're all very similar.

The art on the cover here (left) is a detail from FANTASTIC FOUR #41 (08/65), p.1 and the art on the first interior page (below) is a detail from FF#37 (04/65), p.7 panel 3. As in the first paperback, [L2] here uses the art from the T-shirt introduced in 1965 (in an ad in #41, to be exact) facing the title page and credits on [L3]. The indicia is on [L4].

The first reprinted story is the second story from FFAnnual #2 ([9]/64), "The Final Victory of Dr. Doom!"
[L5] reprints p.5, a portion of panel 1
[L6] reprints p.7 panel 7
[L7-9] reprints p.8
[L10] reprints p.9 panel 5 and p.10 panel 1
[L11] reprints p.10, a portion of panel 4
[L12-22] reprints pp.11 through 14, panel 4
[L23-25] reprints p.15 panels 4-5,7 and p.16 panels 1-2.7-8
[L26-28] reprints p.17
[L29] reprints p.18 panels 5-7
[L30-50] reprints pp.19-25

The second story is entirely from FF#33 (12/64)
[L51-52] reprints p.1
[L53-84] reprints pp.2-7 and 9-13
[L85-87] reprints p.14 panels 1-5 and p.15 panel 6
[L88-102] reprints pp. 16-20

The third reprinted story comes from FF#35(02/65).
[L103-104] reprints p.1
[L105-108] reprints p.2 panels 1-2 and p.3 panels 2-6
[L109-114] reprints pp.4-5
[L115-116] reprints p.6 panels 1,4-5
[L117-157] reprints pp.7-20

[L158] reprints a pin-up of the Sub-Mariner from FF#33 (12/64)

[L159] uses the same ad that appeared on [L175] of the first four books

[L160] is the page on the left.

Between the Fantastic Four paperback in 1966 and this one, MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS continued to reprint FF stories chronologically and nearly consecutively, but with a bi-monthly schedule the gap between a given story's original publication and its eventual reprint was widening every year. That might be discouraging for someone coming in late, but there were a few good things about it: readers would be less concerned about missing upcoming issues if they had a reason to believe that it would be available again less than two years later. It keeps them buying the current issues. Also, between 1962 and 1965, Marvel's sales really mushroomed; as long as their committed reprint titles kept reprinting stories in order, then with every issue they would be presenting stories with larger and larger original audiences. The target audience for the reprints would gradually, incrementally change from people who missed out the first time around due to spotty distribution to people who simply started reading later.

Of course, the reprint titles didn't reproduce the letters. Initially, of the super-hero titles only FANTASTIC FOUR ran a letters' page, even stating explicitly in an early issue that FF outsold all their other titles by such a margin that they assumed that anyone buying any of their super-hero comics must have bought FF first anyway. (From #9: "...you [fans] seem to feel that the FF mag is sort of the headquarters, or clearing house for the others.") In 1963, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN got a letter's page and in the first week of March, AVENGERS #5(05/64) and X-MEN #5(05/64) got their first letters' pages. They'd be followed by SGT. FURY in May. Of course, the idea of measuring the popularity of an entertainment franchise by audience participation sounds a little silly when placed against the yardstick of the Beatles' first U.S. tour and TV appearances in early 1964, which is what I've been injecting into these posts. If this is your first experience with an electronic device and you've never seen the footage then trust me, teenage girls in their audience had NO problem 'participating' at their shows. And it translated to sales. That same week that AVENGERS ans X-MEN got letters, Thor's name became larger on the cover of JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #104(05/64) than the series' title, and the Beatles had their second B-side to join its A-side on the Billboard charts. "From Me To You", which didn't chart when it was released as an A-side in 1963 (although a cover did), entered at 86 as the B-side to "Please Please Me". In fact, this was only mid-way through a period of 14 consecutive weeks in which some Beatles-related single was introduced.

In the second week of March, TALES OF SUSPENSE #54 (06/64) ran its last suspense story, "Skrang Strikes Tonight!", which makes it the last such generic anthology story Marvel produces until they bring back the format with TOWER OF SHADOWS and CHAMBER OF DARKNESS in 1969, since JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY ran its last one the week before. The Wasp and Watcher back-up features had not been terribly different up to that point. In fact, at first they had been made by having each character narrate an old suspense story script, but TALES TO ASTONISH #56 (06/64) in the first week of March was the last time that method was used for the Wasp; she would star in short stories in the next three issues in stead of narrating them. The Watcher had already made the same change in TS#53. Newly drawn versions of the narration style would be used for the Watcher back-ups in SILVER SURFER beginning in 1968.

This meant that all the comics that still had science fiction/fantasy titles were now super-hero series with a lead of 13-18 pages and a back-up of 5-9 pages. Thus, STRANGE TALES #121 (06/64) began the perhaps overdue practice of giving Dr. Strange a portion of the cover. He had only been mentioned in blurbs since #117 and only ever appeared before on #118. It was just in time for him to guest star in FF#27 that week.

While all that was on the stands, any kid picking them up over the next few weeks probably heard the following pouring out of the transistor radios of teenagers congregating in front of the drugstore:
Mar. 14th-- "Twist and Shout" enters the charts at 55
Mar. 16th-- Capitol releases their second Beatles single, "Can't Buy Me Love" b/w "You Can't Do That"
Mar. 21st-- "She Loves You" finally replaces "I Want To Hold Your Hand" at #1
Mar. 21st-- The Carefrees enter the chart at 73 with "We Love You Beatles"
Mar. 21st-- Copies of the Beatles' cover of "Roll Over Beethoven" imported from Canada enter the U.S. chart at 79
Mar. 21st-- The Four Preps enter the chart (for the last time after eight years of placing singes) at 87 with "A Letter To The Beatles"
Mar. 23rd-- Vee Jay Records releases "Do You Want To Know A Secret" b/w "Thank You Girl"
Mar. 23rd-- Vee Jay also releases a four-song EP with "Misery", "A Taste Of Honey", "Ask Me Why" and "Anna"
Mar. 27th-- MGM Records releases "Why" b/w "Cry For A Shadows", another Sheridan recording.
Mar. 28th-- "Can't Buy Me Love" enters the charts at 27
Mar. 28th-- Copies of "All My Loving" imported from Canada enter the U.S. chart at 71
Mar, 28th-- "Do You Want To Know A Secret" enters the chart at 78
Mar. 28th-- The first Beatles related songs to drop from the charts in 1964 are "My Bonnie" (a Sheridan recording) and tribute songs from Donna Lynn and The Swans; despite this there are still ten Beatles recordings and two other tributes simultaneously in the chart this week, largely owing to the number of labels making records available but obviously also the public demand for them.

There's one paperback left and the Beatles continue to occupy America long after they've left.