Here's a cover from my Silver Age collection. I'm going to post some interiors and details tomorrow.
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| Classic Kirby artwork. The stuff that kept Marvel going until Kirby could reignite the business with the best superheroes ever created for the public. |
4 comments:
Great cover...that's when comic book artists could really draw.
That is one of my favorite pre-hero Marvel covers. Very effective all around!
Have you ever stoped to think about how many years Marvel was treading water with these monsterbooks before they tried the superhero thing? It's not hard to calculate. Divide 12 (months) into the number of issues in the title to determine the number of years (approx.). Strange Tales was going roughly 100 issues...or a little better than 8.5 years.
Tales of Suspense, a little over 3 years. Journey into Mystery, about 7 years to Thor. Tales to Astonish, about 3 to 3.5 years.
Amazing Fantasy...about a year or so.
So it helps to put the great explosion of superheroes into perspective, when you realize that the Submariner had a soap opera in a split book for only three years before being spun off. The Hulk was roughly 4 years. Captain America was roughly 3.5 years. Iron Man was about 5 years, Dr. Strange about the same 5 years. Human Torch ran about 3 year tops, and Nick Fury/Sheild ran about 3 years before being spun off and dying within a year or so.
Kinda makes you think, doesn't it?
You bring up a point that goes back to one of my other essays:
Marvel Comics (or Atlas) was never an innovator. Lee and Goodman just copied what was popular and tried to capitalize on what other creative folk were doing that was commercially successful. When superheroes faded in the later 40s, they trended to what was selling--monsters and science-fiction. When EC was put out of business, they doubled down on that stuff and eked out an existence that way all during the 1950s and into the very early 60s.
The only innovators at Marvel Comics were Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Kirby had been begging Lee for a chance to create new superheroes and when he was given that chance he created the Marvel Universe. Ditko added to that universe with Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, and the casts of characters attached to those two heroic icons.
And even in cutting Kirby and Ditko loose to create what they did, Lee & Goodman were just trying to take advantage of the superhero popularity that DC was enjoying in their reintroduction of their established characters.
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