Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,710Chief of Staff
I can vaguely recall a couple of those…the only one I remember reading was The Silver Surfer…I loved reading about him - but I can’t remember why now 😵💫🫣🤣
I can barely stop laughing at that one long enough to say that the idea of using a descendant of Mary Shelley's Robert Walton in the Frankenstein story was good.
plot by Leigh Brackett (!!!), script by Edmond Hamilton
I never guessed she wrote comics. Hamilton was her husband and has many comics writing credits, this appears to be Brackett's only comics credit. heres the Grand Comics Database entry for this story just cuz I wouldnt believe me either
Krypto the Superdog became an important and popular character in the Superboy universe. Otto Binder wrote the first script and legendary Superman artist Curt Swan drew the pictures.
And an advertisement from this issue…
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Krypto the Superdog became an important and popular character in the Superboy universe. Otto Binder wrote the first script and legendary Superman artist Curt Swan drew the pictures.
Otto Binder through the 1940s was the main writer on Fawcett's Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family stories. He created the character of Captain Marvel's twin sister Mary Marvel and many other recurring characters and concepts in the Marvel Family universe. His stories had a whimsical fanciful tone, and he wrote over half of the various Marvel Familystories over 13 years.
After Fawcett exited the comics business in 1953, following years of plagiarism lawsuits from DC and the general collapse of the industry, Binder was quickly hired by DC, writing at first the Superman spinoff titles, then in the late 1950s the main Superman stories. Superman now had a whimsical fanciful tone like the Captain Marvel stories once had, and rapidly expanding universe of new characters and concepts within the Superman universe. Binder wrote the first issue of Jimmy Olsen's solo comic, and the first issue of Lois Lane's solo comic. As well as Krypto, he created Supermans cousin Supergirl, who looked a lot like Mary Marvel in her first appearance. He also created Brainiac, the Bottle City of Kandor, the Phantom Zone, the Legion of Superheros, Bizarro, Jimmy Olsen's Elastic Lad identity, and many more. He wrote the first Imaginary Tale, which became a recurring variation of Silver Age Superman stories. The late 50s/early 60s era when Binder was writing Superman is my personal favourite era in Supermans history, lotsa classic stories and general wackiness.
(but kind of ironic DC sued Fawcett for plagiarism, when the Golden Age Superman and Captain Marvel comics were so different in tone, then hired their main writer to reinvent the Superman series in an increasingly Captain Marvel-esque tone)
hey how bout some more Superpets? Krypto is the best known Superpet, but he's not the only one!
Beppo the SuperMonkey, introduced Superboy 76, oct 1959, and also created by Otto Binder, with artist George Papp.
Beppo was another Kryptonian. Remember how us earthlings used to put monkeys into testrockets to see if theyd survive? Turns out Supermans father Jor-El did the same. When JorEl had to put his only son in the test rocket and send him to earth moments before Krypton exploded, he didnt notice the mischievous monkey had hidden inside! Beppo emerged on earth and tormented Superman when he was a baby, before disappearing for his own undocumented adventures.
Streaky the SuperCat, introduced Action 261, Feb 1960. created by Superman's creator Jerry Siegel (recently returned to the DC after being fired years before) and artist Jim Mooney
Streaky was an earth cat, the pet of Linda Lee, Supergirl's civilian identity. Exposed to kryptonite, Streaky temporarily gained all the usual superpowers, then after returning to normal would coincidentally encounter more kryptonite and become super again whenever the world needed him most.
Krypto and Streaky got along like cats and dogs
Comet the SuperHorse, introduced Action 292, Sept 1962, created by writer Leo Dorfman and artist Jim Mooney. Comet first appears to SuperGirl in a dream, but he is a real horse out there somewhere communicating with her telepathically. (you know these adolescent girls and their dreams of horses)
in the next issue Comet gets the cover, and we learn his secret origin. Turns out Comet is neither Kryptonian, nor an earth horse, but a character from Greek mythology. Once a centaur, he fell in love with the sorceress Circe, who tried to make him all human but got her magic potions mixed up and instead he became all horse. Unable to reverse the mistake, she tried to help Comet by using her magic to give him all the usual superpowers, plus telepathy.
and of course all four critters team up to form the Legion of SuperPets, in Adventure 293
Thank you, Caractacus, that is very interesting and informative.
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 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.
By now Marvel UK had established itself as a major publisher of weekly comic titles to compete with DC Thomson and IPC/Odham’s.
Editor-in-chief Neil Tennant (yes, that one, later one of the Pet Shop Boys) was responsible for anglicising the dialogue to suit British readers, and for indicating where women were to be redrawn more modestly for the British kids.
However, apart from some covers drawn by Marvel Comics' American staff, no original material had yet been produced by Marvel UK. This changed in 1976 when CaptainBritain Weekly was launched, featuring a hero created for the British market. Captain Britain Weekly featured new stories in colour as well as reprints of Nick Fury and Fantastic Four strips as backup. It was initially a success but sales dropped quickly and the title soon joined the Spider-man title from #39.
It was Neil Tennant's idea to create an original British Marvel war comic to compete with popular titles published by the opposition such as Warlord and Battle. Fury reprinted US WWII strips such as Sgt. Fury and CaptainSavage, with new covers by British artists. However, the 1960s American war strips failed to win over an audience used to the grittier fare of 1970s British war comics, and Fury was cancelled with issue #25 merging with Mighty World of Marvel a week later. Also having a strip called Fokker! did not amuse parents whose kids were running around shouting the word as they played their imitation games!
Tennant left in 1977 to edit cookery and home interest books before going onto editing TV tie-ins and then Smash Hits! PSB were formed during this time. He was replaced by Nick Laing who oversaw the launch of Marvel UK's StarWarsWeekly title, soon after the film was released in the UK. The weekly issues split the stories from the US monthly issues into smaller instalments, and it usually took three weekly issues to complete a US monthly issue. In May 1980 the title became known as The Empire Strikes Back Weekly, and in November 1980 it transformed into a monthly publication. The format changed back to a weekly in June 1983 with the adaptation of Return of the Jedi (also the new name of the publication), and remained so until its last issue in 1986. The title also reprinted several other supporting strips in each issue from other Marvel properties such as The Micronauts. While the comic was in a weekly format, the supporting strips often made up the bulk of each issue.
A couple of advertisements from this title - the 8mm movies and projector were rather expensive - equating to £105 for movies and £865 for the projector in today’s money.
Next Monday the final part of this series - falling sales led to The Marvel Revolution.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,710Chief of Staff
Neil Tennant, hey…he wasn’t being boring and he had a lot of opportunities 🤭
Captain Britains costume always looked like it would be very hard to draw. I knw it was switched to a more conventional costume later on. Since I saw so little of the character here in North America, thats all I knew was his costume.
too bad Brits didnt like it, Barbel didnt like it, sales were low so the title was merged with a reliable seller. Guess Brits dont need Americans to create a comic for them, when they were perfectly capable of creating their own comics?
I gather Alan Moore wrote some of the early Captain Britains, but I've never read them. I wonder if theyre as dark and transgressive as his usual stuff?
indeed I did, see this post providing supplemental materials to CoolHand's post of the first appearance of the silver age Atom. I shared examples of the original golden age Atom, the Doll Man, and covers of four key issues of Tales to Astonish featuring AntMan
sir miles sez: How long was it before Ant-Man came back…?…the above seems a bit of a throw-away story…_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
precisely, The Man in the AntHill was a oneshot scifi genre story, typical of Marvel's content at the time, not intended to be a continuing series. This was only two months after the debut of Fantastic Four 1, and Marvel did not have any other continuing superhero series. Fantastic Four was Marvel's first attempt at the superhero genre in several years.
for context, lets take a look at all the comics Marvel published in Jan 1962, the month The Man in the AntHill came out (courtesy of Mikes Newsstand). The second issue of Fantastic Four, two cowboy comics, four romance/girl comics, and five science fiction anthologies.
Strange Tales and Journey into Mystery had begun as horror comics in the early 50s, and switched to scifi following the moral panic over horror comics. Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense had both started 1960 as science fiction comcs (which in general was a big genre at the time, DC had been having great success with their scifi titles and at his point Marvel tended to follow the lead of their competitors). Amazing Adult Fantasy had only started a few months earlier, as a showcase for Steve Ditko's unique paranoid brand of scifi. All these were anthologies of short genre stories, with no ongoing characters. Usually about five pages per story, they were very repetitive and most of them dealt with giant monsters. I posted a selection of covers of these giant monster comics back here.
The Man in the AntHill was originally just yet another of these scifi genre short stories. But when Fantastic Four turned out to be successful, publisher Martin Goodman assigned Stan Lee to come up with more of the same. May 1962 Stan 'n' Jack gave us The Incredible Hulk, and August 1962 the MightyThor begins in Journey into Mystery. AntMan was to be the fourth new superhero series, starting in Tales to Astonish35, sept 1962. Unlike the other new superheros, for AntMan they recycled an existing character, Hank Pym, from one of their scifi genre stories. In a sense, The Man in the AntHill was retconned to be the origin of the new superhero debuting in Tales to Astonish 35.
in matter of months all five of the scifi genre anthology titles had been taken over by superheros: Journey into Mystery starred Thor, Strange Tales was split between the Human Torch's solo series and Dr Strange, Tales of Suspense would be split between Iron Man and Captain America, and Tales to Astonish would be split between AntMan and the Hulk (after the Hulk's original solo title was cancelled after only six issues). Amazing Fantasy would debut SpiderMan in its final issue, then be replaced in the schedule by the Amazing SpiderMan solo series.
and I should point out AntMan was the least successful of this initial wave of new superheros from Marvel. Even after changing his name to GiantMan, and taking on The Wasp as his partner, his spot in Tales to Astonish was cut after issue 69, July 1965, and after this point he and The Wasp were only seen in The Avengers team comic. His spot in Tales to Astonish was taken over by the SubMariner.
for those who know comics history, its actually rather astonishing (heh) that AntMan turned out to be one of the best of the MCU films, and its success seems to have blocked DC from ever doing an Atom film, even though The Atom came first in the comics.
Thank you for all that, Caractacus, wonderful information!
FAMOUS FIRSTS - 1st Poison Ivy appearance. Batman #181 (June 1966)
Writer Robert Kanigher and artist Carmine Infantino came up with Poison Ivy after being requested for more female villains for the Batman TV show. She has since joined the prestigious Rogues Gallery of Batman super-villains.
And if you’re thinking of buying a copy make sure that the centrefold pin-up is complete, it’s often missing…
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
too bad Moldoff drew this one. Carmine Infantino drew the cover, and had been drawing the Detective stories since 1964. Infantino drew beautiful women, and aside from that had his elegant flowing style. but longtime Batman artist Moldoff was still drawing most of the stories, and his women arent quite as beautiful as this plot demands. CoolHand I believe you promised us the first BatGirl story one day if we're good? that ones all Infantino. And theres another one where Batgirl and CatWoman get in a catfight.
this design element is called "GoGo Checks" . Briefly appeared along the top half inch of all DC titles in 1966/67. The idea is when comics are displayed on the newstand in layered tiers, even if the DC titles are in the back they can be recognised by the GoGo Check pattern. Important at this point in time as Marvel was starting to encroach on DC's market dominance, and Archie, Charlton, Dell/Gold Key, and others were also trying to get into the superhero niche. But also a desperate attempt to stay "hep" with 60s mod youth culture. Check out the text in the house ad bottom of page 6, also accompanied by GoGo Checks.
Comments
I can vaguely recall a couple of those…the only one I remember reading was The Silver Surfer…I loved reading about him - but I can’t remember why now 😵💫🫣🤣
thanks for the info on the Marvel UK titles CoolHand
this one must have annoyed DC, since they had a popular title called Teen Titans
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sir Miles said: the only one I remember reading was The Silver Surfer…I loved reading about him - but I can’t remember why now
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
beautiful art from John Buscema? Stan Lee's writing at its most pseudophilosophical?
TUESDAY’S COMIC OF THE DAY
Detective #198 (August 1953) The Lord of Batmanor (or Batman Goes to Scotland).
Batman in a kilt? The Loch Ness Monster? This has to be seen!
And the advertisement from the back cover…
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Oh dear .....
I can barely stop laughing at that one long enough to say that the idea of using a descendant of Mary Shelley's Robert Walton in the Frankenstein story was good.
say, isnt that Barbel's house?
art by Dick Sprang
plot by Leigh Brackett (!!!), script by Edmond Hamilton
I never guessed she wrote comics. Hamilton was her husband and has many comics writing credits, this appears to be Brackett's only comics credit. heres the Grand Comics Database entry for this story just cuz I wouldnt believe me either
Thank you, Caractacus.
FAMOUS FIRSTS - 1st Appearance of Krypto.
Adventure Comics #210 (March 1955)
Krypto the Superdog became an important and popular character in the Superboy universe. Otto Binder wrote the first script and legendary Superman artist Curt Swan drew the pictures.
And an advertisement from this issue…
Having never seen the above story, I always wondered how Krypto had come to Earth. The ad was interesting, too.
coolhand said:
FAMOUS FIRSTS - 1st Appearance of Krypto.
Adventure Comics #210 (March 1955)
Krypto the Superdog became an important and popular character in the Superboy universe. Otto Binder wrote the first script and legendary Superman artist Curt Swan drew the pictures.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Otto Binder through the 1940s was the main writer on Fawcett's Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family stories. He created the character of Captain Marvel's twin sister Mary Marvel and many other recurring characters and concepts in the Marvel Family universe. His stories had a whimsical fanciful tone, and he wrote over half of the various Marvel Family stories over 13 years.
After Fawcett exited the comics business in 1953, following years of plagiarism lawsuits from DC and the general collapse of the industry, Binder was quickly hired by DC, writing at first the Superman spinoff titles, then in the late 1950s the main Superman stories. Superman now had a whimsical fanciful tone like the Captain Marvel stories once had, and rapidly expanding universe of new characters and concepts within the Superman universe. Binder wrote the first issue of Jimmy Olsen's solo comic, and the first issue of Lois Lane's solo comic. As well as Krypto, he created Supermans cousin Supergirl, who looked a lot like Mary Marvel in her first appearance. He also created Brainiac, the Bottle City of Kandor, the Phantom Zone, the Legion of Superheros, Bizarro, Jimmy Olsen's Elastic Lad identity, and many more. He wrote the first Imaginary Tale, which became a recurring variation of Silver Age Superman stories. The late 50s/early 60s era when Binder was writing Superman is my personal favourite era in Supermans history, lotsa classic stories and general wackiness.
(but kind of ironic DC sued Fawcett for plagiarism, when the Golden Age Superman and Captain Marvel comics were so different in tone, then hired their main writer to reinvent the Superman series in an increasingly Captain Marvel-esque tone)
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
hey how bout some more Superpets? Krypto is the best known Superpet, but he's not the only one!
Beppo the SuperMonkey, introduced Superboy 76, oct 1959, and also created by Otto Binder, with artist George Papp.
Beppo was another Kryptonian. Remember how us earthlings used to put monkeys into testrockets to see if theyd survive? Turns out Supermans father Jor-El did the same. When JorEl had to put his only son in the test rocket and send him to earth moments before Krypton exploded, he didnt notice the mischievous monkey had hidden inside! Beppo emerged on earth and tormented Superman when he was a baby, before disappearing for his own undocumented adventures.
Streaky the SuperCat, introduced Action 261, Feb 1960. created by Superman's creator Jerry Siegel (recently returned to the DC after being fired years before) and artist Jim Mooney
Streaky was an earth cat, the pet of Linda Lee, Supergirl's civilian identity. Exposed to kryptonite, Streaky temporarily gained all the usual superpowers, then after returning to normal would coincidentally encounter more kryptonite and become super again whenever the world needed him most.
Krypto and Streaky got along like cats and dogs
Comet the SuperHorse, introduced Action 292, Sept 1962, created by writer Leo Dorfman and artist Jim Mooney. Comet first appears to SuperGirl in a dream, but he is a real horse out there somewhere communicating with her telepathically. (you know these adolescent girls and their dreams of horses)
in the next issue Comet gets the cover, and we learn his secret origin. Turns out Comet is neither Kryptonian, nor an earth horse, but a character from Greek mythology. Once a centaur, he fell in love with the sorceress Circe, who tried to make him all human but got her magic potions mixed up and instead he became all horse. Unable to reverse the mistake, she tried to help Comet by using her magic to give him all the usual superpowers, plus telepathy.
and of course all four critters team up to form the Legion of SuperPets, in Adventure 293
Thank you, Caractacus, that is very interesting and informative.
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 - Chapter Ten - Hawk’s Inferno - Part One
Part Two tomorrow…
Making me wait another day 😡
🤣
Wonderful, wonderful.
And a thank you to caractacus, that was great.
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 - Chapter Ten - Hawk’s Inferno - Part Two
NB: Page 9 should be read before page 8 - apologies.
You only have to wait until next Thursday for the next instalment.
Fabulously weird and twisted 👏🏻
Beautiful.
CONTENT ADVICE: Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended.
DANGER GIRL (1998) Part Nine
Part Ten tomorrow…
CONTENT ADVICE: Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended.
DANGER GIRL (1998) Part Ten
Continued next weekend…
Some…erm…lovely artwork 🤭
MARVEK UK Part Three
By now Marvel UK had established itself as a major publisher of weekly comic titles to compete with DC Thomson and IPC/Odham’s.
Editor-in-chief Neil Tennant (yes, that one, later one of the Pet Shop Boys) was responsible for anglicising the dialogue to suit British readers, and for indicating where women were to be redrawn more modestly for the British kids.
However, apart from some covers drawn by Marvel Comics' American staff, no original material had yet been produced by Marvel UK. This changed in 1976 when Captain Britain Weekly was launched, featuring a hero created for the British market. Captain Britain Weekly featured new stories in colour as well as reprints of Nick Fury and Fantastic Four strips as backup. It was initially a success but sales dropped quickly and the title soon joined the Spider-man title from #39.
It was Neil Tennant's idea to create an original British Marvel war comic to compete with popular titles published by the opposition such as Warlord and Battle. Fury reprinted US WWII strips such as Sgt. Fury and Captain Savage, with new covers by British artists. However, the 1960s American war strips failed to win over an audience used to the grittier fare of 1970s British war comics, and Fury was cancelled with issue #25 merging with Mighty World of Marvel a week later. Also having a strip called Fokker! did not amuse parents whose kids were running around shouting the word as they played their imitation games!
Tennant left in 1977 to edit cookery and home interest books before going onto editing TV tie-ins and then Smash Hits! PSB were formed during this time. He was replaced by Nick Laing who oversaw the launch of Marvel UK's Star Wars Weekly title, soon after the film was released in the UK. The weekly issues split the stories from the US monthly issues into smaller instalments, and it usually took three weekly issues to complete a US monthly issue. In May 1980 the title became known as The Empire Strikes Back Weekly, and in November 1980 it transformed into a monthly publication. The format changed back to a weekly in June 1983 with the adaptation of Return of the Jedi (also the new name of the publication), and remained so until its last issue in 1986. The title also reprinted several other supporting strips in each issue from other Marvel properties such as The Micronauts. While the comic was in a weekly format, the supporting strips often made up the bulk of each issue.
A couple of advertisements from this title - the 8mm movies and projector were rather expensive - equating to £105 for movies and £865 for the projector in today’s money.
Next Monday the final part of this series - falling sales led to The Marvel Revolution.
Neil Tennant, hey…he wasn’t being boring and he had a lot of opportunities 🤭
Very nostalgic. I remember my dad having an 8mm projector and my mum having Dairylea. We didn't have a home version of Star Wars though.
Captain Britain never appealed to me at all, I preferred the USA superheroes, so I never read any of his adventures.
good stuff CoolHand!
Captain Britains costume always looked like it would be very hard to draw. I knw it was switched to a more conventional costume later on. Since I saw so little of the character here in North America, thats all I knew was his costume.
too bad Brits didnt like it, Barbel didnt like it, sales were low so the title was merged with a reliable seller. Guess Brits dont need Americans to create a comic for them, when they were perfectly capable of creating their own comics?
I gather Alan Moore wrote some of the early Captain Britains, but I've never read them. I wonder if theyre as dark and transgressive as his usual stuff?
I only bought the free gift issues of Captain Britain, I read the first issue and didn’t like it. Britain only has one superhero 😁
TALES TO ASTONISH #27 - Origin of Ant-Man. Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko on art duty.
How long was it before Ant-Man came back…?…the above seems a bit of a throw-away story…
I seem to remember @caractacus potts referring to this story before and relating it to the main series ...?
barbel sez: I seem to remember caractacus potts referring to this story before and relating it to the main series ...?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
indeed I did, see this post providing supplemental materials to CoolHand's post of the first appearance of the silver age Atom. I shared examples of the original golden age Atom, the Doll Man, and covers of four key issues of Tales to Astonish featuring AntMan
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
sir miles sez: How long was it before Ant-Man came back…?…the above seems a bit of a throw-away story…_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
precisely, The Man in the AntHill was a oneshot scifi genre story, typical of Marvel's content at the time, not intended to be a continuing series. This was only two months after the debut of Fantastic Four 1, and Marvel did not have any other continuing superhero series. Fantastic Four was Marvel's first attempt at the superhero genre in several years.
for context, lets take a look at all the comics Marvel published in Jan 1962, the month The Man in the AntHill came out (courtesy of Mikes Newsstand). The second issue of Fantastic Four, two cowboy comics, four romance/girl comics, and five science fiction anthologies.
Strange Tales and Journey into Mystery had begun as horror comics in the early 50s, and switched to scifi following the moral panic over horror comics. Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense had both started 1960 as science fiction comcs (which in general was a big genre at the time, DC had been having great success with their scifi titles and at his point Marvel tended to follow the lead of their competitors). Amazing Adult Fantasy had only started a few months earlier, as a showcase for Steve Ditko's unique paranoid brand of scifi. All these were anthologies of short genre stories, with no ongoing characters. Usually about five pages per story, they were very repetitive and most of them dealt with giant monsters. I posted a selection of covers of these giant monster comics back here.
The Man in the AntHill was originally just yet another of these scifi genre short stories. But when Fantastic Four turned out to be successful, publisher Martin Goodman assigned Stan Lee to come up with more of the same. May 1962 Stan 'n' Jack gave us The Incredible Hulk, and August 1962 the Mighty Thor begins in Journey into Mystery. AntMan was to be the fourth new superhero series, starting in Tales to Astonish 35, sept 1962. Unlike the other new superheros, for AntMan they recycled an existing character, Hank Pym, from one of their scifi genre stories. In a sense, The Man in the AntHill was retconned to be the origin of the new superhero debuting in Tales to Astonish 35.
in matter of months all five of the scifi genre anthology titles had been taken over by superheros: Journey into Mystery starred Thor, Strange Tales was split between the Human Torch's solo series and Dr Strange, Tales of Suspense would be split between Iron Man and Captain America, and Tales to Astonish would be split between AntMan and the Hulk (after the Hulk's original solo title was cancelled after only six issues). Amazing Fantasy would debut SpiderMan in its final issue, then be replaced in the schedule by the Amazing SpiderMan solo series.
and I should point out AntMan was the least successful of this initial wave of new superheros from Marvel. Even after changing his name to GiantMan, and taking on The Wasp as his partner, his spot in Tales to Astonish was cut after issue 69, July 1965, and after this point he and The Wasp were only seen in The Avengers team comic. His spot in Tales to Astonish was taken over by the SubMariner.
for those who know comics history, its actually rather astonishing (heh) that AntMan turned out to be one of the best of the MCU films, and its success seems to have blocked DC from ever doing an Atom film, even though The Atom came first in the comics.
Thank you for all that, Caractacus, wonderful information!
FAMOUS FIRSTS - 1st Poison Ivy appearance. Batman #181 (June 1966)
Writer Robert Kanigher and artist Carmine Infantino came up with Poison Ivy after being requested for more female villains for the Batman TV show. She has since joined the prestigious Rogues Gallery of Batman super-villains.
And if you’re thinking of buying a copy make sure that the centrefold pin-up is complete, it’s often missing…
written by Rober Kanigher, art by Sheldon Moldoff
we saw Moldoff's Batman earlier in this Penguin story.
too bad Moldoff drew this one. Carmine Infantino drew the cover, and had been drawing the Detective stories since 1964. Infantino drew beautiful women, and aside from that had his elegant flowing style. but longtime Batman artist Moldoff was still drawing most of the stories, and his women arent quite as beautiful as this plot demands. CoolHand I believe you promised us the first BatGirl story one day if we're good? that ones all Infantino. And theres another one where Batgirl and CatWoman get in a catfight.
this design element is called "GoGo Checks" . Briefly appeared along the top half inch of all DC titles in 1966/67. The idea is when comics are displayed on the newstand in layered tiers, even if the DC titles are in the back they can be recognised by the GoGo Check pattern. Important at this point in time as Marvel was starting to encroach on DC's market dominance, and Archie, Charlton, Dell/Gold Key, and others were also trying to get into the superhero niche. But also a desperate attempt to stay "hep" with 60s mod youth culture. Check out the text in the house ad bottom of page 6, also accompanied by GoGo Checks.
@caractacus potts said: CoolHand I believe you promised us the first BatGirl story one day if we're good?
It’s being posted next Wednesday! I (and everyone else who reads this thread) will look forward to your overview of that issue 😁