@Barbel left a comment about how British kids were enthralled with the advertisements in American comics so as a one-off piece I’ve included some of those adverts below…
X-Ray specs looked amazing…they didn’t work, of course 😂 and I’m not sure that the spy scope which enabled hormonal teenage boys to perv on scantily clad girls would go down very well nowadays…
This gun advert would be a bit controversial now as well…
G.I. Joe was the boys action model that was sold for a couple of years before Palitoy licensed it and rebranded it as Action Man in the UK…
These were gifts that kids could obtain by selling goods to neighbours…
And all these look extremely good value nowadays!…
Back to a new comic strip next Monday.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
FAMOUS FIRSTS - The 1st appearance of The Fantastic Four.
Stan Lee wrote the script and Jack Kirby did the art. They both claim to have conceived the characters, we will not know for certain how much each other was involved in the portrayal of the foursome. Legend has it that Lee was asked to imitate the successful JusticeLeagueofAmerica from the DC comics and that this was the outcome. The first issue was published in November 1962 and quickly became a best selling title.
As we have been highlighting advertisements in comics this week I thought it might be fun to post them from this issue instead of editing them out.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
The content of this comic strip contains very strong language not permitted in the ongoing threads of this site. It also contains themes that some readers may find upsetting. Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended. The content has been cleared for posting by the moderators.
Fantastic Four 1, nov 1961, wasn't just the First appearance of the Fantastic Four. It was the First appearance of the allnew Marvel Universe, and began the selfproclaimed Marvel Age of Comics. Within three years of Fantastic Four 1, Marvel also introduced Antman and the Wasp, the Incredible Hulk, the Mighty Thor, Spiderman, Dr Strange, the X-Men, the Avengers, Daredevil and Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD. All these characters from different series knew each other and shared a consistent continuity in which events from one comic would be referenced in another title sometimes years later. This one single comic also introduced a whole new way of writing superhero comics. The characters all had unique individual voices, personalities, and psychological hangups. And they spent as much time arguing amongst themselves as they did fighting the bad guys and saving the world.
But Marvel's history goes back 22 years before Fantastic Four 1.
Marvel Comics 1, oct 1939, the first ever Timely(Marvel) comic (cover by pulp illustrator Frank Paul)
the company now known as Marvel had been publishing comics since 1939, originally named Timely in the 1940s, and then known as Atlas in the 1950s. Owner Martin Goodman, a publisher of pulps, had entered the early comic book market like dozens of others, inspired by the sales of Superman. Timely(Marvel)'s three big superheros in the 1940s were The Human Torch, the Submariner, and Captain America. Not the same Human Torch as seen in the Fantastic Four, the original was an android who caught fire when exposed to oxygen. Submariner and Captain America were both reintroduced into the Marvel Universe shortly after FF1, and were explicitly the same characters though much of the adventures they had in the 1940s was now apocryphal.
heres a nice cover by Alex Schomburg showing all three characters together, doing what they did best in those early days: fighting the Nazis!
When superheroes went out of fashion following the end of WWII, Timely(Marvel) began publishing other genres, and quit publishing their big three superheroes in 1949. Now known as Atlas, they were a big publisher of horror comics through the early 1950s, and were one of the few comics companies to survive the subsequent moral panic over horror comics and imposition of the Comics Code. In the late fifties, Atlas(Marvel) focused instead on science fiction genre comics, and on a specific subgenre of giant monster stories. Following DC's successful revival of the superhero genre with The Flash, Marvel were actually slow to do the same. Archie Comics and Charlton Comics both tried introducing their own new superheroes before Marvel gave it a try. Even then Fantastic Four 1 looks more like a giant monster comic than a superhero comic, and at first the characters did not wear costumes, and never kept their identities secret.
Stan Lee tells almost the exact same story in his 1974 book Origins of Marvel Comics. a more detailed variation I've seen many times says publisher Martin Goodman was playing golf with one of DC's owners (thatd be either Harry Donenfield or Jack Leibowitz) when the DC publisher bragged about their new successful comic, and Goodman gave Lee his assignment to come up with a new series imitating what DC was doing now. Since at that point they had no superheroes the make into a team, the obvious thing would have been to revive their old characters the (original) Human Torch, the Submariner, and Captain America. But Lee claims he was jaded with the comic book racket at this point, on the verge of quitting so he could become a novelist instead, and his wife convinced him to just write the kind of comic he'd enjoy reading himself. Thus he came up with four allnew characters (even if one of them borrowed an old name), and broke all the established rules for how to tell a superhero story.
Cover of Fantastic Four1 does kinda resemble the basic composition of Brave and the Bold 28 (Feb 1960), first appearance of the Justice League. but even more it resembles the covers of the giant monster comics Marvel's been specializing in the last few years. and of course none of the four characters are wearing superhero costumes (thosed come with the third issue)
so what does Jack Kirby say? Kirby'd worked at Timely(Marvel) twenty years earlier. It was Kirby and his original creative partner Joe Simon who created Captain America, and they left the company a year later after Goodman refused to share the profits of their new topselling character. They crossed the street and joined DC with much fanfare, then after the end of the War worked for various smaller companies for better terms and started their own company in the early fifties. When the industry crashed in the midfifties, Simon and Kirby went their separate ways. Kirby briefly returned to DC, where he drew Green Arrow for about a year, and cocreated a new adventure series called Challengers of the Unknown. He then left DC on bad terms and finally returned to Marvel.
Kirby claims when he returned Marvel, they were about to go out of business and Stan was packing up the boxes as he entered the door. He told Stan to stop unpacking those boxes, he had enough ideas he'd save their company single handed, and for the next couple years drew most of those giant monster comics before Goodman gave them the assignment to create a new imitation superhero team.
Thing is, Kirby didnt just draw, he wrote. He'd been writing his own comics for twenty years, and had indeed come up with many brand new ideas that became successful. Simon and Kirby were the ones who invented the genre of romance comic. Marvel was indeed lucky Kirby walked in that door, and DC was stupid to have let him go. Of that list of Marvel Age characters I gave at the start of this post, more than half of them were first drawn by Kirby, and according to him were his idea. (theres good evidence Thor was, and he even claims Spiderman was)
What Fantastic Four 1 resembles far more than Justice League of Americais the first appearance of Challengers of the Unknown. Written by Dave Wood, and drawn by Kirby, the Challengers fist appeared in Showcase 6, Feb 1957.
In this story, four broadshouldered he-man types meet on a plane trip, and when the plane crashed they all miraculously survive. Realising they should have died, they decide they are living on borrowed time, and vow to use that borrowed time to travel the world and have adventures fighting evil and such. over the next several years they journey to countless lost islands and hidden mountain kingdoms, encountering fantastical scifi situations and defeating many mad scientists and evil wizards. Main difference is instead of four big guys who can barely be told apart, the Fantastic Four were four distinct types: the intellectual scientist leader, his girlfriend, her impetuous little brother, and one broad shouldered he-man with an embittered attitude and bad temper. But the Fantastic four also spent much of their time travelling the world discovering unknown kingdoms: Atlantis, Latveria, the Hidden Land, Wakanda, the Negative Zone and many more.
the first three pages of Showcase 6 are much the same as the origin of the Fantastic Four, just without the cosmic rays and the superpowers.
the rest of the story shows the Challengers on their first adventure, travelling to an undiscovered island, where an evil wizard controls a giant monster.
CoolHand didnt show us the second half of Fantastic Four 1. Bet youre all wondering why reed Richards fired that flaregun and signalled the team together, what did he need them all to do? answer: They travelled to a remote island, where an underground living outcast named the Mole Man controlled a whole tribe of giant monsters.
which is all to say, the basic plot of Fantastic Four 1 was recycled with variations from something Kirby had done at a rival company four years earlier.
Personally, I think Lee came up with the characterizations and we know he wrote the dialog. and Kirby came up with the concepts and much of the plots. Once Kirby left Marvel the second time, Lee's stories became more repetitive, less imaginative. And Kirbys later stories that he did receive writing credit for may be full of wild ideas, but they read like lead.
@caractacus potts Thank you once again for such a detailed addition to the first appearance of the FF. Your contribution is invaluable, and welcome at any time. I will not be alone in admiring your extensive knowledge of the medium and I sincerely hope that you will continue to add background detail to this thread, as and when you can.
You are, of course, correct in pointing out that there was a second story in the first issue and I will post this as an extra on Monday (adverts and all).
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,749Chief of Staff
Wonderful reading. Sincere thanks to both @CoolHandBond and @caractacus potts for all of the above. My brain too small to take all of that in, I'm going to have re-read it all. Several times. Just in case I missed something.
yeh sorry @Barbel I may have garbled that a bit, I see now its a bit of an infodump. The early history of Marvel is a vast subject in itself, and I was trying to cherrypick the important details that lead up to Fantastic Four 1. but by cherrypicking factoids I'm losing crucial context and its still an overly long post.
Itd be easiest just to regard Fantastic Four 1 as the first Marvel comic, and for most fan's purposes it is. But to appreciate just how revolutionary that one comic was, it helps to know Marvel's early history, as well as what Kirby was up to in his early years
heres something easier to digest: a selection of covers from those giant monster comics Marvel specialised in in the late 50s/early 60s. These were anthologies with no recurring characters, each issue was three or four very short stories almost always following the same repetitive pattern with yet another giant monster threatening civilization.
Groot from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie was actually a oneshot character from one of these pre-FF1 giant monster comics
this Strange Tales cover looks similar to the giant monster on the cover of Fantastic Four 1 (and note they recycled a name: the Thing, not just the cover design)
they also recycled the name of the Hulk
most of these are drawn by Kirby, but this next one's a Steve Ditko cover
Fin Fang Foom would actually become part of mainstream Marvel continuity
No need to worry @caractacus potts your input is fascinating. My knowledge of American comics is pretty basic, so I’m very happy to learn the background to the strips that I post, and I’m sure everyone else who reads this thread feels the same 🍸
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
The content of this comic strip contains very strong language not permitted in the ongoing threads of this site. It also contains themes that some readers may find upsetting. Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended. The content has been cleared for posting by the moderators.
Comments
CONTENT ADVICE: Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended.
JAMES BOND: FELIX LEITER (2017) Part 7 of 12
More tomorrow…
Good! 😁
CONTENT ADVICE: Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended.
JAMES BOND: FELIX LEITER (2017) Part 8 of 12
This has some of the best “nighttime” artwork that I’ve ever seen.
Continues next weekend…
Up till this story I hadn't thought it would be worthwhile reading a solo Felix story, but my mind has been changed.
Same…going in, I did think this might be some thrown away piece…obviously I should have trusted @CoolHandBond more 🤗
I’m glad you’re enjoying Leiter’s adventures, gents 🙂
@Barbel left a comment about how British kids were enthralled with the advertisements in American comics so as a one-off piece I’ve included some of those adverts below…
X-Ray specs looked amazing…they didn’t work, of course 😂 and I’m not sure that the spy scope which enabled hormonal teenage boys to perv on scantily clad girls would go down very well nowadays…
This gun advert would be a bit controversial now as well…
G.I. Joe was the boys action model that was sold for a couple of years before Palitoy licensed it and rebranded it as Action Man in the UK…
These were gifts that kids could obtain by selling goods to neighbours…
And all these look extremely good value nowadays!…
Back to a new comic strip next Monday.
Very nostalgic, it's nice to see those again. I hadn't seen all of those; did they really send ants or ant eggs through the mail?
I’m familiar with the first set of ‘toys’ - and even bought a few of them 🤣
It looks like they send a voucher to exchange for real ants - I don’t know which shops would be able to supply - maybe someone can answer?
FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (Part 3 of 3)
I think that’s a grand adaptation of a great fun movie - and 60 years old - how time flies.
A new comic strip begins next Tuesday.
I enjoyed that…thanks 👏🏻👏🏻
Yes, me too. Thanks for another unexpected find.
You’re welcome, gents.
FAMOUS FIRSTS - The 1st appearance of The Fantastic Four.
Stan Lee wrote the script and Jack Kirby did the art. They both claim to have conceived the characters, we will not know for certain how much each other was involved in the portrayal of the foursome. Legend has it that Lee was asked to imitate the successful Justice League of America from the DC comics and that this was the outcome. The first issue was published in November 1962 and quickly became a best selling title.
As we have been highlighting advertisements in comics this week I thought it might be fun to post them from this issue instead of editing them out.
Pure nostalgia, I remember reading that when I was a boy. The ads only help!
I hadn’t read that before…and the ads are great 🤣 thanks
CONTENT NOTICE:
The content of this comic strip contains very strong language not permitted in the ongoing threads of this site. It also contains themes that some readers may find upsetting. Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended. The content has been cleared for posting by the moderators.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH - Deviation Two: Foil (Part 1 of 2)
More tomorrow…
My father had the George Adamski books, I remember reading them as a kid in the mid-sixties and being captivated by the photographs of UFO’s.
sorry CoolHand, I was tardy assembling my supplemental notes, didn't mean to interrupt the new comic
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Fantastic Four 1, nov 1961, wasn't just the First appearance of the Fantastic Four. It was the First appearance of the allnew Marvel Universe, and began the selfproclaimed Marvel Age of Comics. Within three years of Fantastic Four 1, Marvel also introduced Antman and the Wasp, the Incredible Hulk, the Mighty Thor, Spiderman, Dr Strange, the X-Men, the Avengers, Daredevil and Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD. All these characters from different series knew each other and shared a consistent continuity in which events from one comic would be referenced in another title sometimes years later. This one single comic also introduced a whole new way of writing superhero comics. The characters all had unique individual voices, personalities, and psychological hangups. And they spent as much time arguing amongst themselves as they did fighting the bad guys and saving the world.
But Marvel's history goes back 22 years before Fantastic Four 1.
Marvel Comics 1, oct 1939, the first ever Timely(Marvel) comic (cover by pulp illustrator Frank Paul)
the company now known as Marvel had been publishing comics since 1939, originally named Timely in the 1940s, and then known as Atlas in the 1950s. Owner Martin Goodman, a publisher of pulps, had entered the early comic book market like dozens of others, inspired by the sales of Superman. Timely(Marvel)'s three big superheros in the 1940s were The Human Torch, the Submariner, and Captain America. Not the same Human Torch as seen in the Fantastic Four, the original was an android who caught fire when exposed to oxygen. Submariner and Captain America were both reintroduced into the Marvel Universe shortly after FF1, and were explicitly the same characters though much of the adventures they had in the 1940s was now apocryphal.
heres a nice cover by Alex Schomburg showing all three characters together, doing what they did best in those early days: fighting the Nazis!
When superheroes went out of fashion following the end of WWII, Timely(Marvel) began publishing other genres, and quit publishing their big three superheroes in 1949. Now known as Atlas, they were a big publisher of horror comics through the early 1950s, and were one of the few comics companies to survive the subsequent moral panic over horror comics and imposition of the Comics Code. In the late fifties, Atlas(Marvel) focused instead on science fiction genre comics, and on a specific subgenre of giant monster stories. Following DC's successful revival of the superhero genre with The Flash, Marvel were actually slow to do the same. Archie Comics and Charlton Comics both tried introducing their own new superheroes before Marvel gave it a try. Even then Fantastic Four 1 looks more like a giant monster comic than a superhero comic, and at first the characters did not wear costumes, and never kept their identities secret.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
coolhand says: Legend has it that Lee was asked to imitate the successful Justice League of America from the DC comics and that this was the outcome.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Stan Lee tells almost the exact same story in his 1974 book Origins of Marvel Comics. a more detailed variation I've seen many times says publisher Martin Goodman was playing golf with one of DC's owners (thatd be either Harry Donenfield or Jack Leibowitz) when the DC publisher bragged about their new successful comic, and Goodman gave Lee his assignment to come up with a new series imitating what DC was doing now. Since at that point they had no superheroes the make into a team, the obvious thing would have been to revive their old characters the (original) Human Torch, the Submariner, and Captain America. But Lee claims he was jaded with the comic book racket at this point, on the verge of quitting so he could become a novelist instead, and his wife convinced him to just write the kind of comic he'd enjoy reading himself. Thus he came up with four allnew characters (even if one of them borrowed an old name), and broke all the established rules for how to tell a superhero story.
Cover of Fantastic Four 1 does kinda resemble the basic composition of Brave and the Bold 28 (Feb 1960), first appearance of the Justice League. but even more it resembles the covers of the giant monster comics Marvel's been specializing in the last few years. and of course none of the four characters are wearing superhero costumes (thosed come with the third issue)
so what does Jack Kirby say? Kirby'd worked at Timely(Marvel) twenty years earlier. It was Kirby and his original creative partner Joe Simon who created Captain America, and they left the company a year later after Goodman refused to share the profits of their new topselling character. They crossed the street and joined DC with much fanfare, then after the end of the War worked for various smaller companies for better terms and started their own company in the early fifties. When the industry crashed in the midfifties, Simon and Kirby went their separate ways. Kirby briefly returned to DC, where he drew Green Arrow for about a year, and cocreated a new adventure series called Challengers of the Unknown. He then left DC on bad terms and finally returned to Marvel.
Kirby claims when he returned Marvel, they were about to go out of business and Stan was packing up the boxes as he entered the door. He told Stan to stop unpacking those boxes, he had enough ideas he'd save their company single handed, and for the next couple years drew most of those giant monster comics before Goodman gave them the assignment to create a new imitation superhero team.
Thing is, Kirby didnt just draw, he wrote. He'd been writing his own comics for twenty years, and had indeed come up with many brand new ideas that became successful. Simon and Kirby were the ones who invented the genre of romance comic. Marvel was indeed lucky Kirby walked in that door, and DC was stupid to have let him go. Of that list of Marvel Age characters I gave at the start of this post, more than half of them were first drawn by Kirby, and according to him were his idea. (theres good evidence Thor was, and he even claims Spiderman was)
What Fantastic Four 1 resembles far more than Justice League of America is the first appearance of Challengers of the Unknown. Written by Dave Wood, and drawn by Kirby, the Challengers fist appeared in Showcase 6, Feb 1957.
In this story, four broadshouldered he-man types meet on a plane trip, and when the plane crashed they all miraculously survive. Realising they should have died, they decide they are living on borrowed time, and vow to use that borrowed time to travel the world and have adventures fighting evil and such. over the next several years they journey to countless lost islands and hidden mountain kingdoms, encountering fantastical scifi situations and defeating many mad scientists and evil wizards. Main difference is instead of four big guys who can barely be told apart, the Fantastic Four were four distinct types: the intellectual scientist leader, his girlfriend, her impetuous little brother, and one broad shouldered he-man with an embittered attitude and bad temper. But the Fantastic four also spent much of their time travelling the world discovering unknown kingdoms: Atlantis, Latveria, the Hidden Land, Wakanda, the Negative Zone and many more.
the first three pages of Showcase 6 are much the same as the origin of the Fantastic Four, just without the cosmic rays and the superpowers.
the rest of the story shows the Challengers on their first adventure, travelling to an undiscovered island, where an evil wizard controls a giant monster.
CoolHand didnt show us the second half of Fantastic Four 1. Bet youre all wondering why reed Richards fired that flaregun and signalled the team together, what did he need them all to do? answer: They travelled to a remote island, where an underground living outcast named the Mole Man controlled a whole tribe of giant monsters.
which is all to say, the basic plot of Fantastic Four 1 was recycled with variations from something Kirby had done at a rival company four years earlier.
Personally, I think Lee came up with the characterizations and we know he wrote the dialog. and Kirby came up with the concepts and much of the plots. Once Kirby left Marvel the second time, Lee's stories became more repetitive, less imaginative. And Kirbys later stories that he did receive writing credit for may be full of wild ideas, but they read like lead.
@caractacus potts Thank you once again for such a detailed addition to the first appearance of the FF. Your contribution is invaluable, and welcome at any time. I will not be alone in admiring your extensive knowledge of the medium and I sincerely hope that you will continue to add background detail to this thread, as and when you can.
You are, of course, correct in pointing out that there was a second story in the first issue and I will post this as an extra on Monday (adverts and all).
Loving all the extra info @caractacus potts 👏🏻
@CoolHandBond hadn't heard of George Adamski before either…so I’m off to do a little research ☺️
Wonderful reading. Sincere thanks to both @CoolHandBond and @caractacus potts for all of the above. My brain too small to take all of that in, I'm going to have re-read it all. Several times. Just in case I missed something.
yeh sorry @Barbel I may have garbled that a bit, I see now its a bit of an infodump. The early history of Marvel is a vast subject in itself, and I was trying to cherrypick the important details that lead up to Fantastic Four 1. but by cherrypicking factoids I'm losing crucial context and its still an overly long post.
Itd be easiest just to regard Fantastic Four 1 as the first Marvel comic, and for most fan's purposes it is. But to appreciate just how revolutionary that one comic was, it helps to know Marvel's early history, as well as what Kirby was up to in his early years
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
heres something easier to digest: a selection of covers from those giant monster comics Marvel specialised in in the late 50s/early 60s. These were anthologies with no recurring characters, each issue was three or four very short stories almost always following the same repetitive pattern with yet another giant monster threatening civilization.
Groot from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie was actually a oneshot character from one of these pre-FF1 giant monster comics
this Strange Tales cover looks similar to the giant monster on the cover of Fantastic Four 1 (and note they recycled a name: the Thing, not just the cover design)
they also recycled the name of the Hulk
most of these are drawn by Kirby, but this next one's a Steve Ditko cover
Fin Fang Foom would actually become part of mainstream Marvel continuity
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
thanks for welcoming my contributions @CoolHandBond . I always worry I'm derailing your thread, and posting minutiae most people arent interested in
No need to worry @caractacus potts your input is fascinating. My knowledge of American comics is pretty basic, so I’m very happy to learn the background to the strips that I post, and I’m sure everyone else who reads this thread feels the same 🍸
Absolutely, please keep it coming! I read a lot of these when I was a kid but had no idea of their backgrounds.
Both of you!
CONTENT NOTICE:
The content of this comic strip contains very strong language not permitted in the ongoing threads of this site. It also contains themes that some readers may find upsetting. Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended. The content has been cleared for posting by the moderators.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH - Deviation Two: Foil (Part 2 of 2)
More next Thursday…
Loving this. I like how they incorporate real names such as Betty and Barney Hill into the story, it makes the reader wonder how much is made up.
Gotta agree with him ^ ^ 👏🏻
CONTENT ADVICE: Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended.
JAMES BOND: FELIX LEITER (2017) Part 9 of 12)
The scene on the steps is reminiscent of the movie YOLT, more of this action filled comic tomorrow…
Very enjoyable.
Yep…and nice to Tiger in the action ☺️