Dr. Haydn

This one is quite interesting regarding division of labor. Stan Goldberg art (and plot, presumably, at least). Stan Lee's name appears as well, but not with his usual signature. Did Stan do anything in this story, other than light edits? It doesn't read like Lee's typical dialogue, to my eyes.

FF #25 was the story where Dr. Banner acquired a new first name (pp. 4-6, specifically). Exit Bruce Banner, welcome Bob Banner! (Or, as Stan & co. would later christen him: Robert Bruce Banner.) About 15 years later, the Hulk TV show would turn him into David Banner.

George Roussos (Bell) did Kirby no favors with his inking in this issue. A bit of a pity, as he did some great work over Kirby pencils in some of the Tales of Asgard stories from around this time.

Fantastic Four was beginning to hit its stride in 1964, but I think Spider-man was far and away Marvel's best title in these early years---where it would remain through about #33.

or his brother Ben?

Dees anyone else on this thread think it's bad form to malign someone who left their family and flew halfway around the world to get shot at?

It's been suggested that George Stonewell was modeled upon George Rockwell, founder of the American N*zi Party. Certainly, ex-infantryman Kirby recognized (and fought) fascism and bigotry wherever he saw it! Is this the first Silver Age Marvel tale that takes an overt stand against prejudice? It seemed like an appropriate storyline for this title, given the diversity within the ranks of the Howlers.

A small correction: The Gene Colan/Stan Lee Captain Marvel debuted in late 1967 in Marvel Super Heroes #12 (cover date December 1967). I guess this was shortly after the debut of the Myron Fass Captain Marvel (Split!), about which the less said, the better.

Looks like the last page of the Tales of Asgard story was reconstructed for the Marvel Masterworks edition. The lettering is no longer Simek, and the art, though Kirbyesque, looks a bit cartoonish.

Marvel now enters the Stone Age! Chic was no Sinnott, but his inks did give Kirby's pencils a consistent, professional sheen.

Agreed. Stan and Jack were firing on all cylinders, for sure! That's why "Hugh Boulder" sticks out like an unsightly pimple on a beautiful face.

No doubt he is. I guess we can debate about the difference between a text piece and a comic book --script.

A few random thoughts: The Wasp disappears after distracting Namor on page 18, reappearing only on page 23. I wonder what Jack had in mind for what she was doing in the interim. (I assume we can rule out Stan's remark that she was "powdering her nose"?) Whose idea was it to make Rick Jones a Bucky clone? Granted, that's a more interesting use of the character than having him be the Marvel version of Snapper Carr. Page 19, last panel: Thor calls Namor a "witless mutant"! Was this the first time that anyone suggested such a thing? (That would make him a cross between Sapiens, Mermanus, and Superior!) Page 18: I love Iron Man's reference to Hugh Boulder! Didn't Marvel have a proofreader by 1964, especially for a landmark issue such as this, billed as a really big deal on the splash page? Part of me is surprised Stan didn't retcon the name as the secret identity of Spragg, the Living Hill.

Page 10, panel 1: the policeman's remark "But you've come back...just when the world has need of such a man!" is interesting, given the timing of the story's publication. This comic appeared two months after JFK's assassination. No doubt this terrible event had an effect on the creative team. With a country in crisis, what better way to sound a note of hope than to bring back a character who personified American ideals?

any chance that Al Hartley was doing touch-ups? IIRC, he was credited with doing this on the splash page of Spider-man's origin.

When it comes to silver age Romita, I think of how beautifully he drew women. There was very little sign of that in his 1954 Cap run.

I think this came up in an earlier part of this thread. Whether or not it was a source of inspiration, surely Ditko or Kirby saw this costume at some point, as Ben Cooper was a New York-based company. Plus, Kirby's two eldest children were the right age to be going door to door on Halloween.

The one thing that Charlton seemed to offer was creative freedom. This certainly would have appealed to freethinkers like Ditko. As a lifelong bachelor, money was likely of less importance to him than it was to Kirby, with a wife and four children.

Funny how people's perceptions can be. Howard the Duck was one of the most literate, adult-oriented comics of its time. It was also side-splittingly funny!

Me too--though it was a bit beyond me in the mid-70s. His Defenders run was top-notch, I think. He did a Sons of the Serpent story in 1975 (#22-25) that so accurately captured the white supremacist rhetoric and racial prejudice of its time that it's a terrifying read today.

Maybe Goodman was reading Gerry Conway's early Marvel stuff?

“Industrywide,” says Goodman sorrowfully, “the volume is not going up. I think the comic‐book field suffers from the same thing TV does. After a few years, an erosion sets in. You still maintain loyal readers, but you lose a lot more readers than you're picking up." Goodman was 100% correct about this in 1971, although it took over two decades, with the speculator crash of 1993, for the industry to truly feel the negative impact.

Martin Goodman looks like someone who liked to schmooze, no doubt a useful skill for a publisher. Once Stan Lee learned that skill in the 1960s, his career took off.

Just read it. In my opinion, Murray relies a bit too heavily on Lee for the article to be terribly insightful. And Roy Thomas gives us yet another spin on the "golf game" legend.

When I started reading in 1969, it was Harvey, Gold Key, and an occasional Charlton. I started reading Marvel and DC in 1973-74. It was a bit of a down time for DC especially (the main superhero titles seemed a bit simplistic to me, even at 9 years old), so I switched to Marvel, especially the mutant titles. After Shooter's departure, I gradually shifted back to DC, primarily the British Invasion titles (Swamp Thing, Sandman, and the Vertigo line). Moore and Gaiman demonstrated to me what a well-written comic looked like (kudos also to Morrison's Doom Patrol, a quirky favorite). These days, I mainly pick up omnibuses. Kirby's Fourth World was a revelation, Silver Age FF and Spider-man a guilty pleasure--all the stuff that would be too expensive to pick up in its original form.