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| Copyright MARVEL COMICS |
I remember my dad giving me a notebook one day, and when I took it into school with me a short time later, a girl in my class called LYNNE SPEED (or Lynn, perhaps) took a fancy to it for some reason and offered to swap me an issue of CREEPY WORLDS #68 for it. I agreed, but a few days afterwards, I felt bad about having parted with the notebook and asked Lynne if she'd swap back.
She was agreeable to the proposition, but it took her several more days to bring the notebook into school with her. And that's all there is to that little story. Apart from to say that the IRON MAN strip in this ALAN CLASS reprint title always reminds me of the annexe huts (in front of which the deal was struck) in my school playground and Lynne herself. The cover of the comic is from an unretouched stat of the original art, as a few changes were made before it was first published in the pages of TALES Of SUSPENSE #44 (below).
As you'll have noticed, 'pharaoh' on both covers is misspelt, something that I still see in many newspapers today. When the story was again reprinted in recent MASTERWORKS and OMNIBUS editions, the mistake was restored (it had been corrected for previous reprints), but in the absence of uncorrected proofs, it had to be re-lettered the wrong way. They missed one on the splash page though, and the alterations back to the uncorrected text were less skilfully executed than the original amendments.
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| Lynne Speed in 1967 |
Not much of a point to this post, admittedly, but I just wanted to see that KIRBY cover again and remember things as they used to be when the world seemed a much brighter and better place. If you've any memories of your own connected to this Iron Man tale, then feel free to share.
I can't say I have any memories of this tale. although I'm pretty sure I have read it having had (and read) every issues of Spider-Man Comics Weekly where they reprinted these old Iron Man stories.My only memories of Iron Man in those days was how he made it to be the popular character he became. that outfit is just awful regardless of the time it was created in, he just looked like a walking can of beans - thank goodness for the totally underrated, Don Hecks (I think it was him) redesign on his outfit. My memories of my schools annex were different to yours Kid, that was where folk went to at my school for a wee snog.... I rarely visited them back then (sob sob)
ReplyDeleteActually, it was Steve Ditko who redesigned Iron Man's outfit, PM, at least as far as his crimson and gold armour goes. Although Jack Kirby is said to have designed the original armour, when Don Heck drew the strip, he tweaked it slightly to make it look more credible - as if it was actually a man in a suit of armour. For example, he gave Iron Man a chin, rather than having the helmet clamp straight into a neck band atop the body, a change he also effected when inking JK's pencils. And snogging at primary school? I never saw anything like that happen around the annexe huts in my day. Anyway, didn't you once tell me you went to an all boys school. (Hee hee.)
ReplyDeleteBoom boom - They must have been more "mature" at my Primary Kid all very innocent kissing of course but boys and girls and all that. I only ever had an unrequited crush on a girl at my Primary school - but my "lady" was comics back then.... and my wee mammy :)
ReplyDeleteAww, ain't that sweet?! I remember having a crush on a girl in my class called Susan back then. (Don't ask me why the class was called 'Susan'. Boom-boom.)
ReplyDeleteShe was called Speed but she was rather slow in returning your notebook, Kid. There was a girl in my primary school class also called Lynne (Isitt) and when I first saw her name written down I thought it made no sense - surely the spelling should be Lin ?
ReplyDeleteEr, why, CJ? Me no catch your drift. That's like saying PM's name should be spelt 'Pol'. Kindly elucidate. Or are you merely relating how you thought back THEN, as opposed to NOW? (I'm not very awake at the moment.)
ReplyDeleteI think I got it only because I wanted the complete run of Tales of Suspense and the Kirby cover. Don Heck art-meh. I never knew Marvels in other countries had different names until I started reading your blog from far off exotic England.
ReplyDeleteFar-off exotic Britain you surely mean, Mike? England is only a part of the U.K. And believe it or not, there was a time when I thought our home-produced mags were the genuine article, and U.S. Marvel mags the imitations. (Hey, I was a kid at the time.)
ReplyDeleteYeah yeah do you really expect us Americans to make that distinction? Sure I know England vs UK bit but we have states, which are supposed to be sovereign states but thanks to the schmuck Lincoln, no longer. Anyway when you talk of the comics you grew up with and get nostalgic for (boy oh boy, me too, and here at 65 years old still do) I as a yank have no idea if yours were distributed all over the UK or just England. Like I said, exotic far away UK. Now if you want exotic, come visit Florida, where the local indigenous creatures will kill and eat you.
ReplyDeleteTales of Suspense #44 would have been on sale in spring and/or summer of 1963, at about the same time that the much-ballyhooed Cleopatra movie starring Liz Taylor was released. Marvel obviously hoped to benefit from the hype.
ReplyDeleteThere was also a Doctor Strange story (I think it was in Strange Tales #124) in 1964 where he rescued the "Lady From Nowhere" and she turned out to be Cleopatra.
I read both of those stories years later, in Marvel Collector's Item Classics reprints.
Of course we do, M, because otherwise it's like us referring to all of America as Washington (or whatever). Yeah, profit is king, so it makes sense to distribute comics throughout the U.K. - and overseas as well. And hey, we have creatures like that over here too. They're called 'Glaswegians'.
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As did I, TC, but you'd never have guessed it was the same Cleopatra in those tales. Although it must've been (unless one was from an alternate universe), but nowadays they'd do a 12-part series linking the two tales together.
Some people refer to The Netherlands as "Holland," which is rather like referring to the UK as England, or to the USA as Washington. Or to England as London.
ReplyDeleteIn You Only Live Twice, James Bond, as he is making out with the femme fatale (Karin Dor), says, "The things I do for England." Wasn't Bond Scottish? And MI6 would be the British (not just English) Secret Service.
Indeed, TC, but it was a variation of the saying "Just lie back and think of England", said to women by their friends when pursued and wooed by rich, ugly men. Daniel Craig says "England" in response to a question in a test in Skyfall, so maybe the moviemakers think mention of 'England' goes down well overseas - as well as in England.
ReplyDeleteKid, I thought Lynne was spelt Lin when I was 6 years old (!!)..."when I first saw her name written down". And I remember Connery saying "the things I do for England" but I thought it was from 'Never Say Never Again' and I assumed it was meant to be a joke, with him being famously Scottish. I look at a lot of online comments, on news sites, YouTube etc and the overwhelming majority say UK or Britain when referring to this country rather than "England".
ReplyDeleteConnery may have said something like it on NSNA, CJ, so I'll listen out for it the next time I watch the film. I mostly hear (or read) a lot of Americans calling Britain 'England' (then again, so do a lot of English people), so my experience is different from yours.
ReplyDeleteWell, UK is a lot easier and quicker to write in a comment :)
ReplyDeleteNot by much, as it's usually preceded by 'the' (the UK). And, if like me, you type 'the U.K.', it requires exactly the same amount of keys (not counting the space) as 'England'. And in Mike's first comment, he typed 'England', not 'UK', so he doesn't fit in with your assertion, CJ.
ReplyDeleteTrue, but it's quicker if you're typing UK comics, UK politics, UK manafacturing whatever. Anyway, I'm only reporting what I see online all the time and I love reading online comments so I see A LOT of them.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but unless you read all online comments everywhere, you can't know if that's typical of the larger picture or just the online comments you read. When it comes to the name of the country 'though (without specifying comic, politics, or manufacturing) I've found that most Americans generally tend to call it England. There's a wider world beyond the internet you know, CJ.
ReplyDeleteYou're dead right, Kid, never spotted that, they've both mispelt "Fairoh"!
ReplyDelete( seriously, I wouldn't have even known, had you not pointed it out! )
They did the same in an issue of the FF as well, JP.
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