SOMETHING THAT'S ALWAYS FASCINATED me is the way comic artists have re-used various conventions and imagery from what has gone before. I'm not judging. Having worked in the Business, I know that it's a hungry beast, gobbling up ideas faster than most can provide them. So now and again, it's entirely forgivable if an artist might have cause to "reference" earlier ideas - his own or those of others - when a dreaded deadline looms. And sometimes, ideas can be thrust upon an unfortunate artist (or writer) by an over-enthusiastic editor. Goodness knows, I've found myself on both sides of that particular fence. Sometimes an editor would recycle an idea over and over - for example, a hero behind bars, and sometimes an artist would re-use something that had been especially effective for them in the past, like a "camera" angle or a particular layout. Here, then, is a quick dash through several examples of ideas that have cropped up on more than one comic...
AS THE DAYS of Marty Goodman's Atlas Comics drew to a close in the late 1950s, the publisher was casting around for the Next Big Thing. Locked in to a draconian distribution contract with arch rivals DC Comics, Goodman was limited to a tight eight titles per month and if he needed to launch a new title, he was forced to cancel an existing one. So, feeling that mystery and science fiction was the coming trend Goodman decided to launch three new comics to complement the existing Journey into Mystery, World of Fantasy and Strange Tales titles. The new books were Strange Worlds , beginning in December 1958 and replacing the cancelled Navy Combat , and Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish , both debuting in January 1959, replacing the cancelled Homer the Happy Ghost and Miss America . Journey into Mystery and Strange Tales had been around since the twilight of the Golden Age and changed in content according to Martin Goodman's take on his customers' tastes. So they bega...