An awful lot of the production work materials from the comic books created in the formative years of the industry are long gone, discarded as unimportant "work product" on the way to producing finished comic book issues, which were the goal point all along. Fortunately, a lot of the original artwork has survived (though far … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Pencils of FANTASTIC FOUR #49
Creator Bill Morrison posted a set of images from the 3M color separation proofs for the cover to this 1951 issue of MILLIE THE MODEL, and so I thought they were worth showing off here. It's relatively rare that proofs of this sort from that era turn up, and the relative simplicity of cover artist … Continue reading More Fun With Color Separations
This past week I was called upon to do some work on the upcoming AUGUST 1961 Omnibus that Marvel is going to be releasing as part of the 60th Anniversary of the publication of FANTASTIC FOUR #1. The massive book will collect all of the other Marvel titles that were also on sale on or … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Cover to FANTASTIC FOUR #1
I ran across this Swedish printing of FANTASTIC FOUR #76 in my travels, and thought I'd share it. As happened on a not-infrequent basis, the local publisher, either by accident or because they were unfamiliar with what the colors of the characters were supposed to be, inadvertently switched the film for the yellow and cyan … Continue reading Even More on Color Separations
I've had to clean out my office recently, and in doing so I've unearthed a small treasure trove of interesting items that have been buried for several years. So with the holidays before us, I expect that I'll be posting a bunch of stuff before through the end of the year. Consider it a bonus … Continue reading Making The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man
As a brief follow-up to the earlier post concerning the 3M cover proof, I've got a pair of examples to show here that may make understanding how the three primary colors were mixed to make the 64 available colors for printing back in the 1960s and 1970s. Here, I've got two examples where, for a … Continue reading More On Color Separations – AVENGERS #10 and FANTASTIC FOUR #110
I saw this posted by its current owner and I thought it was worth both sharing with a wider audience and explaining in a bit greater detail. What you see below is the 3M proof for the cover to FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #5. Also sometimes called a progressive proof, this would have been sent to … Continue reading 3M Cover Proof – FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #5
A bit of a treasure trove came up for auction not too long ago: a full set of stats of the pencils to a golden age Human Torch story from this issue, HUMAN TORCH COMICS #33 from 1948. So I thought it was worth both saving a set of those stats and comparing them to … Continue reading The Golden Age Pencils of Bill Walton – The Human Torch
I think it's fair to say that, as a series, the original run of INCREDIBLE HULK was troubled. It wrapped up after a mere six issues, and had Stan Lee and Jack Kirby not had a creator's affection for the character and started using him in the pages of AVENGERS and other titles, it's doubtful … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Unused INCREDIBLE HULK #4 Pages
It caused quite a stir a couple of years ago when the entirety of the original artwork to AMAZING FANTASY #15, containing the very first Spider-Man story, was anonymously donated to the Library of Congress. The art was among the earliest to go missing from Marvel's warehouse back in the late 1970s/early 1980s and nobody … Continue reading Lee & Ditko: AMAZING FANTASY #15
The Tom Brevoort Experience 