LAST TIME, I WAS TRAWLING THROUGH THE PRE-HERO MARVEL COMICS that some pundits would have us believe are forerunners of the later, more famous, superhero characters. I got to the end of 1960 before I realised that this was going to be a two-part undertaking ... so let's take a look at the later "prototype" Marvel Comics for 1961-1962.
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| Not listed in the Overstreet Price Guide as such, but I'd say Kid Colt 117 (Jul 1964) has more claim to showcasing a prototype of a later, well-known character (The Kingpin) than any of the other "prototypes" we're looking at here. |
As before, there are more than a couple of issues in the following batch that feature the second (and sometimes third) "prototype" of the same character. I'm going to stick with the logic that only the first one could be a prototype. Any others are just Stan and the Bullpen re-using old ideas.
TALES TO ASTONISH 15 (Jan 1961)
"I Learned the Dread Secret of The Blip" is listed in the Price Guide as a prototype story for the later Spider-Man villain Electro (Max Dillon).
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| I'm not sure why Blip is a decidedly unelectrical grey colour on the cover of Astonish 15 when he's a crackly yellow inside. Still, not much similarity between the two characters - not even the name, in this instance. |
Aside from the fact that Steve Ditko would rather gnaw his own arm off than copy someone else's creation, there's not a great deal of resemblance between the friendly electrical star creature and morally bankrupt Dillon.
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| Electro would go on to be a staple villain for Spider-Man (he also fought Daredevil in the early days). And there was a robot called Electro in Marvel's Golden Age, first appearing in Marvel Mystery 4 (Mar 1940) and running for 16 issues. |
One of the more tenuous prototype connections.
Verdict: Not a prototype.
TALES TO ASTONISH 16 (Feb 1961)
The second (alleged) Stone Men prototype, called Thorr, which I rolled up into the Tales to Astonish 5 item last time.
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| Like I say, the second appearance of a similar character cannot be considered a prototype. Proto literally means first. |
Verdict: Not a prototype, either.
STRANGE TALES 84 (Apr 1961)
OK, this is a surprise. Here's a prototype issue where the featured character in the story "The Wonder of the Ages: Magneto" does have similarities to a later major Marvel villain.
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| Hunk Larken gets his magnetic powers in a way similar to the origin of the Fantastic Four, but the ability to generate magnetic fields does align with the X-Men villain, Magneto. |
In this case, protagonist Hunk Larken is more misunderstood than an outright menace, though he does use his newly-acquired magnetic powers to fling a motor car through the air. But he's not a mutant and doesn't wear a bucket on his head, so there's that.
Verdict: Nearly a prototype.
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY 70 (Jul 1961)
More than two years before Spider-Man met Flint Marko, an escaped con who was merged, atomically, with the sands of a beach in Amazing Spider-Man 4 (Sep 1963), there was an ambulatory pile of sand who comethed in Journey into Mystery 70 (Jul 1961).
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| Jack Kirby's Sandman is defeated with a bucket of water and Steve Ditko's Sandman is beaten with a vacuum cleaner ... so both meet a slightly comedic end. |
Though the earlier Sandman is an alien bent on conquering Earth and the Spidey-foe is a criminal who accidentally gains his sandy powers, there are still some similarities in the way both can shapeshift from sandy to human form. But I think these are either Stan feeding the plot points to Ditko or just possibly Ditko coming up with a similar scenario by coincidence. Or a bit of both.
Verdict: Nearly a prototype.
TALES TO ASTONISH 21 (Jul 1961)
Here's one more Hulk prototype. This time it's a movie monster that comes out the screen to menace the audience.
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| This Hulk doesn't look much like the big green guy, is only named on a movie poster and may actually only be a movie monster. But so much for Stan plucking the name out of thin air in early 1962. |
Just, No ... okay?
Verdict: Not a prototype.
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY 73 (Oct 1961)
This one made me smile - the monster in Journey into Mystery 73 is a prototype for ... you guessed. Spider-Man! The resemblance to Peter Parker is remarkable, wouldn't you say?
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| So there's this giant, intelligent, fifty-foot spider, the result of atomic radiation, and Stan somehow thought at the start of 1962, "How about we re-use that giant spider story, but make the hero a nerdy high school kid who ..." |
If anything The Spider in JiM 73 is a swipe of the classic 1955 Jack Arnold monster movie Tarantula, a trend Marty Goodman was exploring in the first years of the 1960s, several years after the monster movie boom had petered out.
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| The giant Tarantula in the movie was the result of experimental growth hormones rather than atomic energy. The same arachnid went on to star in Jack Arnold's Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). |
Verdict: Not nearly a prototype.
STRANGE TALES 92 (Jan 1962)
As 1962 hoves into view - remember, this is the month that Fantastic Four 2 is on sale - the Price Guide is still attributing prototypes. This one was supposed to be an early version of Doctor Strange's mentor, The Ancient One, and there may be a superficial resemblance.
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| Well, he's ancient, and there's only one of him, but after that any similarities are hardly there at all. It's stretching credibility to suggest that this is any kind of prototype for Stephen Strange's mentor. |
But the title character of "Somewhere Sits The Lama", designed by Don Heck is more a standard-issue Far East sage than a direct ancestor of Steve Ditko's later creation.
Verdict: Not a prototype.
TALES TO ASTONISH 27 (Jan 1962)
This is listed in the Price Guide as "1st Ant-Man app[earance]", but it's not, is it? It's the first appearance of Henry Pym, a scientist who invents a shrinking formula (sounds familiar) and tests it on himself, leading to an adventure in an anthill. The name Ant-Man isn't mentioned and there is no familiar red costume to be seen. Picky maybe, but let's keep this accurate.
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| I think the reason Ant-Man/Giant-Man never really caught on as a solo character was because everything flowed out of this throw-away fantasy story, something that was never meant to become an ongoing feature. If it had, I think Stan would have taken more care with his world-building. |
I'll tell you what it might be, though. It could very possibly be a prototype. The story wasn't created with an ongoing series in mind. It's more likely that Stan was casting around for another superhero idea and recalled the fantasy story he'd done with Kirby just a few months earlier, and decided to retool the Dr Pym as a costumed hero.
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| Ah, there he is - the Ant-Man we all know and love. No seriously, this was my favourite incarnation of Hank's superhero career. |
From there Hank Pym's progress was quite ramshackle, with constant tweaks to try to get the premise to work - swapping from fluid, to gas, to pills, to "cybernetic control" to manage his size changes, adding a partner to goose up the stories a bit, then hiatus and return as Goliath. It never really hung together as a solid premise.
Verdict: Sort of a prototype.
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY 78 (Mar 1962)
Now, normally I'd dismiss this as a prototype for Doctor Strange because there was an earlier claim in Strange Tales 79 (Dec 1960) ... but after searching that comic from cover to cover a couple of times, I couldn't find anything that looked like Doctor Strange, at all. So let's examine this later claim more closely.
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| Yes, there's a sorcerer, but he's a young lad from (presumably) another dimension, not a selfish surgeon seeking out an aged far-eastern mentor for a cure. His powers appear natural, not learned and there's no incantations. |
There is indeed a magician in this issue, but it's a fairly generic version. This could just as easily be a swipe of DC's Mark Merlin who was running in House of Secrets around the same time. A kid shows up from another dimension, gets a job as a handyman, fixing an electric clock so it runs unplugged. Then three oddball characters show up to take him back where he came from. There's a bit of a magic battle, which the kid wins. Then, he's allowed to stay in our reality, but stripped of his powers.
None of that sounds like Doctor Strange. Why isn't it considered a dry run for Dr Droom in Amazing Adventures 1 (Jun 1961), who was Marvel's real first continuing magician hero?
Verdict: Not a prototype.
STRANGE TALES 94 (Mar 1962)
This one is a real stretch ... the main character in "He Came from Nowhere" is alleged to be a prototype for The Thing.
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| I don't know who looked at Strange Tales 94's character Groff and thought, "Yep, looks exactly like The Thing from Fantastic Four." Matt Murdock? |
Well ... the toad lookalike is Groff, an alien from a future Uranus. He's an escaped criminal who changes places with an Earthling. I don't think he looks a bit like The Thing, do you? I was even generous and chose the first version of the Thing from January 1962's Fantastic Four 2 ... hang on a minute!
The Thing first appeared in FF1 (Nov 1962) ... how in the hootin' heck can an alien from a comic cover-dated March 1962 be a prototype of a character that appeared four months earlier? I even checked the job numbers - Fantastic Four 1 has a job number of V-372, the Strange Tales story's is V-525, so there's no doubt which came first.
Verdict: Not in any way a prototype.
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY 79 (Apr 1962)
The story "The Midnight Monster" is the reason for JiM79 being given the status of a Mr Hyde prototype issue. And there are some similarities between Victor Avery's alter ego and the classic Thor villain, Mr Hyde.
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| I don't see how anyone can claim that Thor's foe Mr Hyde can be anything but a swipe from the classic horror story, filmed, oh, dozens of times before the character appeared in JiM 99. It's certainly not inspired by a fantasy story in JiM 79. |
But - and it's a big but - surely if anything is an inspiration and prototype for Mr Hyde in Journey into Mystery 99 (Dec 1963), then it has to be Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde".
Verdict: Seriously ... not a prototype.
TALES OF SUSPENSE 28 (Apr 1962)
Oh, flippin' heck ... it's another Stone Men story. Didn't I already tell you, Bob? Only the first one can be a prototype.
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| Just a quick reminder for everyone ... The Stone Men appeared for the first time in DC's House of Mystery 85 (Apr 1959), then in Tales to Astonish 5 (Sep 1959), and again in Tales to Astonish 16 (Feb 1961), and here in Suspense 28. |
I think you can relax, now. That's the last of them.
Verdict: Not a prototype.
STRANGE TALES 97 (Jun 1962)
Strangely, Strange Tales 97 is billed as a first appearance rather than a prototype comic. For me that's a bit debatable. The story "Goodbye to Linda Brown" tells of a young girl living by the sea with her Uncle Ben and Aunt May. The couple become concerned when the wheelchair bound young girl begins "sleep-walking", wheeling her chair to the water's edge without waking.
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| The story stars two older citizens, addressed as "Uncle Ben" and "Aunt May" by their "niece". But their surname is Brown, not Parker, and they don't really look much Peter Parker's Uncle and Aunt. |
The tale is a re-tread of an old Atlas story "The Sea Waits for Me", in Journey into Unknown Worlds 43 (Mar 1956) by an uncredited writer (though probably Stan) and artist Dick Ayers. But some will have you believe this is the first appearance of Peter Parker's Uncle Ben and Aunt May.
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| The original story in Journey into Unknown Worlds 43 featured an unnamed family - we're only told the daughter is called Joan. |
Given that Steve Ditko is the artist on this story and would later draw Spider-Man's first appearance in Amazing Fantasy 15 (Aug 1962) you might be forgiven for thinking there might be some similarities, but they don't even have the same names, so I don't think this can be counted as a first appearance in the same way that "The Man in the Ant Hill" in Tales to Astonish 27 showcased Dr Henry Pym, who would go on to be the costumed Ant-Man.
Verdict: Probably more of a prototype than a first appearance.
TALES TO ASTONISH 32 (Jun 1962)
It's the Sandman, again ... but not really. In "Quicksand!", Geoffrey Wickshire contrives for his blind half-brother to stumble into quicksand so he can inherit the entirely of their estate. But poor Sir Edmund is saved by leprechauns who promise to restore his sight magically if he'll just agree to remain with them for seven days. Then they return him to dry land, covered in the quicksand so he can tell his brother the wonderful news.
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| In the story "Quicksand!" Sir Edmund isn't made of quicksand, he's just covered in quicksand, which scares the bejeezus out of his conniving brother Geoffrey. |
But Geoffrey thinks his brother has returned from a quicksandy grave for vengeance and in panic falls out a handy window to his death.
Verdict: Not a prototype.
AMAZING ADULT FANTASY 14 (Jul 1962)
When I checked this on in the Price Guide I thought, "Oh no, not another Professor X prototype claim." But on reading the story "Man in Space", I think it's actually something else. There's no character in there that looks or sounds like Charles Xavier, but there is a wider-reaching precedent being set here.
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| When Tad Carter reveals his super-human abilities, he's set upon by his friends, prefiguring the humans' fear of mutants that would be integral to the worldview in The X-men right from its start. |
This includes one of the earliest mentions of the term "mutant" in a Marvel book (I think Tales of Suspense 6 pre-dates it, and there is mention of mutants in Yellow Claw 3). The mutant characters from these stories were later ret-conned in John Byrne's X-Men: Hidden Years).
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| The earliest mentions of mutants in Marvel comics - The Yellow Claw 3 (Dec 1956) had the arch-villain using mutants for his own nefarious purposes and Tales of Suspense 6 (Nov 1959) featured a story about paranoiac fear of super-powered mutants. |
But in this world, Tad Carter is properly a super-powered mutant, hated and feared by regular humans. Tad is contacted mentally by another mutant who tells him he'll have to live in hiding until humans are ready to accept mutants. All these idea would get recycled in The X-Men.
Verdict: Actually is a kind of prototype.
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY 82 (Jul 1962)
So this is supposed to be a prototype for the Spider-Man villain, The Scorpion. What do you think? My take is that this is just a retread of the Grottu story from Strange Tales 73 and The Spider story from Journey into Mystery 73.
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| The third giant red insect in the series. Collect them all. And when Tales to Astonish 39 comes out, collect that one too. |
One of the lamer examples.
Verdict: Not a prototype.
TALES OF SUSPENSE 31 (Jul 1962)
Someone, somewhere though that the monster on the front cover of Tales of Suspense 31 was a dead ringer for Dr Doom. Trouble is a thirty foot space monster and a normal-sized, if megalomaniac, criminal scientist don't bear even the remotest resemblance to each other.
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| The story itself is quite interesting - no one can figure out how to defeat the invading creature. But a washed-up magician figures that the key to the monster's power is misdirection. |
Spoiler alert: The monster isn't wearing a mask. That's his real face! So, I'm not buying today.
Verdict: Not a prototype.
TALES OF SUSPENSE 32 (Aug 1962)
It's Doctor Strange, again. So this is the third prototype for Marvel's Master of the Mystic Arts listed in the Price Guide. And, to be fair, there is a wizard featured in the story "Sazzik the Sorceror". But the connection to Stephen Strange is thin indeed.
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| When you've no ideas, for your violent plays, who you gonna call ... Sazzik the Sorceror. |
Producer of violent tv shows Boris Grumm searches for his next big hit and comes across the grisly tale of Sazzik the Sorceror in an old book. Thinking to make the story into a tv play, Grumm sets about filming the evil exploits of Sazzik. But it all goes wrong when he reads a spell from the book aloud, and Sazzik appears, miffed at having been summoned without good reason, and banishes Grumm to limbo.
I mean, Sazzik and Dr Strange are both magicians. But that's all there is.
More interesting is the myth - still being pushed by the Price Guide - that the cover story of this issue, "Man in the Beehive" was somehow in a competition with "Man in the Ant Hill" for the next available slot in Stan's Marvel super-hero lineup. But even the most cursory examination casts more than a little doubt on that story. Here's the facts:
Tales to Astonish 27 (Jan 1962, on sale 28/09/61), job-number - V-430.
Tales of Suspense 32 (Aug 1962 on sale 08/05/62), job-number - V-765
Tales of Suspense 35 (Sep 1962, on sale 05/06/62), job-number - V-795
Now, with that timeline, and those gaps between the job-numbers, there's no way Ant-Man and Bee-Man were ever in a race for one insect-based costumed-character feature.
Verdict: Not a prototype.
TALES OF SUSPENSE 35 (Nov 1962)
The finish line is finally in sight. Here's the last of the stories officially designated as prototype stories by the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. This time we're looking at a character some pundits think is the basis for The Watcher, and while they might appear slightly similar in appearance, there would need to be more of an overlap in concept to convince me.
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| It's complicated, but pilot Dave Bartlett faces mandatory retirement because of his age and his lack of modern skills, preferring to fly by instinct and skill rather than computer control, so he concocts a preposterous hoax to get himself reinstated. |
As it transpires, the plot is lifted from the 1951 sf movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. An alien representative of the Galactic Federation, Zarkorr, appears on Earth and says unless Earth can prove themselves worthy of space travel, Earth will be isolated or perhaps even destroyed. Turns out it's a hoax so that an aging space pilot can get himself reinstated.
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| In the film The Day the Earth Stood Still Klaatu is the boss. But in the book it's based on, Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates, Klaatu was the servant and robot Gort was the Master. |
The plot doesn't stand up to scrutiny, but makes for goofy fun. "Zarkorr" is less of a parallel with the non-interfering Watcher than he is with Klaatu, the intergalactic policemen who tells Earth, No more war or else!
But as far as Zarkorr being an early version of The Watcher ... I don't think so.
Verdict: Not a prototype.
"NOT PROTOTYPES"
There are a few examples of other characters that show up in early Marvel non-superhero comics that could be classed as prototypes but haven't been, particularly in the western titles.
KID COLT OUTLAW 110 (May 1963)
I'm sure if Kid Colt 110 had come out just three months earlier, many would be claiming Iron Mask for an Iron Man prototype. But it didn't, so it's not. For what it's worth, I don't think there's really much to connect the two. Iron Mask is just an outlaw who wears armour under his shirt and a metal mask to make himself appear bulletproof.
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| "Bullets Can't Stop Him!" - Iron Mask is a baddy that's made himself an armour suit that makes him bulletproof, which is bad news for Kid Colt. |
There's none of Tony Stark's clever gadgets, even allowing for the time period difference. Visually, Iron Mask resembles Doctor Doom, but really his armour just a variation on the kind that, say, the original Black Knight might have worn.
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| Who inspired who? Is Kid Colt's Iron Mask any distant relative of Iron Man, or is he just a latter day variation on the medieval knight in armour? |
We'd see Iron Mask again in Kid Colt 114 (Jan 1964), so someone must have liked him, even it it was only writer Stan Lee.
KID COLT OUTLAW 115 (Mar 1964)
Also not listed in the Price Guide as a prototype issue, though it seems to have as much claim as anything else that we've looked at here ... Kid Colt Outlaw 115, featuring a villain called The Scorpion.
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| When is a Scorpion not a Scorpion? When they're two completely different characters who look nothing alike, with wildly different powers and who only share a name. |
As with most of these other "prototypes", the only similarity between Kid Colt's Scorpion and Spidey's arachnid nemesis, Mac Gargan, is their name.
KID COLT OUTLAW 117 (Jul 1964)
I'll quite pleased that Kid Colt 117 hasn't been listed as a prototype issue, otherwise I would have had to pay a lot more for my copy. But I do think that, of any of the "not prototypes" I'm looking at in this final section, this more has more of a claim that almost any of the others.
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| He might look like just someone with weight management challenges, but looks can be deceiving. I'd bet money that Stan revisited this character when he came up with the Kingpin during the early days of John Romita's run on Amazing Spider-Man. |
He's just call "The Fat Man" in this and wields a boomerang rather than a gem-topped cane, but what Kid Colt's villain shares with the later Spidey baddy is that though appearing fat, he's really "solid muscle".
TWO-GUN KID 77 (Sep 1965)
I've saved this one till last, bringing us full circle to the pic I started my charting of prototype Marvel comics last time. In the September 1965 cover-dated Two-Gun Kid, there appeared an acrobatic villain called The Panther, who sported a black leotard costume.
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| This western villain, the spritely Panther gave Two-Gun Kid a run for his money in a story by Al Hartley and Dick Ayers a full ten months before King T'Challa showed up in Fantastic Four 52. |
Around the same time, Jack Kirby was toying with an idea for a new standalone series featuring a black super-hero of African origin to be called The Coal Tiger (terrible name, Jack). The Panther and The Inhumans were intended to be two new titles to add to the Marvel lineup. But Martin Goodman couldn't get Independent News' permission to expand the line, even by two titles, so the characters were worked into the Fantastic Four storyline.
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| Jack Kirby's original design for The Coal Tiger, not Kirby's best work. The costume was revised and Jack submitted the cover art for Fantastic Four 52. But that was rejected and Kirby had to do it again. I've included the uncoloured final art here so you can see what's going on under the murky colour job. |
In the end, The Coal Tiger became The Black Panther and underwent, no doubt at Stan's urging, a complete visual makeover, using the costume design by Dick Ayers for the earlier Panther villain.
SO WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
I don't think anyone can believe that any of the examples we've see in this blog entry and the last are actually prototypes ... in the sense that Stan thought, "Hey, let me try out this idea and if it works, I can use it later as the basis for a superhero or a supervillain."
A case in point is Stan't account of how he thought up the name for The Hulk, groping around until he thought of just the right descriptive noun. Did Stan really forget that he'd used the same name three or four times before for his pre-hero monsters? But that fact is enough evidence to cast doubt on Jack Kirby's claim that he came up with The Hulk (and all the other Marvel superheroes) by himself.
It's all too often forgotten that during this period of comics history, especially at Marvel Comics, Stan and the staff were struggling on a month-by-month basis just to fill their comics on time and on a very limited budget. Stan had been forbidden by publisher Martin Goodman to build up any inventory material, so they were literally operating hand-to-mouth. If there was a gap in a comic, and no fresh idea for a story, they'd just reuse an old idea.
It's not like Stan was creating high art or even enduring properties that could be used for a multi-billion dollar franchise of movies forty-odd years later. He was just trying to fill 12 cent comic books with stories that didn't bore him to tears, with the help of whatever artists he could afford on his miserly budgets.
Classifying these old comics retrospectively as "prototypes" is just a cynical money-grabbing exercise that only costs fans and collectors more money.
Next: Marvel Cover Gallery 1959
