This is a beginning, a preface to a series of entrees about collecting the entire Marvel Age of Comics as they were originally published. These entrees would be the most interesting if you too posted how you began collecting and, as we go on, your most interesting stories. One of the great reasons to post here is that while my stories take place mostly in Forest Hills, in the borough of Queens, New York, your stories will be, for me, international.
The purpose of this first post is just to give you my background, mention that I dislike comic book retailers and let you in on my second biggest lie!
My journey begins with my Aunt Gussie and Uncle Leon who opened up a candy store in Woodside, Queens. These stores are now extinct. Upon opening, they sent me a box of goodies: candy, toys, and, on the very top, a brand-new Lois Lane comic where she was a witch! That was Lois Lane #1, April 1958. My brother read it to me. The first comic I ever read was "The Caveman from Krypton" which appeared in World's Finest #102, June, 1959.
Soon, the most important comic I read was Challengers of the Unknown #5 or so. It would be years before I knew who Jack Kirby was, but this was the comic that made me love comics. Why? The Superman and Batman comics of this era were mostly "gimmicked". Superman would be old, fat, bald, blind or without powers; Lois would be a witch, fat, old, etc. Jimmy Olsen would be a turtle and Robin would seem to have died.
The Challengers had adventures. They went places, they were "living on borrowed time" and threw caution to the wind. I loved that. And then it stopped. I know now that was because when Kirby left, the series lost its energy. I began to look for similar comics and for me that was cheap and easy.
Remember my aunt and uncle owned a candy store, or to me, it was a comic book library. I went there and could spend a Saturday eating ice cream and candy and reading (and yes, keeping) comics! A hundred a month!!!!!!
So, when Fantastic Four #1 came out I began to see it often had the "Challenger's type" adventure stories in it. (I still had no idea who Jack Kirby was.) It also had personal story arcs that took time to develop. Except for the Justice League, most DC comics, at that time, had two or three stories in each issue. Marvel had one full-length story where the story and the characters could be fully developed. DC also had fillers, short stories that were very plot-orientated. Marvel eliminated those. In their anthology titles (Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, and Strange Tales) Marvel had double features. Their tales were most often continued so the stories and characters could be advanced.
I didn't ignore DC, I read all their comics for a decade. However, I kept the Marvels because, frankly, I enjoyed re-reading them more, especially the stories that took a few issues to tell. I should mention that I lived, with my family, in a small apartment, and didn't have room for every comic I read, so I just kept the Marvels. My aunt and uncle closed the store about 1970 and both soon passed, but I kept collecting... about 6,000 comics it total. I had begun to write a book on this era, featuring a description and credits for every single one of those comics.
I stopped collecting in 1978 and had packaged up all my comics, in plastic bags and in cartons, as there were no comic boxes then. I stored them for nearly a quarter of a century before getting back to them. More on that later.
Having the complete Marvel Age in my home has led several companies, including Marvel, Taschen, Pulp Publications, Tomorrows, Alter Ego, Abrams ComicArts and many others, to use scans from my collection and to invite me to write about them.
Along with Nick Caputo, Michael J. Vassallo and Roy Thomas, I co-wrote Taschen's huge 75 Years of Marvel (and their Stan Lee book) where they used a huge amount of my scans and they allowed us in an acknowledgment section to list the people who had recently helped us with the book. If you get a copy, you will see that I listed my Aunt and Uncle who were long gone. Here's my second biggest lie: My niece wanted a copy of the expensive book and so I asked Taschen to send one to Gussie and Leon, care of my niece, so that she could get one.
When she got the Taschen package it dawned on me that I got My Aunt and Uncle's first box of comics with their names on it and she would get their last box with their names on it, 65 years later.
Thank you Aunt Gussie and Uncle Leon. You would be so happy to see what you started.
16 comments:
Fantastic memories!!
Barry, did you ever get the urge after '78 to re-read any of your comics? And was there anything that really surprised you in your years of following Silver and Bronze Age Marvel...you know, a really unexpected storyline, or event, or cancellation? For me it was the death of Gwen Stacey (the editors really had something against the Stacey family....).
Spirit of '64
I'm sure Barry will answer you when he sees your comment, S64. He's probably busy re-reading his comics as I type.
Good questions:
First, I did a blog on why I stopped reading comics. It’s at: https://forbushman.blogspot.com/2019/03/1977-year-i-stopped-reading-comics.html
We don’t discuss on comic pages the major change at Marvel and DC during the 1970s. The two companies were bought over by much bigger corporations whose new concerns were not just selling comics. Marvel, was bought by Perfect Film and Chemical and DC by Time/Warner. Their editorial direction drastically changed. At Marvel the goal was now to put out the most titles and worry less about quality. Also, Marvel had their characters usually in one book but now, liked DC every character had to be in at least two books, written by different people and continuity was lost.
In later years I heard about stories where Gwen Stacy became pregnant by the Green Goblin and garbage like that. So nothing surprised me at how low they would go.
And the Fantastic Four was cancelled not for poor sales, but because they did not want to promote the Fox movies. That is the cooperates attitude that took over the industry.
I think that post also appeared on Crivens, BP - you're taking over the Blogger-sphere.
There you go, S64, a speedy response to your question.
I wouldn't say that Marvel worried less about quality, but there's no denying that, in trying to put out so many mags, quality WAS sometimes affected. I think that was just the inevitable result of trying to do too much at the one time. After all, surely no one would deliberately put out a slightly lesser quality mag? (Who said 'What about Charlton?')
Remember that Barry would like to hear about YOUR stories too, Crivs.
I wouldn't say that Marvel worried less about quality, but there's no denying that, in trying to put out so many mags, quality WAS sometimes affected. I think that was just the inevitable result of trying to do too much at the one time. After all, surely no one would deliberately put out a slightly lesser quality mag? (Who said 'What about Charlton?')
Kid, I see it a bit differently than you, partially because I got to discuss this with Roy Thomas, the editor at that time. In the 1970s, while DC had several editors, Perfect Film only had one at Marvel, Roy Thomas. Roy said that they paid attention to the best sellers and totally, that’s right, totally ignored the bottom sellers. Not much attention was given to the comics that were “in between.” Marvel saw comics as “good-sellers” or not.
Marvel even said, in the letter’s column, when they cancelled comics such as Super-Villain Team-up that the reason for cancelling them was hat they did not have the staff to work on them. Super-Villain Team Up had 6 writers, 8 artists and 11 inkers in 16 issues, so it never had much of a chance of succeeding.
That's interesting, BP. But when the low sellers were first launched and before it was discovered that they weren't selling very well, wouldn't they have tried at the beginning to make sure they were of a decent quality? Then, when it was noticed that they were routinely not selling too well, they wouldn't have been overly concerned about the quality? That makes sense.
I found that it was usually the Marvel reprint mags in the early '70s where the quality suffered, especially (for example) when they were editing out panels and pages from reprints of Lee & Kirby's Thor; some of the changes were very clumsily executed and the proofs they were using suffered from poor reproduction.
In regard to Super-Villain Team-Up, if it HAD sold well, wouldn't they have 'found' the staff to keep it going? I must confess I don't have much faith in the veracity of claims that comics usually give for cancellation, because when a UK comic was merged with another due to poor sales, the editors usually said it was because of popular demand.
I suppose I'm just a big ol' cynic.
Kid, Barry
I loved the Thomas era Marvel comics, because, not only was I at the right age, but that the top titles ( Spidey, FF, Avengers, Hulk, Conan, Cap) were all winners, AND also the 'B' comics were experimental and often even better, storywise, than the top titles. The light editorial touch allowed some brilliant runs on Master of Kung Fu, Man-Thing, Killraven, Captain Marvel, Dr Strange, Tomb of Dracula, Jungle Action, Warlock. And some of the Black and Whites were really good too.
I don't read the modern stuff. Barry switched off around '78, if I remember correctly (good time to switch off, as Shooter's controlling influence ended spontaneity, except Barry then missed out on the Claremont/ Byrne X-Men and Miller's DD); I switched off in '93 ( and missed out on the second part of Gaiman's Sandman). I switched off because the various characters had developed in such a way that I didn't care for them anymore. Too many false 'deaths'; too many stupid 'shocking' events; too many overly long storylines and too many writers looking to completely overhaul what has gone on before...which meant any 'event' would be comparatively short-lived. To hear that Gwen had a relationship with Norman Osborne means things have sunk a lot more over the years. But gosh, Gwen must have had lots of free time with Peter always disappearing off as Spidey, Capt Stacy doing lots of police overtime and Flash over in Vietnam. Shame on Stan and Jazzy Johnny for not having thought up such a brilliant storyline themselves......
Spirit of '64
I lost interest in most Marvel and DC comics when they started messing about with continuity and rebooting the characters all the time, S64 (more DC than Marvel it has to be said). I love most of the Facsimile Editions and True Believers mags though. Probably because the originals come from a time when comics weren't ashamed to be comics, as opposed to trying to be movie treatments nowadays.
Anon wrote: " Barry then missed out on the Claremont/ Byrne X-Men and Miller's DD" Actually I got those a few years later as packages.
That was S64, BP - his name's at the foot of his comment. Have you not been reading all the way down again, you rascal? Tsk, tsk! One day I must catch up on all the Claremont/Byrne X-Men - I've only read a few.
In the period from '76 to '79 if a comic had either Byrne or Perez as a penciller then I bought it, and more often than not those comics were very good, with Byrne doing great work not only on the X-Men, but also on Marvel Team-up, Iron Fist, Avengers and Star-Lord. Perez did it on the Avengers, FF and Logan's Run. It was otherwise a pretty sad time in comics, as most comics were either poorly written, poorly drawn or both, and badly printed on low quality paper. The exciting new wave of the early '70s, Smith, Wrightson, Kaluta, Brunner, Weiss had disappeared from the scene, and works by Starlin and Adams were few and far between ( or completely ruined as can be seen from Savage Sword of Conan #14). Kirby and Ditko were still around ( I loved Shade!), but it was Byrne and Perez ( plus Golden and the brilliant work by Englehart and Rogers on Batman) that had me coming back for more.
Spirit of '64
I didn't really get into Byrne until he took over Fantastic Four as regular writer and artist (in the early '80s), but I followed a lot of his stuff from then on. (Alpha Flight, Hulk, Sub-Mariner, etc.) I also enjoyed Buscema's run on Thor during the '70s, though Buckler did quite a bit of Thor in between. Ditko's work after Marvel (with the exception of his stuff for Warren) never impressed me too much, though when he did Speedball, his inker made his art look better than it was.
Its strange when most fans think of Buscema they only think of Conan or the Avengers; his Thor run was magnificent. I particularly liked the Buscema-Sinnott combination, especially in those issues that had Odin losing his memory and living in a farm somewhere in the mid-West. The Buscema- DeZuniga was not my favourite however.
I had forgotten about Speedball. Bruce Patterson was the inker I think. Did you see any of Ditko's run on Rom, with inking ( or rather very heavy finishing) by the likes of Byrne, Sinnott and Russell and, best of all, Palmer, who did a superlative job on #60? For Russell it seemed to be a labour of love to embellish one of his heroes. The inking made the art passable, but still a far cry from Ditko's 60s masterpieces.
Spirit of 64
Yeah, the four 'Time-Twisters' issues were particularly good. Funnily enough, I wasn't too fond of DeZuniga's inks on Buscema's Thor either, but didn't mind them so much when he inked Conan. (Well, I think he inked Conan.) Wasn't really familiar with Rom, so missed most of those issues, apart from b&w reprints in a UK weekly. It really was sad to see how far Ditko and Kirby had declined in later years. Kirby had health issues, poor eyesight, etc., but Ditko seemed to have just stopped trying. I can't remember which inker it was now, but someone declined to ink one of his comics because of the sparse pencils, as he'd have had to do most of the drawing at the inking stage to bring them up to standard.
I believe it was Joe Sinnott, Kid, so someone from Ditko's era ( both having started in comics in the 50's).
S64
Yeah, I had an idea it was Joe Sinnott, but wasn't 100% sure without checking. And I think it was a Chuck Norris comic.
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