On my unanticipated trip to the Batcave comic book shop that weekend, I needed to make my meager funds stretch to their furthest. There was a cornucopia of back issues laid out before me. But I had only limited money with which to make my purchases. And so one of the books I wound up coming home with was this early issue of MARVEL TALES, the series that in the present reprinted AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. This issue, though, was from the same era in which MARVEL COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS was being produced, meaning that the issue was annual-sized and squarebound, and contained additional stories alongside the web-spinner. Plus, as a reprint title, it was cheap–reprint books weren’t accorded much of any value as back issues, at least during this time period, so they could be had for a relative song. I was most interested in reading the stories, so this was fine with me.
The lead Spider-Man story is something of a minor classic, and it’s one of my favorites from the early Lee/Ditko era. Or perhaps I should say Ditko/Lee, as this was the first issue on which Steve began receiving plotting credit for. He’d been doing most of the plotting for most of the run, and he felt that a creator should be correctly credited for his work. Lee couldn’t dissuade him, so from this point on until the end of Ditko’s time on the strip, he began receiving a plotting credit. Contrary to what some believe, this didn’t have any effect on payments. At Marvel at the time, “writing” a comic book was defined as putting the words on the page–that’s what was paid for. There wasn’t any functionality in the accounting department to pay for plotting, not yet (though it’s entirely possible that Lee increased Ditko’s page rate slightly as a way of getting him some sort of payment. But it’s also possible that he didn’t.) This story was later adapted in a stripped-down fashion in the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon (without giving Ditko any credit for the story there) so I was already familiar with it before I read this issue. But Ditko’s version is much more fun.
The story in a nutshell involves Daily Bugle J. Jonah Jameson being approached by Smythe, a scientist who’s invented a robot that he believes can capture Spider-Man, and who wants Jameson to fund his research. Peter Parker thinks the idea of the robot is ridiculous, and he eggs Jameson into buying into it–much to his regret when he discovers that the robot is far more dangerous and formidable than he’d anticipated. The whole thing is mainly an elaborate chase across the city with Spider-Man staying just one step ahead of his tireless pursuer. Meanwhile, at the Parker household, Betty Brant and Liz Allan are introduced to a character who’s been a running gag in the strip for several months: Mary Jane Watson. Aunt May had been attempting to set Peter up with her neighbor’s niece MJ for several months now, though she remained unseen. This is MJ’s first on-screen appearance and her features are obscured by household items and scarves and so forth all throughout it, maintaining the mystery of her appearance (though Betty and Liz’s reaction makes it clear that she’s a knockout.)
In the end, despite a good effort, Spidey can neither elude nor stave off his robotic pursuer, and he winds up captured, ensnared in a pseudo-web of unbreakable metal tendrils. Jameson and Smythe race to the scene, leaving the robot in lockdown mode, and Spidey takes advantage of this to use his science smarts to open up its workings and liberate himself. Then, he fills his costume with webbing, making it into a crude marionette, and waits for Jonah to show up. The moment where Jameson goes to unmask Spidey and instead pulls his head clean off is a classic. This gag costs Spidey his costume, and at the story’s end Aunt May discovers Peter’s spare, which leaves him without a uniform to wear–a situation that will cause him to have to go into action in the next issue in an inferior store-bought replica. Anyway, this whole story was a lot of fun, without any villain per se but with al of the strip’s regular players getting their time in the spotlight.
The second story in the issue was reprinted from the pages of JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY and featured the Thunder God, Thor. I wasn’t as huge a fan of Thor at that time, but any Lee/Kirby story was always worth reading. I’d come to see this one dramatized in animation a short while later as well, once my local station began syndicating the 1966 MARVEL SUPER-HEROES cartoon again under the title THE INCREDIBLE HULK AND FRIENDS in response to the popularity of the Green Goliath’s live action TV series. it introduces a new villain, the Grey Gargyole, who possesses the power to transform anything he touches into stone. I’d seen the Gargoyle already in one of the THOR issues I already owned, so he was a familiar figure to me.
The Gargoyle has come to America from his native France with one objective in mind: he intends to steal Thor’s enchanted hammer, which he believes will make him immortal. He’s wrong, of course, but that doesn’t stop him from giving the Thunder God a proper tussle. In the end, it’s powerless Don Blake using a hologram projector helpfully whipped up for him by Stark Industries at Thor’s request who’s able to trick the Gargoyle into plummeting off of a riverside pier, where his stone form sinks to the bottom like a stone. All in all, it really isn’t one of Thor’s better stories of the period, but the artwork is great, and Lee’s snappy dialogue and melodrama are really working, so it’s still entertaining.
The final story in the issue was a bit of a step down from the other two features, even though it starred a character that I cared about a bit more: the Human Torch. it was from the early days when the Torch headlined his own solo series in STRANGE TALES alongside his appearances in FANTASTIC FOUR. This was no doubt motivated by publisher Martin Goodman and editor Stan Lee remembering how the Torch was a popular solo headliner all throughout the Golden Age of Comics. Anyway, artist Dick Ayers does his best here, but without the creative powerhouse of Jack Kirby, the story is a bit lifeless, and Lee doesn’t have much to work with. it really gives a sense of just how much of the lifting Jack Kirby had been doing on their stories together.
Anyway, this tale brings back the Torch’s recurring foe the Wizard, who was merely a super-smart criminal in these early days. In fact, this is the story in which he adopts his signature weapon: circular anti-gravity disks that enable him to fly and perform other feats. Using them, he’s able to capture both the Torch and the Invisible Girl and trap them in an advertising display for cigarettes containing a limited air supply so the Torch doesn’t dare use his flame. But the pair are cleverly able to alert Reed and Ben to their whereabouts and are rescued–at which point the Torch turns this into a grudge match with the Wizard and bests him. The Wizard’s final anti-gravity disk malfunctions, carrying him up into the stratosphere, never to return (until he did, of course, a few months later in FANTASTIC FOUR.)
The Tom Brevoort Experience 