PART TWO Of HULK - MADE In BRITAIN...

 

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

 

I guess there's no point in deluding myself.  I know that nobody drops in to this blog because they're interested in anything that I may have to say. It's all about the images; they want to see the pretty pictures from various comics and their creators, past and present, and remember their childhood and teenage years in the same way that I do.

 

So, there's really no need for me to wafflle on, because you've probably already scrolled down past this piffle to the pages below, culled from HULK COMIC #2 in 1979, produced by the legendary DEZ SKINN (Britain's answer to STAN LEE) when he was the head honcho at MARVEL U.K. all those many years ago.

 

Well, I'm off to sulk in a corner - I'm sure you'll find the following array of awesome images interesting to inspect.

 

  

 

 

 

 

Is THERE No END To THESE LOOPY LAPSES In LOGIC?

Copyright MARVEL COMICS.  Cover art JACK KIRBY & GEORGE ROUSSOS (as BELL)

I'll try and make this as short as I can.  In FANTASTIC FOUR #19, REED RICHARDS and SUE STORM are on a visit to the Museum of Natural History when they spy some hieroglyphics that seemingly portray a blind Pharaoh being exposed to a vial of radioactive herbs which restore his sight.  Faster than a fart from the FLASH, the foursome are soon using DOCTOR DOOM's time machine to speed back to ancient Egypt in a mission to obtain said vial in order to restore the vision of BEN GRIMM's blind girlfriend, ALICIA MASTERS.

After a succession of encounters with a time-traveller from the future, the foursome obtain the vial and return to the present.  Unfortunately, however, on arrival the vial is gone, as the time machine is seemingly unable to transport anything with radioactive properties from the past to the future, or vice versa.  (Hang on a minute - aren't cosmic rays radioactive?  Then don't the FF have 'radioactive properties' in their genetic makeup.  Two loopy lapses for the price of one?)

Ben is understandably disappointed that poor Alicia must remain blind, although Reed vows to work at replicating the substance until he hopefully one day will meet with success.  So, no happy ending this time 'round, mainly because MISTER FANTASTIC is clearly stunted when it comes to seeing the obvious way to resolve the situation.

In the best comicbook tradition, "Can you spot the solution, readers?"

It's simple.  Take Alicia into the past, cure her blindness, and then bring her back. There'd be no story then though, would there?  Guess that's why I'm not writing comicbooks for a living!    

MIGHTY MARVEL COVER GALLERY - PART FIVE...

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

And now, yet another phantasmagorical pictorial presentation of the very early days of The MIGHTY WORLD Of MARVEL from 1972/'73, when it seemed all of Britain was receptive to the 40 page power-packed periodical which hit the shelves week after week.

Nowadays, of course, Marvel U.K. no longer exists as we knew it, and a company called PANINI have a permit to produce a plethora of full-colour monthly publications for British readers.  And what a Marvel-lous job they do of it too.  (Pun?  What pun?)

However, nothing can truly match the excitement generated by the re-presentation of of those early Marvel classics back at the start of the '70s - when, if you were a certain age, the world was yet young and way-out wonderment still aborning.

Remember to come back for Part Six.

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE For The MIGHTY MARVEL COVER GALLERY...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

 

Return with me now to an earlier age, when the name JACK KIRBY was synonymous with action and adventure in the Mighty MARVEL Universe.  And there was plenty of A&A around in the pages of The AVENGERS, especially on the dynamically drawn covers by the artist dubbed 'KING' by MR. MARVEL himself, SMILIN' STAN LEE.  (You'd be smilin', too, if you had his kind of money.)

 

So, here for your edification, enlightenment and enjoyment are the first ten covers of the Avengers' own mag - when comics were fun as well as fantastic, instead of the dull, dismal, dreary and depressing publications they are now.  Someone should look at how things were done back then - maybe they'd learn something.  (Like how to do them right, for instance.)

 

 

 

JACK KIRBY - SAINT Or SINNER?

Much has been made over the last twenty-odd years in certain quarters about JACK 'KING' KIRBY not receiving either the credit or remuneration he deserved for his undoubted contribution to the success of MARVEL COMICS.  In fact, Jack - along with JERRY SIEGEL and JOE SHUSTER - is almost a poster boy for the 'hard-done-to creators' school of thought, and it would be all-too easy to believe that he indeed fell victim to the evil machinations of corporate big business.

I don't believe it's as simple as that, but on the matter of credit, Jack was every bit as shy as anyone else in sharing the glory of his accomplishments with those who fully deserved equal billing.  I'm struck by the fact that, when later relating his career in the comicbook biz, Jack usually neglected to mention his long-time collaborator JOE SIMON, instead preferring to airbrush him from the history of the many titles they both worked on when he could get away with it.

In Kirby's one-page essays in some of his 1970s DC mags, I can't remember Joe Simon being mentioned once, and the backup tales (reprints from the '40s) are labelled 'A Kirby Classic' on every page.  Also, in a summary of his comics career written in 1966 and printed in FOOM #8 in 1974, there is again no acknowledgement of his erstwhile art and business associate.  I guess it's human nature to believe that, in any partnership, we bring more to the table than the other guy, and it seems that Jack was as prone to this as anyone else you care to name.

Take SPIDER-MAN for example.  Jack claimed for years that he had created the idea of Spidey and even designed the costume - however, the facts (as I understand them) are different.  Apparently, Joe Simon, JACK OLECK and C.C. BECK were responsible for producing a strip called The SILVER SPIDER, which had developed from an earlier idea by Simon for a character called SPIDERMAN (no hyphen).  The idea languished in limbo until it was revised and appeared as The FLY for RED CIRCLE COMICS (ARCHIE) in 1959.

According to Jack's version of events, he showed a Spiderman logo (lettered by Joe when he first came up with the idea) to STAN LEE, and pitched to him Simon and Oleck's original concept before the character had been renamed and revised.  However, Jack claimed the idea as his own and failed to mention his former partner's involvement, taking sole credit in the matter.  Jack later recanted his claim about the costume when it was pointed out to him that STEVE DITKO's unused cover for AMAZING FANTASY #15 was drawn before his own (published) version, but not before perpetuating his mistaken account of events in numerous fanzine and convention interviews over a period of time.

Don't get the wrong idea - this isn't meant as an attack on Jack's honesty or integrity, but his memory was every bit as bad as Stan Lee's is reputed to be.  And it seems that, on the matter of creators feeling deprived of credit or money, very often the determining factor seems to be "How rich did someone else get off an idea I worked on?"  To me, this is akin to someone freely selling a silver teapot for £100 (and believing they got a good deal), and then seeing it on television in The ANTIQUES ROADSHOW five or ten years later valued at £1,000.

You can bet your boots that the seller will be kicking himself and cursing the other guy's luck - but feelings of bitterness or frustration (however understandable) from missing out on something hardly entitles anyone to a share of an increased value from something they underestimated the potential worth of at the point of sale.  Regardless of whether it's property or ideas, the principle is surely the same.

When it comes to the matter of credit for who did what, it seems that more creators than you'd realise are in the exact same boat as those they point the finger at.  Thus has it been, thus shall it ever be.  As I said - it's human nature.  So, to answer my own question - saint or sinner?  Neither.  Jack was just as human (though a lot more talented) as the rest of us.

Got any thoughts on the matter?  Feel free to express them in the Comments Section.  Go on - you know you want to.

FOOM COVER & IMAGE GALLERY - PART THREE...

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

For all you frantically flapping FOOM followers, here's Part Three of our sensational series devoted to MARVEL's magnificent magazine from back in the sizzling '70s.  This time around, ol' Winghead himself - CAPTAIN AMERICA - is the featured cover star, with an article detailing his enthusiastic 1940s exploits on the silver screen.  Were you a FOOM fan back in the day?  Feel free to share your reminiscences about Marvel's club magazine in the comments section.

(Click on images to enlarge, then click again for optimum size.)

It's interesting to note that in the above article, JACK KIRBY doesn't mention JOE SIMON even once,
thereby giving the impression he did it all by himself.  Other sources say that The CHALLENGERS Of
The UNKNOWN was co-created with DAVE WOOD (or Joe Simon), but again, no mention by Kirby.

IT'S NOT MAD - IT'S KRAZY COMIC FOR KIDS...

Copyright relevant owner

You're looking at the cover of the first issue of KRAZY - IPC's then-latest comics offering back in 1976.  However, all the images in this post were scanned from the IPC file copy which was gifted to me by an editor on one of my regular trips down to London in the mid-'80s.  If you look carefully, you can see the handwritten notations detailing what each page cost in terms of script, art and lettering.

Interestingly, the notes only continue up to the centre-spread - after which each page is curiously absent of any details pertaining to the cost of producing this once-popular periodical.  I can only guess as to why; perhaps the issue was misplaced and the process begun again and completed in another copy.

I know that ODHAMS PRESS used to have duplicate bound volumes of each year's collection of a particular title - one with typewritten notes of contributors' fees pasted to each page of the comic.  Perhaps IPC also did this, and the copy of Krazy in my possession was a temporary measure, begun but then abandoned in favour of the more usual method.

That's just speculation on my part, of course - I'll never know for sure unless someone with some inside information decides to share it with me.  (Hint, hint!) 

Want to see the second half of the mag?  Then be sure to click here after leaving a message in the comments section.