It was always a red-letter day when a new issue of FANTASTIC FOUR would show up on the spinner rack at my local 7-11. FANTASTIC FOUR had swiftly become my favorite comic book at the time, and so I was hungry for the continuing adventures of the cosmic quartet. This particular entry was still in … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #196
I'm fairly certain that I came across these documents at Scott Edelman's blog. In any case, Scott was one of those who found these documents preserved in the back of a drawer in the Marvel offices and hung onto them. Around 1966, as Marvel was beginning to make its first faltering in-roads into other media, … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: THE CHARACTER WRITE-UPS OF STAN LEE
And we are back, with the last of our sequence looking at Marvel's archived stats from FANTASTIC FOUR #1 to see what they might tell us about how the book and the stories had been put together. Before we get into the fourth and final section of the issue, though, I want to share something … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: THE STATS OF FANTASTIC FOUR #1, Part 4
Here's another of the books that I got in my Windfall Comics purchase where I bought a long box of around 150 Silver Age Comics for $50.00 in 1988--making each book cost a mere 33 cents. FANTASTIC FOUR was a favorite series of mine, and I believe this particular issue, #29, was one that I … Continue reading WC: FANTASTIC FOUR #29
Continuing our sequence looking at Marvel's in-house production stats for FANTASTIC FOUR #1--the closest thing that still exists to the original artwork--and studying them up close to see if they can tell us anything about how the book was put together. So let's go! We're moving into the back half of the issue now, a … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: THE STATS OF FANTASTIC FOUR #1, Part 3
Here's a second portion of our look at Marvel's archived stats for FANTASTIC FOUR #1, as close to looking at the original artwork as we can get. As with last time, there isn't a whole lot new that's revealed here. But having the ability to get up real close on some of these pages does … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: THE STATS OF FANTASTIC FOUR #1, Part 2
As those who have been following this page for some time are aware, there are a bunch of mysteries wrapped up in FANTASTIC FOUR #1, the seminal publication that kicked off the Marvel revolution in the 1960s. There have been several theories as to how this book may have been put together--whether it was all … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: THE STATS OF FANTASTIC FOUR #1
And another issue of MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS reprinting Fantastic Four stories from earlier in the group's history, made its way to my regular 7-11 haunt. This era in which there were still monthly reprint titles for most of the major Marvel series was a godsend to me in terms of allowing me to get a … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #78
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
I was sampling all sorts of random Marvel books out of my drugstore's Big Bin of Slightly Older Comics. Since they were selling these treasures at five for a dollar, it was always fiscally advantageous to pull five books at a time--if you went to the register with fewer than that, the outcome would depend … Continue reading BHOC: INHUMANS #9
