Leer Comics

WITH STAN LEE taking a much more active hand in Marvel's anthology titles during 1964, following his first revamp of Strange Tales , Journey into Mystery , Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense in the last couple months of 1963, it became apparent as 1964 wore on that Stan wasn't quite happy with the B-team titles quite yet. Starting with Strange Tales , he would further evolve those mags with more radical changes, the first of which was introducing the "split-cover" idea . Doctor Strange had been appearing in Strange Tales beginning with a couple of appearances in issues 110 & 111, then returning as a permanent back-up in 114 (Nov 1963), the first to see Stan scripting the main Human Torch feature. But the magician was nowhere to be seen on the following  Strange Tales covers - aside from a cameo on issue 118 - until June 1964's Strange Tales 121 .  Strange Tales 121 sported Marvel's first regular "split cover" format - the idea wouldn...

IN THE EARLY DAYS of Marvel, Stan Lee hadn't been quite so protective of the characters as he would later become. I believe, even in 1962 and 1963, he saw Marvel as no different to Atlas. It was just comic books, not the great American novel. But by the end of 1963, that was beginning to change. In the last entry in this blog, I included a table showing how Stan had farmed out the script-writing of the early (B-team) Marvel stories to diverse hands , including his brother Larry Lieber, Ernie Hart, Robert Bernstein and the great Jerry Siegel - but was less than satisfied with the results. I say "B-team" here, but it's worth noting that Stan didn't assign the Western and Millie scripting to anyone else. I can only guess, but I'd suggest that the super-hero revival was very much in its early days, and Stan didn't want to entrust proven money-makers to writers unfamiliar with the established Marvel house style. Also, Stan had been burned a couple of times in...

BACK WHEN I first started reading Marvel Comics, in the mid-1960s, I was aware of The Hulk as a co-star in the Tales to Astonish series. To be honest, I liked the Giant-Man stories a bit better, but as I became more familiar with the Marvel titles, I began to pick up hints that The Hulk had enjoyed a life before Tales to Astonish . I found tantalising references to the nature of these earlier Hulk adventures when the stories started showing up in the reprint books Marvel were putting out in the mid-1960s. The  Marvel Tales Annual for 1965 had a reprint of the Ringmaster segment from The Incredible Hulk 3 (Sep 1962). I knew that because Stan had thoughtfully added a caption at the foot of the first page that told me so. The cancelled Incredible Hulk series was reprinted in Marvel Collectors' Item Classics during the 1960s ... this was the first time I became aware of these comics. I can't now recall when I did finally manage to find an issue from the original run of The Incr...