IT'S A SCHOOL RECORD...

I'm at the foot of this extract.  (I masked off  the subsequent names) 

I turned five years old towards the end of 1963, but didn't start school 'til early '64. Around five months later, my family moved to another house a few minutes down the road, which meant that, out of the one year, nine months I spent at my first primary school (before we moved house yet again), I lived most of that period in that 'second' home.  (I'll refrain from indulging in an examination of why five months of school days in one house seems, in retrospect, no lesser duration than the 16 months of school days in the next house, as I don't want to drive you all nuts - or away.)

Anyway, some time in the early or mid-'90s. I revisited my first primary school, and was astonished to find that it still had the school records from my days in its possession.  The kindly headmistress generously let me borrow them to photocopy (before they were forwarded to Education department HQ - which should have received them years before), and while poring through their ancient pages, I was surprised to find that there was no record of our ever having moved house in '64.

That means, as far as the school was concerned, I lived in the same house for all the time (21 months) that I was at that school, whereas, in fact, only five months fell under the umbrella of my old address.  (Had the school ever had cause to write to my parents, the letter would've gone to our previous house and they'd never have seen it.)  It didn't seem right to me, so I carefully pencilled in the address of our 'new' home so that the records were correct, and that other house was officially recognised - even if it was around 30 years after the fact.  (I did that after photocopying the pages however, so it's not in my copies.)

My one regret is that I didn't photocopy the relevant pages in colour, as I only had access to a black and white copier at the time, but at least I have facsimiles of the school record of admissions from my relatively short time there, before my family moved to another neighbourhood and I attended another primary school - at which I spent five and a half years before going on to secondary school.

Anyway, I'm sure you must find all this riveting, so I've enclosed a few extracts from the records to illustrate this post.  Don't get over-excited now.  What I find interesting is that names I didn't know then, I knew later, as some of them popped up in my second primary, and others in secondary.  Even some that I did know ended up going to one or both of my later schools.

The previous post was a 'Journey Into Mystery' - this one has been a 'Journey Into History'.  (Gosh, I'm sharp, aren't I?)

This time I'm at the top.  (I masked off the preceding names)

COME WITH ME - On A JOURNEY Into MYSTERY...

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

One of my all-time favourite origin issues is JOURNEY Into MYSTERY #83 - introducing The MIGHTY THOR (or THOR The MIGHTY as he's referred to inside the mag).  That's the cover of my very own copy you're looking at up there, which first came out in August 1962.  Well, that's not quite true, because although it was cover-dated August, it actually went on sale in May of that year.  "Wait a minute," I hear you cry, "there's no date on the cover!"  Yup, but there was on the US issues, which were printed first; then the cover plates were amended to include a UK price and remove the month from the issue number box.  As these comics came over to our shores as ballast in ships, we didn't get them until many months after our American cousins, so it was pointless having a date on our copies (printed on the same presses as the ones for US readers).

Below is the 1966 GOLDEN BOOK & RECORD SET reprint of the above comic, and as you can see, some of the detail of Thor's hair has been lost.  Inside, the splash page was printed in black and white on the interior side of the cover, and the final page of the origin story had the last panel omitted, with the other two being extended to fill the space.  The 'drawing-up' of the soldier's helmet and head is rather clumsy (see further down), but I doubt many readers noticed it back in the day - unless they had the original printing with which to compare it, that is.

Next up is a 1999 German edition, and I've included an interior page (further down) so that you can see how it looks in a foreign language.  On the whole, the re-lettering throughout the tale has been done with some proficiency, and the balloon shapes don't seem cluttered or squeezed, which can sometimes happen when one language is exchanged for another.  One of the things I tried to do (and usually succeeded) when re-lettering a strip in another tongue, was to ensure the pages looked as if they had been created that way.  I've seen some pages by lesser letterers (don't scoff - they exist) with words crammed right up against the balloon or caption outline, making the published result look terrible.  This one manages to avoid that. 

  

Now here's an interesting thing I only just noticed while looking at these covers in preparation for scanning.  If you compare the cover below with the ones above (best to enlarge them to their full size), you'll see the detail is much sharper than even J.I.M. #83's cover.  This surprised me, because I'd expected the original printing to be better - but no, it isn't.  In the cover below, you can see individual brush strokes that just reproduce as blobs of black in the 1962 presentation.  If you want what is probably the best-ever single issue printing of this classic tale, then you should do your absolute best to get your hands on the issue below.  It's dated October 2017 in the indicia inside, so (at time of typing) might well still be available in your local comics shop.  

Okay, I know I've shown these before, but what follows is an original production stat of the cover as JACK KIRBY and JOE SINNOTT drew it, along with an amended version by me.  As you can see, initially there were more STONE MEN (later revealed to be called KRONANS), five of whom were deleted because STAN LEE thought the cover was far too cluttered, resulting in Thor being visually overwhelmed by them all.  I thought too many Kronans had been removed, so therefore digitally played around with the stat to produce the cover as I'd have done it.  (Click image to enlarge, then click again for optimum size.)  Hey, MARVEL - are you reading this?  Next time you reprint this ish as a single comic, use my version of the cover - no charge!  Okay, that's it for now, the other pages are accompanied by footnotes to explain things as you go along.  See you all next time, culture-lovers.

And now, a selection of interior pages - with footnotes...

Original printing.  Note the misspelling of Thor's name in final panel

1966 reprint, with two panels on bottom tier extended

Didya know that Thor was multi-lingual?  You do now

2017 reprint.  Simply glorious