Don't mess with the logo!

MANY YEARS AGO, when I earned my living in the publishing industry, there was a line of thought that you didn't mess with a magazine's logo - except for once a year when you were allowed, if you were lucky, to add snow.

British comics have long had a tradition of adding snow to the masthead for seasonal issues. In fact, it's something of a cliche. The Dandy is dated 1938, but is by no means the earliest example I've ever seem. The Smash is 1967, when British comics were still in their heyday. The TV Comic is from 1970, but looks much more old-fashioned than the Smash, don't you think? (Click on the images to enlarge.)

From a marketing point of view, I suppose, this makes sense. A product's branding is its unique identifier in the marketplace and so should always be immediately recognisable, right? But the problem with this marketing philosophy is that it assumes the customers are stupid, and it probably shouldn't be applied to magazine logos, anyway. I mean, even if you change a magazine logo a lot, it's safe to say that magazine readers can, by definition, read, and so can probably still recognise a magazine, even if you transform the cover logo drastically.

The other exception is the related, but slightly different situation, of changing a magazine's logo as part of a deliberate re-branding exercise. This you would do if you thought the masthead was looking a little tired, or you wanted to signal to readers that something about the magazine (and of course I'm actually talking about comics here) had changed. In past years that was a course that wasn't undertaken lightly, as the marketers - we called them circulation people back then - still saw this as "messing with the logo", but that seems to happen much more often now than it used to. I've been seeing more and more examples of both "messing with the logo" and evolving the logo for marketing purposes in recent years, some of them for good, some of them for ill. 

Probably the earliest, and most extreme, example was on Will Eisner's newspaper comic strip, The Spirit.

When The Spirit first started in 1940, the first page was designed like a standard Sunday page of comics, with a standard consistent logo. But after his service in WWII, Eisner returned to the strip newly-energised and the regular logo was jettisoned, becoming more radically creative with each issue.

However, The Spirit was exempt from the usual marketing objections because it wasn't a comic that used its cover to sell itself to customer. It was given away free with newspapers, so Eisner didn't haven't anyone looking over his shoulder, second-guessing his creative decisions. Which was probably why The Spirit was so ... creative. Nothing will stifle creativity quicker than a bunch of administrative people telling you why you can't do stuff.

"GREAT NEW LOOK!"

The earliest example I was aware of as a kid reading Marvel Comics was when Stan decided, for whatever reason, to revamp the logo of his fantasy anthology title, Strange Tales, with issue 80 (Jan 1961). I'm guessing this was because he thought the old logo, which had been around since Strange Tales 1 (Jun 1951), was looking a bit "old", or maybe he didn't think it fit the house style being established by Artie Simek and Sam Rosen.

This seemed a bit odd at the time, as there was no attempt to give the masthead of Journey into Mystery a makeover, and that had been around almost as long as the original Strange Tales logo. The first version of the Strange Tales logo would have been by an anonymous Atlas staffer, but the revamped logo, introduced with issue 80 (Jan 1960), with its wavy outline, is almost certainly the work of Artie Simek.

I can see Stan's point. The old Strange Tales logo looks quite different to both the newer logo that replaced it and the Journey into Mystery masthead. It's very likely that the old Strange Tales logo was created by someone much less talented than Artie Simek or Sam Rosen.

The wavy Strange Tales logo was very effective and would enjoy a long run on the title's masthead. Even when The Human Torch was replaced in Strange Tales 135 (Aug 1966) with Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD, the full size Strange Tales logo persisted. The Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish logos of the same period were revamped to incorporate the stars' names on the masthead. This wouldn't happen on Strange Tales for another year when, on issue 150 (Nov 1966) Doctor Strange was finally incorporated into the title's cover logo and, in a nice touch, the lettering style for the character reflected the magazine's roots by using a similar, wavy outline style.

When Stan did get around to looking at the logo of the Journey into Mystery title, as the Thor feature grew in popularity and finally took over the book, he turned to established Marvel letterer Simek.

Even though Journey into Mystery 1 was published six or seven years before Artie Simek officially worked for Marvel, the logo does have the look of his work. The line spacing was increased in mid-1963 to fit better with the new corner box. Note how similar the lettering of "Thor" is to the Strange Tales logo. And the "Thor" on JiM 99 is a foretelling of the later Thor masthead.

The logo that appeared on Journey into Mystery 1 (Jun 1952) remained pretty much unchanged right through to when Thor first started appearing in the title, in 1962. There was a slight tweak when the Marvel Corner Box was introduced with JiM 91 (Apr 1963) where the gap between "Journey into" and "Mystery" was increased to line up with the foot of the corner box. It was probably deemed too much trouble to redrawn the logo to be more condensed (taller and skinnier).

What I find most interesting about the masthead is that it looks for all the world like the work of Artie Simek. The ragged ends to the letters are very much a Simek trademark, but according to Wikipedia, he didn't start working at Marvel until the late 1950s.

The "Thor" on the cover of JiM 103 was a return to the wavy outline, then JiM 104 introduced the classic "The Mighty Thor" logo which would last until Thor 336 (Oct 1983). With issue 126 (Mar 1966), "Journey into Mystery" was dropped from the masthead and the title became Thor.

As the logo evolved, though, the hand of Simek was more and more evident. The earliest renders of the word "Thor" were almost all by Simek, with his favourite wavy outline, similar in some ways to the revamped Strange Tales logo. The "Thor" on the cover of JiM 99 (Dec 1963) actually prefigures the later Thor logo that would be introduced on JiM 104 (May 1964). That Thor logo, which would persist for the next seventeen years, was almost certainly the work of Simek, with its ragged ends and the signature chunk out of the "O".

WHO THE DON HECK IS ARTIE SIMEK?

Arthur Simek (born 6 Jan 1916) was one of the premiere letterers of the Marvel Silver Age comics, but began as a freelancer for Marvel's predecessor Timely Comics some time around 1947. The earliest Timely credit I could find for Simek was for the cover for Kid Colt Outlaw 9 (May 1950), though he would have been one among many, as Timely output was large. 

An Interview with writer Leon Lazarus in Alter Ego 90 (Dec 2009) does shed some light on Simek's standing in the Timely offices of the late 1940s. "We were on the 14th floor of the Empire State Building," explained Lazarus. "The letterers were gathered in the production room, away from the artists. In that room with me were many people, most of whom I don’t remember now. Mario Aquaviva was in charge of the letterers, but Artie Simek was over him. Artie was a tall, skinny guy, very nice and quiet, with a big Adam’s apple. He never pushed anyone around. He didn’t letter stories; he did logos."

It's likely that Artie Simek, who supervised the letterers at Timely, would have been designing logos and having them finished by staffers or freelancers. But the cover blurbs on the Kid Colt Outlaw do look like Simek's work.

So, despite the account on Wikipedia, it seems likely that Simek continued to letter for Marvel, either as a staffer or a freelancer, right through into the 1950s. Further, Simek seemed to survive the Great Atlas Implosion of 1957, but not before exploring work possibilities at DC, lettering World's Finest 91 (Dec 1957) and Batman 112 (Dec 1957). Perhaps he found the culture at DC not to his liking because he was back at Marvel very soon afterwards and was quickly the main letterer for the eight titles a month the fledgling Marvel Comics was publishing. 

Along with his contemporary, Sam Rosen, Artie Simek would go on the letter all the key Marvel titles through out the 1960s. He died 20 February 1975, aged just 59.

WHO THE SAM HILL IS SAM ROSEN?

Sam Rosen, the other letterer of the Marvel Silver Age, began in the comics industry in 1940, lettering Will Eisner's Spirit newspaper strip. His association with Eisner led to lettering work for Quality Comics and he also contributed his calligraphy to the comics published by Victor Fox. His earliest Marvel work I could find was on an interior strip for Timely's War Comics 1 (Dec 1950), though he continued lettering for Quality throughout the 1950s, as well as Harvey Comics and Prize.

Sam Rosen began as a letterer on Will Eisner's Spirit newspaper giveaway, on both the lead strip and the back-up, Lady Luck. As part of the Eisner team, he also lettered for Quality Comics over the next fifteen years.

By the beginning of the 1960s, Rosen had joined Artie Simek and between them, they lettered what Stan called "The Marvel Age of Comics". The earliest Marvel credit I could find for Rosen was on the story "Goliath - The Monster that Walked Like a Man!" in Journey into Mystery 63 (Dec 1960). From there he became a regular contributor, adding Incredible Hulk and Iron Man in Tales of Suspense to his regular assignments.

By 1964, Rosen was lettering The Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, though he would sometimes switch titles with Artie Simek.

Once Sam Rosen got his feet under the table at Marvel, he was off and running, though Artie Simek was still lettering the covers at this point.

Sam Rosen, born 4 April 1922 died 8 April 1992, just a few days after his 70th birthday.

... AND BACK TO THE LOGOS

Not long after the Strange Tales logo revamp, Stan ordered a new masthead for Tales of Suspense. The identity of the letterer on the first version of the Suspense logo is lost in the mists of history, but could well be the work of Sol Brodsky. On Tod Klein's excellent blog, he mentions that Brodsky would often do the basic designs for late 1950s/early 1960s logos and other hands, often Artie Simek's, would do the final render. However, the redrawn version looks a lot like the work of Sam Rosen.

When Tales of Suspense launched in January 1959, Artie Simek was lettering for Marvel, though the logo doesn't look anything like his work. By the time the masthead was revamped, in November 1962, Sam Rosen was lettering for Stan and I suspect this logo is his work. Later in May 1964, the Suspense masthead was once again transformed to allow for title star Iron Man to have more prominence.

This would have been one of the first things Rosen did for Stan, and may even have been set as a test. Compare the blocky, drop-shadowed letters of "Suspense" with Rosen's lettering on the splash page of Amazing Spider-Man 17 (Oct 1964).

Sam Rosen's lettering is distinguished by its squat, rounded characters and the trademark drop-shadow. The title lettering here is very similar to the revamped Tales of Suspense masthead in 1962.

Then, as the Iron Man strip grew in popularity, Stan decided to reduce the size of the comic's actual title and emphasise the book's cover star. "Tales of Suspense" was brought down drastically in size and ranged on to a single line and "Iron Man" became the main lettering in the logo, looking not a million miles away from the type style used on the very first issues of Suspense. 

Tales of Suspense 59 (Nov 1964) added Captain America to the masthead, and just five months later was rendered in the colours of the American flag. As the new solo titles for Iron Man and Captain America hoved into view in 1968, the last few issues of Suspense alternated the the emphasis on the two characters.

When Captain America joined the book as co-star, "Iron Man" was downsized to allow his co-star equal cover-billing, which was likely done by Sam Rosen, as reported on Grand Comic Book Database by Nick Caputo. Then just a few issues later, on Tales of Suspense 64 (Apr 1965), the "Captain America" lettering was rendered in red, white and blue. Some have criticised this design as being difficult to read, but as a kid, I loved it. The covers continued like this right through to Tales of Suspense 90 (Apr 1967), when the positions of "Iron Man" and "Captain America" were reversed for the first time - which made sense as Cap was the cover-star of that issue. The next change was when Stan realised he was going to have Cap take over Suspense and spin Iron Man off into his own title ... so he began featuring each character's name bigger on alternating covers, beginning with Suspense 97 (Jan 1968).

The difference between the logos on Tales of Suspense 98 and Captain America 100 isn't huge. But with Captain America 110, incoming artist Jim Steranko completely overhauled the comic's masthead.

In 1968, with Marvel no longer constrained by the draconian conditions imposed on them by the DC-owned Independent News Distribution, they suddenly went from just 14 titles, five of which were bi-monthly, to a massive 21 comics. Iron Man, Sub-Mariner and Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD all got their own titles, along with Silver Surfer, Captain Savage (a Sgt Fury spin-off) and Captain Marvel. Spider-Man got a magazine-size comic, Spectacular Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange, Captain America and The Hulk took over Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish respectively. It was turbulent time for title logos.

As Suspense transitioned to Captain America, there wasn't really a seismic shift in logo styles. More of a minor tremor. The logo lettering became a bit more condensed, to fill the space left from dropping "Tales of Suspense" and "and Iron Man". At first, the red-white-blue kept it from looking too dull, but that was dropped with issue 102, and any pizzazz went with it, leaving a really lifeless masthead. It would be left to Jim Steranko in 1969, to do a bit of a radical overhaul of the logo, with issue 110 (Feb 1969). He too avoided the red, white and blue colour scheme and gave Cap a more dynamic masthead, slightly reminiscent of the Superman logo. However, it seemed that no one could make up their mind what Cap's logo should be, and over subsequent issues the masthead swung between old and new versions and all stops in between.

Captain America 118 sported the same style logo as had appeared on the first ten issues of the title. Issue 134 had a weird squashed version of the same logo which was quickly dumped in favour of the return of the Jim Steranko version with Captain America 139 (Jul 1971).

With Captain America 118 (Oct 1969), the masthead went back to the original style, sometimes with the red-white-blue, sometimes just the one colour. But it didn't last long. Captain America 134 (Feb 1970) introduced a new style which endured just five issues before changing back to the Steranko version again.

Three different cover designs in the space of a year is the sort of thing that gives marketers nightmares. The lack of consistency is confusing for readers, they reason. In this case, I'm not altogether sure they're wrong.

Then, just when you thought things had settled down, issue 143 (Nov 1971) had a completely revamped logo design, which last a mere three issues before going back to pretty much the version we saw on Captain America 134. The editorial certainty had gone, due most probably to the fact that Stan had stepped back from being the editor of the line, leaving these kinds of decisions to others.

Suspense's sister publication, Tales to Astonish went through a similar evolution. The title started with a very geometrical logo, which was stylistically similar to the Suspense logo and was likely designed by Sol Brodsky. But inside a year, on issue 12 (Oct 1960), the masthead was worked over by, I'd say, Artie Simek. Those ragged ends to the letters are a Simek characteristic. Then the logo remained unchanged all through the Ant-Man and Giant-Man years - with no attempt to accommodate the character's name into the masthead.

The first Tales to Astonish logo was every bit as bland as the Tales of Suspense one, but by issue 12, Stan had Artie Simek redraw the lettering, adding his trademark ragged ends to the characters. However, when Giant-Man became the title star, Stan didn't have his name rendered larger, as he'd done with Iron Man in Tales of Suspense, so I've done it here for him, so you can see what it might've looked like.

I've suggested before that Stan seemed bewildered that Ant/Giant-Man wasn't more of a success with the readers. But at the same time, I wonder why he didn't have Simek or Brodsky revamp the Astonish logo to include Giant-Man's name as he did with Iron Man over on Tales of Suspense. Surely, if he'd made the branding for Giant-Man more prominent on the Astonish covers, that might've gone some way to making the character seem more important in the minds of readers? But then again, as noted in an earlier post, the character was struggling without a strong "rogues gallery" to play off ...

With issue 61, Tales to Astonish built the logos of the co-stars into the main masthead. The Giant-Man lettering would be gone inside a few issues. The Hulk graphic would last for a while, disappear, then resurface when The Hulk took over the title as the main star. The Sub-Mariner logo would arrive with issue 70, transform then revert back to the original over the next year or two.

It wouldn't be until Tales to Astonish 61 (Nov 1964) that Giant-Man would be incorporated into the logo, at the same time as The Incredible Hulk was - for Giant-Man, this was too little too late. Within four issues he'd be gone, banished temporarily to super-hero limbo, his place in the title usurped by Fantastic Four villain, The Sub-Mariner, beginning with Astonish 70 (Aug 1966).

The logo for the Sub-Mariner was a slightly odd, triangular affair, configured to allow space for "The Incredible" ... as long as The Hulk was on the right. Much later on in the run, beginning with Tales to Astonish 91 (May 1967), Marvel took to alternating the position of "Sub-Mariner" and "Hulk", much as they did over on Tales of Suspense. The problem was that, as soon as they did that, the shape of the Sub-Mariner lettering didn't fit the space properly, so it was again revamped, closely resembling the masthead of the Golden Age Sub-Mariner comics - a decision I'm guessing acknowledged Golden Age fan Roy Thomas would have had something to do with. On issue 91, it looks slightly odd, as the lettering is rotated slightly clockwise. Compare to the original below:

The Sub-Mariner logo that appeared on Tales to Astonish 91 and would be used later in the run of Silver Age Sub-Mariners, had its roots in the Golden Age Sub-Mariner logo. A kind of cross between issue 1's logo (Spring 1941) and issue 2's (Summer 1941).

Then, just a few issues later, the masthead was re-jigged again - as with Tales of Suspense - to allow the two co-stars turns in dominating the cover logo. Because "Hulk" is such a short word, the letters had to be extended (short and wide) to take the right amount of space, though I think the lettering looks much better condensed as it was on earlier issues.

First Hulk had the feature role on Tales to Astonish 99, then Sub-Mariner the following issue. When the big green guy took over the title, his logo was re-rendered once again, with less-than exciting results.

Tales to Astonish 99 (Jan 1968) was the first to favour The Hulk and issue 100 (Feb 1968) gave Sub-Mariner the top spot, but once again the lettering had been given a makeover, similar to the 1966 version but this time rectangular rather than triangular.

When The Hulk took over the title with issue 102 (Apr 1968), there was more than enough space to render "Hulk" in the more condensed style I preferred, though once again, it had gotten a little dull, reminiscent of the first version of the Astonish logo. 

The first issue of Subby's own book retained the lettering style of his logo on Tales to Astonish. After three years, a pastiche of the Golden Age logo was introduced. Two years later, the masthead had reverted to the 1968 version, with one unimportant addition.

Meanwhile, The Sub-Mariner spun off into his own title, Prince Namor, The Sub-Mariner 1 (May 1968), retaining the logo style the Bullpen had set up for him on the cover of Tales to Astonish 100. This would last three years until, probably once more due to the influence of Roy Thomas, the masthead was revamped to resemble the Golden Age version more closely. Then, with sales floundering a little, the original Silver Age logo was reinstated on Sub-Mariner 65 (Sep 1973), with the addition of "Savage", which didn't help as the title was cancelled with issue 72 (Sep 1974).

The original logo for The Incredible hulk was thick and blocky - just like the character. The first run of the Silver Age title sported a slender and elegant logo, not really in keeping with the big green rage monster it represented. I liked the graphical approach of the later 1960s logo, but weirdly, the masthead went back to an elegant look at the beginning of the 1970s.

The Hulk logo persisted for a short time, then on The Incredible Hulk 110 (Dec 1968), the masthead was given a complete makeover, and the title lettering was rendered as though constructed from massive blocks of stone - way better than what had come before. There were echoes of the original logo from Incredible Hulk 1 (May 1962) - the heft of the letters and the 3D perspective shadow diminishing away into the distance. This was my favourite Hulk logo of the era. Yet it lasted just 25 issues before Stan had it redrawn into the style that was to last from Incredible Hulk 129 (Jul 1970) to 313 (Nov 1985), with only minor tweaks ... over fifteen years. Why I'm not sure, but perhaps Stan found the rock-hewn version too fiddly to colour effectively.

I could go on like this with every Marvel title of the Silver Age, which would be a lot of fun for me, but I wouldn't want to test your patience any further than I already have. Perhaps if anyone's interested I could take a look at titles like Daredevil and X-Men which also went through some intriguing transformations over the 1960s and 1970s.

Next time, I'll look at some of the logos that were altered just for dramatic effect, rather than for evolutionary reasons. Until then ...

Next: I said, Don't mess with the logo!

Still paddling in the unfamiliar waters of early Marvel Comics

SO IT WAS MID-1965, I was just coming up to my eleventh birthday and I was leaving the kids-stuff comics of DC behind and discovering the wonderful new world of Marvel Comics, masterminded by a cheery bloke called Stan Lee. I had found a character called Captain America that I thought was really cool, with his lack of superpowers, his natty spinning shield and his eye-catching Stars-and-Stripes costume. But it didn't take me long to figure out that this Marvel outfit had other titles and pretty soon, I'd found Fantastic Four and Spider-Man comics as well, and they were just good as the Captain America and The Avengers stories I'd read.

Back in the 1960s, comics companies had no advertising budgets, and there were no comic stores or fanzines or internet to keep customers informed of what other books the company was publishing. If you picked up a Fantastic Four comic and you liked it, the chances were you might be interested in X-Men as well. So the publishers would heavily cross-advertise their various titles in every other comic they published.

There was no doubt that DC, as the incumbent sales champions and most polished of the comics operations, had the best-looking house ads. Mostly designed by Ira Schnapp, the master letterer of most of DC Comics' covers, the DC ads were an object lesson in grabbing the customer's attention.

Veteran DC editor Mort Weisinger was responsible for the copy, which was mostly pretty corny, but the text was elevated by Ira Schnapp's impeccable sense of comics design.

Marvel's house ads were quite a bit less polished than DC's, but they did give a pretty good idea of what else was out from Marvel at the same time. Where Weisinger went for a more specialised approach, writing punchy, hard-sell copy, Stan Lee just wanted to bring all Marvel Comics to the attention of all Marvel readers. Every issue.

And here's a confession to horrify everyone ... when I was ten, I was so impressed with the Marvel House ads that I clipped the miniature covers out of those ads with a pair of scissors and kept them as a kind of "Wants List". Yup, I totally vandalised my comics. Many years later, I bought some old Tales to Astonish at auction. The vendor hadn't checked the books carefully and had graded them as fine. But when I received them, you guessed it, some idiot had clipped the cover repros from the Marvel house ads. In the interests of karma, I'd like to think that idiot was my ten-year-old self. I certainly deserved it ...

Maybe Stan's scattershot approach worked, because Marvel's sales rose while DC's were falling - the above ad page is from Daredevil 5.

At the time, I couldn't know that Marvel Comics had been restricted to a handful of titles, distributed as they were by their own arch-rivals DC Comics. As I described in the last entry in this blog, in 1957 Marvel publisher Martin Goodman had been forced to enter a deal with arch-rivals DC Comics to get his books onto the newsstands. The catch was that DC would only take eight titles a month. Goodman extended his reach by putting out 16 bi-monthly titles, but as he'd been publishing 50-60 titles up to this point, it seriously cramped his style. The restriction eased a little during the early 1960s, but mostly it meant if Goodman wanted to launch a new title, he'd have to cancel an existing one.

However, there was an up side to this restriction. It meant, that Stan was able to advertise just about his whole line of super-hero comics in any one issue of his books, just using two house ads with four covers apiece. This, coupled with Stan's strategy of aggressive and regular guest-starring of a character in another hero's title, meant that the readers very quickly became accustomed to buying the entire Marvel output every month, something you just couldn't afford to do with DC comics.

Wow ... even Millie the Model and the cowboy comics made it into this house ad from Tales to Astonish 66 (Apr 1965).

It also meant that at least until the mid-Sixties, Stan Lee was able to write just about every Marvel title himself. Which, of course, meant the style and the tone of voice was consistent across the range of product, something that DC with their scores of titles weren't able to manage.

Anyway, it was the advertising policies of, initially, DC Comics and later Marvel Comics that kept me (and no doubt thousands of other kids) informed of what other titles might be in the spinner racks that month. But not always ...

STILL DISCOVERING MARVEL COMICS

In the case of Daredevil, I first stumbled across an issue in a motorway services area. It would have been sometime in the early part of 1965. My family would almost certainly have been on the way to visit relatives in Scotland by car. Back then, not many families had cars and the motorways weren't the giant parking lots they are today.

With this level of traffic, it was no surprise that motorway service areas were a treasure trove of "old" comics.

So you can imagine how pleased I was to discover a copy of Daredevil 5 (Dec 1964) in the newsagent at one of the few motorway pull-off areas between London and Glasgow. I must have read that issue a dozen times during the remainder of the journey. To my ten-year-old mind, it was a source of wonder that a blind man could be a superhero. And at that moment, Daredevil became one of my favourite Marvel characters - though this early in the game, Stan was still struggling a bit to know what to do with him.

Holidays in Spain were still two or three years away for me in 1965, but a criminal matador was an intriguing concept.

When I went back and had a look at Daredevil 5, I noticed some indications that perhaps artist Wally Wood was also partly responsible for DD's lack of a clear direction. After floundering for a couple of issues with a revolving door of artists (Bill Everett on issue 1, then a brief run of three with ex-EC artist Joe Orlando), Stan settled on Wally Wood, also an EC alumnus, as the permanent Daredevil artist. But even by this time, Stan had become accustomed to giving his artists the barest outline of the story and leaving the pacing them. That's fine if the artist is Jack Kirby. Even Dick Ayers and Don Heck had been working this way with Stan long enough to know what was required. But Wood was a newcomer to Marvel. He was likely unfamiliar with how Stan would spend as much time on his heroes' private lives as on their action antics. So Wood's pacing was a little off.

Daredevil 5 starts off with a three page action sequence to demonstrate to new readers how the character operates. Then there's a single page with Matt and Foggy in the law office to set up the rest of the plot. Ditko or Kirby would never have restricted this scene to a single page, as Stan needs a bit of room for character exposition. So page 4 looks like this:

Stan tries to squeeze two or three pages of exposition into a single page.

It's a bit of a car-crash, looking for all the world like one of those EC pages that Wood used to work on where Gaines and Feldstein would have all the dialogue lettered onto the comic page first and make the artists fill in the gaps with drawing. There's more lettering than art here. The rest of the book is a bit better but when Wood got tired of Stan criticising his storytelling, he left Marvel and went to Tower Comics. It wasn't a great loss to Marvel. Much as I love Wood's work - his EC stuff and his Spirit pages are beyond brilliant - he just wasn't cut out for superheroes. As his later work on the Tower books demonstrated.

Another comic I must have picked up in a swap, because it was dated May 1964, was Strange Tales 120. Probably what drew me to the book was the Fantastic Four's Human Torch on the cover, fighting side by side with a human snowman. At this point I hadn't read any X-Men comics, so I didn't really know who Iceman was ...

Fire meets Ice - Jack Kirby's dynamic cover is a cross-over between the Fantastic Four and the X-Men.

Nice though the Jack Kirby art was in the lead story, it was the back-up story that stayed in my memory. Drawn by Steve Ditko, the Doctor Strange story in this issue was a lot like the short mystery stories that had dominated the title before Stan's super-heroes came along. The plot involves the magician investigating a haunted house, which was very close to home for my ten year old self. In south-east London where I grew up, we were surrounded by bombed out and derelict houses that still hadn't been demolished in the post-war years. More than one of them had a history of haunting attached to them by the kids in the area.

Doctor Strange heroic battles the mystic forces of the haunted house only to discover its horrifying secret ...

So on that level, I had a real and emotional attachment to this story. The pay-off, which owed a lot to the formula Lee had developed earlier on the monster and ghost tales he did with Steve Ditko in Amazing (Adult) Fantasy, was at the time genuinely creepy. The shock ending is that the house isn't haunted at all. It's that the house itself is a sentient being.

... the house is alive and malevolent. And only Doctor Strange has the power to force it to release its human captives.

It probably seems pretty corny now, but in 1965, I can tell you, it scared the bejabbers out of me and my pals. We didn't go near a derelict house for weeks after that story.

Thinking back on this tale and relying on my memory, I was sure that this was the first or second Doctor Strange story, as it featured none of Strange's main foes or supporting cast. I remembered that there were a few Strange stories before Marvel revealed how he became a magician, and my faulty recall was telling me that the Nightmare and the Baron Mordo stories came later. So I looked for this story around issue 111 of Strange Tales. Funny how the memory can plays tricks on you ...

Doctor Strange was to become one of my favourite characters and would remain so until the present day. At his best illustrated by Steve Ditko's art, subsequent artists like Gene Colan and Frank Brunner did the character no disservice at all, and I still remember the later run written by Steve Englehart with reverence.

Another "vintage" item I stumbled across right at the beginning of my conversion to Marvel was Tales to Astonish 39 (Jan 1963). I'd already seen a later Astonish, featuring Giant Man battling the Human Top, the year before, but this one was a really old comic, in my eyes. The cover was very much part of Stan's plan to stay below the radar of DC's distributors by resembling one of early Marvel's standard monster books. The giant red insect dominates the scene with the "Astonishing" Ant-Man in the foreground, but very tiny - an occupational hazard for ant-men.

This doesn't look remotely like a superhero comic - which is probably what Stan intended.

The plot wasn't really much different from those pre-hero monster tales. The Beetle is zapped with radio-activity, and gets intelligence. The growing really huge bit is when the creature snatches Ant-Man's growth gas and uses it all to make himself man-sized. Ant-Man is then stuck at his tiny size until he can defeat the Scarlet Beetle. But here and there in the story are the first signs of Stan showing you that the world may not idolise and trust super-heroes just because they're super-heroes. Where Batman and Superman would have police officers saluting them and politicians asking them to sort out some problem, in Stan's Marvel universe, the heroes would have no automatic endorsement from either the authorities or the public. In this story, the police speculate that Ant-Man is too frightened to tackle the growing insect problem.

Taking Ant-Man's gas-cylinders, the Scarlet Beetle chucks our hero down a hole and sets off to cause mayhem among the humans ...

And when the menace is defeated, because they don't know of Ant-Man's involvement, the police wonder why there was no sign of Ant-Man. Of course the readers know that Ant-Man saved the day and the story also shows us that a True Hero doesn't wait around to take a bow ... already Stan's own moral values were coming out in his stories.

Restored to his normal size, Dr Henry Pym sets the little beetle free to live out the rest of his several-week lifespan, while the cops wonder why Ant-Man never showed up to do their job for them ...

Strangely, Ant-Man didn't really catch on. Stan's reasoning must have been, small boys love insects so here's a hero that works with the insects to battle commie spies and catch crooks. And that's quite sound reasoning. But it was right at the beginning of Lee's hero revolution and Ant-Man was an early experiment that didn't work. It even took me a while to connect the dots and realise that the Giant Man in issue 15 of The Avengers was the same character as the guy who fought the Scarlet Beetle. Eventually, Stan's search for the ideal comic book style would pay off, but that was still a way in the Tales to Astonish 39's future. In the meantime, I had more new Marvel characters to discover. Just round the corner were The X-Men and The Mighty Thor, both visualised by the equally mighty Jack Kirby.

Next: From Explorer to Fan to Collector