The Best Marvel Annual: Fantastic Four 1

MY ALL-TIME FAVOURITE COMIC ANNUAL IS AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL 1, which I covered here nine years ago. But running it a close second is the first Fantastic Four Annual.

My second favourite Marvel Comics annual.

On the newsstands in the U.S. on 3 Sep 1963, this is Marvel's fifth 25-cent annual (tying with Patsy and Hedy Annual 1) although, as noted in my earlier post, DC had been pumping out reprint 25-centers from mid-1960 onwards. It features the sixth Silver Age appearance of Namor the Sub-Mariner in an epic-length clash with the entire human race, and is almost all-new material.

Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner was reintroduced during the Silver Age in Fantastic Four 4 (May 1962), then returned in issues 6 (Sep 1962), 9 (Dec 1962) and 14 (May 1963), making a sidebar appearance in Strange Tales 107 (Apr 1963) along the way.

It's interesting that editor Stan Lee decided to go with the Sub-Mariner for the first FF annual rather than Doctor Doom (who would be the antagonist for the following year's annual) but it's likely that Stan felt Namor's backstory allowed for more spectacle than the still under-developed Doctor Doom.

With much pageant and heraldry, Namor arrives in the newly-restored Atlantis for his own coronation, though we never get to find out just how The Sub-Mariner was able to track down his people.

And spectacular it is, opening with a vista of the restored kingdom of Atlantis, and its blue-skinned inhabitants back in their rightful abode. But wait ... hasn't Namor been searching for his lost people since Fantastic Four 4? Yet Stan and Jack choose to gloss over the reunion, merely mentioning it in a caption box on page 2 - "The mighty Sub-Mariner has finally found his long-lost undersea kingdom." It's a bit of a missed opportunity, but I can see why Jack would want to get straight into the action.

Probably Jack Kirby's first double page spread for Marvel Comics, the two pages look to have been drawn separately, as they don't quite match up in the way a single drawing would. Pretty cool all the same.

So, in order to demonstrate himself worthy to lead the Atlanteans in their battle against the surface people, Namor incites some of his pet sea monsters to start harassing the shipping lanes of the Atlantic. By sheer coincidence, it's exactly at this time that Reed Richards decides the team needs a holiday, and books them on to a restful sea cruise, with one eye on investigating the strange goings on across the world's oceans.

Investigating the appearance of sea monsters, the FF's rowing boat is captured inside an organic air-sac and dragged to the bottom of the ocean. If only Sue Storm had been able to throw a force field round them ... but she wouldn't get that power until Fantastic Four 22 (Jan 1964).

We don't have to wait long until the monsters show up and the FF take to a small boat to investigate. This was one of the problems I have with Jack's plotting details. Nobody in their right mind would go after a sea monster in a rowing boat ... except maybe for Captain Ahab ... oh, wait. Of course, they're easily captured by Namor, who simply insists they present his demands to the United Nations and he'll leave the surface people alone. And with that, he uses one of his implausible undersea contraptions to hurl them back to New York.

The origin sequence, narrated by "Dr G W Falton", is the first mention in the Marvel Age of the idea that Namor is a mutant. I'd argue against that, as Namor is the  result of combining two different sets of genes, rather than having slightly altered DNA to his parents.

Reed loses no time in setting up a special session at the UN and invited speaker Dr G. W. Falton offers a capsule history of Atlantis and the origin of the Sub-Mariner. Quite how he knows so much about Namor and his people isn't called into question. So it's not a massive surprise when the true identity of Dr Falton is revealed.

If Reed's supposed to be able to squeeze his entire body through the tiniest pinhole, I'm not convinced now that heavy equipment falling on him would hurt him in any way. A No-Prize is on offer if you can explain it to me.

Prince Namor must have been expecting the meeting at the UN to go badly, as he has his troops standing by in New York harbour for immediate deployment. With the element of surprise it's only a matters of hours before the Atlanteans are in control of Manhattan. And before the Fantastic Four can formulate an effective response, Reed is injured while preparing a device to combat Namor and his troops. Luckily, Reed just about managed to complete the device and Ben and Johnny know where the On switch is.

With his armies driven back into the sea, Namor tries to take on the FF alone. But even his power isn't enough and he resorts to escape instead, taking Sue Storm with him. 

The effect is immediate and devastating. Namor's troops are deprived of their life-giving water and are forced to abandon the battle and return to the sea. Now the FF just have The Sub-Mariner himself to deal with. Taking the fight to the Baxter Building, Namor goes a few rounds with the FF members until, outclassed, he's also forced to flee back to open waters, but he takes a hostage with him. Quite literally hot on his heels, The Human Torch gives chase while Ben and Reed get the experimental U-Car ready to follow.

The fighting is brought to a halt when the Fantastic Three and Namor realise that Sue Storm's life is in danger.

While Namor battles the FF above the waves, below aboard the Atlantean flagship, Sue Storm's presence has sparked rivalries and jealousies. Lady Dorma, realising that Namor and Sue have feelings each other floods the ship with seawater. Interestingly, it's Warlord Krang who seems concerned for Sue's safety. By the time the Atlanteans next appeared (in Fantastic Four 33, Dec 1964), Dorma is a more sympathetic character.

The various plotlines are wrapped up in a very hurried fashion, as though Jack Kirby saw the 37th page cantering up and had to squeeze what should have been four or five pages into two. The story might have been better served by dropping a couple of the pinups.

Not surprisingly, Sue almost drowns unnoticed by the combatants above, until Ben spots her trapped in kelp at the seabed. Their grudge-fest momentarily forgotten, the two combine forces to free The Invisible Girl and bring her to the surface. Over the FF's objections, The Sub-Mariner orders his people off the Atlantean flagship and hastens to deliver Sue Storm to a New York hospital for the proper medical attention. And that's pretty much it.

What seemed at the time like an epic, widescreen spectacular, doesn't seem to hold up quite so well today. With my reading of it for this blog entry, it definitely has Jack Kirby's plotting fingerprints all over it and isn't terribly well-structured.

Breaking it down, it goes like this:

Scene 1 - Namor in a restored Atlantis (4 pgs)

Scene 2 - Horseplay in the Baxter Building, Reed mentions the sea monster sightings (4 pgs)

Scene 3 - The FF take a cruise, see the Monsters, take off after them in rowboat (2 pgs)

Scene 4 - FF Captured by Namor, who orders them to present his demands to the UN, then frees them (3 pgs)

Scene 5 - At the UN, expert "G W Falton" lectures on the origins of Namor and Atlantis and is revealed to be Namor (6 pgs)

Scene 6 - Namor's army invades and takes NY, Reed uses a super weapon to drive them back to the sea (6 pgs)

Scene 7 - Now alone, Namor grabs Sue and returns to Atlantis (2 pgs)

Scene 8 - FF follow and give battle, Sue is injured (7 pgs)

Scene 9 - Namor rushes Sue to NY for medical treatment but is gone by the time Reed catches up (3 pgs)

It's only my opinion, but I think Scenes 3 and 4 just slow the story down. I'd rather have seen the FF investigating in the Fantastic-Car, perhaps having a battle with one of the sea monsters. As it is Namor captures them a bit easily, and then releases them with a message for the UN. Why not just address the UN himself? Why the folderol of posing as an "eminent" expert (who no one's heard of) to tell the story of Atlantis? It would have been more powerful if Namor had told it as himself. And Scene 9 could have used another couple of pages to show us that Namor has saved Sue Storm but lost his kingdom, rather than glossing over that big event in a caption box.

I think Stan left Jack too much on his own with this one, and by the time the art showed up in the Bullpen, it was too late for do-overs.

THE EXTRAS

One of the funnest parts of these old Silver Age annuals is the extras Stan would throw in, something we never got in the DC Annuals. And this one is no exception. We get 11 pinups of old foes, three pages explaining the FF's powers and a schematic of the Baxter Building, a bonus retelling of Spider-Man meeting the Fantastic Four from Amazing Spider-Man 1, all rounded out with the first 13 pages of Fantastic Four 1 for any latecomers.

As a listing of what had gone before, these pinups might be interesting to some newer readers, but they don't give much insight into what any of these foes were capable of ... they don't tell the story. An opportunity missed. Click to enlarge.

The pinups are okay, but look a bit like Jack Kirby knocked them off in a single day. I was never the sort of kid who ripped out pinups and stuck them on the wall. Also the pinups here didn't all have ads on the other side, so you'd be faced with some tough choices about which side to display.

What struck me in looking at this handy-dandy guide to the Fantastic Four and their skyscraper HQ is how the characters and set up owe quite a bit to the team dynamics of the pulp characters Doc Savage and his team.

Much more entertaining to me were the two pages explaining the powers of the Fantastic Four and the guide to the Baxter Building. What did occur to me when revisiting these pages was just how much the FF draws upon Doc Savage and his band for inspiration. It's especially apparent when you compare the Baxter Building to Doc's HQ on the 86th floor of "Manhattan's tallest building", which also had express elevators, science labs, a library and living quarters.

While Doc Savage had other companions he relied on - Renny, Johnny and Long Tom - Ham and Monk were by far the most popular, constantly insulting and playing tricks on each other. Though Pat was often seen as a "pest" by Doc, she was every bit as capable as the others.

It's easy to match scientific genius/inventor Reed Richards to Doc Savage. Doc's most popular companions, Monk and Ham, appeared in more adventures than any other team members and just like Ben and Johnny, were constantly "friendly feuding". Pat Savage was Doc's cousin and often invited herself along on Doc's adventures. Both Ham and Monk thought she was a "peach", though Doc felt that dangerous adventures were no pastime for a female.

The Kult of Kirby have long claimed that the case for Jack being the sole creator of the FF can be proved by how similar The Fantastic Four are to Challengers of the Unknown (actually a Simon & Kirby creation). In my view the characterisations of Reed Richards' band of heroes are much closer to Doc Savage's team, which neither Stan nor Jack have claimed any close affinity to.

In Amazing Spider-Man 1, the second story pit Spidey against the forgettable Chameleon. But in there somewhere, he tried to apply for membership in the FF ... and we all know how that turned out.

Another interesting feature is this annual was a re-telling of the FF's first encounter with Spider-Man, which originally happened in the first issue of Amazing Spider-Man (Mar 1963), occupied barely three pages.

Rather than simply re-using some of the panels from Amazing Spider-Man 1, Kirby redrew almost exact copies of much of the art, reworked slightly to fit in to the expanded continuity.

For the Annual, Stan and Jack expanded the scene to six pages and Ditko was drafted in as inker to give the art some visual continuity, probably because Kirby's Spider-Man was never terribly convincing.

While Ditko's inking helps with the Spider-Man figures, I don't think his work over Kirby's pencils is especially good. He did a better job on FF 13 a few months earlier, but still wasn't getting The Thing's hide right.

I had speculated in an earlier blog entry that this retelling was a substitute for another six-page Spider-Man/Human Torch encounter which ended up in Amazing Spider-Man 8 (Jan 1964). But in retrospect, this no longer seems plausible. The key evidence is the Job Numbers, which I admit I never thought to check before.

The Job Number for the six-page "The Fabulous Fantastic Four Meet Spider-Man" in the FF Annual is X-344. This is consistent with the other Job Numbers we can see in the Annual:

• X-324 - "The Sub-Mariner vs the Human Race", main story
• X-343 - Questions and Answers About the Fantastic Four
• X-206 - The Mad Thinker Pinup

The story in Amazing Spider-Man 8, "Spider-Man Tackles The Torch" was likely created some considerable time later, as its Job Number is X-529.

The Mad Thinker pinup Job Number is quite a bit adrift from the others, and was probably created right after Kirby finished up on Fantastic Four 15 ("The Fantastic Four Battle The Mad Thinker and his Android of Doom", Jun 1963), as that story has a Job Number of X-191, and several weeks before he started on the FF Annual in earnest. I note that the Job Number on Fantastic Four 17 (Aug 1963) is X-315, and for Fantastic Four 18 (Sep 1963) it's X-361, so Kirby would handed in the art for the FF Annual in right between those two FF issues.

And finally, the reprint of the first 13 pages of Fantastic Four 1. Except that it's not just a reprint. As often happened with the evolving appearances of characters in the Marvel Silver Age, just doing a straight reprint would probably have confused readers a little.

Above left: Dragoom from Strange Tales 76. Centre: The Human Torch as he appeared in the original printing of Fantastic Four 1. Above right: The Torch as depicted - altered by Sol Brodsky - in the reprint of FF1 published in FF Annual 1.

Back in Fantastic Four 1, The Human Torch was a shapeless mass of flame, not unlike the fire creature "Dragoom" in Strange Tales 76 (Aug 1960). Kirby had probably drawn him this way to look less like the original Human Torch from the 1940s' Timely Comics. But as the months went by, the look of Johnny Storm's flaming alter-ego changed quite quickly and by FF3 had become the red humanoid figure we're most familiar with. At the time Fantastic Four Annual 1 was published, the main FF title was already up to issue 17, and if Johnny's flame form had been left as is, most readers would be wondering who the fiery guy was and what happened to Johnny.

EDIT: Kid Robson sent me some scans from the first issue of Fantastic Four 1, so I've taken a moment to edit them together so you can directly compare the other alterations that were made to the reprint in FF Annual 1.

Though it's not the most significant change, Marvel's production department altered the masthead of page 1 to remove the inset pictures of the FF and replace them with giant lettering.

A little more interestingly, you can see here how Sol Brodsky (and his team if he had one at this time) made changes to reduce the height of Ben Grimm and to make Reed a little fuller in the face, to match their appearances in later FF stories.

The Thing's stature is considerably reduced in the reprint, making him more like six foot tall (noticeably shorter than The Hulk during the same period). And in the panel on the right, Reed's face has been made less gaunt. Yet weirdly, Ben is the same height as Reed and Johnny in FF1 and only Sue's height has been increased in the reprint.

And here's another image of the Fantastic Four, from both issue 1 and the altered version from the Annual, where the art changes on Reed are more apparent.

So in Fantastic Four 1, Reed was depicted as thin in the face and with more grey hair. In the altered reprint, Brodsky has filled out Reed's features and toned down the grey above his ears.

Coming back and looking over Fantastic Four Annual 1 with fresh eyes, I think I may have been swayed by other historians in my assessment of it. I still don't think it's as good as Amazing Spider-Man Annual 1 (Sep 1964), and Fantastic Four Annual 3 (Sep 1965) might actually be more fun. As spectacular as the 37-page epic is, it's not without its problems in pacing and general storytelling. And the pinups, inked for the most part by Kirby himself, seem rushed and lacking in detail, though none of that would have bothered me when I first saw this annual around 1966.

The three other Marvel Annuals for 1963 - Millie was all new material; Strange Tales Annual 2 had an 18-page Torch/Spidey story pencilled by Kirby and the Patsy and Hedy Annual was all reprint, still a lot to manage on top of the regular titles.

That said, we should also consider what else was going on in 1963, a massive expansion year for the burgeoning Marvel Comics. Around the same time that Jack Kirby was working on the FF Annual, he was also crafting the first issues of The Avengers and The X-Men, issue 18 of Fantastic Four, Sgt Fury 3 and the Human Torch/Spider-Man cross-over for Strange Tales Annual 2. And although Stan had given him some respite by taking him off the Thor strip in Journey into Mystery for the mid-part of 1963, he still was expected to draw covers for that title, along with Kid Colt Outlaw, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish and Two-Gun Kid. So, yes, some aspects of the Fantastic Four Annual may have looked a bit rushed, but not without good reason.

I still have a couple more Annuals on my list to look at, but that can wait until another time.

Next: Prototype, Schmototype

Collectors' Item Classics from Marvel

BACK IN 1981 I SOLD ALL MY MARVELS. It was for a good reason, though I won't go into that here. But I cannily felt that surely the worth of all this fading newsprint couldn't possibly go any higher and I divested my holdings.

My entire comics collection - I had just about every Marvel from 1959, apart from Fantastic Four 1 - was put under the figurative hammer for whatever I could get for it. For my Amazing Fantasy 15 I got £75. It's an interesting story how I acquired that comic. 

This is all I have left of my original Marvel Comics collection - a few blurry pictures taken while I was trying to figure out how to use a new camera I had. The Hulk 1 was especially tatty, as I'd picked it up in a second hand shop about twelve years earlier.

Back in 1971, I'd been fortunate enough to go on a school trip to the United States. While on a homestay in Connecticut, I chanced across a small store with a single comics spinner rack. All they had was about ten copies of Conan the Barbarian 1 (Oct 1970). Why it was still sitting on the spinner rack almost a year after its release is anyone's guess. I'd seen DC's Anthro a couple of years earlier and decided I didn't like "caveman comics" so I bought just the one copy of Conan the Barbarian 1. 

For some reason, my addled teenage brain thought that Marvel's Conan the Barbarian was the same genre of comic as DC's Anthro. I didn't really like stories about cavemen and mammoths so I passed up the chance of ten copies of Conan 1 for 15 cents a piece at the time.

A few years later, just as the fanzine scene was getting underway in the UK, I placed an ad in Doug Gifford's Thing magazine, looking to plug the gaps in my Silver Age Marvel collection and offered up for trade my near-mint Conan 1, still a pretty rare comic in the UK at the time. Someone offered me a vg copy of Amazing Fantasy 15, so I took the deal.

Anyhow, during the 1990s, I was working at 2000AD - headquartered in the Bloomsbury area of central London. Not far away was GOSH Comics, so I'd wander down there in my lunch hour to pick up my copy of Comics International and to have a prowl through the inexpensive back issues on offer. I started amassing a neat collection of Charlton comics, precisely because they were cheap and had cool, neglected characters like Captain Atom and Blue Beetle, all drawn by Steve Ditko.

During my time on 2000AD, I cultivated a taste for quirky, non-corporate comics. Charltons were definitely quirky and, at that time, cheap - they could be picked up for about £3.50 each. Pretty quickly, I had complete runs of Captain Atom and Frank MacLaughlin's JudoMaster. Still love that costume.

Because I'd become interested in Martial arts during those years, I also started to pick up copies of Charlton's JudoMaster. Then it wasn't long before I acquired a set of Paul Gulacy's run on Marvel's Master of Kung Fu. I was in full-on collecting mode again. At the time, I didn't think it was feasible to go after Marvel Silver Age comics as they had increased mightily in value in the twelve years since I'd sold my original collection. So I started seeking out period reprints of those comics ... and of course, my eye first fell on Marvel Tales and Marvel Collectors' Item Classics.

MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM TALES

In the very early 1960s, DC's Dark Overlord Mort Weisinger hit on the idea of reprinting old stories in a bumper-sized comic and selling it for more than double the price of a regular comic. With no expenditure on new material, these comics must have been a cash-cow for DC. So it wasn't long before Marvel's Publisher Martin Goodman thought of the same idea himself.

The earliest of Marvel's reprint 25c comics aped the style of the DC Annuals - composite covers featuring scenes from the stories inside. But where the DC books were 80 pages with no ads, Marvel's were 72 pages with ads. Not content with just chiselling the creative people who worked for Marvel, Goodman also chiselled his customers.

I had missed the earliest of the Marvel 25c comics, so Marvel Tales Annual 1 (1964) - with its cover-to-cover origin stories - was always one that I had coveted back in the day. I wouldn't track down a copy until around 1990.

But in 1965 it had become apparent to Goodman and his editor Stan Lee that many Marvel fans wanted to read the earlier stories they'd missed. The steady stream of requests for back issues must have been some sort of a clue, so in 1965, Stan made more of a concerted effort to make the formative adventures of Marvel's key characters available ... and make some easy money for Marvel in the process.

The second Marvel Tales reprinted the first issues of The Avengers and The X-Men. The first issue of MCIC re-presented Fantastic Four 2 and Amazing Spider-Man 3. The Journey into Mystery Annual contained an all new Thor story and reprinted JiM 85, 93, 95 and 97.

A second Marvel Tales Annual came out, along with a Journey into Mystery Annual. And curiously, Stan added Marvel Collectors' Item Classics to the lineup - this one positioned as a "King-Size Bullpen Book" and with a decidedly different cover style. Instead of scenes from the stories inside, MCIC featured the actual covers of the interior reprints. From that point on, that would be the style for the next couple of years of Marvel's main reprint books.

I had owned most of these reprint collections first time around, but in the 1990s, they were an ideal resource for me to see many of my favourite stories, more or less exactly as they originally appeared. I've not done a side-by-side comparison, but I don't recall these early Marvel Tales and MCIC reprints as having any obvious changes from the originals ... like lettering corrections or different colour schemes.

But as I gathered more and more of these issues, I started noticing that they had slowly begun to deviate from just reprinting the original comics. At first it was the inclusion of the occasional unpublished pinup (as detailed in my last blog entry). Then, for reasons lost in the mists of time, the reprint's original cover artwork was replaced with new art.

The first issue this happened with was Marvel Tales 12 (Jan 1968). Just an issue before, the cover format of Marvel Tales had changed to focus on the original Amazing Spider-Man cover art by Steve Ditko. But for whatever reason, Stan didn't think Ditko cover for ASM17 was suitable, so had the art department (ie, John Verpoorten, according to GCD) put together an amalgam of two different covers.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the cover art on Amazing Spider-Man 17, although you might argue that the Spidey figure is a little small. Nonetheless, Stan (or possibly Roy) ordered that the art department fudge together a new cover illo for Marvel Tales 12 by enlarging the Spider-Man image and dropping in the Green Goblin from ASM39. I'm not entirely sure it works, are you?

For the next couple of years, Marvel Tales trundled along, reproducing the original Steve Ditko Spider-Man covers, although with some alterations to fit the 25c book's different cover format. Then, beginning with the May 1970 issue, Marvel Tales inexplicably ran a series of new covers.

In the middle of 1970, Marvel Tales featured a short run of new covers by Marie Severin - apart from issue 29, which had art by Sal Buscema. No one knows why this came about. With Marvel Tales 30, the covers returned to using the original Romita drawn covers from Amazing Spider-Man.

Then it was back to reprints as usual ... quite what motivated this isn't clear. There's certainly nothing wrong with the Ditko covers that go with the stories. Unless someone thought that the older Ditko art didn't reflect the then-contemporary look of the character under John Romita. In which case, it'd have been nice to have new John Romita covers for those issues. In case you might find it useful, here's a handy-dandy guide to what was reprinted in the first few issues of Marvel Tales ...

	Amazing Spider-Man	Thor (in Journey into Mystery)	Human Torch (in Strange Tales)	Ant-Man (in Astonish)
Marvel Tales 1
Marvel Tales 2
Marvel Tales 3	6	84	101	38
Marvel Tales 4	7	86	102	39
Marvel Tales 5	8	87	103	40
Marvel Tales 6	9	88	104
Marvel Tales 7	10	89	105
ASM Ann 3	11, 12
Marvel Tales 8	13	90	106
Marvel Tales 9	14	91	107
Marvel Tales 10	15	92	108

Marvel Collectors' Item Classics had a shorter run under that title than Marvel Tales. The four-miniature-cover covers ended with issue 11 and the title switched to reprinting the original Fantastic Four cover art as the main cover image. Except for issue 12 (Dec 1967), which had a weird hodge-podge of Kirby art drawn from various sources. Have fun trying to identify where they come from ...

This was the only issue of Marvel Collectors' Item Classics that didn't use original cover artwork from any of the reprinted comics inside - Fantastic Four 17, Iron Man from Suspense 52, Dr Strange from Strange Tales 121 and nine pages of Incredible Hulk 6.

With issue 22, Marvel Collectors' Item Classics drew to a close. It was just too much hard work to mention the comic by name, so Stan sensibly continued the numbering with the more modestly labelled Marvel's Greatest Comics, which sort of fitted with the top-line text on every Fantastic Four comic - "The World's Greatest Comics Magazine".

For the first four issues, Marvel's Greatest Comics just used the Kirby FF covers for the issues it was reprinting. Then - at around the same time that Marvel Tales briefly switched to putting new covers on the old reprints, MGC started the same practice. Starting with Marvel's Greatest Comics 27 (Mar 1970), we got new cover art by Jack Kirby for two issues (probably some of the last work he did for Marvel before departing for DC). Marvel Greatest Comics 29 (Dec 1970) was a bit of an anomaly, as it reprinted two out-of sequence FF issues - 12 and 31 - then it was back to the in-sequence Fantastic Four reprints with FF 37 and 38 behind an all-new Sal Buscema and Marie Severin cover. And for anyone interested, here's a run-down of which early Marvel issues were reprinted in the first 11 issues of Marvel Collectors' Item Classics (the ones with the tiny cover repros on the front).

	Fantastic Four	Amazing Spider-Man	Dr Strange (in Str. Tales)	Ant-Man (in Astonish)	Iron Man (in Suspense)	Hulk
FF Ann 1	1 (part)
MCIC 1	2	3		36
MCIC 2	3	4		37
MCIC 3	4		110		40	3
FF Annual 2	5
FF Annual 3	6
MCIC 4	7		111		41	4
MCIC 5	8		114		42	4
MCIC 6	9		116		43	5
MCIC 7	13		117		44	5
MCIC 8	10		118		45	2
FF Annual 3	11
MCIC 9	14		119		46	2
MCIC 10	15		Unpublished pinup		47	2
MCIC 11	16		120		51	6

I didn't collect Marvel Tales or Marvel's Greatest Comics much past the point where the cover price dropped to 20c and we got 36 pages instead of 68 ... or even 52. Even though this was the point where Roy Thomas again began commissioning new cover art for the reprint books.

The above Marvel's Greatest Comics covers are by Gil Kane (34), John Buscema (35), Sal Buscema (36) and Gil Kane (37). Not a bad artist among them. So how come their art just isn't as good as Jack Kirby's original covers?

Thinking about it now, it probably really did have something to do with bringing the look of the reprint titles in line with how the character's contemporary adventures looked under Marvel's new star artists John Romita and John Buscema. Yet even though these covers were by Marvel's best and brightest 1970s artists, they just didn't compare with the original covers drawn by Jack Kirby and John Romita five or six years earlier.

This batch of Marvel's Greatest Comics covers are by Sal Buscema (38), Jim Starlin (39), Sal Buscema (40) and Jim Starlin (41). I'll grudgingly admit I really like the Starlin art, but there was no way anyone was ever going to draw a better cover than Jack Kirby's original for Fantastic Four 51. Ever.

But don't take my word for it. Take a look for yourself. I've compiled the newly-drawn reprint books' covers alongside the original issues' covers. Try telling me the earlier artworks aren't more striking and impactful.

Meanwhile, over on Marvel Tales, the new cover art was supplied by Gil Kane (34 and 35), John Romita (36) and Sal Buscema (37). Seems that not even John Romita can match John Romita's original cover art from Amazing Spider-Man 51. I wonder why Marvel Tales missed out on reprinting Amazing Spider-Man 50?

Even stranger, the Marvel Tales issues were reprinting the John Romita era Spider-Man stories by this time. So I really can't see why you wouldn't use the original covers, as Romita was also still drawing covers for the 1972 era Amazing Spider-Man comics.

This final batch of four Marvel Tales reprints has covers by Sal Buscema (38), John Buscema (39) and Gil Kane (40 and 41). So it looks like John Romita had given up trying to compete with his own earlier work and left the field clear for others to flounder in. As much as I love Big John Buscema's work, it's just not a very good cover ...

Yet despite these minor carps, Marvel Tales and Marvel's Greatest Comics - along with their other reprint-y stablemates - offered me an terrific opportunity to have reading copies of all these classic Marvel stories at exceptionally cheap prices. No one really wanted this stuff during the 1990s and you could pick it up for pennies.

These days we have stacks of wonderful reprints of classic comics from just about every era in every high street bookshop, all printed on lavish glossy white paper.

But it's not the same, is it? These stories were meant to be read on newsprint and for the most part, the classic 1970s Marvel reprint books are your best opportunity to experience these stories properly ... without breaking the bank.

Looks like I'm all out of room for now, so I'll have to leave my look at the remaining Marvel reprint titles - Marvel Double Action, Triple Action and Super Action - for another time.

Next: Secret agents and super spies

Marvel's First Magazine - The Spectacular Spider-Man

MARVEL COMICS WAS NEVER Martin Goodman's primary publishing interest. He had started up in the 1930s as a magazine publisher after first working as a circulation manager at Eastern Distributing Corporation, under future Archie Comics founder Louis Silberkleit. 

When Eastern went out of business in 1932, Goodman joined several other investors, including Silberkleit, and founded Mutual Magazine Distributors as part owner, and was appointed editor of Mutual's sister company, Newsstand Publications Inc. Goodman's first publication for Newsstand was Western Supernovel Magazine, cover dated May 1933. The second issue was re-titled Complete Western Book Magazine, dated just two months later. The new publishing company quickly added further pulp magazines to its lineup, including All Star Adventure Fiction, Mystery Tales, Real Sports, Star Detective, the science fiction magazine Marvel Science Stories and the jungle-adventure Tarzan knock-off Ka-Zar.

Martin Goodman quickly established his publishing philosophy - look at the newsstands, see what other houses were publishing then launch a copy. Rinse, repeat.

In 1934, Mutual filed for bankruptcy, leaving Newsstand Publications in the lurch, Newsstand was unable to pay its printers and the company's assets were seized. Silberkleit decided it was prudent to abandon ship, but Goodman convinced the printers they'd have a better chance of getting their money if they allowed Newsstand to continue trading. Now as the sole owner, Goodman pulled the company back into profitability, and within a couple of years had moved to better offices in uptown Manhattan. "If you get a title that catches on," he told the trade magazine Literary Digest, "add a few more, and you're in for a nice profit." With Goodman, it was all about providing disposable entertainment as cheaply (to him) as possible. "Fans aren't interested in quality," he concluded. 

Goodman's company didn't really have an identity. He'd publish each title under a different company name - Margood Publishing Corp, Marjean Magazine Corp and so on. That way, he could make sure that if one title ran into trouble, its misfortunes couldn't affect the rest of his publishing line. It was a practice he'd continue well into the 1960s.

As the 1930s wore on, sales of the fiction pulps were declining and there was a new fad gaining traction with kids at the newsstands ... comic books. National were having a great success with their costumed characters Superman and Batman, and Goodman, ever willing to jump on a bandwagon, contacted comic strip packager Funnies Inc and had them put together material for a 64 page book, Marvel Comics. The comic's first printing, cover dated Oct 1939 sold out its 80,000 print run in a week. Goodman immediately reprinted Marvel Comics 1 with "Nov" overprinted on the cover and this time sold out the 800,000 print run almost as quickly. 

Martin Goodman's first foray into comics, Marvel Comics 1, was a ripping success, and continued on a monthly schedule as Marvel Mystery Comics from issue 2. The publisher in the imprint was given as "Timely Comics" though that identifier would rarely appear on any of Goodman's comic covers.

With a major hit on his hands, Goodman then quickly lured Funnies Inc editor Joe Simon away and set up what would come to be called Timely Comics. Daring Mystery Comics 1 (Jan 1940) quickly followed, then the Jack Kirby-drawn one-shot Red Raven Comics 1 (Aug 1940), which flopped and was quickly re-tooled as Human Torch 2 (Fall 1940).

With Marvel (Mystery) Comics a success, Goodman followed up as quickly as he could, according to his own established publishing philosophy, with Daring Mystery Comics and Red Raven, which morphed into a solo title for The Human Torch with issue 2.

Yet for all the initial success Goodman was having with his comic books, the pulp sales were in freefall, and Goodman began to transform the magazine part of his business into a low-end, traditional magazine publisher, putting out puzzle books, sports and movie fan mags, cartoon digests and "men's interest" magazines.

Through the 1940s, Goodman lavished far more attention on his magazines, or "slicks" as they were referred to, which he saw as far more reputable than the comics. Yet most of those publications are now lost in the mists of history. It's been very difficult to uncover any information on these magazines, beyond their subject matter.

The first issue of Popular Digest was cover-dated September 1939, just one month ahead of Marvel Comics, and was published by Timely Publications. Coincidence? I think not.

One of his early magazines was a Readers' Digest knock-off called Popular Digest, the first issue of which was dated Sept 1939 and carried a strap-line of "Timely Topics Condensed" and was published by one of Goodman's shell-companies, Timely Publications, though the cover identifier Goodman was using around this time was Red Circle Magazines

But Goodman's most successful magazines - Stag and Male - were, ironically, a good deal less respectable than his comics line. 

The origins of Martin Goodman's Stag magazine began here in January 1942, with this adult cartoon magazine. However, this was nothing like Esquire magazine of the same period, so it seems likely that Goodman cancelled this after one issue and re-launched Stag as an Esquire clone the following month.

Stag had begun in 1942 in response to the far more successful (and still extant) Esquire magazine. Goodman was always one to follow trends rather than to create them (as documented in umpteen other posts on this blog) and launched his version Stag in direct response. Or rather almost. The first issue of Stag was more of a compilation of cartoons from other magazines, printed on bulky pulp-style paper. But the following month, Goodman transformed the magazine and tried to publish something closer to the formula of Esquire.

An editor called J. Alvin Kugelmass brought the idea of imitating Esquire magazine on a much lower budget to Goodman, and the publisher - ever vigilant for a bargain - jumped in with both feet.

Putting the two magazines side-by-side seems pretty damning. Though Stag was printed on much cheaper paper than Esquire, and used much lower profile contributors, there can be little doubt that Goodman was trying to cash in on the same market ... if I were less charitable, I might say he was trying to pass-off Stag as an Esquire stablemate.

Where Esquire had Vargas pinups, Stag used Peter Driben. Though I'm a fan of Driben's work - later made much more famous on tame 1940s and 1950s girlie mags like Titter and Wink - he's certainly not in the same class as Vargas.

But this new version of Stag didn't last either. After an internal scandal at Martin Goodman's company, where editor J. Alvin Kugelmass had been endorsing freelancers cheques to himself and cashing them, Stag shut down for a couple of months and returned as The Male Home Companion, for a single issue in October 1942.

A few years later, with sales on Goodman's comic line declining, Writers' Digest for August 1948 carried an announcement that Goodman was about to re-launch Stag magazine, with Stan Lee as editor. However, the plans fell through due to "distributor trouble" and the following year, another re-launch was announced, this time with Bruce Jacobs as editor.

Stag was the market-leader in the slightly shadowy world of "men's interest" magazines. Starting off as a straight adventure magazine in the late 1940s, it had transformed into a more "spicy" style of men's fiction by the late 1950s, often mixing Nazis and sex on its covers. By the 1970s the title had pretty much become newsstand porn.

Stag's subsequent success would launch a whole raft of what would come to be referred to affectionately as "men's sweat" magazines - a kind of cross between spicy pulps and coy girlie magazines. Completely by accident, Goodman had actually started a trend, and Stag and its other companion magazines would enjoy considerable success until the late 1960s, when market forces would compel Goodman to transform his line of men's mags into soft porn publications. 

Coming very much from a pulp tradition, artists Mort Kunstler and Earl Norem were two of the most prominent artists of the Men's Sweat magazine genre, often including pretty racy, fetish-themed material into their newsstand-displayed covers.

But in its heyday, Stag, along with stablemates Male and For Men Only, enjoyed the contributions of writers like Bruce Jay Friedman, Mario Puzo and Mickey Spillane, and artists like Norman Saunders, Earl Norem and Mort Kunstler.

As an impressionable lad of 11 or 12, I recall seeing issues of Stag and Male at the newsstands I would haunt while looking for Marvel Comics around 1963 and 1964. Despite the siren-call of the lurid cover art, I'd never pluck up the courage to pick one up and look inside, fearful that the proprietor would shoo me away if I were to show too much interest in these forbidden publications. So the contents will forever remain a mystery.

Many years later, in an original art catalogue from US art dealer Tony Dispoto, I came across the above black-and-white interior illustration, attributed to Man's Life magazine. I don't think it was a Goodman title, but it does give some indication of the content of these mags. The cover line from this September 1956 issue, "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" was appropriated by Frank Zappa as the title of one of his albums.

But for all that, it's as well to remember that Marvel's late Sixties and early Seventies foray into comic magazines was likely inspired by these slightly eccentric magazines.

IT'S SPECTACULAR, ALL RIGHT ...

Back in 1957, when Goodman had found himself without a distributor, he was forced to go cap-in-hand to DC Publisher Jack Liebowitz and submit to a draconian eight-titles-a-month deal in order to get his comics on the stands. Though Liebowitz's Independent News allowed Goodman to add a few extra titles across the ten-year contract, Marvel was still only publishing 14 titles a month at the end of 1967. By the beginning of 1968, after Kinney National Company bought out DC Comics and Independent News, Marvel was finally freed up to expand its line of comics, and Goodman set about expanding his anthology titles Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish into six titles. A year later, Independent News went out of business and both Marvel and Saturday Evening Post owner Curtis were sold to Perfect Film and Chemical Company, so it made sense for Curtis to distribute Marvel's comics.

The first sign that something was up was when the three anthology titles were each given over to one of their co-stars, changing their titles so that Astonish, Suspense and Strange Tales all disappeared.

But we readers didn't know any of that stuff. Oh, sure we knew something was happening with Marvel, but back then, I was just excited about additional, new Marvel Comics ... it didn't even occur to me that Marvel seemed to be doing better. Though the transition wasn't that smooth, because the same month that Hulk and Captain America took over Astonish and Suspense respectively, Stan had an 11-page Iron Man and an 11-page Sub-Mariner tale parked in the slightly odd Iron Man and Sub-Mariner.

The existence of this title has always puzzled me. I've never understood why it was needed, when Stan could have just launched Namor and Iron Man in their own books the same month as Hulk took over Astonish and Cap took over Suspense.

I've always wondered why it was done that way. Did the Suits decide that launching the two brand-new titles, Iron Man and Sub-Mariner couldn't be done at the same time as Hulk and Captain America? That wouldn't make any sense, as in effect Hulk and Cap were just continuations of Astonish and Suspense, not additional titles. Or did Stan just miscalculate, and get his story-lengths in a muddle? I guess we'll never know ...

1968 was a bumper year for Marvel house ads. Each announcement was more exciting that the previous one. But for UK fans, we would be disappointed over how hard the Spectacular Spider-Man mag was to find in the newsagents. I had more luck with Silver Surfer 1.

The first inkling I had about Marvel's aggressive expansion plans was when I stumbled across copies of Iron Man and Sub-Mariner 1 and Iron Man 1 in a small newsagent in Wemyss Bay in Scotland, in the summer of 1968. While I wasn't that mad about IM&SM1, I though the first issue of Iron Man was a very wonderful development, as I was a massive fan of Gene Colan at the time (still am) and the thought of 20 pages of Colan Iron Man at a time was beyond fantastic.

Incredibly, that tiny newsagent is still there in Wemyss Bay. I haven't been there for fifty years, but I'm very happy that one of my essential childhood haunts is still alive and well.

And as the Marvel explansion unfolded, there were more and more wonderful comics coming out. Jim Steranko's SHIELD comics deserve an entire blog post to themselves. Sub-Mariner and The Incredible Hulk in their own comics was okay. I hadn't been a great fan of Namor, though the John Buscema artwork was sublime. Kirby's Captain America title was great, of course, but then Cap was always my favourite Marvel character. And the Dr Strange book was also terrific. But in the house ads in those books we saw that there was even better things to come from Marvel, notably the Silver Surfer book (which also deserves its own posting). But the really intriguing thing was that second Spidey book, The Spectacular Spider-Man.

The fully-painted cover and the grey-tone interior artwork were a revelation to me, as I'd never seen a comic like that before. And it was full magazine-size rather than the smaller 10x7 inch comic size.

It wasn't  all that obvious from the house ads just what we could expect. I wouldn't have noticed the 35c cover price in the ads, and it wouldn't have meant much to me if I had. And though I didn't track down a copy of the comic until a couple of years later, when I did finally find one I was pretty blown away. Where American comic readers might have been a bit disappointed that it was in black and white, that didn't bother me one bit. The skilful grey wash-tones more than made up for it. And that cover ... wow - a painting! I thought it was just incredible.

A couple of years earlier, someone had given my younger brother an illustrated Walt Disney storybook, but the pictures were full colour paintings of Mickey and Donald on a caravan holiday. I used to love those illustrations. Perhaps they were even by Carl Barks, but it's such a long time ago I can't be sure. The Spectacular Spider-Man cover was even better, because that was an oil painting of a super-hero - something fans may take for granted today, but back in 1968, it was nothing short of revolutionary.

Though it was based on a John Romita drawing, the execution of the cover painting was by Harry Rosenbaum. Little is known about Rosenbaum beyond his work for some of Goodman's men's magazines, and his later cover paintings for a couple of the Skywald mags put out by Sol Brodsky during his temporary split from Marvel Comics in the early 1970s.

The usual Spider-Man supporting cast are all present and accounted for, with Jonah Jameson and Captain Stacy featuring large, as well as Gwen, Mary Jane and Harry Osborne. The villain is a Frankenstein monster type, controlled by villainous mayoral candidate Richard Raleigh.

The inside of the book was also pretty impressive. The story was mammoth length, at 52 pages, allowing for some spectacular six-page fight sequences by John Romita, and some great character scenes by Stan, featuring the usual supporting cast of Spider-Man. Further, Stan appears to have consciously pitched the story at an older readership, by not using a costumed villain, but rather a corrupt politician who uses a strength-enhanced monster to create chaos for his own nefarious purposes.

In 1964, Jim Warren added a comic magazine - Creepy - as a companion to his successful horror movie magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. I had been aware of FM from about 1963 or so, and had even acquired the occasional copy, expensive though they were, but hadn't seen either Creepy or Eerie.

The reality was that independent publisher Jim Warren had been in this space for a couple of years already, aiming his own black and white mags, Creepy and Eerie, firmly at an older readership, with a horror anthology format that wasn't a million miles away from the classic EC Comics of the 1950s. But all that was lost on me, as I wouldn't come across these Warren comics until much later in my teens.

Once again, the house ad for Spectacular Spider-Man 2 (Nov 1968), really didn't do the John Romita cover art justice, though this time the interior story was printed in four-colour comic book style, and ran to a mammoth 58 pages.

But for Stan, the experiment couldn't have been successful, because when the second issue of Spectacular Spider-Man (Nov 1968) came along, it was with four-colour interiors and a familiar costumed super-villain, The Green Goblin.

This time the cover art was a solo Romita oil painting, which wouldn't have been clear to readers from the house ads that ran in the regular Marvel comics. Dynamic though it might be, I suspect the inclusion of the garishly-costumed Green Goblin might have been too juvenile an approach for the magazine's intended older audience.

With the expanded space, Stan had encouraged John Romita to make the artwork, well, spectacular. So there were fewer panels on a page, with more full-page splashes dotted throughout the story. The supporting characters were once again in evidence, but I couldn't help feeling that this wasn't the direction Stan had envisaged for his magazine-size Spider-Man comic. 

The Interior of the book - Romita layouts, Jim Mooney pencils and Frank Giacoia inks - wasn't vastly different from what readers could see in the regular Amazing Spider-Man comic, just with more pages and bigger panels on the page.

It was hard to see a difference between this story and what was going on in the regular Amazing Spider-Man title. If anything, the tale told in Spectacular Spider-Man 2 seemed to be simply marking time, as we end the story in exactly the same situation that we began it - with Norman Osborne back to his amnesiac state, oblivious that he'd ever been The Goblin and that Peter Parker was really Spider-Man. And there less of a feel that Stan was pitching this at an older audience than the regular comics.

The story in Spectacular Spider-Man 2 seemed quite decompressed compared to the regular Amazing Spider-Man comic, with bigger panels and more full page splashes ... yet the material wasn't really much different from the 12c comic, which makes me now think that either Stan wasn't sure where to pitch this or was getting mixed messages from his publisher.

I have no idea whether this was Stan's idea or if Goodman had imposed this package and approach on Stan in an effort to get better sales, but I think it was the wrong strategy and led to the magazine's cancellation.

PUSSYCAT - A MARVEL ANOMALY

Right around the same time that Marvel were trying out the magazine format, Martin Goodman felt the time was right to experiment with a completely different kind of comic magazine. The Adventures of Pussycat had been running in five-page comic strip instalments in some of his men's magazines, like Stag, Men and Male, and had been written by Stan Lee, Ernie Hart and Larry Lieber and drawn by Wally Wood, Jim Mooney and the legendary Bill Ward. The strip was a low-budget riposte to Playboy's successful 1962-1988 "Little Annie Fanny", by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder. Goodman had his magazine staff pull together nine episodes and shove them into a 64-page mag, the identical format to the first Spectacular Spider-Man magazine.

Behind a Bill Everett painted cover was 64 pages of reprinted comic strip from Martin Goodman's slightly seedy men's adventure magazines of the 1960s. Drawn mostly by Jim Mooney and Bill Ward, some of the episodes were written by Stan Lee, but the bulk were scripted by Larry Lieber.

It's doubtful that the trial was a success, as only the one issue ever appeared, though the character would continue in Goodman's men's sweat mags until the early 1970s, so it's not like there wasn't the material available.

MARVEL MAGS OF THE 1970s

The commercial failure of these three magazines at the end of the 1960s made Stan and Marvel shy of trying to compete with Warren's comics for quite some time. Right around the time that this was happening, Goodman was in the process of selling Marvel Comics to Perfect Film and Chemical Company, so it's quite possible that he hadn't considered a line of Marvel Comics magazines as a sustainable venture. He may well have just been piling on some product to make Marvel's portfolio of publications appear more attractive to prospective buyers. Then again, it's likely that negotiations with Perfect Film would have been rattling along from the early part of 1968, and that Goodman's comics mags had nothing to do with that.

After a three-year hiatus, Marvel once again attempted to get a toehold in the monochrome comic mag market, with the launch of Savage Tales, cover dated May 1971. The featured Conan story offered us teenage readers some coy nudity, gorgeously illustrated by Barry Smith.

By 1971, Goodman was halfway out the door at Marvel, and with the success of Robert E. Howard's Conan character in the Marvel colour books and Stan's ascendency to Publisher, Marvel took another swing at the black-and-white mag market with the introduction of the slightly racy Savage Tales, cover dated May 1971. 

Besides the cover-featured Conan the Barbarian, the mag also gave us an equally titillating Ka-Zar story by John Buscema, a post apocalypse macho fantasy Femizons drawn by John Romita, a "blaxploitation" story, Black Brother by Denny O'Neil and Gene Colan and the first appearance of Man Thing by Gerry Conway and Gray Morrow (coincidently on sale the same month as DC's House of Secrets 92, which debuted the character Swamp Thing, creation of Gerry Conway's then-roommate Len Wein). But still Marvel struggled with the format. 

It would take another couple of years before Marvel mounted a serious attack on Warren's domination of the black-and-white comic magazines market. Aimed squarely at the horror-fan readers of Creepy and Eerie, Marvel's mags mined the same material in a slightly more sensational way.

The second issue of Savage Tales (Oct 1973) wouldn't come along for another two-and-a-half years, featuring mainly Barry Smith's Conan and a few reprints. And by this time, Marvel had already launched Dracula Lives (Apr 1973), Monsters Unleashed (Jun 1973), Vampire Tales (Jul 1973) and Tales of the Zombie (Aug 1973) in an all-out assault on beachhead Warren ...

Next: The Best Marvel Annual