Strange Tales: The Human Torch solo stories

IT'S FAIRLY WELL RECORDED that at the beginning of the 1960s, when Marvel publisher Martin Goodman instructed editor and head writer Stan Lee to kick off a superhero team comic to cash in on the success DC was having with Justice League, he wanted to revive Timely's Golden Age characters The Human Torch, Captain America and The Sub-Mariner.

The Human Torch had been the headline character in Marvel's first ever comic, Marvel Comics 1 (Oct 1939). When Stan was ordered to create a new superhero team book in 1961, Goodman wanted to re-use the Timely characters, but Stan went with The Fantastic Four, likely including The Human Torch to appease Goodman.

And if Stan had just meekly followed that order, it's doubtful that we would have a Marvel Comics today. At best, the company would probably have ended up as a curious footnote in the history of comics, and not the creative powerhouse it evolved into during the 1960s.

As good as Stan's instincts were, he did take a few mis-steps along the way. No shame in that. We learn only from our mistakes. The Incredibe Hulk was discontinued after just six issues, though the character would pop up as a guest star here and there until a new approach and a new home could be found for him. And Ant-Man too would struggle to find an audience during those formative years.

I actually enjoyed the exploits of both characters as a kid reading those books around 1963-1964, but I found it a bit inexplicable that The Human Torch enjoyed such a long run in Strange Tales.

Though I wouldn't have known it as the time, the lead Human Torch story in this early issue was during the period Stan was trying to hire in experienced scripters. This one was written by Superman co-creator and industry legend Jerry Siegel. Even so, his expository dialogue does squeeze Ayers' art literally into a corner.
Click on Image to expand.

I'm fairly sure that the first Strange Tales featuring the Human Torch I saw back in the early 1960s was issue 112 (Sep 1963), probably a year or so after it came out. The first of two stories written by Jerry Siegel, the issue was a good introduction to the character, as it established many strong plot points in its 13 pages. First there's the Spider-Man style sub-plot with tv commentator Ted Braddock attacking The Human Torch on air for being a hot-headed show-off ... not without cause, I have to say. The main plot has The Eel stealing a high-tech gadget from a scientist that turns out to be a miniature nuclear power supply. Just why a scientist is constructing a hazardous nuclear device in a populated area is never explored. The Torch goes after the Eel, runs into The Thing (see above page scan) and recovers the atomic device. But his troubles aren't over. The Torch's "flame molecules indicate the atomic pile will explode in a split second from now" and he flies the device into the stratosphere to contain the explosion with his own body. After that foolhardy but brave act, tv's Ted Braddock relents and decides The Torch is a hero after all, restoring the status quo.

Dick Ayers was inking Kirby's pencils on Fantastic Four at the same time as he was drawing The Human Torch in Strange Tales, so was the ideal artist (after Kirby) to be providing art for this FF spin-off. The first two panels are Ayer's art on The Human Torch. The third is an Ayers-inked panel of Kirby pencils from FF18, for comparison.

Yes, it is a little corny, and probably not how Stan would have scripted the same tale, but Dick Ayers' art is very good indeed here and it's very obvious he's doing his best to capture the spirit of Kirby, including typical "Kirby's Kast of Kharacters" shots, some strong action splash panels and good pacing. The only slight weakness, I was going to say, is Ayers' portrayal of The Thing. I've always thought that no one draws Ben Grimm as well as Kirby. But when I checked Fantastic Four 18, which came out the same month as Strange Tales 112 and was also inked by Dick Ayers - and it seems that Dick was drawing the Thing exactly as Kirby was ... or perhaps it was Ayers' inking that defined The Thing's look at the time.

The Lee-Ditko fantasy back-up story in Strange Tales 112 is a really good one, and the house ads for key first issues and equally important debut superhero annuals was very much a bonus for this newly-minted Marvelite.

Strange Tales 112 is rounded out with an absolute gem of a Lee-Ditko fantasy story, a pretty neat Larry Lieber-Paul Reinman sci-fi story and two great house ads for landmark Marvel comics. Weirdly, this issue didn't have Dr Strange. The character had first appeared in Strange Tales 110, with a follow-up adventure in ST111. He was missing from Strange Tales 112 and 113, so I had somehow stumbled across an anomalous patch of Strange-free Strange Tales.

But after this issue, I would go back to the beginning of the Torch run and start to amass a complete set of Strange Tales, plugging the gaps with the Marvel Tales reprints.

IN THE BEGINNING WAS KIRBY

When I began to back-fill my collection and got to read the earlier Strange Tales, a couple of major differences between the Torch in the Fantastic Four comics and this solo version became very obvious. The first was that plotter Stan and scripter Larry Lieber had tried to re-engineer the character so that he could have a secret identity and operate incognito in the small American town of Glenville where he was living. This made no sense to me as it was obvious from the Fantastic Four comic that the FF all lived in the Baxter Building, and that the public was well-aware that Johnny Storm was The Human Torch.

The story in Strange Tales 101 was a pretty daft, portraying The Human Torch as a superhero with a secret identity and having the villain revealed as "Charles Stanton, publisher of the town's newspaper. I can hardly believe it!" ... straight out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon.

Even dafter is Johnny explaining on the first page of Strange Tales 101 (Oct 1962) that, even though the townsfolk know Sue is Invisible Girl, no one knows he's The Human Torch. Really? They don't suspect Sue Storm's brother Johnny is the Human Torch? OK, if you say so ...

The only explanation I can think of is that Stan was trying to pitch these stories at a younger readership, who probably didn't read Fantastic Four. But even that is a bit shakey. Why would anyone think it was a good idea to pitch a character, whose power is to set himself alight, to small kids? And at this point, Fantastic Four was only up to issue 7, and wasn't yet exploring the slightly more grown-up themes that would start around the time of The Hate Monger story (FF21, Dec 1963), so I'm not convincing even myself, here.

The front cover of Strange Tales 102 almost seems to suggest that the Torch story is a back-up rather than a star attraction. Inside, The Wizard impersonates The Torch in order to discredit the young hero, a storyline that couldn't have been unfamiliar to comic readers of any age, and one that Stan would return to often.

Strange Tales 102 (Nov 1962) was a bit of an improvement. It introduced a major Marvel character, The Wizard, who would later go on the lead the Frightful Four and defeat the FF on a couple of occasions. The whole secret identity thing was hardly mentioned, though there is a scene where the Wizard douses Torch's flame, and Kirby draws the Torch's figure with his head still obscured by flames. But overall, there's more of a sense of menace here, with The Wizard portrayed as a smart and resourceful foe.

Interestingly, though the plot includes the cliche of the villain impersonating the hero to turn the public against him, the technology The Wizard uses to imitate The Torch's flame is not so dissimilar to the flame suit Reed builds for Johnny in Fantastic Four 39 (Jun 1965), after the team have lost their powers at the hands of ... The Wizard.

Strange Tales 103 (Dec 1962) gave us a Torch story that more resembled Stan's fantasy yarns than it did his superhero stuff. Check out the brazen Valeria (daughter of the despotic Zemu) using her feminine wiles on the hapless guard to effect Johnny's escape. That'll be the end of his career as an evil hench-person.

The next issue had an altogether more whimsical story, as its title "Prisoner of the 5th Dimension" might suggest. Again written by Lee/Lieber and drawn by Jack Kirby, the story seems to mesh together plots of two standard Stan Lee fantasy stories and tosses The Torch into the mix. The first plot is that of an alien disguised as an old man, scaring people away from an area so the aliens can invade. The second plot is the hero being transported to an alien world (in this case the 5th Dimension), then being helped by the beautiful daughter of the despotic ruler.

The Human Torch exhibits some powers that he doesn't seem to have over in the Fantastic Four comic. In this tale he can burrow through the earth using his flame power and create a tornado. He also manufactures a smoke screen and does skywriting (in neat block capitals that are almost as good as Artie Simek's) ... but I'm fairly sure I remember him pulling those stunts in the FF book, as well.

It's hard to say which aspect of Strange Tales villain Paste-Pot Pete is more ridiculous - his name or his costume. I doubt any of the parties involved would be able to remember why they portrayed him this way, but from this perspective, it doesn't seem to make any sense.

Strange Tales 104 (Jan 1963) was on sale the same month as Fantastic Four 10, and introduced a character who would go on to join forces with The Wizard and menace the FF in Fantastic Four 36 (Mar 1965). In these early appearance, Paste-Pot Pete was a depicted clownish figure, despite his criminal tendencies. Why Jack Kirby thought it was a good idea to draw him in a comedy artist's outfit, I really couldn't say. Perhaps Stan intended Pete to use his crazy appearance to make the police think he was harmless, until it was too late. Or maybe he was originally intended simply as a comedy antagonist (like Superman's Mr Mxyzptlk, also a denizen of the 5th Dimension), and somehow scripter Larry Lieber didn't get the memo.

To be honest, back in 1964 or 1965 when I would have first seen this story, it didn't much bother me, but now it just seems downright daft.

Strange Tales 105 was a catalogue of dodgy science ... I wouldn't have been convinced by the idea of the Torch stopping a shell from an artillery gun with his heat, however intense. The kinetic energy doesn't dissipate just because the metal's melted. The molten slag would still plough through his body at speed.

Strange Tales 105 (Feb 1963) featured the return of The Wizard, just three issues after we last saw him. Clearly a big fan of the Silver Age Lex Luthor, The Wizard has been behaving like the model prisoner until he could get assigned to the prison pharmacy. The using the available "harmless chemicals" he concocts a "serum" to "burn through the strongest substance" and makes a big hole in his cell wall. Panicky guards turn up and charge through the gap in pursuit of The Wizard - only he's hiding behind the cell door. He then calmly leaves through the front entrance.

Holed up in his hideout, The Wizard then issues a challenge to The Torch. Impulsively, The Torch rushes off to confront his enemy - on the foe's home ground. Which seems like an awful big strategic mistake to me (Sun Tzu, 10.25).

So, The Wizard's stronghold is a huge underground system of traps and weapons. Where did he get the field-gun he shoots The Torch with? Or the asbestos-lined chamber where he traps the Torch. How much did all this cost? And most importantly, who built it?

This is a sample of the books Martin Goodman published the same month as Strange Tales 105. Still only identified by the "MC" box on the cover, no Marvel Corner Box yet, and still pretty bland stories that don't really compete with DC's slick professionalism. The only ray of sunshine here is Fantastic Four. The story in issue 11 was kind of fun, probably Stan's first use of humour in a straight superhero tale, with the Impossible Man being more exasperating than menacing.

Even though the credits say that Stan was plotting, the story does scan like the sort of thing DC were publishing at the same time. Larry Leiber has said that he provided full scripts to Kirby around this time, indeed that Kirby was unhappy if he didn't get a full script. Still, this was early days for Stan and Marvel. Amazing Spider-Man 1 wouldn't come out until the following month. So I shouldn't complain simply because Stan hadn't found his editorial voice yet ...

The two big revelations for Strange Tales 106 are that Johnny's neighbours were just kidding on that they didn't know he was The Human Torch, and that The Acrobat is really a super-villain, not a super-hero. Ayers' pages are serviceable, but don't quite have the polish here that Jack Kirby's have.

The next issue, Strange Tales 106 (Mar 1963), saw series inker Dick Ayers take over as penciller as well. A character shows up on Johnny Storm's doorstep, offering his acrobatic skills and a partnership to The Torch. They'll form a new team called "The Torrid Twosome". Catchy. Of course, it's a scam and it doesn't take long for The Acrobat to show his true colours. The Fantastic Four come along at the end and save the day.

The most interesting this about this story is that Stan ditches the ill-advised attempt by the Torch to have a "secret identity". It's revealed that everyone in town knew Johnny was The Human Torch, but didn't let on, out of respect for Johnny's privacy.

Dick Ayer's work on pencils is pretty good. Individually, the panels are a fair attempt at the Kirby style, but the page layouts don't have The King's flow or design sense. 

It is a bit of a classic cover, pencilled by Jack Kirby, but the story inside Strange Tales 107 is a little disappointing. Johnny is again displaying hitherto unknown powers, as is Namor and the whole battle feels just a little unimaginative. Sub-Marine would get the epic battle he merited in the Fantastic Four Annual 1, on sale just three months later. Marvel Mystery Comics 8 had the first half of the epic 1940s Torch-Subby battle.

I don't know if Stan felt the title needed a bit of a boost, but Strange Tales 107 (Apr 1963) brought out the big guns and featured The Sub-Mariner as the foe. It's a bit reminiscent of Marvel Mystery Comics 8 & 9 (Jun & Jul 1940), where the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner strips were combined for an epic 44-page showdown. Sadly, this Torch vs Subby battle wasn't that epic. It had Sub-Mariner displaying the abilities of sea creatures, though he never again used these powers. And it had The Torch flying underwater with his flame on. His claim that he was using his super-nova flame fooled no one, it was just a daft idea.

For the next few issues, Stan sidelined Larry Lieber and had a revolving door of different scripters, working over Stan's plots with Dick Ayers art. The results weren't great.

Despite the presence of Kirby on pencils, the Torch stories in these issues weren't any better than what had come before. In fact, I thought the scripts of Robert Bernstein were less effective than Larry Lieber's work.

Strange Tales 108 and 109 (May-Jun 1963) were scripted by Robert Bernstein ("R. Berns"), who had started in the 1940s, working for both DC (Green Lantern) and Marvel (Black Rider & Wild Western). In the 1950s, Bernstein scripted for DC (GI Combat & Our Army At War), Quality (Blackhawk & Dollman) and EC (Psychoananlysis & Shock Illustrated). As the 1960s approached, Bernstein found himself working under the baleful eye of DC's Dark Overlord Mort Weisinger, writing scripts for Aquaman and Superboy in Adventure Comics, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, and even Superman. So scripting for Stan Lee over at Marvel was a risky business for him. So much so that one wonders why he didn't come up with a better disguise than "R. Berns".

For Stan he scripted the Thor feature in Journey into Mystery 92-96, Iron man in Tales of Suspense 40-46, as well his Strange Tales work.

Curiously, for Strange Tales 108, Kirby was back, though the story still had that pre-Marvel goofiness about it. The baddy is an artist who paints pictures that come to life and menace The Torch. Stan is still getting the plotter credit, so we can lay this one at his door. Bernstein's script was serviceable enough, though it lacked even Larry Leiber's little inspired touches.

Kirby also pencilled Strange Tales 109 ... though some of the panels look very much like they've been redrawn by other hands. Bernstein's script makes a better effort to emulate Stan's freewheeling, slang-laden style but the plot, with a suburban sorcerer using Pandora's Box to carry out crimes, lacks spark.

Strange Tales 110 was memorable for teaming The Wizard and Paste-Pot Pete for the first time. These two would go on the form the backbone of the Fantastic Four's most dangerous foes, The Frightful Four, and be directly responsible for defeating Johnny and his team-mates just two years later. Oh and it had the first Dr Strange story, too. Strange Tales 111 ... not so memorable.

With Strange Tales 110 and 111 (Jul-Aug 1963), Bernstein was out and Ernie Hart was in. Hart had been an editor at Timely during the 1940s, had scripted for Charlton during the 1950s and was drafted in by Stan Lee to write Strange Tales and Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish 44-48 under the pen-name "H. E. Huntley". His stint on The Torch lasted just two issues.

Issue 110 brought back both The Wizard and Paste-Pot Pete, teaming them up for the first time, in anticipation of their later Frightful Four alliance. Kirby was gone again, replaced on the art by Dick Ayers. And, as with the stories scripted by Robert Bernstein, Hart's dialogue is sort of serviceable ... but with the Wizard uttering lines like "You're fellow after my own heart. I'll join you gladly, Paste-Pot Pete, in such a delightful endeavour!" you have to wonder what on earth editor Stan Lee was thinking. 

Strange Tales 111 pit The Human Torch against The Asbestos Man ... the most surprising aspect of this is that it took Stan so long to figure out that the natural nemesis of fire is the ultimate flameproof substance. Hart turns in another competent but uninspired script and Stan must have thought so too, because after just two issues, Ernie H. was sent on his way, and Stan drafted in another scripter in an effort to pep the title up.

Industry legend Jerry Siegel had been the writing half of the team that created Superman, arguably the character responsible for single-handedly keeping the comics industry going thought the good times and the bad. It's impossible to over-estimate just how important a figure Siegel is in the history of US comics and how much of a debt anyone who's ever worked in American comics owes him. That said, Jerry made some ill-advised choices during his long career and by the early 1960s was having to beg at Mort Weisinger's table for the few crumbs he needed to survive. It's says a lot for Stan that he gave the guy some writing work at Marvel, even though he probably knew that Siegel wasn't really going to turn in the kind of script Stan was looking for.

The Torch's newest foe, The Plantman looks, for some reason, like The Shadow. The next time he appeared, less than a year later, he would be wearing his more familiar "foliage leotard".

Strange Tales 113 (Oct 1963), with the scripting credited to "Joe Carter", wasn't a terrific improvement over issue 112. The Plant Man was an okay villain, and the story did introduce Doris Evans, who would feature as Johnny's girlfriend for a lot of the Silver Age, but again the story lacked the level of humanity and humour that we knew Stan could provide.

By this time, it seemed that Dick Ayers had given up trying to imitate Jack Kirby and was drawing the strip very much in his own style. I suspect Stan had something to do with this. It's fairly well established that Stan didn't really want artists to draw like Jack Kirby. He just wanted them to try to capture Kirby's sense of movement and storytelling - which is what I think Ayers was trying to do here. I did find a quote from Ayers himself on the subject in a 2014 Comics Journal interview: "One day I came in to Stan, and gave him a story," said Ayers . "It was a Western and I had inked it just the way Jack penciled it, and he took it and said, 'If I wanted somebody to ink like Kirby, I could get him off the street! I know you with your brush, you can do anything. So add to it!"

And with this issue, Stan's grand new-script-writers experiment was over. He'd tried out several and all were found wanting. Robert Bernstein, Ernie Hart and Jerry Siegel - all experienced comics guys - seemed unable to capture the Stan Lee lightning in a bottle.

This is what the scripting map at Marvel looked like between August 1962 and November 1963, when Stan took over scripting pretty much the entire Marvel line, and started using "The Marvel Method" to cope with the workload:

Month	Journey into Mystery	Strange Tales	Tales of Suspense	Tales to Astonish
Aug 1962	Lieber	-	-	-
Sep 1962	Lieber	-	-	Lieber
Oct 1962	Lieber	Lieber	-	Lieber
Nov 1962	Lieber	Lieber	-	Lieber
Dec 1962	Lieber	Lieber	-	Lieber
Jan 1963	Lieber	Lieber	-	Lieber
Feb 1963	Lieber	Lieber	-	Lieber
Mar 1963	Lieber	Lieber	Lieber	Lieber
Apr 1963	Lieber	Lieber	Bernstein	Lieber
May 1963	Bernstein	Bernstein	Bernstein	Lieber
Jun 1963	Bernstein	Bernstein	Bernstein	Hart
Jul 1963	Bernstein	Hart	Bernstein	Hart
Aug 1963	Bernstein	Hart	Bernstein	Hart
Sep 1963	Bernstein	Siegel	Bernstein	Hart
Oct 1963	Lee	Siegel	Bernstein	Hart
Nov 1963	Lee	Lee	Lee	Lee

You can see that most of the Marvel anthology characters started off being scripted by Larry Lieber from Stan Lee plots. Lieber admits he didn't think too much of the superhero stories Stan was bringing in during the early Sixties. "Thor was just another story," Lieber told Roy Thomas for Alter Ego magazine. "I didn't think about it at all. Stan said, 'I'm trying to make up a character,' and he gave me the plot, and he said, 'Why don't you write the story?"

Stan had been teaching Larry the rudiments of comic writing even before this, as Lieber had written many fantasy tales for the pre-hero Marvel anthologies. "Before the superheroes," Lieber told blogger Danny Best, "Stan was teaching me to write. Now he had never taught anybody else to write so he didn’t know how well somebody learns or doesn’t learn or, he didn’t know how to compare me to anybody else. All he knew was I didn’t write as well as he did.

"He wasn't always the most patient person and I had problems [writing] the dialogue and he said, 'Why did you say that? You could have said it this way, or this way or that way,' and I’m realising, yeah, I didn't think of it that way or this way.

"So at any rate finally I think at one point he got a little exasperated and he said, 'I’m going to hire some of the old pros.' He remembered writers from the past. He still gave me work, he didn't want to take work away, but we were putting out a few more books.

"So he hired somebody and then the next week when I came back to him he said, 'Larry, you know something, you’re no good, but you're better than these other guys.' So that was my first victory ... if you want to call that a victory, right? The others are worse than me."

I know I used the above quotes in the Rise of Giant-Man blog entry but I think they're worth repeating here in the light of the pattern you can see in the above table. Stan had to go through that journey in order the realise that only he could deliver the characterisation and feel needed to produce the kind of stories he envisaged for Marvel.

It was this realisation that lead directly to the intertwining of the plots of the whole line of Marvel comics and Stan's method of giving his artists the bare-bones of the plot and leaving them to fill in the details.

Next time, I'll look at the first few Human Torch stories Stan scripted after the failure of his "new-script-writers" experiment and consider whether Stan's Human Torch stories were any better aligned with the Fantastic Four comic than these early tales had been.

Next: More Strange Torch Tales

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 1960s, there was no doubt that DC Comics were the undisputed sales champions of the comics business. Although slightly outsold by Disney's Uncle Scrooge title (854,000 per month), Superman (820,000) and related titles held seven of the top ten positions in the sales chart. The highest seller in Stan Lee's stable of soon-to-be Marvel Comics was Tales to Astonish at 185,00 a month. Today, of course, any publisher would have palpitations at the thought of that kind of monthly sale, but back in 1961, it was strictly small potatoes. To say that Marvel were a distant second would be overstate things. Outselling Marvel publisher Martin Goodman's titles by multiple margins were books from Dell, Archie and Harvey ... pretty much in that order.

This is the top ten selling titles for 1961, in chart order - not a Stan Lee title in sight.

Given those kinds of sales figures, DC Comics could be forgiven for feeling a bit smug. The sales on their Superman family of titles were solid, boosted in part by the popular Adventures of Superman tv show. DC's second string of characters - Flash and Green Lantern - were also enjoying strong sales, thanks to the sleek makeovers they'd had from editor Julius Schwartz and his stable of top-notch pencillers Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino and - probably more importantly - the smooth inking styles of Joe Giella and Murphy Anderson. They couldn't even see Stan Lee in their rearview mirror.

But that was about to change. Early in 1961, Marty Goodman had heard, possibly from DC publisher Jack Liebowitz (accounts vary), how well DC's new title Justice League of America was doing saleswise. The comic collected all of Schwartz's second string characters plus other DC third-rankers like Green Arrow and Aquaman and teamed them in book-length adventures. Goodman immediately ordered his editor Stan Lee to produce a copycat book starring his Golden Age big three - Captain America, Human Torch and Sub-Mariner. But at this point in his career, Stan had realised that Goodman's imitation tactics had created no boost to sales whatsoever, and that slavishly copying other publishers' ideas was getting Marvel nowhere. The story of how Lee - on the verge of quitting the business - was persuaded by his wife to do as Marty asked, but do it his own way is detailed in my previous blog entry. Stan gave Marty his supergroup, but included only The Human Torch in the line-up - and then took a chance and wrote what he would want to read if he were a comic buyer. The result would have an impact on DC's sales in just a few years.

In a different blog entry, I'd questioned why FF artist Jack Kirby - who claimed he alone had created and written the Fantastic Four stories - would put The Sub-Mariner in issue 4 when the copyright was likely held by Bill Everett. On reflection, one possible explanation might have been that Goodman hauled up Lee and demanded to know why The Sub-Mariner wasn't featuring in their new superhero team book. So Lee directed Kirby to include Subby in issue 4 so as to have something to show his publisher.

Lee and Kirby revamped Golden Age hero The Human Torch as a member of the Fantastic Four, as per publisher Martin Goodman's instructions, but balked at putting Captain America and Sub-Mariner in the team. Shortly afterwards, Prince Namor was introduced as a villain, possibly to stifle Goodman's complaints.

MUST BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT

The comics business has never been an industry to spend money on advertising or marketing. Usually, they've just created a title, delivered it to the newsstands and crossed their fingers. And that had always worked just fine. Kids bought comics based on whether they'd heard of the character - Superman, Tarzan and Disney characters being the most recognised - or if their friends told them a comic was good. In 1960, the best-selling comics were Disney stuff, Tarzan and Superman, based on the sales figures reported in 1961. But as the 1960s progressed, something strange started to happen. The average sales of DC Comics went into freefall and Marvel's began a relentless upward climb. And all this by word-of-mouth.

Okay, not only word-of-mouth.

As big a threat to comics sales as television was, it had also proved to be a boon - sort-of. Comics have always been a source of material for both big and small screen entertainment. During the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood constantly looked to comics - both newspaper strips and comic books - for characters to license. As early as 1936, newspapers' Flash Gordon starred in three successful movie serials, quickly followed by the similar Buck Rogers, Jungle Jim, Mandrake the Magician, Adventures of Captain Marvel, Batman, Captain America and Superman. As the serial era wound down, Hollywood found that television could make low-budget entertainment even cheaper, and some characters, like Jungle Jim and Superman switched to tv.

The Adventures of Superman was filmed in black and white from 1952 and went to colour in 1954. However it would be a good few years before the tv audience was able to see Superman in blue, red and yellow, as the show wasn't transmitted in colour until 1965.

Starring George Reeves as Superman/Clark Kent, The Adventures of Superman made its debut in 1952, tightly controlled by DC comics and distributed via syndication rather than by the more common network method. Though production ceased in 1958, the show continued in syndication until well into the 1960s, and was the main factor in keeping the profile of the character and the sales of the main Superman comic title high. Even as late as 1967, Superman was outselling Amazing Spider-Man by almost two-to-one.

This process would be repeated in 1966 when the Batman tv show (I know, I know) increased the sales of DC's Batman comic by 100%. However, the effects on comic sales was much shorter lived for the Batman comic than it had been for Superman. By the third season, sales had dipped down almost to pre-tv show levels and by 1968, Amazing Spider-Man was outselling Batman.

However, even as early as 1964, the sales figures must have been making DC accountants feel uneasy. Marvel was already rapidly closing the gap on rivals DC and by 1965 had equalled DC in average sales. And that with just the 16 titles they'd been limited to by the draconian distribution deal Jack Liebowitz had forced Marty Goodman to sign in 1957.

Something had to be done. So DC did it. They gave us Go-Go Checks.

Words fail me ...

Go-Go Checks were introduced on all DC Comics at the end of the year in 1965. For anyone not familiar with the phenomenon, DC simply added a band of black and white checks to the top of every cover in their line. That's it.

Yes, there's Go-Go Checks. But nothing else had changed. The cover themes were as daft as ever, and were still driving (sometimes very awkwardly) the stories inside. Even at 11 I felt DC just didn't "get it".

Now I'm probably biased, because by 1965, I was a die-hard Marvel reader. Even at the age of 11, I could tell that Stan Lee's stories in the Marvel books were far more sophisticated and interesting than the kids' stuff that DC were offering. In all fairness, the eight-year-old in me still has a fondness for the Weisinger-inspired silliness of the Superman family titles, but all-in-all I was over that by 1965 and was instead devouring the Lee-Kirby Fantastic Four stories.

The companies' flagship titles, the month that DC added Go-Go Checks. Marvel was offering us Fantastic Four vs Galactus and the Silver Surfer. DC had Superman changing into a dragon and scaring some college professors.

Which makes it all the more astonishing to me that the DC management weren't able to see that it would take more than some "trendy" livery on their covers to combat the threat of Martin Goodman's jumped-up comics company. In 1964, Liebowitz had been smart enough to see that a radical overhaul of the Batman titles was needed to bring the character out of its sales slump and save Batman from cancellation and oblivion. So how come he didn't understand that it was Lee's whole creative approach that was elevating Marvel's circulation and positioning them to take over as the market's sales leaders? I guess we'll never know.

The Go-Go Checks lasted from April 66 till July 1967 and all during that period, DC's top-selling comic stuck doggedly to the outdated and rather boring Weisinger-style stories. You could argue, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But the formula was broke. DC just hadn't realised it yet.

During the 15 months that the DC comics sported the Go-Go Checks, and even after, the Superman stories followed the same formula that editor Weisinger had enforced for the preceding ten years, a melange of lost superpowers, secret identity threats and even jokey (if slightly offensive) body-shock situations.

By contrast, Marvel's whole approach could not have been more different. Certainly, Jack Kirby was responsible for much of the "sense of wonder" that permeated the Fantastic Four and Mighty Thor titles. But even Stan Lee and his Spider-Man collaborator John Romita were presenting far more interesting and mature situations for their hero than anything DC was doing.

By contrast, the Lee-Romita Spider-Man title presented genuine threats and life-changing events for their most popular character. Readers were given a real sense that Spider-Man was in danger of physical harm.

It was DC's failure to update their out-moded story styles for a new, more savvy generation of comics readers that lost them their sales lead. By mid 1967, DC's total monthly sales were trailing Marvel's by almost a million, around 13% behind their rivals. It was only going to get worse for DC from here. The Go-Go Checks hadn't helped one bit. And while DC were consciously not imitating Marvel Comics, there were others who were.

THE C LIST

In the mid-1960s, especially in the UK, us kids really only bothered with two types of comics - Marvels and DCs. Of course there were quite a few other companies, but DC had the big names and Marvel had Lee & Kirby. Archie was huge in the States, but never made much of an impact on us in Britain. It was just too, well, American for us. We liked the tall buildings, the cool cars and cops with guns, but the high school antics of Archie never appealed to me or to the kids I went to school with.

Archie Comics had tried - almost half-heartedly - to develop a line of superheroes as early as 1959, when they engaged Joe Simon and Jack Kirby to produce The Double Life of Private Strong and, shortly after, The Fly, forming the backbone of the "Archie Adventure Series".

Although on the surface, The Shield appeared to resemble Captain America, the Golden Age character actually pre-dated Simon & Kirby's patriotic hero. This revamp, ironically by S&K, was more like Superman than Cap.

The Double Life of Private Strong featured the Archie-owned Golden Age character The Shield, revamped with an new civilian identity and backstory. In this version The Shield was Lancelot Strong, who'd been given superhuman abilities by his scientist father. When communist agents killed his dad, Strong was adopted by a rural couple, discovered his powers in his teens and adopted a bumbling, timid persona to conceal his abilities. Superman publishers DC Comics didn't like the sound of that very much and, under threat of legal action, Archie cancelled the title after two issues. But also in Double Life of Private Strong 1 was a two-page strip featuring The Fly, also by Simon & Kirby.

The artwork for The Fly seems quite a bit more old-fashioned than Kirby's concurrent work over at Atlas/Marvel. Perhaps this was due to Simon's influence. Weirdly, the cover to issue 3 looks more like it was drawn by Mike Golden in the early 1980s than by Simon & Kirby in the late 1950s.

Two months after the debut of Private Strong, Archie publisher/editor John Goldwater launched The Adventures of the Fly, with Simon & Kirby again providing the finished package. The Fly was in reality teenager Tommy Troy who finds a fly-shaped ring in his home's attic. Rubbing the ring, he transforms into an adult superhero.

The character started as a pitch to Harvey Comics back in 1953. In his book, The Comic Book Makers, Joe Simon described the genesis of the character: "In 1953, a year before the devastating Senate investigation into comics, I was visited by C.C. Beck, the artist behind the success of Captain Marvel. Beck told me that he owned the Ukulele Bar & Grill in Miami, Florida, and while tending the bar, often thought about doing another superhero. He offered to 'take a crack' at the business again, if I would come up with an idea for a new character and a script.

"Jack Oleck, my brother-in-law, who had been the number one scriptwriter for Simon and Kirby since the early days of Young Romance, had time on his hands. Oleck always had time, even if he turned out a script seven days a week. As always, he was anxious to join in a new venture."

The first page of a Silver Spider script by Jack Oleck, discovered amongst papers in Joe Simon's apartment.

Simon's idea was for a character called "Spiderman", and he asked Oleck to come up with an origin. In Oleck's pitch, orphan Tommy Troy is adopted by a strange elderly couple and finds a strange ring in their attic. When he rubs the ring, a genie appears to offer one wish. Tommy wishes he were a superhero. Joe Simon changed the name to The Silver Spider and took Beck's sample pages to Harvey. Editor Sid Jacobson thought the pitch was "old-hat" and "a take-off on The Green Hornet", so the series didn't sell. Simon later revived the idea for Archie's Goldwater as The Fly.

The origin of the Silver Spider, created by Joe Simon and C.C. Beck, scripted by Jack Oleck and drawn by Beck. The concept failed to sell to Alfred Harvey in 1953 and was shelved immediately afterwards. Jack Kirby had no involvement.

In later years, particularly in a lengthy interview in The Comics Journal 134 (Feb 1990), Kirby would claim he and Joe Simon came up with the idea for Spider-Man, originally called The Silver Spider. It's possible that Kirby was misremembering his work with Joe Simon on The Fly as some kind of early pitch to Stan Lee for what became Spider-Man. And if that's not the case, then Kirby's claim to have had a hand in the creation of Spider-Man would have amounted to him pitching other people's work to Stan.

In any case, Simon & Kirby stopped working on the title after The Fly 4, and Kirby gave his full attention to freelancing for Marvel. The writing on The Fly was taken over by Robert Bernstein and the art fell to John Giunta and later John Rossenberger, seasoned professionals all. Bernstein had been a staple at DC, scripting many first and second tier characters, like Superman, Jimmy Olsen, Congorilla and Aquaman. Stan also gave him a shot at Marvel where he wrote stories for Thor (Journey into Mystery 92-96), Iron Man (Tales of Suspense 40-46) and Human Torch (Strange Tales 108-109), though I thought those issues were the dullest of the early runs. Lee must have agreed, because he took back the scripting on those titles and Bernstein was gone. Giunta was known primarily for inking Superboy, Jimmy Olsen and Wonder Woman stories for DC. Rosenberger had drawn romance stories for DC and mystery stories for ACG. The remainder of the run on Adventures of the Fly was unremarkable and the series was cancelled in 1964.

The other title in the Archie Adventure Series was The Adventures of the Jaguar. The character's origin was remarkably similar to The Fly's. Zoologist Ralph hardy finds a "nucleon energy" (that's magic) belt in a hidden temple in Peru and on putting it on, is tranformed into ... The Jaguar. As the Jaguar he has all the abilities of the animal kingdom, multiplied by a factor of a thousand. With stories again created by Bernstein and Rosenberger, the comics didn't set the world alight, but still managed to stay on the stands from September 1961 until the 15th issue in November 1963.

The Jaguar had an origin story that was suspiciously similar to that of The Fly's. Way too much reliance on magic artifacts and abilities that mimicked those of animals.

But in 1965, Archie publisher Goldwater thought he saw an opportunity. He had been watching the rise and rise of Stan Lee's Marvel Comics and figured, "How hard can it be?" He hired Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel to revamp all of his superhero properties into one line of comics, The Mighty Comics Group.

Starting with The Fly, Siegel morphed him into Fly Man and pitched the writing style as a bad pastiche of Stan Lee, mixed with the hokiness of the Batman TV show, albeit nearly a year before the Caped Crusader hit the airwaves. To further beef up the appeal, Siegel included additional superheroes teamed up to help Fly Man battle The Spider, including Golden Age MLJ characters The Comet and The Black Hood, as well as a revamped version of The Shield ... and of course Fly-Girl - not to be confused with the later dance troupe that shot Jennifer Lopez to fame. At the end of the story, the heroes wonder if they should form a super-team called The Mighty Crusaders and continue to fight crime.

Siegel's run on Fly Man was a pretty cynical attempt to ape the success of the superheroes in Stan Lee's Marvel Comics. Toward the end of the run, Archie Comics took to featuring the heroes in a corner box that was a bit too similar to the established Marvel trademark cover box.

Of course ... they did. So much so that as well as starring in Fly Man's comic, The Mighty Crusaders got their own title. As with the Fly Man stories, art was by Paul Reinman. Reinman's notable achievements were a long run as artist on the Golden Age Green Lantern character, then contributing art for the fantasy, war and western tales in Marvel pre-hero titles for years, at the same time as freelancing for ACG. Later, Reinman would ink Kirby's pencils on Fantastic Four 18, 19 & 21, Avengers 3 & 5 and X-Men 1-5.

The covers of the Archie Mighty Comics line went out of their way to look like they were published by Marvel. The story titles in particular tried to capture Stan's sense of melodrama.

To further ram home how hard Archie were trying to fool readers into thinking their comics were as good as Marvel's, they took the branding one step further and re-titled Fly Man "Mighty Comics Presents", making the books resemble Marvel's anthology titles Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish and Strange Tales, rotating the characters on the covers and even using a split cover on issue 42.

At the end of its run, the format of the final issue Mighty Crusaders changed to feature just the one character, foreshadowing the run of Mighty Comics Presents that followed right on its heels.

The trouble with the Mighty Comics Group was just ... their comics weren't very good. I remember reading a couple when they came out and even my 11 year old mind could figure out that this stuff was just a bad copy of Marvel Comics. And they've not stood the test of time very well, either.

To give you a taste, here's a bit from Mighty Comics Presents 40 (Nov 1966), with The Web battling Iron Fist. Who actually has iron fists. Made of iron. The Web is enjoying a good fight with his enemy Iron Fist for reasons that are never explained. Then, Iron Fist's costume goes out of control and he asks The Web to help him. Like they're suddenly best friends.

Pages 3, 4 and 6 from the first issue of Mighty Comics Presents.
Read the extract and make up your own mind.

Later, when the Web gets home, his wife Rosie gives him a hard time for dressing up in a superhero costume and fighting bad guys. We know she's called Rosie because the Web mentions her name in every speech balloon. The Web's civilian name, on the other hand, remains a mystery until page 7 (not ideal as this is the first issue), when Rosie finally calls him by name. When The Web (John Raymond, by the way) doesn't give up being a superhero, she leaves him. To get her to come back, he has to promise not to fight as The Web again.

Finally, Iron Fist attacks John and Rosie and The Web honours his promise to his wife. Iron Fist is so upset that The Web won't fight that he gives up being a super-villain and leaves.

All of this portrayed with horrendous dialogue by the legendary Jerry Siegel.

It's hard to imagine what Siegel was trying for. Funny? It really wasn't funny. Satire? Satire should be cleverer. Other than Paul Reinman's workmanlike art, there just doesn't seem to be any talent going into these stories. In fact, it's a bit sad to see the great Jerry Siegel - the guy who wrote Superman, for goodness' sake - reduced to this. It's a bit like watching Bela Lugosi in an Ed Wood movie.

Mercifully, John Goldwater cancelled the Mighty Comics series with issue 50, cover dated October 1967.

SOME KIND OF TOWERING ACHIEVEMENT

Wally Wood had contributed the pencil art for Marvel's Daredevil, issues 5-8, (and by definition the plotting/pacing) but had been unhappy about either Stan Lee criticising his storytelling or Stan having Wood plot the stories while Lee took the payment and the credit. I kind of lean more towards Wood's lack of ability to work from anything other than a full script (as he did at EC), as his storytelling on Daredevil was quite weak. I'd also add that I don't think that Wood, brilliant as he was at EC science fiction, was very good at superhero action. For issues 9-11 of Daredevil, Wood inked over Bob Powell pencils.

So, after exiting Marvel, for whatever reason, Wood immediately teamed up with Len Brown and established the Tower line of comics featuring newly-created superheroes in an attempt to do what Stan was doing back at Marvel.

Len Brown had been a creative editor at Topps Chewing Gum from about 1959. In 1962 inspired, legend has it, by Wally Wood's cover art for Weird Science 16, Brown pitched an idea for a set of cards that would depict the Martian invasion of Earth.

I liked the cover for Weird Science 16 so much that I asked artist John Ridgway to do a pastiche of it for the cover of Marvel UK's Transformers 2, when I was supervising editor on that title back in 1984.

Brown hired Wood to produce a series of concept sketches, Bob Powell to pencil the art for the cards and Norman Saunders to render the art in a fully painted style. The result was Mars Attacks, one of the most notorious of all trading cards sets. It's interesting to note that when Wood struggled to produce pages for Daredevil that matched Lee's expectations, Bob Powell was the artist drafted in to help out. It's not known whether this was Wood's doing rather than Lee's, but it was probably a match made in heaven given the artists' prior history on the Topps project.

The design influence of Wood's Weird Science cover can be seen on the design of the gum card Martians. The card set scandalised suburban America and Britain during the 1960s, due in no small part to Wood's subversive sense of anarchy.

Even before Wood left Daredevil, he was talking to Brown about a possible new series of comics. They'd first discussed the concept of a group of superheroes working together for a government organisation in 1964. A year later, with Wood already dissatisfied with the way things were going at Marvel, he asked Brown to write a 12-page outline for the series. "I submitted a Captain Thunderbolt story in which he fought a villain called Dynamo," recalled Brown. "I had always loved the old Phantom Empire serial with Gene Autry in the 1930s. I remembered that the Thunder Riders were agents of the evil queen in the serial. I loved the name, the Thunder Riders, so I recommended 'Thunder Agents' to Wally."

Wood had been casting around for a property he could offer to Tower Publications' managing editor Harry Shorten. Shorten had been an editor for Archie/MLJ during the 1940s and in the 1950s had started his own publishing company, producing television magazines. Shorten wanted Wood to be the editor for his new line of comics, but stressed that Wood would be strictly creative, and wouldn't have to do the boring officework part of the editor's role. When it became obvious that Wood couldn't handle the art by himself, Shorten brought in long-time Archie artist Samm Schwartz as a production editor to handle trafficking. Gil Kane, Steve Ditko, Reed Crandal, Chic Stone, Sal Trapani and others produced art and the series was off and running.

The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents title managed a respectable three year run, from Nov 1965 to Nov 1968, doing better than the Archie line of superheroes.

What set the Tower Comics apart from the beginning was that they were all 68-page, 25c books, which made them an attractive, if pricey, read. The core title was  T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, an anthology comic which featured Dynamo, NoMan, Menthor as well as the heroes fighting together as T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Two spin-off titles, Dynamo and NoMan, followed, but were short-lived. Tower also published some war, teen and funny animal titles, but I have no recollection of those at all.

With the cover of Dynamo 4, it's hard to tell whether Wood was being ironic or had just given up trying to think of new ideas. NoMan lasted just two issues and the other titles made little or no impact. The Tippy Teen title was very much an Archie knock-off, featuring art by Archie contributors Samm Schwartz and Dan DeCarlo.

I remember seeing the Tower comics at the time in 1965 and thinking that the art was nice but the stories were a bit boring. The scripts were written by Len Brown, Larry Ivie, Steve Skeates, Lou Silverstone, Bill Pearson and others. And none of these guys seemed to grasp what it was that made Lee's Marvel books different from the Competition, Distinguished or otherwise. The writing just has no pizzazz, no enthusiasm. It's hard to imagine anyone reading these stories and being entertained. I wasn't.

And I couldn't have been alone because after 1968. Tower Comics pretty much closed its doors and left the field to Marvel, DC and Charlton.

THE D LIST

In 1965, American Comics Group (ACG) decided that they too would have a crack at superheroes. The company had long published a handful of war, romance and mystery titles, but were best known for Adventures into the Unknown (1-174, Fall 1948 - Aug 1967, Forbidden Worlds (1-145, Jul/Aug 1951 - Aug 1967) and Unknown Worlds (1-57, Aug 1960 - Aug 1967).

Their first hero was Magicman, who appeared in Forbidden Worlds 125 (Jan/Feb 1965). As Tom Cargill, Magicman is the immortal son of the 18th Century magician Cagliostro and, joining the army to fight in Viet Nam, uses his magical abilities to combat evil ... well, communists. The series was written by ACG editor Richard Hughes and had gorgeous, clean-line artwork by Pete Costanza, who had drawn many Captain Marvel stories during the preceding two decades.

The ACG heroes appeared at the beginning of 1965. Though not strictly a super-hero, Herbie's alter-ego The Fat Fury appeared around the same time as Magicman and Nemesis, so is not likely to have been just a coincidence.

ACG immediately followed Magicman with another occult hero, Nemesis. Debuting in Adventures into the Unknown 154 (Feb 1965), Nemesis was the spirit of detective Steve Flint who is murdered by the mob. Awaiting processing in the afterlife, Flint strikes a bargain with the Grim Reaper that allows him to return to Earth and avenge his own murder. A bit similar to DC's Spectre, really. The Magicman stories were also written by Richard Hughes and drawn in the main by Chic Stone.

For most of its existence, ACG comics had concentrated on horror and mystery stories. During the comics purge of the 1950s, ACG had survived by severely toning down the horror elements. They didn't dip a toe into superhero tales until 1965, which suggests Hughes, or more likely publisher Ben Sangor, had noted the success of Marvel's heroes and thought ACG should have some costumed heroes of its own. Hughes had created The Black Terror for Standard during the 1940s, along with Fighting Yank and Pyroman, so he had a track record. However, some ACG fans weren't happy with the move. In response to a reader complaining about the inclusion of a recurring character in Adventures into the Unknown 161, Hughes replied that it was "simply a matter of business. The popularity of costume heroes was such that we just had to go in for them to some extent ... our readers were demanding them."

DC had been publishing superheroes continuously since Action Comics 1, so it's unlikely Hughes is referring to the popularity of Superman and Batman, which at this point was in decline. Yet if it was Marvel who'd inspired him to create Nemesis and Magicman, why do the ACG scripts read more like DC material than like Lee's hip, informal yarns? Tellingly, after the cancellation of its titles and the closure of ACG in 1967, Hughes went on to script Jimmy Olsen and Hawkman for DC.

I think if Hughes had been savvier, he could have used Magicman to take some kind of stance on the Viet Nam conflict, which formed a background for the character's stories. Using the setting as a kind of Hogan's Heroes comedy scenario is a missed opportunity at best, and faintly offensive at worst.

DELL'S KEY WASN'T SO GOLDEN, EITHER

The other player that tried to muscle in on Marvel's (and to an extent DC's) turf was comics giant Dell. Founder George Delacorte had been there for the birth of the American comic book. When he collected a bunch of newspaper comic strips and put them into the first recognisable comic book, The Funnies, in 1933, he created an entire industry. In later years, Dell concentrated on licensed material, publishing huge amounts of Disney and Warner Bros material from their animated cartoons, along with iconic fictional characters from pulps and radio, like Tarzan, Lone Ranger and Zorro. Their tv tie-ins were legendary and many cult tv shows had a Dell comic - Man from U.N.C.L.E, Star Trek and Twilight Zone to name just three.

And their own originated characters enjoyed massive sales. Turok Son of Stone (a native American adventure book) outsold most DC titles during the early 1960s.

But when it came to superheroes, Dell didn't enjoy such a sparkling success. Their first forays into super-powered shennanigans were bland enough ... Nukla made his first appearance in late-1965 and Superheroes almost a year and a half later in early-1967.

Nukla was really CIA spy and pilot Matthew Gibbs. While flying a mission over Communist China (surely a breach of some kind of international protocol), his plane is fired upon by the Chinese military and is instantly vaporised by the resulting nuclear explosion. We might argue that it serves him right, but he does gain the ability to reassemble his body through sheer force of will and can now perform amazing nuclear-powered deeds, provided he can first de-materialise his body into an intangible nuclear cloud. To be fair, Nukla wasn't terrible. But it wasn't great either. A bit like Captain Atom, without the great Steve Ditko artwork.

The Superheroes featured a team called The Fab Four (familiar, much?), teens who find themselves able to transfer their minds into four super-powered androids - El (laser, infra-red and x-ray powers), Polymer Polly (speed and heat resistance), Hy (hypersonics) and Crispy (cryogenics). Like Nukla, Superheroes was written by Joe Gill and drawn by Sal Trapani. But where Trapani's art on Nukla is neat and ordered, similar to the DC comics by Gil Kane and Infantino, the art on Superheroes is chaotic and messy. It looks to me like Trapani was trying to emulate the dynamic layouts of the Marvel comics but not quite pulling it off ...

Trapani was the brother-in-law of longtime Charlton inker and editor Dick Giordano, drawing science fiction strips for Charlton during the 1950s. In the 1960s, he provided art for ACG and Warren, and moved to DC, along with Giordano in the 1970s, finally fetching up as an inker at Marvel during the 1980s.

Nukla isn't an especially bad comic ... it just isn't very good, either. The Superheroes, on the other hand, defies description of just how awful it is. And that's being kind.

Joe Gill had enjoyed a long stint at Charlton Comics, where he'd co-created Captain Atom, Peacemaker and Judomaster. Credited by Mark Evanier as probably the most prolific scripter in comics, Joe Gill began by scripting Captain America after the departure of Simon & Kirby from Timely in 1942 and continued writing western and teen stories until around 1948, when the industry went into a post-war downturn. Gill landed at Charlton and worked there almost exclusively right through till the 1970s. He also did much colouring work for Charlton.

As bad as these Dell superhero titles were, they looked like literary gold compared to the next adventure offerings from the company. Dracula, Werewolf and Frankenstein were an attempt by Dell to turn the Universal Monsters into superheroes. It didn't work.

With scripts by Don Segall and art by Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallirico, these superhero adventure stories were cringingly bad, both in concept and execution.

Just when you think it can't get any worse ... Dell tries to turn the Universal movie monsters into superheroes.

Dracula was a modern-day descendent of the original Count Dracula, researching into a cure for brain damage using bat blood. Exposure to his experimental serum gives him bat-like abilities and he moves to America where he adopts the secret identity of Al U. Card. See what they did, there? Incredibly, even though Dracula lasted just three issues, Dell thought it was a good idea to reprint the entire series in 1972. I don't think it would have sold any better than it had in 1967. It's pretty inept stuff, even if Dell were aiming it at non-discerning eight year olds.

Frankenstein was created in 1866 by a scientist known only as The Doctor, The Monster has superior intellect and the strength of 50 men. He lies dormant for 100 years below a castle outside Metropole City, until awoken by a convenient lightning bolt. To disguise his monstrous appearance Frankenstein puts on a rubber facemask and takes the name Frank Stone (sigh!)

Werewolf has Major Wiley Wolf (honest, I'm not making this up) crashing his aircraft in the Arctic Circle, developing amnesia and becoming like a wild animal, as he lives with a pack of wolves for six months in the Canadian wilderness. After being rescued, he resigns from the Air Force and joins the CIA, who train him to the peak of physical perfection and ... It's no use. I can't go on.

Don Segall had written for DC and Tower Comics was probably best known as the co-creator, with Steve Ditko, of The Creeper. By the 1970s, he'd moved into television, where he enjoyed a similar level of success as a writer and producer, contributing single scripts to shows like Diff'rent Strokes and Love Boat. Fraccio and Tallirico were a long-time double act who frequently worked under the collective name of Tony Williamson or Williamsune and enjoyed a long stint at Charlton Comics and later at Warren, contributing art for Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella. Their art was never great and they never aspired to be anything other than jobbing artists who would deliver competent work - when circumstances allowed - on time for a reasonable rate.

After the failure of these books, Dell pretty much stuck to its core strength of movie, cartoon and tv tie-ins until closing its doors in 1973.

WHAT IS SO HARD?

It's a good deal easier to figure it out with the benefit of hindsight, but it's still pretty incredible that so many smart, experienced publishing people were unable to see the obvious. The secret of Marvel's success in the 1960s wasn't really a secret at all. Stan Lee put it all out there on show, so with a little bit of thought, anyone could figure it out.

It wasn't just putting an eye-catching branding idea on the cover. Yes, Marvel had the trademark corner box on the cover ... but so did Mighty Comics, and look what happened to them. DC Comics tried their own version with the Go-Go Checks. But if that's the only change you're going to make, then that's not going to alter the direction of your sales figures. 

It wasn't just publishing stories where the character had a glib line in dialogue. True, DC characters all talked like your humourless and slightly boring uncle, but Archie tried jokey dialogue with their Fly Man and Mighty Crusaders comics (admittedly bad jokey dialogue) and that didn't work either. 

And it wasn't Jack Kirby alone. DC had had Jack Kirby both before and after Marvel - his runs on Green Arrow and Challengers hadn't been tours de force of sales and read just like any other DC comics of the time. And don't get me started on the "Fourth World" stuff. I wasn't a fan at the time, and re-reading those books more recently confirmed my worst fears. No matter what Jack claimed ... he couldn't write. I love him to bits as an artist and an ideas man, but a writer he was not. And in case you think it was the DC editors holding him back, just look at those early Archie Adventure Comics with his legendary partner Joe Simon.

No, what made Marvel Comics special was the Voice that Stan Lee brought to them. It was the way his characters talked, each with his own personality. Even if you couldn't see the pictures, you'd be able to tell if it was The Thing or Spider-Man speaking. It was also the way his characters reacted to the extraordinary circumstances they found themselves in - mostly with shock and surprise, just like we would if it were us. Even the innocent bystanders in Marvel comics often refuse to believe what was right in front of their eyes, claiming that an invasion of New York by Galactus must be some kind of advertising stunt, which is exactly how people in the real world would react.

And, as I've covered in detail in other entries in this blog, Stan sought to extend that real world informality to his letters pages and his Bullpen Bulletins.

It was all those factors, working together, that separated Marvel from DC, ACG, Archie and Dell. And it was the fact that Stan had talent as a writer, and had his characters drive the plots, that made his stories speak to the readers in a way they could relate to. Every other superhero series I've looked at in this entry did exactly the opposite. Contemporary comic characters like The Web, Superman and Dracula all sounded pretty much the same - no personality, no unique voice, no characterisation - and existed only because of the demands of the plot.

Today comic readers take characterisation for granted. Customers expect a much higher standard of writing than the companies were prepared (or able to) to offer during the formative years of the 1960s. So today, it's not uncommon to see writers of the caliber of Joss Whedon, Michael J Straczynski and Kevin Smith writing scripts for comics. But back then, there was only Stan, trying to raise the standards, all by himself. It just took the industry a decade to catch up with him, as first Roy Thomas, then other decent writers like Len Wein, Marv Wolfman and Tony Isabella filtered into the business, all heavily influenced by the work of Stan Lee.

Next: Superheroes on the 1960s screen