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| Image copyright MARVEL COMICS |
Yesterday morning, I woke to a thick carpet of snow in my town. It was like a classic Christmas scene, but by afternoon, the snow had started to melt and only patches remained. It's the same this morning, with those patches reluctant to disappear completely, and a Yuletide atmosphere still casting its glow over the surrounding terrain.
It reminds me of a time, 44 years ago, of a similarly Festive feeling, when I first bought The MIGHTY WORLD Of MARVEL #15, and returned home after an afternoon adventuring with a pal to find that my family had acquired a canine chum. PRINCE was his name, a mongrel who looked just like a mini-Alsation, and was the first of three dogs we had over a period of around 25 years.
The above cover is interesting, in that most of it looks to have been pencilled by JIM STARLIN and inked by JOE SINNOTT, with the exception of the SPIDER-MAN figure, which has a distinct JOHN ROMITA flavour to it. Could this be a patch, dropped in over Jim's original Spidey figure, or did he just do a good job of channelling Romita senior's web-slinger? Whaddya think?
Anyway, this cover's full of memories and associations for me, and, if you're old enough to have bought it back then, it'll be the same for you, too. Hope you enjoyed seeing it again.
6 comments:
Because of the Christmas holidays of '67/8, snow on the ground often takes me back to memories of my Captain Scarlet books, plus several songs from that Christmas chart, ( as recently recounted to you in a different post! )
I was stuck in that ruddy snow storm it took me over 3 1/2 hours from 7:30am to cover less than 6 miles to East Kilbride, and then as you say it melted in a few 2 hours – when I got to work and hardly any of the “locals” came in, wish I had turned around as well. Now that’s off my chest – I’m not great at guessing art styles but I thought it was more Romita and Sinnott n (but I know that Starlin drew a lot of these covers and was probably responsible for this as well ) Spidey does look like Romita to me as well but no matter what it’s a wee cracker of a cover. MWOM was brilliant at this time with the paper covers , even with the sometimes off centre spot colour and over reliance on grey-tone shading inside. I still have my first 30 issues of MWOM and a few odds issues from the first 3 years. Looking at this issue takes me right back to 1973 again and the cold January mornings with the milk frozen on the doorstep and the frozen milk popping through the silver top.
It's amazing to think that amongst my MWOM collection there are covers by Steranko too, my be worth a small fortune but I'd never sell em this weekly comic was my first foray into Marvel, always a pleasure.
You can't beat some snow for that festive feel. Unfortunately, all we got around here was rain, rain and more bloody rain. Back in January I enjoyed the rare treat of standing at my front door watching snow falling by the light of the street lamps and it was magical :)
Snow takes me back to just about every Christmas I had as a youngster, JP. It's amazing to remember things and people, now gone, as they used to be way back then. And before it turns to a grey slush, snow makes everything look so clean.
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As I've said before, PM, the first 30-odd issues (and in particular, the first 20 of that 30) were the best examples of MWOM that were ever published in my opinion. After that, until they got the grey tones sorted out, it was a bit of a dog's dinner, visually-speaking. (That sounds like a contradiction in terms, but you know what I mean.) The Spidey figure definitely looks like the work of Romita, or a style similar to his.)
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I take it they were reprints from American comics 'though, Karl, or did he draw any new ones for MWOM? I know Frank Miller did a cover for one of the British Annuals right enough, so it's always possible in Steranko's case.
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You can't beat falling snow backlit by a street lamp, CJ. Extremely evocative just thinking about it. There's a photo on the blog somewhere of my old dog sitting out in the garden at night as the snow falls in the darkness, with a street light in the background. As you say, magical.
Update: Since first publishing this post and responding to comments, I later found out that an eBay seller's claim of Frank Miller drawing a cover for a British Annual was erroneous.
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