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| Image copyright DC COMICS |
Apparently, the success of DC's The BRAVE & The BOLD #28 was what prompted MARVEL to publish The FANTASTIC FOUR #1. Some folk even see a similarity between the cover layouts - or could it just be their over-developed sense of imagination? What do you think, readers? Do you see a deliberate similarity - or just a coincidental, vague resemblance? Feel free to share!
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| Image copyright MARVEL COMICS |
7 comments:
There are obvious similarities, but that could simply be because the subject matter is similar. There are also similarities between the covers of Action Comics #1 and Whiz Comics #2, and Detective Comics #27 and Amazing Fantasy #15. And probably for the same reason.
Supposedly, the success of the Justice League prompted Marvel to create a counterpart. At the time, though, Marvel did not have any superheroes to combine in a team comic, so Stan had to start from scratch with the FF. A few years later, though, Marvel was publishing Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, and Ant Man & the Wasp, so they had enough heroes to form a team in the Avengers, while the members still had solo adventures in their respective strips in other titles. Which was more like the JLA, and probably what Martin Goodman had in mind in the first place.
On seeing them side by side you have to wonder. If Jack was not 'inspired' by the JLA cover then that's one helluva coincidence!
I'd heard that Goodman wanted Stan to do a team with Captain America, The Sub-Mariner, The Human Torch, and some other Timely characters, TC - maybe The Vision, or Bucky and Toro, characters like that. If true, thank goodness didn't listen to him, eh? Yeah, The Avenger are more like The JLA than The FF.
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There does seem to be a similarity in the layout, PC, but I can't make up my mind whether it's a coincidence or not. Mainly because the covers aren't exactly the same. And yet...and yet...
Stan could have revived the All-Winners Squad (Captain America, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, and some second banana superheroes from the 1940's), but it probably would have been pointless. Most comics book fans in 1961 were kids who were too young to remember those characters. Captain America and the original Torch would have been no more familiar to them than the all-new Fantastic Four.
Oddly, Superman and Batman are not on the cover of B&B #28, and appear only briefly in the story. But they were already popular enough not to need the added exposure of the Justice League. Maybe DC even decided that the characters should not be over-exposed.
I think the fact that a relatively recent revival of Cap and Subby hadn't really worked is probably what put Stan off using them, TC. True, the simultaneous revival of the Torch hadn't worked either, which is likely why Stan made the FF's Torch a teenager unconnected to the original.
Superman and Batman probably didn't need the added exposure of the League, but you'd have thought the DC bigwigs would've thought the League could do with the added exposure of Superman and Batman. Had Marvel been the publisher, they'd have had them on the cover, that's for sure. Still, Supes and Bats cover absence didn't seem to have held the League back in the reader popularity stakes.
I've also heard that Mort Weisenger (editor of the "Superman Family" comics) and Jack Schiff (then editor of Batman and Detective Comics) did not want the characters over-exposed, and resisted their inclusion in the JLA. Then their boss, the publisher or editor-in-chief, overruled them.
Apparently, singer Jim Reeves didn't want to do too many TV appearances because he considered himself a recording artist and thought over-exposure on TV might hurt record sales. (On the grounds that why would people buy his records if they could see and hear him on TV all the time?) He was obviously missing the point that the wider his audience, the more records he'd likely sell - perhaps that's the way Mort and Jack were thinking in regards to comic sales of their respective titles?
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