My entire comics collection - I had just about every Marvel from 1959, apart from Fantastic Four 1 - was put under the figurative hammer for whatever I could get for it. For my Amazing Fantasy 15 I got £75. It's an interesting story how I acquired that comic.
Back in 1971, I'd been fortunate enough to go on a school trip to the United States. While on a homestay in Connecticut, I chanced across a small store with a single comics spinner rack. All they had was about ten copies of Conan the Barbarian 1 (Oct 1970). Why it was still sitting on the spinner rack almost a year after its release is anyone's guess. I'd seen DC's Anthro a couple of years earlier and decided I didn't like "caveman comics" so I bought just the one copy of Conan the Barbarian 1.
A few years later, just as the fanzine scene was getting underway in the UK, I placed an ad in Doug Gifford's Thing magazine, looking to plug the gaps in my Silver Age Marvel collection and offered up for trade my near-mint Conan 1, still a pretty rare comic in the UK at the time. Someone offered me a vg copy of Amazing Fantasy 15, so I took the deal.
Anyhow, during the 1990s, I was working at 2000AD - headquartered in the Bloomsbury area of central London. Not far away was GOSH Comics, so I'd wander down there in my lunch hour to pick up my copy of Comics International and to have a prowl through the inexpensive back issues on offer. I started amassing a neat collection of Charlton comics, precisely because they were cheap and had cool, neglected characters like Captain Atom and Blue Beetle, all drawn by Steve Ditko.
Because I'd become interested in Martial arts during those years, I also started to pick up copies of Charlton's JudoMaster. Then it wasn't long before I acquired a set of Paul Gulacy's run on Marvel's Master of Kung Fu. I was in full-on collecting mode again. At the time, I didn't think it was feasible to go after Marvel Silver Age comics as they had increased mightily in value in the twelve years since I'd sold my original collection. So I started seeking out period reprints of those comics ... and of course, my eye first fell on Marvel Tales and Marvel Collectors' Item Classics.
MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM TALES
In the very early 1960s, DC's Dark Overlord Mort Weisinger hit on the idea of reprinting old stories in a bumper-sized comic and selling it for more than double the price of a regular comic. With no expenditure on new material, these comics must have been a cash-cow for DC. So it wasn't long before Marvel's Publisher Martin Goodman thought of the same idea himself.I had missed the earliest of the Marvel 25c comics, so Marvel Tales Annual 1 (1964) - with its cover-to-cover origin stories - was always one that I had coveted back in the day. I wouldn't track down a copy until around 1990.
But in 1965 it had become apparent to Goodman and his editor Stan Lee that many Marvel fans wanted to read the earlier stories they'd missed. The steady stream of requests for back issues must have been some sort of a clue, so in 1965, Stan made more of a concerted effort to make the formative adventures of Marvel's key characters available ... and make some easy money for Marvel in the process.
A second Marvel Tales Annual came out, along with a Journey into Mystery Annual. And curiously, Stan added Marvel Collectors' Item Classics to the lineup - this one positioned as a "King-Size Bullpen Book" and with a decidedly different cover style. Instead of scenes from the stories inside, MCIC featured the actual covers of the interior reprints. From that point on, that would be the style for the next couple of years of Marvel's main reprint books.
I had owned most of these reprint collections first time around, but in the 1990s, they were an ideal resource for me to see many of my favourite stories, more or less exactly as they originally appeared. I've not done a side-by-side comparison, but I don't recall these early Marvel Tales and MCIC reprints as having any obvious changes from the originals ... like lettering corrections or different colour schemes.
But as I gathered more and more of these issues, I started noticing that they had slowly begun to deviate from just reprinting the original comics. At first it was the inclusion of the occasional unpublished pinup (as detailed in my last blog entry). Then, for reasons lost in the mists of time, the reprint's original cover artwork was replaced with new art.
The first issue this happened with was Marvel Tales 12 (Jan 1968). Just an issue before, the cover format of Marvel Tales had changed to focus on the original Amazing Spider-Man cover art by Steve Ditko. But for whatever reason, Stan didn't think Ditko cover for ASM17 was suitable, so had the art department (ie, John Verpoorten, according to GCD) put together an amalgam of two different covers.
For the next couple of years, Marvel Tales trundled along, reproducing the original Steve Ditko Spider-Man covers, although with some alterations to fit the 25c book's different cover format. Then, beginning with the May 1970 issue, Marvel Tales inexplicably ran a series of new covers.
Then it was back to reprints as usual ... quite what motivated this isn't clear. There's certainly nothing wrong with the Ditko covers that go with the stories. Unless someone thought that the older Ditko art didn't reflect the then-contemporary look of the character under John Romita. In which case, it'd have been nice to have new John Romita covers for those issues. In case you might find it useful, here's a handy-dandy guide to what was reprinted in the first few issues of Marvel Tales ...
Amazing Spider-Man |
Thor (in Journey into Mystery) |
Human Torch (in Strange Tales) |
Ant-Man (in Astonish) |
|
Marvel Tales 1 | ||||
Marvel Tales 2 | ||||
Marvel Tales 3 |
6
|
84
|
101
|
38
|
Marvel Tales 4 |
7
|
86
|
102
|
39
|
Marvel Tales 5 |
8
|
87
|
103
|
40
|
Marvel Tales 6 |
9
|
88
|
104
|
|
Marvel Tales 7 |
10
|
89
|
105
|
|
ASM Ann 3 |
11, 12
|
|||
Marvel Tales 8 |
13
|
90
|
106
|
|
Marvel Tales 9 |
14
|
91
|
107
|
|
Marvel Tales 10 |
15
|
92
|
108
|
Marvel Collectors' Item Classics had a shorter run under that title than Marvel Tales. The four-miniature-cover covers ended with issue 11 and the title switched to reprinting the original Fantastic Four cover art as the main cover image. Except for issue 12 (Dec 1967), which had a weird hodge-podge of Kirby art drawn from various sources. Have fun trying to identify where they come from ...
With issue 22, Marvel Collectors' Item Classics drew to a close. It was just too much hard work to mention the comic by name, so Stan sensibly continued the numbering with the more modestly labelled Marvel's Greatest Comics, which sort of fitted with the top-line text on every Fantastic Four comic - "The World's Greatest Comics Magazine".
For the first four issues, Marvel's Greatest Comics just used the Kirby FF covers for the issues it was reprinting. Then - at around the same time that Marvel Tales briefly switched to putting new covers on the old reprints, MGC started the same practice. Starting with Marvel's Greatest Comics 27 (Mar 1970), we got new cover art by Jack Kirby for two issues (probably some of the last work he did for Marvel before departing for DC). Marvel Greatest Comics 29 (Dec 1970) was a bit of an anomaly, as it reprinted two out-of sequence FF issues - 12 and 31 - then it was back to the in-sequence Fantastic Four reprints with FF 37 and 38 behind an all-new Sal Buscema and Marie Severin cover. And for anyone interested, here's a run-down of which early Marvel issues were reprinted in the first 11 issues of Marvel Collectors' Item Classics (the ones with the tiny cover repros on the front).
Fantastic Four |
Amazing Spider-Man | Dr Strange (in Str. Tales) |
Ant-Man (in Astonish) |
Iron Man (in Suspense) |
Hulk | |
FF Ann 1 | 1 (part) | |||||
MCIC 1 | 2 | 3 | 36 | |||
MCIC 2 | 3 | 4 | 37 | |||
MCIC 3 | 4 | 110 | 40 | 3 | ||
FF Annual 2 | 5 | |||||
FF Annual 3 | 6 | |||||
MCIC 4 | 7 | 111 | 41 | 4 | ||
MCIC 5 | 8 | 114 | 42 | 4 | ||
MCIC 6 | 9 | 116 | 43 | 5 | ||
MCIC 7 | 13 | 117 | 44 | 5 | ||
MCIC 8 | 10 | 118 | 45 | 2 | ||
FF Annual 3 |
11
|
|||||
MCIC 9 | 14 | 119 | 46 | 2 | ||
MCIC 10 | 15 | Unpublished pinup | 47 | 2 | ||
MCIC 11 | 16 | 120 | 51 | 6 |
I didn't collect Marvel Tales or Marvel's Greatest Comics much past the point where the cover price dropped to 20c and we got 36 pages instead of 68 ... or even 52. Even though this was the point where Roy Thomas again began commissioning new cover art for the reprint books.
Thinking about it now, it probably really did have something to do with bringing the look of the reprint titles in line with how the character's contemporary adventures looked under Marvels new star artists John Romita and John Buscema. Yet even those these covers were by Marvel's best and brightest 1970s artists, they just didn't compare with the original covers drawn by Jack Kirby and John Romita five or six years earlier.
But don't take my word for it. Take a look for yourself. I've compiled the newly-drawn reprint books' covers alongside the original issues' covers. Try telling me the earlier artworks aren't more striking and impactful.
Even stranger, the Marvel Tales issues were reprinting the John Romita era Spider-Man stories by this time. So I really can't see why you wouldn't use the original covers, as Romita was also still drawing covers for the 1972 era Amazing Spider-Man comics.
Yet despite these minor carps, Marvel Tales and Marvel's Greatest Comics - along with their other reprint-y stablemates - offered me an terrific opportunity to have reading copies of all these classic Marvel stories at exceptionally cheap prices. No one really wanted this stuff during the 1990s and you could pick it up for pennies.
These days we have stacks of wonderful reprints of classic comics from just about every era in every high street bookshop, all printed on lavish glossy white paper.
But it's not the same, is it? These stories were meant to be read on newsprint and for the most part, the classic 1970s Marvel reprint books are your best opportunity to experience these stories properly ... without breaking the bank.
Looks like I'm all out of room for now, so I'll have to leave my look at the remaining Marvel reprint titles - Marvel Double Action, Triple Action and Super Action - for another time.
Next: Secret agents and super spies
Initially, the first printings of the strips in the reprint books were listed in a thin strip (originally presented in...) under the splash page, but this soon gave way to a big ugly 'arrow' that obscured part of the page, which was sometimes cut up and resized to accommodate it. It made me wonder if a few dim readers had complained about buying a 25c mag and finding it contained reprints (yeah, the MCIC title should've given them a clue), so maybe Stan felt obliged to make it even more obvious that they weren't new stories. (If that wasn't the reason, then it seems to be pure vandalism for the sake of it.) Regarding the new covers, some of the '70s ones were perhaps necessitated by the change in cover design (a panel within a border) or simply to dupe unsuspecting casual buyers into thinking they were new stories. (Yeah, the reverse of the '60s approach.) Pure speculation on my part of course, but it makes a kind of sense. Later reprint mags (like Marvel Super Action, etc.) edited out one or two pages because the page count had shrunk from 20 (or 19 to be precise, because two of them were half pages) to 17, and sometimes it was done quite clumsily. Still, they had their own charm and when the stories weren't cut, they were a handy way of filling in the gaps. One casualty of the reprint mags was just about any story inked by Vince Colletta, because they were using poor quality stats in which Vinnie's fine lines had dropped out and were then 'retouched' by a blindfolded monkey with a felt-tip marker.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that, Kid ... I didn't mind the strips at the foot of the splash pages in the reprint books ... except that it did mean the artwork was reproduced a bit smaller than first time round. But when all's said and done, I was just happy to be able to read the early Marvel stories from the issues I'd missed.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the new covers don't compare to the originals, although a few are decent on their own merits. One eason why new covers made have been used at times was because of the lack of good source material. It's possible that Marvel couldn't find good stats to use of the originals. One corection. I believe Marvel Tales # 36 is by Sal Buscema and Frank Giacoia, with Romita providing a few corrections or possibly supplying the layout for Sal.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point about there having possibly been a lack of decent stats of the originals to work from ... as far as the artist(s) of the Marvel Tales 36 cover goes, thanks for clarifying the credits, Nick.
DeleteAlthough to be fair, the artists that worked on those covers had the onus to reimagine these iconic covers in a new light, which in my experience, is much harder then creating something new. Other then those Romita remakes, (you just can’t top those beauties escpecailly Spider Man 48, 51, and 55), they did a pretty seviceable job.
DeleteSo much fun to discover others feel the same way. I have my masterworks and omnibus, but I also have the memory of how incredibly exciting it was to obsessively collect and enjoy MCIC and Marvel Tales. Twice as much comic goodness for half the price! Thank you immensely for takin' me down Memory Lane!
ReplyDeleteThat's my complaint too, the new "color" process has no texture! Even TPBs and collections prior to the early 90s still emulated the original printing style.
ReplyDelete