0052:Is That A Light Sabre In Your Pocket? Part 1

First of all, I'd like to thank Khairul Hisham and Joe Sokolowski for inspiring the idea for this post. Joe posts daily on Google+ with questions about the experiences of other collectors. When he asked everyone what Star Wars comic they read first, Khairul replied that he read the B&W mass market paperback collection of the original Marvel adaptation.

This (on the left) is it, I believe. Marvel began publishing a monthly comic book series based on Star Wars in April of 1977, just as the movie was reaching some theaters. It was rare back then for any movie to have simultaneous national releases across the country. A movie would usually premiere in Los Angeles or New York or both, then open almost immediately in chains and large capacity theaters in major cities. If it took off and demand increased due to word of mouth or rave reviews, more prints would be created and shipped to theaters in "the boondocks". If not, existing prints would be split between some of those theaters in remote areas and 'second run' theaters in the cities. Or just destroyed.

"Star Wars" (1977) opened in late May in fewer than 50 theaters nationally ("43 screens" according to IMDB, but that might be fewer actual theaters). By the time it reached my (not unsubstantial) town in June it would have passed 300 screens. By August it peaked at about a thousand more screens than it started on.

The first six issues of the monthly comic book series formed the adaptation of the movie (now retroactively known as "Star Wars IV: A New Hope") and were cover dated July through December.

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Remember, the first issue actually shipped before the movie. That means that the art was sent to the printers as far back as March. It was written and drawn from a shooting script and some early production stills. That's why there's a scene with Biggs in the first issue and Jabba is the size and shape of a human (and wearing clothes) in issue #2. When fans found out that the comic could possibly include something, even a scrap, of material not available in the movie, the already healthy sales turned into an insatiable demand that comics hadn't seen in many years. Newsstand comic books simply didn't have second printings-- period. If a comic sold out completely (logistically tricky with newsstand distribution), the publishers would just try to put the same characters into as many titles as possible, hoping to duplicate in future issues whatever caused the previous issue to sell out. Star Wars was a different case, because the franchise started in a different medium with potential readership in venues beyond the comic racks. Not only could new printings of the individual issues be packaged in bags for department stores, but the stories could be reprinted in different formats because it would be sold to an audience without preconceived notions of what was

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appropriate for a comic book.

In late July, between issues #4 and #5, Marvel published a Tabloid sized Treasury with the title MARVEL SPECIAL EDITION featuring STAR WARS. It was the first of two and it reprinted the first three issues. In early October, after issue #6 of the monthly series, the second tabloid came out reprinting #'s 4-6. In fact, the last page of the second tabloid is a full page ad with the cover of issue #7 of the monthly series, "On Sale Now!"

From 1974 until 1981 Marvel published an ongoing series of tabloid sized color comics called MARVEL TREASURY EDITION. It lasted 28 issues, but there were more than 20 additional tabloids published under other titles, such as MARVEL TREASURY SPECIAL or MARVEL SPECIAL EDITION. Most of those used licensed characters (although four of the MTE's were of Conan). The Star Wars volumes were unusual in that most of the comics in that size were 80 pages for $1.50 at that time. The two Star Wars adaptations were 56 pages for $1.00. [All of the other tabloids and comics that Marvel published from 1968 up to 1981 always had a multiple of 16 for the number of

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interior pages. Not counting the covers, they were 32, 48. 64, 80 and 96.] Aside from being twice the size of a normal comic book the appeal of these books was the modicum of new material and no ads. The inside covers of both, front and back, had B&W production photos, including one of George Lucas and Sir Alec Guinness in the second volume. The front and back covers had new art. The art from the front cover of the first volume was shrunken to be used on the cover of this mass market paperback (see the first scan above), consequently losing much of the detail. After reprinting issue #1 (17pp) and #2 (18pp) there's a full page devoted to the cast and other credits, as it appears in the second scan (Page ii) above. The remaining 20 interior pages are a reprint of issue #3 (18pp), a full page ad for the second volume and a page with miniature reproductions of the covers of the first three issues. The back cover was an untitled portrait of the rebels by Rick Hoberg and Dave Cockrum, who also did the front. This back cover art was recycled for the mass market paperback. Type was added providing credits for the production involved in the reprint, which differs from those in the tabloids. (see page 121 below)

Page 121

For the second tabloid, since all three reprinted issues (#4,5 and 6) contained 17 pages of story, that left five pages to be filled. Curiously, the covers aren't reproduced at all, even in miniature. The page of movie credits, which already appeared in the first volume, appears again, this time between issues #5 and 6. As mentioned earlier, the last page is an ad for issue #7. The other three new pages are pin-ups, possibly newly made for the tabloids, possibly rejected cover ideas, which are grouped in the front of the book as background for a small amount of text to recap the events of the earlier three issues. In the mass market paperback, they are grouped at the back without the text.

Both of the tabloids were printed in Marvel editions and Whitman editions. It's easy to tell the difference; a white box in the upper left corner of the front cover will have the volume number, the price and either a Curtiss Circulation distribution mark (two letter "C"s inside a larger "C") or a large "W" with the name "Whitman" written across it. Whitman also printed reprints of the individual issues.

Around the time that issue #8 (02/78) of the monthly series was coming out in November 1977, the mass market paperback came out. It measured 4.25" X 7.00", roughly half the size of the originals, or a quarter of the tabloids (10.00" X 13.50"). It was published by Del Rey Books, a division of Ballantine Books. Ballantine published the original Star Wars novel ahead of the movie in 1976. The Del Rey imprint was then created in 1977 to specialize in publishing science fiction. It handled subsequent printings of the paperback as well as all the other Star Wars related novels through the 1980's. Knowing that, it becomes less surprising that this wasn't published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster that published color mass market paperbacks of Marvel Comics stories beginning that same year. Simon and Schuster also published larger trades of Marvel material under its Fireside imprint, such as ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS, etc. This would all become a moot point by 1980 when Marvel published an adaptation of "The Empire Strikes Back" in issues #39-44, but also as a single volume magazine, tabloid and a paperback under their own imprint, Marvel Illustrated Books.

With a cover price of $1.50 the Ballantine paperback was actually cheaper  than buying the individual issues at cover price ($1.90). It was published before barcodes had become ubiquitous (although the comics and tabloids had them). It does, however, have a ten digit ISBN, # 0-345-27492-x. That five digit string, "27492", doubles as Ballantine's stock number on the front cover. The number appears on the book's spine, minus the first "0". It was also assigned a 13-digit ISBN (retroactively?), #978-0345-27492-2.

The book contains 128 pages (four unnumbered, 124 numbered). The inside covers are both blank, and the unnumbered pages consist of a featureless title page (omitted here) and the pages whose scans above I've labeled Page ii through iv. The next four pages (1-4) are introductory essays by Stan Lee (above and left) and Roy Thomas (which are going to have to lead off the second half of this post-- this will take forever to finish otherwise).

I may or may not be caught up this weekend, so I'm going to finish this after Labor Day if I am or before if I'm not.
See you when I can.

0051: This Artist, This Man

This is the second half of the post "This Man, This Artist" (#0050). The title is a play on the title of one of Jack Kirby's most beloved art jobs from FANTASTIC FOUR #51 (06/66), "This Man, This Monster". (If you haven't read it and plan to, be advised that the rest of this paragraph is a Spoiler. The post continues in the next paragraph.) It takes place after the first Galactus story (#48-50) with the team trying to get their lives back to normal. The Thing is bemoaning his condition when a stranger invites him in from the rain. The stranger (who is never named during the story) turns out to be a scientist jealous of Reed Richards' success and drugs Ben then uses his own technology to turn his own body into the Thing and the Thing's body back into Ben's original form. Hoping to infiltrate the Baxter Building as the Thing to get close enough to Reed to kill him, the stranger instead learns that Reed's public persona is his own and not the hypocritical façade he had always assumed it to be. He realizes that his chances to find success on his own terms were squandered when he focused all his energy on revenge. During a crisis, the stranger sacrifices himself to save Reed. His death causes the real Ben to revert to the Thing. Each of the three men, Ben, Reed and the stranger, are either men or monsters depending on perspective. Ben fears that he is a monster, Reed is characterized as one and the stranger discovers that he is one. The stranger isn't named in the story because it gives thing a kind of universality. He didn't do wrong because of his name or who he is, but because of the limited way in which he saw things. That could have been any of us.

The thing that makes Kirby so universally name dropped is not simply because he touched a large number of people, many of whom went on to be comics creators. Fans, critics and publishers keep revisiting his work because of the wide variety of future creators who imprinted on him like ducklings. Eventually the ducklings grow up and swim away from momma, but if you could see under the water then you'd know that their legs are still kicking the same way. 31 years ago when Fantagraphics published the one hundredth issue of AMAZING HEROES they noticed that it would coincide with Jack Kirby's birthday on August 28th. They then cast a wide net asking anyone working in the industry to contribute a brief message to Jack. Dozens replied with anecdotes, observations, sketches or some combination of those. I included scans of half of them in the previous post and now here's the rest, along with my own short descriptions of the contributors.

• William Messner-Loebs is now known primarily as a writer but he also drew his own scripts on JOURNEY, published by Aardvark-Vanaheim and then Fantagraphics. He had just concluded the series months before this article and had begun scripts on JONNY QUEST for Comico with various artists. He began several years at DC with art on WASTELAND and scripts for DR. FATE, FLASH and WONDER WOMAN. These tend to be overshadowed by scripts for THE MAXX and EPICURUS THE SAGE, both with Sam Keith.
• Gilbert Hernandez (who often signs 'Beto') is one of several Hernandez Brothers, two of whom (Gilbert and Jaime) are markedly more prolific. Along with Mario they created all of the features in the magazine-sized anthology LOVE & ROCKETS (which was recently revived as a new series). The serialized features (like "Palomar" and "Poison River") were gradually compiled in a series of trade paperbacks under the umbrella title LOVE & ROCKETS, even though some had only tenuous or no connections to the others.

Gilberto also contributed to the all-ages anthology MEASLES and girl-band-from-space series YEAH! as well as the adult oriented BIRDLAND, LUBA and GRIP.

• T.M. Maple was a prolific fan letter writer in the 70's and 80's, when nearly every title carried a letters' page. He died shortly after Jack.
• Don Heck was working at Marvel when Jack returned there in 1958. On more than one occassion Don would have an extended run pencilling a feature that Jack started and left, notably THE AVENGERS and IRON MAN. He passed away about a year after Jack did.
• Al Gordon is more likely to be the inker who started at Marvel in the late 70's rather than the Golden Age penciller, if only because he signed off here with the phrase "'Nuff Said!" He also worked on DNAGENTS for Eclipse while Jack was drawing DESTROYER DUCK.
• This statement by Wally Wood was provided to the editors by Jim Valentino from materials prepared for a convention booklet, since Wood had died in 1981. A few years after this article when the Harvey Awards added a Jack Kirby Hall of Fame category, Wood was the first in.

• Steven Grant started writing for Marvel in the late 70's after being published in STAR*REACH and other independents. He went from the HULK! magazine and SPIDEY SUPER STORIES to the PUNISHER mini-series (collected as CIRCLE OF BLOOD) and First Comics' WHISPER when this article came out. Two years ago he brought back Warren's "The Rook" for Dark Horse.
• Milton Canniff was the creator of the newspaper strips TERRY AND THE PIRATES and STEVE CANYON. He was ten years older than Jack and died a couple years after this article ran.
• Don Rico was a Golden Age contemporary of Jack's who did art for Victor Fox, Lev Gleason and others. He went to work for Marvel in 1942 to draw Captain Marvel after Simon and Kirby left. He stayed there right through the change to Atlas until the restructuring in 1957.
• Michael T. Gilbert is most famous for refurbishing a forgotten Golden character (Mr. Monster) and has a regular column in the magazine ALTER EGO.

• Joshua Quagmire was the creator of Cutey Bunny and now works primarily through his website.
• Chas. Gillen, according to several online sources, was the real name of the Charlton artist who signed his work "J. Gill". I recognize Gillen's name (and stylized signature) from fanzines like this one, but I can't recall seeing his (or Gill's) name after the 1980's.
• Stan Lee-- if I have to explain to you who Stan Lee is then you might be reading this blog by mistake. Perhaps I can interest you in a cat video?
• [Jim] Steranko had a pair of short-lived action series for Harvey comics in 1966 when he got a chance to ink Jack Kirby on the S.H.I.E.L.D. feature in STRANGE TALES. He soon began finishing Jack's layouts and eventually was pencilling and writing the feature, taking it to a full-length monthly NICK FURY series in 1968. By the end of that year he began short stints on X-MEN and CAPTAIN AMERICA. His work on all three titles was reprinted as Baxter paper mini-series a few years before this article appeared.

• Burne Hogarth is another artist whose comments were provided by Jim Valentino. He was both a commercial illustrator and comic book artist. He drew the Tarzan Sunday newspaper strip for over a decade, but today is probably best known for a series of instructional books about drawing anatomy, especially anatomy in motion.
• Roy Thomas became a comics fan in the 1940's, contributing to the pioneering fanzine ALTER EGO, and currently edits the modern version of it published by TwoMorrows. In the mid-1960's he began a long association with Marvel, usually succeeding Stan Lee's writing duties on various titles as the company's line expanded and Lee's editing duties became more demanding. Eventually, he succeeded Lee as Editor-In-Chief as well. Most notably, he took over X-MEN and AVENGERS. He also talked the company into abandoning it's policy of avoiding licensing characters in order to adapt the first CONAN comics, which he wrote for over a decade. He also wrote the adaptation of STAR WARS in 1977. In the 1980's he became DC's go to guy regarding Golden 

Age characters, scripting ALL-STAR SQUADRON, YOUNG ALL-STARS and INFINITY, INC. When CRISIS eliminated that history, he was given a new monthly title, SECRET ORIGINS, to write or edit a new one. He may be the only person working in comics to have created as many durable, recurring characters as Stan and Jack.

• Jaime Hernandez, who often signs as "Xaime", is one of the Hernandez Brothers (see Gilberto, above). Jaime did a number of mini-series that spun off supporting characters from LOVE & ROCKETS, such as PENNY CENTURY and WHOA, NELLIE! and numerous album covers.
• Don Simpson is the creator of the long-lived super-hero parody "Megaton Man", but Dover Publications has just recently collected his science fiction opus BORDER WORLDS into a single volume for the first time ever.
• Jonathan Peterson became an editor at DC around the time that this article ran. By the time he left in 2000 he had also done some scripts.

• Rick Veitch is a writer and artist who has worked for Marvel and DC but might be best remembered for his creator owned work published with smaller companies, such as BRAT PACK, MAXIMMORTAL and RARE BIT FIEND. In the 1970's he left undergrounds to work in the majors, doing art for SGT. ROCK (DC), colors for FLASH GORDON (Western), letters for STAR WARS (Marvel) and all three for his own scripts in HEAVY METAL. After providing art on SWAMP THING for a year and a half he took over scripting when Alan Moore departed, staying for another year and a half. His website is both beautiful and easy to navigate.
• Gil Kane was working at DC in the 1950's when Jack left to join Marvel. At about that time, Kane was playing a huge part in launching DC's Silver Age, leaving behind "Rex the Wonder Dog" and "Trigger Twins" for the new "Green Lantern" and "The Atom". Beginning in the mid-60's Kane became one of the select few to work at both Marvel and DC simultaneously. He was still working for both when this article was published and continued to do

so right through the 90's. He passed away in 2000.

• Mark Alexander was an inker discovered by DC's title NEW TALENT SHOWCASE, but at the time of this article was working on one of Marvel's "Official Handbook" series, which must have forced him to think about numerous Kirby caharcter designs.
• Scott Shaw! is (like Fred Hembeck and Sergio Aragones) one of those rare humor cartoonists who becomes tied into super-hero comics for reasons that become obscured with time. His anthropomorphic comics appeared in QUACK! (published by Star*Reach) along with Dave Sim, Frank Brunner, Steve Leialoha and others. He worked on Marvel's Hanna-Barbera titles in the late 70's while Jack was there (see the Howard the Duck post, #0045) He was drawing CAPTAIN CARROT for DC while Jack Kirby was doing CAPTAIN VICTORY for Pacific Comics. Shaw brought unpublished stories of features from QUACK! to Pacific, which became WILD ANIMALS, but Pacific went under before the second issue was ready. At the time of this article he was probably working in animation, but clearly made time to write a substantial entry. In fact some of the submissions for this issue were so long that they were published as full articles in this same issue. They include "Kirby!" by Doug Moench, "Jack Kirby's Gods & Heroes" by Greg Potter, "The King And I" (an interview) by Mark Evanier, "10 Great Jack Kirby Stories" by Richard Howell, "That Old Jack Magic" by Greg Theakston and reviews of key issues by R.A. Jones in the same style normally used to review current comics.

Well, I hope that these two posts provide you with several days of amused reading. I also hope that Gary Groth doesn't have a conniption fit over me reproducing so many pages that he never had any intention of reprinting in a million years anyway. It'll also give you something to point to the next time someone says, "You can't get that many people with that many different tastes to agree on anything..."

0050: This Man, This Artist

Jack Kirby lived to be just over 76 years old. That's how long ago Captain America started punching Nazis. On Monday, August 28th, 2017, it will be Jack Kirby's 100th birthday.

The cover on the left is for AMAZING HEROES #100 (Aug.1st, 1986), a fanzine published by Fantagraphics. AH began as a B&W magazine, the same size as Fantagraphics longer lived fanzine THE COMICS JOURNAL, although I remember it being thinner. As TCJ began to devote more space to the legal and ethical issues facing comics publishing and retail, AH took over the materials more commonly sought by fans, such as release dates, previews of upcoming series and events, histories of Marvel and DC heroes and news about licensing for film and merchandise. Whereas TCJ would publish 50 page career spanning interviews with writers and artists, AH would interview them about recent projects and career highlights. Beginning with issue #14, AH shrunk down to standard comic book dimensions. It was still printed in B&W on newsprint, but of the two fanzines it was the one whose readership more likely included comic fans who didn't buy anything else of magazine dimensions that wasn't designed for a bookshelf. For their convenience, AH would then fit in a comic storage box.

Seeing as how this Kirby tribute issue is 31 years old, the people paying tribute may not all be familiar to modern audiences, although most should be. I'm not going to make any assumptions about who you'll recognize, so...

• Steve Rude is an artist probably best known for drawing Mike Baron's Nexus (as his first and definitive penciller). Look for Rude's own character The Moth. He also drew a MISTER MIRACLE Special for DC that was on sale in January following this article.
• Richard Corben emerged from undergrounds to be one of the defining contributors to the American HEAVY METAL. His SHADOWS ON THE GRAVE mini-series for Dark Horse is ending soon.
• Robert Loren Fleming is a writer who collaborates with Keith Giffen on AMBUSH BUG.
• If you read comics, you already know who Frank Miller is.
• Michael Kraiger had just started contributing the feature "Zone" to Fantagraphics' anthology THREAT months before this article. It moved to Dark Horse a few years later. He then became an editor at Marvel.

• Jim Baikie worked on 2000A.D. and other Fleetway titles in the U.K. before pencilling DC's ELECTRIC WARRIOR.
• Jim Rohn contributed his "Holo Brothers" feature to Fantagraphics' THREAT anthology shortly before this article and their Monster Comics imprint published the 10 issue miniseries that continued the story.
• Gary Fields regularly contributed "Enigma Funnies" to THREAT but lettered comics for several other creators.
• John Romita briefly drew Captain America stories in the fifties.When Kirby left Marvel in 1970, Romita was assigned to follow him on FANTASTIC FOUR. He's probably best known for his work on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.
• Jack Katz created the genuine epic FIRST KINGDOM, currently complete in hardcover from Titan.
• Bob Laughlin self-published KITZ 'N' KATZ, which was distributed by Eclipse in the 80's.
• Arthur Byron Cover is best known as a science fiction author who has occasionally worked in comics, notably with Harlan Ellison on DAREDEVIL #'S 208-209.

• Flo Steinberg was, I think, technically the receptionist at Marvel in the 60's, but according to Stan Lee and others she effectively handled just about every task around the office not directly involving comics production, such as sorting fan mail and keeping the fan club memberships organized. At the end of the 60's she left for a non-comics editing job but was involved in undergrounds and early independents, eventually becoming a publisher herself.
• Rick Norwood was an editor for COMICS REVUE, a fanzine from the publishers of COMICS INTERVIEW.
• Dennis O'Neil is a writer who worked for Marvel briefly in the mid-60's and more prominently in the 80's but made comics history with Neal Adams for their work on Batman and Green Lantern in the early 70's.
• Julius Schwartz was an early fan of science fiction pulps in the late 1920's and went on to become an editor at DC, where he revived the company's Golden Age heroes in the late 50's as s-f based characters, creating the Justice League to replace the Justice Society.

• Barry Windsor Smith became famous for drawing the first CONAN THE BARBARIAN comics in 1970. Before that, he drew in a cruder style that looked like a Kirby imitation. In just a few years his art became both original and beautiful but he kept an affection for Kirby's characters. Two years before this article he finished and inked Herb Trimpe's pencils on the MACHINE MAN mini-series. In the 90's he created ARCHER AND ARMSTRONG, RUNE and STORYTELLER.
• Dave Garcia was the creator of Panda Khan, which was a back-up feature in A DISTANT SOIL before this article and afterwards became its own title from Abacus Press.
• Monica Sharp scripted and edited the Panda Khan stories, often with Garcia.
• Bob Wiacek is an inker who did some work at DC in the mid-70's just Kirby was leaving, but in 1977 began a long tenure at Marvel working on just about everything, including STAR WARS and IRON MAN.

• Dave Gibbons is a British artist who drew for both 2000 A.D. and DOCTOR WHO WEEKLY from the beginning of each. In America, he became famous for WATCHMEN with Alan Moore and GIVE ME LIBERTY with Frank Miller.
• Kevin O'Neill is another British artist, probably best known for MARSHALL LAW and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. That's his illustration of a 'Marshall Law' type gun on the left.
• Mike Royer is a longtime inker of Kirby who has followed him through several publishers for about 20+ years.
• Stephen DeStefano was doing the DC title 'MAZING MAN when this article came out. He went on to do brilliant humor comics (including INSTANT PIANO and JINGLE BELLE) whose audience was dwarfed by that for his animation work (including "Ren And Stimpy" and "The Venture Brothers").
• Charles Meyerson wrote text pieces for First Comics in the 80's.

• Steve Parkhouse is a British artist who sold some scripts to Marvel in the late 60's. When Marvel created a U.K. branch in 1972 it was initially all reprints, but Parkhouse was one of the early writers they called on when easing into publishing original stories. He wrote three different features for HULK COMIC (later HULK WEEKLY) but also drew his own scripts on the SPIRAL PATH feature and Alan Moore's BOJEFFRIES SAGA for Fleetway/Quality's WARRIOR. Eclipse reprinted SPIRAL PATH as a mini-series while this article was out. Today you can see his art in Dark Horse's RESIDENT ALIEN (highly recommended.
• Bill Mantlo was a prolific writer at Marvel in the mid-70's to mid-80's, probably most famous for MICRONAUTS and ROM, but also wrote INCREDIBLE HULK for years and all of the B&W magazine version of HOWARD THE DUCK. He also created Rocket Raccoon for an uncompleted science fiction serial. He has been unable to write for 25 due to traumatic injury by a car.

• Vince Argondezzi drew NEXT MAN for Comico before this article came out and drew INFINITY, INC. for DC afterwards.
• Rick Bryant iinked Keith Giffen's pencils on a one shot comic from Lodestone called THE MARCH HARE, which Giffen co-wrote with Robert Loren Fleming.
• Scott Hampton had completed SILVERHEELS for Pacific comics two years before this and adapted Robert E. Howard's 'Pigeons From Hell" for Eclipse two years later. Not to be confused with brother Bo Hampton, Scott is currently finishing P. Craig Russell's layouts in AMERICAN GODS: SHADOWS from Dark Horse.
• George Pratt works as much (if not more) as an illustrator than as a comic book artist. Like Hampton, he often paints comics and is probably best remembered for the graphic novel ENEMY ACE: WAR IDYLL.
• Larry Marder is the creator of TALES OF THE BEANWORLD, originally with Eclipse and now with Dark Horse. He was made Executive Director of Image to overcome their early chaos.

• Steve Ringgenberg is a freelance comics writer who also writes nonfiction about comics industry.
• Dark Horse Comics had only just started publishing when this article was released. The lineup shown here is, left to right, Concrete (by Paul Chadwick), Boris The Bear (by James Dean Smith), Garrett from "Mindwalk" (by Randy Stradley and Randy Emberlin), Mercy St. Clair from "Trekker" (by Ron Randall), Conrad from "Black Cross" (by Chris Warner), Roma (by John Workman) and Charlie from "Hellwalk, Inc." (by J.M. DeMatteis and Mark Badger). Boris had his own series and the others appeared in DARK HORSE PRESENTS. Two of them, however, hadn't even debuted when this illustration ran. "Trekker" would debut in #4 (01/87) and "Roma" would debut in #5 (02/87). The "Hellwalk, Inc." feature didn't start until issue #2 (undated; probably September), but the image of Charlie used here can be found in #1 as part of a small ad teasing the next issue. Also in #2, the art seen here is also used in a two page ad in the centerfold.

• J.M. DeMatteis is a comics writer who was writing war and horror stories for DC's anthologies in the late 1970's and eventually doing some super-hero back-up stories. In the early 80's he worked at Marvel, including writing DEFENDERS and CAPTAIN AMERICA. When this article came out he was writing the last stories of the original JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA series and would go on co-write, with Keith Giffen, the new JUSTICE LEAGUE series that would follow the LEGENDS mini-series. Those would be some of his best remembered scripts, along with the GARGOYLE mini-series for Marvel and MOONSHADOW and BLOOD: A TALE, both minis for Marvel's Epic line and both later reprinted by DC's Vertigo.
• Scott McCloud is now best known for the nonfiction comics-format book UNDERSTANDING COMICS, but at the time of this article he was known primarily as the creator of ZOT! from Eclipse.
• Jerry Ordway is both a writer and a penciller on numerous titles but his close association with Superman was beginning to develop after this article ran and ALL-STAR SQUADRON was cancelled.

Whew! And that's just half the article! Give yourself some time to read some Jack Kirby stories today and I'll complete this article during the week. Enjoy!

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.

0048: Save Us, Fred Lerner!

Thanks to decades of multi-billion dollar misinformation campaigns, there are millions of people here in the U.S. who will only believe the opposite of what scientists tell them. I was thinking about that during all the coverage leading up to the eclipse event that will take place on the day this is originally posted. There's really no new information; as always, people who know about these things are quick to warn dim-bulb newscasters that they must warn the general public not to look directly at the eclipse. The reasons for this will be ignored (because the world would come to an end if TV news devoted more than 30 seconds to a story, apparently), but the message is still unequivocal. Don't look into a total eclipse with your bare eyes. Period. Then I looked at the path of "totality", the areas on the Earth that will be most directly beneath the path of the moon as it passes in front of the sun. Not California, not the northeast: it will cut through states that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. You know what that means: the same people who were cheering on the elimination of publicly funded health care will suffer everything from severe nausea to lifelong blindness and possibly death. It's been a long time since these people put their trust in someone who deserved it. It would help them immensely if they had someone they could identify with who would tell them, "Hey, it's not good for you to drink toxic waste." (I'm sure a lot of people are thinking "It would help the rest of us immensely if they didn't.") Maybe it could be someone with a military rank. On basic cable. Possibly with a mullet. Hmmmn...

These are stickers that, according to the copyright date, were produced after the first of six seasons of what must have been the most prolific cartoon of the 90's. And for a series with several redundant plotlines, resisting the urge to fall back on reruns is admirable. It probably went on as long as it did to accommodate the celebrities willing to do voice roles (you don't have to trust this scientist-- find it at IMDB and click on "Full Cast").

The limited animation and limited dialogue kept me from watching more than a couple of episodes but my preschool nephew loved it and it lasted long enough for him to enjoy it right through elementary school. These were probably bought for him by his grandparents and forgotten before they could give them to him. Sometimes I open a box of my things and find unopened fast food toys I don't recognize. I've become accustomed to being the family wrangler for comic/cartoon related items. What I can't sell as collectibles goes to yard sales. These are easy to store, though, and if my nephew ever gets a pang of nostalgia he's welcome to them. Me, I'll be back to comics soon enough. It's just a question of what I trip over next.

0047: I'll Take Manhattan Minuet

For people of a certain age, often their first exposure to either jazz or classical music was the incidental background music in Warner Brothers cartoons. These seven or eight minute shorts were created to be shown in theaters as part of a program of short films that preceded the main feature film. In no particular order, movie-goers arriving for the full program would see a newsreel, a cartoon, a serial chapter, a musical short (often a sing-along), trailers and/or other bits as well. Depending on the year (or desperation of the theater) there might be a raffle held live in the theater or a charity appeal. After all that, the feature film (often 70 minutes long) would begin. By the mid-1950's television had seriously cut into the movie industry's cash flow and it responded by competing with spectacles it knew television couldn't provide. Wider screens, brighter colors, longer features and so forth was what studios invested money in and theaters who wanted to show the best of what was available needed cash for up to date equipment. They couldn't to that by scheduling fewer screenings of longer movies, soooo... bye-bye shorts. While newsreels and trailers mouldered until they could be repurposed as kitsch, cartoons and serials were more easily packaged for television. By the time one generation of children had seen twenty years worth of a studio's back catalog several times, a whole new batch of children would become old enough to discover them. Everyday after school throughout the 1970's there was always one channel or another that aired an hour or two of theatrical shorts with what I didn't know were seriously outdated pop culture references. I can quote many of them to this day.

Booklet cover.

On a good day you could be lucky enough to watch Fleischer Studios stuff, although you never saw Superman or Betty Boop except on PBS. Popeye was often what made it into syndication packages. If you were unlucky it was the Popeye cartoons from the early 1960's and you got a little more fresh air that day. MGM's "Tom and Jerry" and anything by Tex Avery made life worth living, but the Warner's stuff for some reason always had the best music. They even came out under imprints called "Merrie Melodies" and "Looney Tunes". The secret was Carl Stalling. After Walt Disney completed "Steamboat Willie", the first synchronized sound cartoon, he hired Stalling (who played music live in theaters over silent movies) to retrofit music onto two earlier silent cartoons. The two went on to launch a line of "Silly Symphonies" cartoons. Shortly after that he joined Ub Iwerks when Iwerks formed his own studio (although Disney was a major client of theirs). But when Iwerks' studio was absorbed by Leon Schlesinger (in 1936), Stalling began a run of an estimated 1000 cartoon scores over the next two decades.

Inner side of jewel case inlay card.

Stalling had an amazing talent for writing scores that he could mentally synchronize to an animation script. That's not completely impossible; unlike live action films, animation scripts are plotted out to the second in order to estimate the total number of frames and therefore man-hours to draw and shoot them. Since Stalling would conduct the recording sessions he could certain that the music would be played at the tempo he intended. So, not impossible, just inhumanly difficult. To produce score at this pace, Stalling drew on his experience playing live and spontaneously over silent movies. His 'compositions' were often patchworks of quotes from classical works both well-known and rarely heard elsewhere, mixed with hooks from popular songs of the day. His own original writing linked one to the next creating the illusion of these unrelated parts being conceived as a whole work. A real godsend for Stalling was the emergence of Raymond Scott in 1937. Scott had been the pianist in his brother's band but the lively evocative pieces he wrote, while popular with audiences, were murder on musicians accustomed to improvisation and looser arrangements. They required precision. So, Scott formed a "quintette" (not counting himself) and rehearsed them relentlessly. The results were regular radio appearances and numerous records. He spent most of World War II as the music director for the CBS Radio Network and by the time he left for Broadway he had gotten enough of his compositions on the air to provide Stalling with the quotes and cues for over 100 Warner Bros. cartoons.

Outer side of jewel case inlay card.

The music on this CD is played by The Beau Hunks Sextette, a Dutch ensemble originally formed to reconstruct and perform the lost scores to Hal Roach films (their name comes from a Laurel & Hardy film). They went on to record them and when they decided to remain a performing entity in their own right, the first composer they tackled outside the original project was Raymond Scott. Their first album of Scott music was "Celebration On The Planet Mars", released after Scott's death in 1994. For some reason, on the original Dutch release the band is identified as The Wooden Indians, but when this album, "Manhattan Minuet", came out in 1996 on the Basta label, it also reissued the 1994 with the Beau Hunks name. According to the liner notes, the recording was done with the cooperation of the Preservation Committee of the Raymond Scott Archives, whose advisory board includes several musical luminaries: Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), David Harrington (Kronos Quartet), Dick Hyman, Robert Moog, Andy Partridge (XTC), Henry Rollins and Hal Willner.

Sharp eyed comics fans have already recognized the artist responsible for the distinctive art on these scans, the primary reason for including this CD on the post. I'll quote the last two paragraphs of the booklet.

The Acme Novelty Library was a phenomenon of craft intersecting art in the 1990's that is unlikely to ever be equaled, certainly not in my lifetime. The first ten issues alternated size and shape so radically from one issue to the next that I pity any collector trying to track them down in their original forms. It then briefly became a series of thin paperbacks of uniform size, then hardcovers. Ware's projects have been few and far between in the past decade, peppered by occasional New Yorker covers. I don't know if that's just to keep a toe in, or to maintain name recognition or if Françoise Mouly has nude pictures of him. But when a project does surface, like 2012's "Building Stories", it turns heads and occasionally even induces hernias. I love Ware's stuff and would pick up oddball items simply because they had unique art of his. I can't know when I'll next come across some, but when I do I'll make a point of sharing some images with you.