FSC: MARVEL AGE #1

In 1982, I was still ordering my comics through the mail order service offered by Geppi’s Comic World in Maryland. I didn’t yet have a driver’s license, and my family’s new homestead was in a new development that was too far away from any center of civilization to get to easily by walking or bike-riding. So I’d bitten the bullet and signed up for C.O.D. home delivery–a situation that led to some nail-biting weeks when a package would arrive and I’d be counting up coins scavenged from all over in order to make the required amount. This also meant that I needed to select exactly what I wanted weeks earlier from an order sheet. And sometimes, information about those offerings could be scarce in those days. All of which is to say that I ordered the first issue of MARVEL AGE almost blind, knowing nothing about it apart from the title.

MARVEL AGE, as it turned out, was Marvel’s new in-house promotional publication dedicated to both showcasing whatever was new and upcoming at the House of Ideas and also to putting forward the Marvel perspective on whatever was happening in the world of comics. It was very successful for a long time, due in part, I’m sure, to its affordable cover price. This first issue only cost a quarter, and even once it went up to 50 cents (for more pages) it was still something of a bargain. All told, MARVEL AGE lasted for 140 issues over ten-plus years, which is quite an achievement.

This first issue was produced by Marvel’s Direct Sales team under the command of Carol Kalish, who oversaw the initiative. A good deal of it was written and edited by future Marvel writer Peter David, who was then working on that department. I can remember this reporting of a joke made at a monthly fan press conference about a backwards issue of Spider-Man getting traction as a legitimate thing and then certain parties, notably the Comics Journal, becoming indignant at this reveal that the whole thing was a gag. It would be so wonderful if this sort of thing was the worst P.R. situation that anybody in the field had to worry about today.

The opening section of the issue was devoted to Marvel Coming Attractions, sort of an expanded version of the Mighty Marvel Checklist from the old Bullpen Bulletins page with a lot more detail added in as well as some visuals. There were two feature articles in this inaugural issue, both of them penned by Peter Sanderson. The first gave a behind-the-scenes look at the development of CRYSTAR, a comic book and toy line intended to be a home-grown Marvel addition to G.I.JOE and TRANSFORMERS and the like but which never captured the attention of toy-buyers in sufficient quantities. The second was about the development of the OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, a project that would have a bit of a longer tail than poor CRYSTAR.

There was also an Editorial Notes section in which each of the main editors within the group wrote up some general thoughts about what was coming up, or making comics in general, or pretty much whatever struck them as momentarily diverting. Possibly the best thing from it was the above cartoon by Paul Smith, which he had faxed to Louise Simonson upon hearing an anecdote about John Buscema being asked about what Conan might find funny.

All in all, MARVEL AGE was a nice little behind-the-scenes package, especially for those who didn’t already have access to magazines such as AMAZING HEROES or COMICS FEATURE that covered the field broadly and which weren’t limited in presenting a company-approved opinion on whatever was being talked about. But for me, I was already starting to be plugged into that group of publications, and so I was a bit skeptical of MARVEL AGE. I did buy the first four issues, which carried things along up to the point where I stopped using Geppi’s Comic World to get my new books and instead dealt with picking them up locally. At that point, I didn’t read another issue of MARVEL AGE until I cane on staff at Marvel.