0046: Turn On Your Magic Beams

When Jack Kirby left DC in 1958, they were publishing PETER PORKCHOPS, FLIPPITY AND FLOP, FOX AND THE CROW, THE THREE MOUSEKETEERS and SUGAR AND SPIKE. He hadn't been working on them but there had always been a sense that there was a selection of anthropomorphics (called "funny animal comics" back then) that would appeal to small children just learning to read but able to follow simple stories from the actions of the characters. Once they learned to enjoy reading, they were potentially part of the audience for the comics Kirby did work on: westerns, war, romance, super-heroes, science fiction and more besides. He took that versatility to Marvel while it was in the process of rebuilding after massive cancellations. In its scaled down and informal state, he made an enormous impression on its eventual, more fully formed identity. That new identity slowly, gradually started eating DC's lunch, so to speak. By the late 1960's Marvel was in a better circumstance to expand than when Kirby joined them and an infusion of new talent at both companies allowed for new titles and characters to emerge rapidly. During 1967 and 1968, Marvel began ten new ongoing titles and DC began 16. By the end of 1969, Marvel was still publishing five of theirs. DC was publishing only the final three (all of which began with 1969 cover dates) and DC SPECIAL, which had no regular feature. The price increase (from 12¢ to 15¢) that year had something to do with it, but it was still clear to observers that, even if Kirby was still a big fish, that Marvel was no longer a small pond. If he wanted to his new ideas to be noticed he'd have a better chance creating them in his own space rather than trying to shoehorn them into Marvel's mushrooming continuity. Despite Julius Schwartz' efforts to place DC's super-heroes into the same setting, the deeply Balkanized mindset of the company regarding editorial duties made that an uphill battle. Stan Lee, as Marvel's sole editor-in-chief for years, was able to shoot past him towards that goal. But this situation provided an opportunity for Kirby to write his own stories and to plot them in ways that didn't require him to keep track of events in the other books. In 1970, he returned to DC.

The sales of SUPERMAN"S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN weren't great, so Kirby could use it to introduce his new characters. A few months later his new titles, FOREVER PEOPLE, THE NEW GODS and MISTER MIRACLE (along with some stories in SUPERMAN'S GIRLFRIEND, LOIS LANE) formed the first leg of his Fourth World epic. There were also some random horror short stories and two aborted B&W magazine titles during this time, but for two years the Fourth World became the way Kirby was defined to fans. They're still easily the most frequently reprinted stories of his from the 70's. At the time, though, DC considered them beautifully drawn failures. Jimmy and Lois went back to their dreary pre-Darkseid lives until 1974 when poor sales forced them (and SUPERGIRL) to combine into the triple-length (later double-length) SUPERMAN FAMILY. The first two Fourth World titles were cancelled and MISTER MIRACLE became more of a super-hero series as it entered the second third of its existence.

Overlapping the end of the Fourth World was the start of DEMON and KAMANDI, followed in 1973 by reprint titles CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN (resuming the old numbering), BOY COMMANDOS and BLACK MAGIC. Because DEMON and KAMANDI were (mostly) monthly, Kirby's output had actually increased while he juggled three settings instead of three books with a shared setting. Although lovingly remembered by artists, DEMON started to falter. MISTER MIRACLE followed. To replace them, DC issued a collaboration between Kirby and his estranged long-time partner Joe Simon. It was big enough deal that a new job code sequence was created for it, SK-1 for the story and SK-2 for the cover. The project was THE SANDMAN and it was... different. It certainly wasn't the Golden Age hero that the pair had taken over in 1942.

About a year after Kirby's return to DC, the last of the anthropomorphics and even the 'teen humor' titles were cancelled. Aside from a single issue of LAUREL AND HARDY and a single delayed issue each of SWING WITH SCOOTER and DATE WITH DEBBI, there wasn't much being offered for young children after 1971. In fact, by the end of 1973 the only humor comic they had for any demographic was PLOP!. Simon's own satirical PREZ was being cancelled and DC didn't seem to be happy with many of Kirby's ideas, but the Golden Age reprints of their work used to expand comics for the "Bigger and Better" and "Super Spectacular" formats seemed popular enough. They could milk nostalgia, but the whole reason Kirby left Marvel was to do something new.

That 'something new' was a colorful, kid-friendly hero whose modus operandi was inspired by an old name. Unlike Wesley Dodds, the new Sandman was exactly that-- no secret identity and he travels through people's dreams. The specifics of the hows and whys (and the whats and the wheres) were as fuzzy as the who. Wise cracking monster sidekicks Brute and Glob (controlled with a Hypnosonic Whistle) help him come to the rescue of orphan Jed-- and that's all readers need to know. Drawn and edited by Kirby with a script by Simon, the indicia gave "Quaterly" as the official frequency and the cover date read "Winter", but the story ended without an on sale date for the next issue (a standard practice at DC at the time). Months went by during which the monthly KAMANDI soldiered on alone, joined in the summer by the bi-monthly OMAC, THE ONE MAN ARMY CORPS and Kirby's often overlooked stint on OUR FIGHTING FORCES #151(10/74)-#162(12/75).

When SANDMAN did return at the beginning of 1975, Joe Orlando was the new editor, Michael Fleischer was the new writer and Ernie Chua was the new artist. The only holdover from the first issue was inker Mike Royer. Simon and Kirby had split again, although both contributed series proposals to FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL (a monthly 1970's version of SHOWCASE). Kirby offered ATLAS (#1), MANHUNTER (#5) and THE DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET (#6) and Simon offered THE GREEN TEAM (#2) and THE OUTSIDERS (#10).
A clue to what happened with the SANDMAN series might lie in Joe Orlando's job codes, clearly visible throughout the series.

• J-3780 story "The Night Of The Spider", drawn by Chua for #2 (04-05/75)
• (Note: HOUSE OF MYSTERY #228 (12/74-01/75) uses codes 3784-3787 and 3794-3795 on reprints newly edited by Orlando)
• J-3813 story "The Brain That Blacked-out The Bronx!", drawn by Chua for #3 (06-07/75)
• J-3848 story "Panic In The Dream Stream", drawn by Kirby for #4 (08-09/75)
• J-3879 cover by Kirby for #2
• J-3886 letters' page by Orlando for #2 [last element needed to print]
• J-3888 story "The Invasion Of The Frogmen!" by Kirby for #5 (10-11/75)
• J-3947 cover by Kirby for #3 [no LP; last element needed to print]
• J-3994 letters' page by Orlando for #4
• J-4003 cover by Kirby for #4 [last element needed to print]
• J-4015 story "The Plot To Destroy Washington, D.C.!" by Kirby for #6 (12/75-01/76)
• J-4060 letters' page by Orlando for #5
• J-4074 cover by Kirby for #5 [last element needed to print]
• J-4080 story "The Seal Men's War On Santa Claus" by Kirby intended for #7
• J-4115 cover by (?unsigned, credited to Bill Draut in Amazing World of DC Comics #7 and more recently the second volume of the Jack Kirby Omnibus) for #6
• J-4116 letters' page by Orlando for #6 [last element needed to print]

The job codes are generated when an assignment is passed out. Obviously, stories take longer to complete than covers or editing reprints. Yet, Kirby was assigned the fourth issue before the cover or letters' page for #2 had even begun. I tried to find a little information about this series from Ronin Ro's often hyperbolic Kirby bio "Tales To Astonish" (Bloomsbury, 2004), but it gives the false impression that after Kirby created OMAC that he and Simon did one issue of SANDMAN and that after that Jack refused to work on the book again. That's obviously not true, because he completed four stories from Fleischer's scripts. What could be true is Ro's assertion that the series was Simon's idea but that after the first issue Kirby no longer wanted to continue collaborating with him. That would explain why it took a year before the next issue came out. Had it been any other title, publisher Carmine Infantino would have simply handed the book to a new editor and told him to find a new creative team. There would be nothing to gain from that since the only reason for the book's existence was to sell the marquee names of the creators. It took nearly a year, but maybe fan demand eventually convinced them that the character might sell anyway. If so, why wait until Kirby returned for the fourth issue before printing the second? It's times like this I wish I hadn't stopped getting JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR just because each issue was larger than my house.

Anyway, the scans you've been reading around are taken from THE BEST OF DC (BLUE RIBBON DIGEST) #22 (03/82). The front cover above was drawn by Richard Buckler and Dick Giordano (who doubled as managing editor). This back cover was drawn by George Pérez. The inside covers have the contents, credits and indicia in front and an ad for CAPTAIN CARROT #1 in back. Everything else is a reprint except for the 18 page Sandman story intended for the unpublished SANDMAN #7. Four excerpted pages are seen in the other scans here.

While the series was being published, Kirby also did the last three issues of JUSTICE, INC. and one of RICHARD DRAGON. Also during that time, Marvel comics with October 1975 cover dates included the monthly Bullpen Bulletins Page as usual, but that particular month it had the title, in all caps, "THE KING IS BACK! 'NUFF SAID!" (The titles, before and after this, were normally silly alliteration gags that tried to use as many obscure words beginning with the same letter as possible, going as far as assigning the titles alphabetically. The August page started with 'E', September with 'F' and November with 'G'.) After SANDMAN #6, the only Kirby comics DC published were KOBRA #1 (02-03/76), which continued without him as a short-lived series, and the remaining issues of KAMANDI up to and including #40 (04/76). Robert Kanigher went back to writing "The Losers" in OUR FIGHTING FORCES. Editor Gerry Conway (since issue #33) took over writing KAMANDI with issue #38. Writing duties and editorial duties both turned over on that title several times in the first year after Kirby left and it lost its monthly status. When Jack C. Harris came on as editor the cancelled OMAC title was tied in by establishing that Kamandi was his grandson. In 1978, with Harris writing, it crossed over with Karate Kid to explain why the future of OMAC and Kamandi diverge from the future that led to the Legion Of Super-Heroes. Then came the Implosion. DC's plans to circumvent the loss of sales due to the frequent price increases of the 1970's by offering more pages (which worked well enough in 1971) went horribly wrong for reasons too complex to discuss adequately here. Over two dozen titles were cancelled in the year leading up to it (including revived versions of NEW GODS and MISTER MIRACLE) and another dozen during the three months that the page increase lasted. The last issue of KAMANDI #59 (09-10/78) was expanded by 8 pages with the first chapter of a new OMAC origin by Jim Starlin. The lead story was the first chapter of a story that would further incorporate Kirby concepts into a single continuity parallel to the other DC worlds (Earth-K?). Many of the cancelled titles, including KAMANDI, had further issues in various stages of completion when the surprise cancellations happened. Two massive volumes of photocopied pages were created (but not sold) for legal purposes. Leaked copies revealed that the next two issues (#60- 61) would have Kamandi discover a vortex that would enable him to travel to other timelines (i.e., the rest of the DCU). While there, he is grabbed by Brute and Glob, who have mistaken him for Jed, the boy who features in the Sandman adventures. In a framing story, the Sandman tells Kamandi that the story of meeting Santa Claus (meant to be published in its entirety) demonstrates that the myths in one timeline might be the reality of another.

Eventually, the OMAC back-up feature was substantially altered and ran briefly as a back-up feature in WARLORD in 1980. A year later or so, the digest above came out. The story was published again this past January as part of those final two issues of KAMANDI in the KAMANDI CHALLENGE SPECIAL (03/17). It was included in the 2013 THE JACK KIRBY OMNIBUS VOL. 2 as part of the original series, but unfortunately the nature of that collection required omitting the two issues drawn by Ernie Chua. That's why in two weeks I hope to have a post that proposes a Sandman trade collecting whatever is available for this character. I had hoped to get this post out earlier to coincide with the release of the SANDMAN SPECIAL on Wednesday, August 16th,2017, but I had lost track of the digest above. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to read the special before I get to the trade post.

0043: Cast Your Rice Upon The Waters

I can't remember if the first John Waters movie I saw was "Pink Flamingos" or "Polyester", but I'm pretty sure I've seen all of them, from "The Diane Linkletter Story" to "A Dirty Shame". Nowadays he's mostly writing books and hosting film festivals, but his name has been registering on my radar for years. Turning back the clock ten years, he started 2007 by appearing as a funeral director in an episode of "My Name Is Earl" in January. In February, for Valentine's Day, New Line Records released a compilation of love songs called "A Date With John Waters", a sequel to the popular "A John Waters Christmas"(2004). Both were various artists albums for which Waters wrote liner notes to songs he selected around a holiday theme.

So what to do for March when you're not Irish? Why, star in a new basic cable TV series, of course! Waters had been telling interviewers for years that he loved attending murder trials and only stopped when people started recognizing him and he became concerned about being a distraction in a serious legal proceeding. That's not to say that he lost interest in true crime stories. And the more bizarre the circumstances, the better. So, a series on CourtTV seemed a natural match. After shooting a pilot in 2006, he went to narrate 13 episodes of "'Til Death Do Us Part" in the character of "The Groom Reaper", who was sort of a cross between Rod Serling in "The Twilight Zone" and any of the EC horror hosts.

Each episode would open with the Groom Reaper at a wedding or its reception, speaking directly to the audience. Unlike Serling, however, it was always clear that he was physically there, interacting with the events, even though the other attendants never noticed that he was speaking to an invisible third party.

The bulk of each half hour episode would then consist of actors playing out a dramatized version of an actual, real-life murder case in which one spouse killed the other and was eventually caught. (They had to have been caught, because otherwise we would never have had the story.) Waters didn't write, direct or produce any of the episodes, he only performed in them, which was a departure for him. Most of his performing credits have been cameos, often in his own movies as a gag, or else voice work. After sprinkling some of those voice overs onto choice parts of the story, the episodes would end with the Groom Reaper emerging at the killer's apprehension, arrest or trial for one last wry observation before telling the viewers, "I've got another wedding to go to. I hope it's not yours."

I remember the airings to be oddly spotty, even by basic cable standards. They seemed to skip every third week  and, while many basic cable channels (like TBS or Comedy Central) will run the new episodes of original shows several times during the week (including time slots they expect to be low performing, like midnight to dawn), "'Til Death Do Us Part" had its one airing in primetime. After three months it was gone, with only half of its episodes aired. It also ran in Canada, under the name "Love You To Death", possibly to avoid confusion with the American sitcom also being produced that year, "'Til Death" (with Brad Garrett and Joely Fisher).

By the end of the year, CourtTV had been converted into TruTV, which announced that one of its guiding principles would be that they would use only genuine footage. Even though TDDUP was based on true stories it was technically scripted and shot, complete with (out of necessity) fabricated dialogue just like "Dragnet" or "Naked City" (well, maybe not just like them...). A year later, in mod-2008, it was made available as a 3-DVD set from Navarre (UPC# 787364-818198). Soon after, TruTV's claims about keeping things real proved to be disingenuous as the crime and law enforcement orientation of CourtTV was replaced with skeevy "real footage" programs about repo men, dangerous occupations in remote areas and out of work D-list 'celebrities' (Tonya Harding, Danny Bonaduce, Todd Bridges...) cracking jokes about security camera footage. After five years of failing to knock AMC (or anyone else) out of the Emmys, it switched format to comedy, including scripted shows like "Adam Ruins Everything". However much the network rubs me the wrong way, I can't get too mad at "Adam...", "Talk Show: The Game Show" or some others that have emerged since then. Those shows are at least funny, unlike the network's most aired show recently, "Impractical Jokers". It's scheduled to run 37 half-hour episodes tomorrow alone. That's not a special occasion, it's a typical day. And I would like to point out that seven of the remaining eleven half-hours  are infomercials, which frankly would be preferable to "Impractical Jokers", which is so appallingly cringe-inducing that I can confidently say that I've seen funnier things with Sarah McLachlan singing in the background.

About the promo comic itself, it's a coverless 16 page freebie that I picked up at my regular direct market comics specialty store. Scans of the first three pages are above and page 14 is on the left here. It adapts the first episode from the premiere on March 19, 2007, which aired along with the third episode. The few episodes that aired jumped around the production schedule, which is less harmful in an anthology series like this than it would be in a show with fixed characters. It cuts off half way through that episode, where the commercial break would be. In some episodes viewers were encouraged to text in which spouse they believed would murder the other in the second half. That seemed like a kind of dated approach in 2007, just as multi-platform viewing was becoming the norm.

The comic is also a DC production, whose editors were also working on "Connor Hawke: Dragon's Blood" at the time. Later in the year they would edit promo comics for Batman and Cal Ripken, Jr. (given out at Camden yards) and another for JLA and Con Edison. James Peaty was doing random fill-in issues for various DC titles then. Later he would write "Good Looking Corpse", the next to last story arc in "Supergirl" in 2011 before it was cancelled for New52. Adam Dekraker also hopped around, not only at DC but other publishers. He might be best known for working on the "Smallville" comic and did the "Forerunner" feature in Countdown to Adventure after this. Inker Dan Davis, letterer Pat Brosseau and colorist Guy Major are all DC perennials 

0041: The Brave and The Old

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm into comics. I'm aware that this makes me hard to shop for; almost paradoxically, although there are millions of things I would like it would be difficult even for a fellow collector to know the full scope of what I do or don't already have. Besides that, it's the hunt that's half the fun. However, it makes it super easy to pick out cards. Just skip anything that specifies age and even cards designed for kids work as both a light-hearted joke and "thinking of you" acknowledgement.

This Hallmark card licenses images in the style of the animated TV series "Batman: The Brave And The Bold" (which originally aired 2008-2011). Although there is no explicit copyright date, the mark "APR10" leads me to believe that it came out in the spring of 2010.

Measuring 5.5" X 8.0", the accompanying envelope is marked "Extra Postage Required", but I'm certain it's not for the size. My guess is that it's for the weight.

That card is printed on the same durable bond stock as many other cards, but the interior has some minor 3-D 'pop-up' effect and a prerecorded sound chip (which now no longer works).

As you can see in the upper right hand corner, the activator is hidden under the words "Press Here". Less obvious from this picture, but easily noticed when holding it, is that the sound-making device and speakers are hidden under Batman's torso.

The sound chip plays the theme to the TV series, credited to Andy Sturmer on the back of the card. Frankly, of all the audio clips a little kid could drive his parents crazy with by repeatedly pressing that button, this is definitely one of the better ones. I wish now that I had pulled this card out a few times over the years for a cheap little pick-me-up before the battery died. Instead I tucked it out of the way and kept it clean, then forgot about it until I stumbled across it last week.

For however many years Hallmark had permission to use this iteration of Batman, they made full use of it, covering every commercial aspect of a child's birthday party. They used different poses of him and different backgrounds for invitations, plastic cups, tablecloths, etc. And they've used many more iterations of Batman for their Christmas ornaments.

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:

0034: The Crayola 64 Beats The New52

1966 was an interesting year for Superboy. Jerry Siegel returned to scripting him briefly (after writing for Marvel under pseudonyms) and 14 year old Jim Shooter became the regular scripter for Legion Of Super-Heroes stories in "Adventure Comics", finally ending the practice of filling out the issues with Superboy reprints, running full-length LSH stories instead. Most significantly, Filmation brought an animated "Superboy" to television as a series of 6-7 minute shorts meant to alternate with cartoons of adult DC heroes like Superman, Aquaman and Batman (that's right, Aquaman had a show named after him but Flash and Green Lantern did not; they did get three shorts apiece, as did Atom, Hawkman, JLA and Teen Titans and they alternated with Aquaman stories just as Superboy alternated with Superman). A large batch was produced in 1966 and smaller batches in 1967 and 1968, when the schedules could be completed with reruns from the first season. The fourth season was entirely reruns.

By the end of the first season in 1967, this coloring book was produced by Whitman Publishing Company with "Drawings by Jason Studios". The back cover has identical art with the text "Superboy Coloring Book" and the Whitman logo. It is missing the price and stock number (seen here in the upper right corner) and, curiously, it's also missing the words "Authorized Edition" that appear under the word "Book" on the front. The contents were 96 pages of (naturally) black-and-white drawings of characters from the cartoons, including plenty of Ma and Pa Kent and Lana Lang so that kids won't wear down their blue crayons to a nub before they get through the book.

Also in 1966, Andy Warhol was known to have shot a film he called "Superboy" which he never released. There are promotional stills that have circulated featuring known Factory regulars Mary Woronov and International Velvet (not a drag queen, by the way) posing with an unidentified shirtless blond surfer. How they found a surfer in New York, I don't know. How they lured him into a repurposed factory building full of women with Adam's apples in an enormous, then-dirty city like New York and convinced him to pose shirtless..., well, I'd really like to know how anybody would do that because that's some real salesman-of-the-year stuff right there. I don't suppose the page on the right is a little tip-of-the-hat to Warhol's efforts?

Superboy remained wonderful for a few years, at least. As the 1960's ended, the Legion lost their lead in "Adventure Comics" to Supergirl, who had been a back-up feature in "Action Comics" prior to that. The LSH became a back-up in "Superboy" until the early 70's when, after the cartoon was cancelled, LSH became the lead and it was retitled "Superboy and the Legion Of Super-Heroes" (on the cover, anyway; the indicia would remain "Superboy" for years). Often he became a barely speaking supporting character in his own book. Before the DC implosion in 1978 there was an effort to give him some sort of a vehicle by making him the new lead in "Adventure Comics" and giving the old series over to LSH completely, effectively switching places from a decade earlier. After the Implosion things got even more convoluted. Superboy was given a new series outside of DCU continuity while still being a part of the Silver/Bronze Age Superman's past. He was also the subject of the first DC direct market-only comic in December 1979. But it all became moot after Crisis On Infinite Earths gave Superman a new history without Superboy. Or so we thought. There must be something about putting a teen-age boy in tights that fuels constant demands for his return. There's also the prospect for some of vicariously reliving their teens with invulnerability. I just wish he could show a little more invulnerability to acidification.

ADMIN02: Happy Fourth

It's a holiday where I am, so there isn't a normal post prepared. The Fourth of July was the date when the U.S.A. officially began declaring independence. I say "began" because it was when the first signatures were put to the Declaration. People were still adding signatures to it about four years later. And it didn't genuinely became a united country until the Constitution was drawn up and ratified years after that. Still, it was easier than dealing with a condo association.

It's been a month since the first administrative post asking if cosmetic changes to the blog have caused anyone tech problems for people reading on mobile devices. Despite dozens of views there have been no responses, which either means (a) there are no problems, or (b) widening the screen has prevented them from reading the blog altogether. Either way, I'm going to live with it.

Fresher business involves a minor problem I had steering G+ announcements about the blog towards the G+ Comic Book Community. If enough time lapses between G+ posts, the audience to whom the post gets directed defaults to"Public", which means a (theoretically) larger potential audience, except for the fact it does not literally get delivered to every G+ user's feed, just that it can be. In reality, it gets sent to a random mixture, only some of whom are comics fans. The practical result is that a much smaller percentage of a larger number of readers means that the blog actually gets a smaller audience. Having learned that the target audience can be changed by software instead of me, I now know to manually direct it before composing the G+ post by clicking on the word "Public". I went back and made sure that everything posted to "Public" was also reposted to the CBC. Apologies to anybody who got duplicate notices.

Other than that, the blog will be more of the same for a little while. More yard-long ramblings about the minutiae of Silver Age Marvel reprints, the search for Mr.X continues and in between I hope to provide some more random surprises to prevent things from getting in a rut. For instance, I've noticed that I haven't done much involving DC lately, or many things less than 20 years old either. Recalling that the only previous Administrative post ended with a hastily thrown in scan of an Alf trading card (since I didn't have enough to say about it to make a post out of it), I'm thinking that I can kill two birds with one stone using the scans below:

The card fronts above correspond to the backs directly below each one.

These were three promotional cards issued by a comics distributor to remind retailers when the new Batman movie would be in theaters. The distributor wasn't selling tickets, but they were selling comics, books, toys and other merchandise tying into the movie. All of the art on the fronts of the cards were also used in movie posters. There were even more poster designs, but any retailer who needs more than three reminders that there's going to be a Batman feature film and should stock up before the release date is not running a business worth saving.

There'll be something new before the end of the week.

0031: Three Shots, Four Victims

Stevie Wonder's first three singles didn't make Billboard's Hot 100 chart, but that shouldn't have reflected too badly on him; he was only 12 years old at the time. However, his fourth single, and the album it came from, were both released about a week after his 13th birthday and, oh boy, they turned out to be quite a bar mitzvah for someone who isn't even Jewish. Both went to number one, although they were released May 21, 1963 and topped the charts in August. It was a slow build, but the single ("Fingertips") stayed at #1 for three weeks leading right up to MLK's March On Washington. The next chart published after the march was topped by The Angel's "My Boyfriend's Back" and the album was displaced by Allen Sherman. Oy. Yet another shining example of the music industry being in tune with the times. There wasn't another black artist with a #1 single for the remainder of the year. Rock wasn't welcome either. The top acts were Bobby Vinton ("Blue Velvet"), The Fireballs ("Sugar Shack"), Nino Tempo & April Stevens ("Deep Purple"), Dale &Grace ("I'm Leaving It Up To You") and, for the entire month of December, "Dominique" by The Singing Nun.

So, why the he--...uhh... why the heck did the Singing Nun top the charts for an entire month? And how does it tie in to the history of Silver Age Marvel? It has to do with that handsome devil on the left. Yeah, I know he's Jewish (more so than Stevie Wonder, anyway). Just forget about the Singing Nun for now; we'll get back to her later.

This is a scan of the inside front cover of FANTASY MASTERPIECES #1 (02/66). It functions as a table of contents for the issue, although if you can enlarge the image enough to read it you'll notice that each capsule description of the stories doubles as a plug for whatever title the artist is currently working on. Always the pitchman. (Speaking of which, consider yourself No-Prized if you recognize the comic book Stan is holding in that photo. Use the comments for guesses.) As you can tell from the 12¢ cover prices below, the first two issues of FANTASY MASTERPIECES were in the standard 32-page format, unlike the annuals I've been focusing on so far in these "publishing history" posts. Both were technically published by "Zenith Books, Inc.", another one of Martin Goodman's numerous publishing companies that comprised the Marvel Comics Group. It was not Marvel's habit to print content on their inside front covers. Those had been used for paid advertising until the first issue of MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS, as seen in post 0027 last week. Except for this issue, Marvel would only put content on the inside front cover of giant, 64-page format comics and only until early 1969. So, why no ad here?

The simple answer may be that the title was originally planned to be a 64-page giant or annual. The series converted to that format as of issue #3, after all. #1 shipped the same week as PATSY WALKER'S FASHION PARADE, a 64-page one-shot that followed the cancellation of the bi-monthly PATSY WALKER title, arriving in the schedule slot that its next issue would have been in. It consisted entirely of one page pin-ups, paper dolls and other features, either reprinted or from file stock that wouldn't have found any other outlet. Rather than let that material sit around unused while starting a new double-length reprint title, the standard size PW was temporarily replaced with a standard size FM. Once the FASHION PARADE had been taken care of, FM could go back to the original plan.

Of course, that just raises the question of what the original plan was. The first two issues are very much in the mold of the STRANGE TALES ANNUAL #1. In fact, the first story in the first issue had also been reprinted in the Annual. But when the third issue adds 32 pages, 28 of them are Golden Age Captain America stories. [More about that in a future post.] Otherwise, the reprinted stories were from 1959-1962 [not "from the Golden Age of Marvel" as the banner states] and all from the four suspense series that were converted to super-hero series (except the one 1962 story from AMAZING ADULT FANTASY). Marvel's 1964 and 1965 all-reprint Annuals were published because there was an increasing audience for their super-hero titles, much larger than the audience possible for their earlier, lower distributed issues. But before introducing super-heroes, Marvel's suspense titles were the best sellers they had. When the new super-heroes became leads and the suspense stories became back-ups in 1962, that was followed by a greater demand for super-heroes which Marvel answered with super-hero back-ups and/or more pages for the leads. The suspense stories disappeared completely by the summer of 1964. Why reprint them  a year and a half later? I think the answer's on the cover, where the names of the artists are written larger than the story titles. Marvel's artists were producing 50% more comics per month than they had in 1958 and Stan Lee had been cultivating an editorial tone in letters' pages, ad copy and even credit boxes that emphasized the idea that the creators were also characters whose activities could be sold as well. By reprinting the suspense stories, Marvel could sell even more of the artists' names than they could newly produce.

Both of these 32-pagers had 25 pages of story content and 7 pages of paid ads-- no in-house ads, no letters' pages, no text stories or editorial content of any kind (except for the first scan above). All the stories were subsequently reprinted again, either in 1970's horror comics, Masterworks hardcovers or an all-Ditko trade for the 1962 story. The covers were made from excerpted panels retouched and recolored. Yet, one has to wonder what the expectations were for this title, in terms of sales. Television shows like "Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits", which had a sort of O. Henry-ish synergy with these sort of stories, had since been cancelled. JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY changed its name to THOR between the first and second issue of FM. It was also the third new title in two years for Marvel, all three of which being reprints. It would be another year before a new title of original material would appear. This was far removed from Marvel in the 1980's or 1990's when fans looked forward to new Marvel #1's every month. And yet, Marvel's name recognition and sales were building during this period. Within a year they would be licensing images and characters to Golden Records, Lancer Books, Donruss Trading Cards and Grantray-Lawrence Animation, all involving super-heroes. The suspense stories really wouldn't be a part of that.

Back when the suspense stories were at least still in play, when Thor stories only took up 13 pages of JIM and Stevie Wonder was getting his first #1 single in August 1963, Stan and Jack introduced the 5-page back-up feature "Tales Of Asgard" in JIM #97 (10/63), leaving room for only one suspense story until the Thor lead expands to 18 pages in JIM #105 (06/64). On the week that "Tales..." debuted, Ant-Man became Giant-Man in TALES TO ASTONISH #49 (11/63). The following week the Lizard made his first appearance in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #6 (11/63), Dr. Strange returned from a two-issue absence to become a permanent feature in STRANGE TALES #114 (11/63) while the Human Torch fights an imposter Captain America and, less well known but ultimately more significant, TWO-GUN KID #66 (11/63) begins running 18-page stories plus a 5-page generic western back-up. Previously, since being revived at #60 as a masked hero series, each issue would have 13-page and 5-page Two-Gun stories plus the generic back-up, which would facilitate shuffling smaller stories among Marvel's four remaining western titles when necessary. However, since that revival the one anthology, GUNSMOKE WESTERN, was cancelled leaving three single-character series. The reason that this is significant is that longer stories, on top of the loss of the anthology, reduces the plasticity of the entire sub-group of western titles. RAWHIDE KID would follow suit with longer stories a month later in #37 (12/63) and KID COLT OUTLAW in #115 (03/64).

In mid-August DC released their first FLASH ANNUAL (Summer/1963), and their 17th 80pg Giant overall. For the character who defined DC's Silver Age, it sure took long enough. By contrast, Marvel had only released 6 of their 72pg Annuals but had already included four titles covering humor, sci-fi/fantasy and super-heroes. Of the 22 original Giant Annuals DC would release, the only ones not tied to Superman or Batman would be: Rudolph, Flash and Sgt. Rock. But the Flash Annual would have a further distinction none of them had: a story from before 1950. Promoted on the cover, it reprinted a Jay Garrick story with the first appearance of the original Star Sapphire from 1947. This was coming a month after the first JLA/JSA Crisis crossover ended. (It's no wonder Marvel teased Human Torch readers with a phony Captain America.) Stan's boss, publisher Martin Goodman, didn't seem so encouraged by the readership's interest in historic characters. There were few or no licensing options in 1963 as there would be in just a few years and Stan's talent as a  writer had to be balanced with his editorial duties, which was easier to manage when he was preparing eight formulaic genre comics for release every month in 1958. By 1963 he was the custodian and primary writer for a new mythology that was growing an audience of regular readers beyond bored 10-year-olds with ten cents left over after buying candy. But Goodman had never stopped being a magazine publisher and had just released the second edition of a fumetti style joke magazine called YOU DON'T SAY that was made extremely cheaply by recycling photos from news services instead of creating photos. News photographers need to take more photos of public figures than can be eventually selected by editors for use, so any amount of money to be had for the nearly identical unused photos is gravy. Stan and others would then write non-sequitur gags to match whatever photos were available. The humor wasn't particularly political; readers only needed to know which figures had rivalries,etc. The same jokes could probably have been used with sports figures or film stars. The rest of my notes on the topic are below:

So, three shots were fired. John F. Kennedy was killed. Governor John Connally was severely injured. Bystander James Tague was superficially wounded. YOU DON'T SAY was cancelled at the printers. Three shots, four victims. The bright side of losing the magazine is that it required keeping the comics line. One issue of the B&W magazine was priced at four times a color comic and cost a fraction to produce. It would be awfully tempting to believe that the superior profit margin could be replicated with several similar titles, but I suspect that the harsh reality is that the magazine's success was tied to there being only one of it. Putting out two such magazines a month, for instance, would only bring in more profit than the comics if they continued to sell as much as releasing one semi-annually. It's more likely that the sales would be diluted. And by the time they realized that they had made a mistake, the artists who had been making the comics would have found other positions and reassembling them would be nearly impossible. And they were making innovations all the time. In fact, the very issue of FANTASTIC FOUR quoted in the notes above (#21) introduced WWII hero Nick Fury in the present day which (spoilers) meant he survived the war. But it also shows him working for the CIA and promoted to Colonel. That became the first step towards introducing S.H.I.E.L.D. into Marvel continuity. The same week that issue came out, Dr. Strange was upgraded from a 5-page back-up to an 8-page back-up, starting with his origin in STRANGE TALES #115 (12/63). This meant the title gave up suspense back-up stories before JIM. The same week also saw the introduction of Iron Man's first slimmed down, red and yellow armor in TALES OF SUSPENSE #48 (12/63). Then, in October, TALES TO ASTONISH #51(01/64) added a regular Wasp back-up feature. Because the Giant-Man feature had irregular lengths, there were suspense stories in #51 and #54. Immediately after, TALES OF SUSPENSE #49 (01/64) added "Tales of the Watcher", a 5-page back-up that ran 10 issues. Because the Iron Man feature stayed at 13 pages for a while, issues #50-54 also carried 5-page suspense back-ups. In November, DC completed their second wave of annuals for the year with Batman (#6) and Superman (#8). After the assassination, Kirby returned to Thor and the nation mourned their first Catholic president by buying enormous quantities of a nun singing in French. Stan had been right in his hunch that the public would not be in the mood for jokes involving Kennedy, even if the jokes weren't at his expense. DC, however, published a story in ACTION COMICS #309 (02/64) a month after the assassination in which Superman fools Lois Lane and Lana Lang when they try to prove that he's Clark Kent by having Kennedy disguise himself as Clark as a favor. Of course, the story had been prepared well before his death, but one has to wonder why weeks of advance notice weren't enough to find any other way to fill 14 pages when your company's shareholders control both the printing presses and the distributor. Why they thought lining the President up with the Legion Of Super Pets for a public appearance as a practical joke would be seen as a 'fitting tribute' is still mystifying over 50 years later.

Stan Lee had a grasp for the mood of the public that DC's editors did not and heading into the 1960's the gap between them in that regard would become a chasm. Although Julius Schwartz saw the value in being attentive to that segment of fandom that cared enough to write fan letters, Stan's wider view enabled him to reach people who weren't already reading and give them an incentive to start and come back. He also knew when to sit back and give Jack Kirby room. So, when the year ended with the country anxious about its future and identity and with its leadership disrupted, Marvel was prepared with a story to run in the first week of January that would make the fourth issue of Avengers as sought after as #1. And that would be a good place to start the next Silver Age post.

0027: It must be a collectors' item; it says so on the cover

So far, I've done three extra-wordy posts about the development of the giant/annual format at Marvel and DC in the Silver Age. If you haven't seen them, they are the only posts that have been tagged with the label "publication history" to date. You can read them by clicking on that term at the end of this post, or come back at any time and click on the same term under the list "Name Yer Poison" on the right. If you have read them, let me give you a quick recap: After the Comics Code Authority was implemented at the end of 1954, both Marvel and DC spent the rest of the decade publishing only one format of comic book, 32 pages plus covers for 10¢. In June of 1960, DC released an 80-page Superman Annual acknowledging their 25th Anniversary which reprinted recent stories answering frequently asked questions about Superman's history. Despite the higher 25¢ cover price it sold well enough to justify releasing a second "annual" five months later. The following year DC established a pattern of not releasing one company annual per year (as they had in the 30's and 40's), but three 'annuals', twice a year. One would be Superman, one would be Batman and the third would vary. The next year after that, Marvel introduced their own 72 page annuals with two titles right after DC's June wave. One of those, the first Millie the Model Annual, was filled with original material instead of reprints. The other, for Strange Tales, reprinted suspense and fantasy stories from titles which were in the process of being converted into super-hero comics.

The titles Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, Journey Into Mystery and Tales of Suspense converted from bi-monthly to monthly status in late 1960. Even before then, the improved sales of the new Kirby/Ditko look on the Goodman titles had made selling ad space easier. The story content in these books was typically 23 pages of comic art (split among five stories), a two page text story (required for cheaper mailing rates on subscription copies) and either paid ads or in-house ads. DC had far fewer ads and Dell rarely had any. With fewer titles on the stands, the publishing group that would become Marvel again in 1961 needed revenue where they could find it. Upgrading those four books to monthly frequency brought Marvel from eight titles a month to ten titles a month. Something else that happened is that the stories lengthened. While still totalling 23 pages of comic content, they would now fall into a four story pattern: 7 pages, 6 pages and two 5 page stories. The next phenomenon was to try to cultivate recurring characters. Initially it would be the monsters or invading aliens and the scientists who defeated them. To flesh out their parts and give them something resembling a personality, those characters would occupy the 6 and 7 page sections and they would be packaged as a two-part story. Sometimes they would combine the 6 or 7 page section with a 5 page section. Conveniently, Stan Lee was editing all these titles, so if someone came up with an idea for a lead feature, free-standing stories could be shuffled into another title to make room without having to worry if they would fit elsewhere. Although it couldn't have been developed for this purpose, this system of standardized lengths made it easy to insert super-hero stories into these titles as lead features without having to totally overhaul the look and feel of the titles. The first Ant-Man, Human Torch and Thor stories were 13 pages, followed by two 5 page stories of the sort those series had always published. The first Spider-man story was broken into 6 and 5 page chapters.

The cover of my copy of Marvel Collectors' Item Classics #1

By the end of 1961, the addition of bi-monthly titles "Linda Carter" and "Fantastic Four" raised the average release schedule to 11 comics per month. When the first Marvel annuals came out in 1962, "Fantastic Four" was upgraded to monthly. The last issue of "Amazing Fantasy" (#15, with Spider-man) had the date August on the cover, but September in the indicia. Editorial content inside announces the intention to continue publishing Spider-man in that title. For all of its prior existence, the title had been monthly, but if it was falling into a bi-monthly schedule on odd-numbered months, then it would have been switching places with the "Fantastic Four". Instead, it was cancelled and that spot was taken by the return of "Two-Gun Kid", redesigned to resemble a super-hero title, complete with mask and secret identity.

1963 began on a down note, with the Hulk series cancelled and Kirby temporarily leaving the Thor feature, both in the first week of January. However, it was also the introduction of the Watcher (with The Red Ghost in FF#13). And after that the rest of the year was filled with incremental moves towards the new Marvel identity. Starting in February, the "MC" box was dropped in favor of a rectangular box in the upper left corner of all the covers, including the western and humor titles. Each box would include a a portrait of that title's main character(s), something that was now possible since every title had a lead feature with a recurring character (except "Love Romances", which used a generic couple). The box also had the words "Marvel Comics Group" and the 12¢ price, which previously appeared in a large circle almost anywhere in the upper third of the cover. Now, even when comics were fanned on a newsstand rack, readers would be able to find the characters they wanted and would connect those characters with the name of a publishing group. A week later, Iron Man fought a villain named Dr. Strange just two months before a hero named Dr. Strange debuted in April. Between those two stories, in March, Sgt. Fury makes his first appearance in his own title and the Wasp is introduced in the Ant-Man feature. Hank and Jan cross over into FF#16 in April just as Spider-man gets his first issue-length story in AS#3. Even so, he still gets no respect: Dr. Octopus calls him "Superman". In May, "Love Romances" (Marvel's only remaining romance title and only anthology without a committed lead) and "Gunsmoke Western" (which had become redundant to "Kid Colt Outlaw") were both cancelled, leaving two bi-monthly slots on the schedule. Right after that, Iron Man fought the time travelling Mad Pharoah two months before the Fantastic Four fought Rama-Tut. (Hunh. Seems Tony's got the drop on everybody back then.)

Inside front cover of MCIC #1

At this time, DC began following suit by converting more genre anthologies to recurring feature titles. They had done it before in 1959 (with Mark Merlin, Space Ranger and Adam Strange) and did it again in 1963 (with Eclipso and Doom Patrol). They also decided to spread out their annuals a bit in order to have them compete with Marvel titles rather than each other. "Batman Annual" #5 was moved up to late May, followed by a second Lois Lane and seventh Superman in June. Marvel responded by putting more comics out without increasing their total number of titles. Three titles began shipping monthly, two of them for a four-month period ("Patsy Walker" and "Modelling With Millie") and the other ("Amazing Spider-man") permanently. Also in June was MILLIE THE MODEL ANNUAL #2 and STRANGE TALES ANNUAL #2, both "72  Big Pages" for 25¢, both published by Vista Publications, Inc. Millie was more of the same, albeit with a few ads. The "Strange Tales Annual" had some significant differences, the most obvious being an 18-page new story featuring the Human Torch (who had been the lead in the monthly "Strange Tales" for a year at that point) with Spider-man. That was followed by one story reprinted from "Strange Tales", but the other nine all came from "Strange Worlds" #1-3 and "Worlds of Fantasy" #16, two titles that had already been cancelled in 1959 shortly after these stories originally appeared. [It's off topic, but from the first annual, all but two stories from "Journey Into Mystery" #55 would be subsequently reprinted, either in 1970's comics, the Monster Masterworks trade paperback or Marvel Masterworks for the various titles. From the second annual, only two stories had ever been reprinted, at least in the U.S. so far.]

In July, Marvel added two more annuals with the "72 Big Pages" banner. PATSY AND HEDY ANNUAL #1, starring Patsy Walker and Hedy Wolfe, was mostly reprints from 1958, from Male Publishing Corp. The other was a bombshell: FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #1, from Canam Publisher Sales Corp., began with a new 37-page Lee and Kirby story in which the Sub-mariner finally finds the residents of Atlantis he'd been searching for since he regained his memory in FF#4, tells his origin story for the first time in the Silver Age, wages war on the surface world and promptly loses his people again. There was also two pages of FAQ's, a now famous diagram of the Baxter Building, and a 6-page retelling of the story from "Amazing Spider-man" #1 about his meeting the FF but told from the FF's perspective (by Kirby with Ditko inks). Scattered throughout are 11 pin-ups forming "A Gallery of The Fantastic Four's Most Famous Foes!" which was in fact every opponent from the first 17 issues with a capsule description and the issue number of their first appearance. It ends by reprinting the first 13 pages of FF #1, which explains why Marvel's flagship title at the time was the only major feature prior to this annual not included in the first issue of Marvel Tales. There were only two in-house ads on the interior pages, one with the cover of "Strange Tales Annual" #2 and a more generic one for "Amazing Spider-man" and a new title, "The Avengers", shipping the same week as the FF Annual along with the first "X-Men". Busy week.

The scans for this post are from the first issue of MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS, which was released in October of 1965 after the six annuals for that year. It differs from them in a few respects: the banner calls it a "Bullpen Book" instead of an annual, and the indicia claims it will be published "quarterly" (by Animated Timely Features, Inc.); it's only 64 pages; and the inside front cover has the staff credits with B&W art details to form a kind of contents page. Here's the real contents:

• Reprint FANTASTIC FOUR #2 (01/62) "... Meet The Skrulls From Outer Space!", 24pp
• Ad (see third scan below), also in FF#46 (01/66)
• Reprint TALES TO ASTONISH #36 (10/62) [Ant-Man] "The Challenge of Comrade X!", 13pp
• Reprint JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #97 (10/63) "Tales of...Asgard!", 5 pp
• Reprint AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #3 (07/63) "...Versus Doctor Octopus", 21pp
• Inside back cover: ad for Famous Artists Schools Studio with Albert Dorne
• Ad for Mike Marvel System (bodybuilding), still at 285 Market St.

From page 25 of Marvel Collectors' Item Classic #1

One of the items in those contents was the first installment of the "Tales Of Asgard" back-up feature, which began running one month after the FF Annual. Funny story? That was about the time that, despite everything I described going on at Marvel in 1963 up to that point, Goodman was seriously considering discontinuing the line of comics and just publishing magazines and paperbacks. But that story is going to have to wait.

0023: "From The Glorious Past..."?

In the posts "The Lost Anniversary" and "The Post Anniversary" I wrote about Atlas Comics' reinvention as Marvel and the first issue of the Marvel Tales reprint series in 1964, respectively. The two aren't unrelated. Before 1960, most comics publishers (and readers) viewed reprinted stories as matters of dishonesty or ineptitude because, frankly, those were exactly the reasons behind reprints in the Golden Age. A more straightforward form of 'content recycling' was to take a few remaindered or overrun copies of comics past their cover date and bind them, three or four at a time, in a new cover and sell them for 50-75% of their original cover price. EC Comics made several of these. In fact, the first three DC annuals from 1936 to 1938 were very much like this, either rebinding existing pages or printing them from the same plates. That third one came out at about the time that the original owner went into receivership and his share was bought out by his distributors. Almost immediately, they added a fourth title, Action Comics, which introduced the character who would symbolize their company, Superman. The first two titles, already renamed More Fun Comics and New Adventure Comics, switched from a 'volume and issue' numbering system (with a new #1 each year) to a whole numbering system. The title they jointly owned with the previous publisher, Detective Comics, carried on and became the publisher name for all four series. In 1939 and 1940 they published annuals of new material, still 96 pages for 15¢ at a time when their standard format was 64 pages for 10¢. They continued every year until the mid-40's, when M.C. Gaines (editor and minority owner of the All-American imprint) left to create a new publishing company, Educational Comics. He took with him some trade dress elements and the feature he initiated, "Picture Stories From the Bible", and sold his share of the company back to DC's owners for the stake he needed. When he died a few years after that, his son took over the floundering company, renamed it Entertaining Comics (or EC) and radically overhauled its roster (imagine replacing PBS Kids or Disney, Jr. with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim). Some of the cash flow problems were addressed with the aforementioned "annuals" rebinding old comics.

By the time Gaines left, DC had
already begun publishing the quarterly "World's Finest Comics" and "Comic Cavalcade" at 96 pages, then shrunk to 80 pages. When war time paper restrictions were lifted, smaller companies put out giant issues, some over 250 pages, often rehashing past failures and in some cases stealing older stories from other publishers, gambling that no one would notice. Martin Goodman's Marvel companies didn't seem to bother with annuals. The only examples I can find are B&W 128-page reprints of "Captain America" (early 40's), Marvel Mystery Comics (mid-40's) and Kid Colt Outlaw (early 50's), all for Canada. That changed after 1957, when both their rack presence and market penetration were compromised.

On the right is my personal copy of Marvel Tales Annual #2 from 1965. The situation at the time is best summed up by the blurb, "From the glorious past, when the Incredible Hulk was featured in his own magazine...", which was a whopping three years earlier. The other headliners were only two years old. In fact, the oldest story here is a five page suspense story used as filler and originally published less than a year before the Hulk story. Let me see if I can present more of a coherent timeline.

• The popularity of super-heroes wanes in the late 1940's. Goodman's first comic book series, "Marvel Mystery Comics", is almost ten years old when it drops super-hero features, replaces them with suspense stories and changes its name to "Marvel Tales". A year later the 'Marvel' group identity begins to change into the 'Atlas' group identity.
• During the 1950's, the Superman television show (1952-1958) causes the already enormous readership for Superman to become almost as permanent a part of popular culture as the character himself. He, Batman and Wonder Woman are the only DC super-heroes left with eponymous series as well as each having the lead feature in an anthology (although WW's anthology, "Sensation Comics", spends its last year as "Sensation Mystery" during the Superman TV show's first season).
• Atlas tries unsuccessfully to revive its three biggest super-heroes, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and Captain America, in 1953-1954. Probably due to the bad publicity of the Congressional hearings on juvenile delinquency, "Young Men In Action" and their individual titles are cancelled by the end of the summer, except Sub-Mariner which lasts an additional year.
• By the end of 1954, the Comics Code Authority is formed by a coalition of publishers to regain public trust. EC is scapegoated and when participating publishers begin using the CCA stamp starting with early 1955 cover dates, EC replaces its "New Trend" titles (1950-1954) with "New Direction" titles, futilely attempting to play by the new rules. By the end of 1955 they abandon comics and publish B&W magazines with comic art, such as "Mad".
• To find out what kind of features will sell in the new CCA climate, DC creates "Showcase" (a 'try-out' series) in 1956. The first year is a failure except for issue #4, which introduces an updated, scientifically rational version of a Golden Age super-hero, The Flash. More such reworkings of super-hero characters follow over the next five years.
• In 1957, after Goodman dismantles his own Atlas distribution system the distributor he intends to use for his own comics is put out of business by legal problems. Sitting on a large inventory he must move, he accepts a deal from Independent News which is controlled by DC's owners. It reduces the number of titles he publishes by 80% officially and was rumored to have prohibited super-hero titles unofficially.
• In 1958, Jack Kirby quits DC acrimoniously and works for editor Stan Lee at Goodman's shrunken group of publishing companies. The Superman television series ends.
• In 1959, the DC series "The Brave And The Bold", which had been a period adventure anthology (knights, vikings, musketeers, etc.) for four years suddenly adopts the "Showcase" approach of devoting each issue to a single, temporary feature. Most are super-heroes.
• After twenty years, Superman has accumulated a large recurring cast and an increasingly byzantine backstory, mostly due to retroactive elaborations about his home planet and childhood. The most frequent questions from readers are usually dealt with by running newly scripted and drawn retellings of key points of his life. In 1960, for the company's Silver Anniversary, it is decided to run an 80 page collection reprinting the most requested Superman stories. It will cost 25¢ at a time when 32 page comics cost 10¢ [2.5 times the pages, 2.5 times the price.] Although the stories cover the span of his life, they were all originally published during the previous five years. The only new material is the cover, a 2-page map of Krypton and a modicum of editorial content. It ships in June with no cover date and DC's owners control the distribution, so they are intending to let it sit on racks until it sells. They needn't have worried; it sells out rapidly. So much so that a second "annual" is released in November.
• In 1961 Marvel adds the letters "MC" to its cover, finally asserting a group identity and begins to try recurring adventure heroes in their suspense comics. DC, having successfully launched several new titles from "Showcase" and "Brave And The Bold", including "Justice League Of America", expands the concept of their now twice-a-year "annuals".

Page 24, following the X-Men story, Angel hosts a T-shirt ad.

In June, on three successive weeks, they released  a "Secret Origins" Annual, a third Superman Annual and their first Batman Annual, all in the format used in 1960. New covers, one or two pages of new features and reprints of 1950's stories translated to brisk sales. The Secret Origins volume had two "Showcase" alumni, Adam Strange who got the lead feature in "Mystery In Space" in 1959 and Challengers of the Unknown, who got their own title in 1958. Batman and Superman appear in their first "World's Finest" team-up. The rest of the reprints are Silver Age origins of Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter, all of the original JLA except Aquaman. A text story gives the origin of Green Arrow, who joined a few months before the annual. By September Marvel introduced the Fantastic Four. Although they didn't wear costumes, they were essentially a super-powered version of the Challengers of the Unknown, created by Kirby the year before he quit DC. It's long been assumed to have been a reaction to DC's sales of the JLA comic, but that had only been out a year after debuting in "The Brave And The Bold" and the first issue of JLA came out between the first issues of "Green Lantern" and "Rip Hunter", which were both introduced in "Showcase". Since all three proved their commercial appeal in the try-out titles and DC wasn't going to hand Goodman their sales figures (and the title didn't include a Statement of Ownership in its first year), how did Marvel know which of the three sold best? Well, when your biggest rival only releases three giant specials for the summer and two of them tie into five titles they've been selling for 20 years and the third ties into a title they've recently introduced, they sort of ARE telling you their sales ranks, if not the actual quantities. Right after the first FF comic shipped, DC raised their standard comic price to 12¢, meaning that the 80 page Annuals should have gone from 25¢ to 30¢ to remain proportionate. However, in November, DC released a fourth Superman and second Batman Annual, still adhering to the same formula and still only a quarter. That decision to make the cover price a less malleable part of this new, second format was not lost on Marvel.

Page 35, following the Hulk story.

Marvel raised their own standard prices when DC's November annuals came out. Their problems distributing the Hulk followed in the spring of 1962. To fit the new Hulk title into the schedule they cancelled "Teen-Age Romance", which wasn't a huge seller, but it was at least allowed onto the stands. Rather than risk losing another mediocre seller from the racks in order to publish a potential hit that no one will see, Marvel decided to put their new super-hero features into their existing anthologies. The first three were on the stands in June when the next wave of DC annuals hit: "Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane", then Superman (#5) and Batman (#3). Lois had a four-page back-up feature in the "Superman" title in 1944-1946. When WWII ended, popular culture was filled with images of returning soldiers reentering the workplace and working women becoming homemakers. Lois remained a regular cast member in Superman stories, but the solo feature was cancelled. In 1957, two issues of "Showcase" were followed by her own series in 1958.

Page 44,  after the Doctor Strange story

At this point, "Showcase" had reached its 40th issue and except for four issues in its first year, every feature introduced either took over a former anthology title (Space Ranger and Adam Strange) or started its own title. What Marvel could have really used, apparently, was a try-out book of its own. However, since introducing new titles was off the table for the foreseeable future in the summer of 1962, what would be the point? Any new feature that sold well would just have to be shoehorned into an existing title anyway, which is what they were already doing. So, instead of launching a try-out title, Marvel produced its own annuals, beginning in 1962. What neither DC nor Marvel could have known at the time is that Showcase #41 would be the start of a dry spell that began with an attempt to turn the long-running back-up feature "Tommy Tomorrow" into full-length stories but wound up being the last new stories with the character until 1977. He would never have his own feature again. For the next five years most of their successes were features introduced elsewhere (Teen Titans, Enemy Ace, Spectre, etc.) with one exception: The Inferior Five. Marvel might have been painted into a corner with regards to increasing their cash flow using the modern annual format, but at least they didn't wind up believing that the try-out format is somehow magic or fool-proof.

The first two Marvel annuals were "THE BIG MILLIE THE MODEL ANNUAL" from Male Publishing Corp. and "THE BIG STRANGE TALES ANNUAL" from Atlas Magazines, Inc., both out in July with Marvel's second batch of September cover-dated comics. Both had 72 pages for 25¢. Unlike the typeset font used on their standard 32-page comics, these first annuals have "#1" and "1962" (no more specific date) hand lettered on the covers. Millie carries the blurb: "All-New Stories", which start with a retelling of Millie's 'origin' story. Some of the "All-New Stories" are pin-ups, a regular mainstay of the ongoing series at the time. The Strange Tales is all reprint, except the cover, so its blurb reads, "Triple Value!" Why triple? Marvel comics at that time were all 32 interior pages (plus glossy covers), but usually about 24 of them were comics art. In 1962, two more pages would be a text story in order to meet an arbitrary standard of the Post Office for a lower postage rate on subscription copies. The remaining six pages would be some combination of in-house ads (like the ones appearing throughout this post) and paid ads. However, the first Strange Tales annual had no ads and no text. Marvel wasn't selling subscriptions to titles that came out once a year, so they weren't mailing them anywhere. It was 72 pages of story, albeit in 4 to 7 page increments. That's three times 24, hence "Triple Value!" (at double price). All the reprints come from 1959-1960 and from the four titles that will eventually be converted to super-hero anthologies: "Journey Into Mystery", which had just debuted Thor, "Tales To Astonish", which had just debuted Ant-Man (in costume), "Strange Tales" itself, whose next issue to follow the annual will debut a new "Human Torch" solo feature and "Tales Of Suspense", which will debut Iron Man around Christmas.

After the Marvel annuals hit the stands, The US Postal Service experienced a massive internal sting operation in August involving narcotics going through the mail under false cover. Preventing that from happening again required closer scrutiny of any business using bulk mailing rates. While neither Marvel or DC was doing anything illegal involving the mail, executives at DC had Prohibition-era mob connections that might have been inadvertently discovered by Feds looking for something else. It might be a coincidence, but Marvel would no longer suffer from sabotaged distribution of super-hero comics as they had months earlier with the Hulk. It was too late to save the Hulk comic (it would be cancelled right after New Year's), but Marvel could now make plans to start new titles again.

Page 50, before the Avengers story

In November of 1962 DC published the last issue of "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer" as an 80-page Annual. They had published the previous 12 issues annually, but in whatever the standard format of the time had been. Apparently, since this was the last issue, they had developed more trust in the form than the substance. They also released annuals for Batman (#4) and Superman (#6).

In December, "Linda Carter, Student Nurse" is cancelled to make way for "Amazing Spider-Man" and "Tales Of Suspense" takes on Iron Man as its  lead feature. In March of 1963, "Incredible Hulk" is cancelled to make way for "Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos". Then, both the standard line and the new annual format will expand.

Finally, I want to detail the contents of Marvel Tales Annual #2, published by Non-Pareil Publishing Corp. in July, 1965 while Marvel was shipping comics cover dated September and October.

• Cover: (see first scan above)
• Inside Front Cover: Ad for Famous Artists Schools Studio with Albert Dorne
• Reprint X-MEN #1 (09/63) "X-Men", 23pp
• Ad for T-shirts. (see second scan) It's not a coincidence that Angel is modelling a T-shirt in an ad following an X-Men story. This house ad was made specifically for this comic, as evidenced by the code "MT-2" in the corner of the coupon to the left of the word "T-SHIRTS".
• Reprint HULK #3 (09/62) "The Ringmaster", 10pp This is the first appearance of the villain, but there's no origin story here. It's just the third story from that issue. The Hulk's origin was in the previous issue. Eventually, the whole six issue series will be reprinted in installments like this.
• Ad for 1965 Annuals (see third scan) It says "On Sale Now!", although the Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man (along with Millie the Model) probably came out a month after they were intended. Marvel published four annuals in 1963 and 1964 but eight in 1965 and had to spread them out.
• Reprint STRANGE TALES #115 (12/63) "The Origin of Doctor Strange", 8pp
• Ad for Stationery Set (see fourth scan) This ad is also specific to this issue; note the "MT-2" code on the right border of the coupon.
• Reprint AMAZING ADULT FANTASY #8 (01/62) "A Monster Among Us", 5pp
• Ad for current comics (see fifth scan)
• Reprint AVENGERS #1 (09/63) "The Coming Of The Avengers!", 22pp
• Inside Back Cover: Ad for Mike Marvel System (bodybuilding)
• Back Cover: Ads for Slimline Co. (X-Ray glasses) and Best Values Co. (coins)

It's worth noting that the three companies advertising on the back and inside back covers all have the mailing address 285 Market St., Newark, NJ.