Dr. Haydn

Given Marvel's modest sales figures at the time, I guess a lot of people missed these great stories when they first appeared. But almost HALF reprints?? Astounding! I guess it was cheaper than generating new material. Especially if the new material was a mediocre photocopy of the old.

Sure was a bargain, back in the day...

Judging from the caption, bottom right, Jack had not yet told Stan what the next issue's plot was going to be.

John Pound--letterer of pp. 1-9 (though Mike Royer seems to have done the display lettering and sound effects): was this the same guy that went on to have a modest career in underground comix? The lettering in the panel below (from the Lambiek Comiclopedia entry for Pound) looks like a close match to me.

Sam Rosen lettering on the caption, top left. The magazine went all out to preserve the Marvel look.

Now that you mention it... it sure does! I don't know how that can be fixed. Perhaps some speed lines to suggest motion? That way, the characters would appear to be walking or running instead of levitating.

I can see why Stan didn't use Keller on the superhero line.

Is this the first we've seen of Jack Keller's work on this site? This splash reminds me a bit of the late, lamented Joe Maneely--though the figures are stiffer. Maybe a hint of Jack Davis in there as well, though less stylized and cartoony.

If his parents left Austria (the Austro-Hungarian Empire back then) shortly before Jack's birth in 1917, as a result of the unrest created by World War I, most of what they owned would have been left behind. This would explain how they ended up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a notoriously rough neighborhood back then. Still, I'd be curious to know where the aristocrat story came from. If doesn't appear in the biography on the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center site.

His parents were Austrian-Jewish immigrants. I wonder if they spoke German at home when Jack was young?

It's almost as if the artists were contributing most of the ideas!

Not the first nor the last time that Peter was racked with self-doubt about his spidery alter ego, but the most effective example we've seen so far. I especially like Peter's shadow on the right. Nice effect by Ditko.

Oh yeah. The story was great too!

...and then there's this interesting tidbit from the "coming attractions" section. Did Stan already forget that Steve Ditko would be drawing the Hulk feature (NOT Mr. D. Ayers?)

Here's an interesting tidbit from the letter column: a fan comes to Steve Ditko's defense concerning criticism about how he draws feet. Around this time, as I recall, Ditko poked fun at himself in a different issue of ASM with a scene in a modern art museum. J. Jonah Jameson was giving an art aficionado the grand tour, and they ended up in a room that consisted entirely of paintings of human feet (along with a thought balloon by Stan Lee that stated, "Boy! I wish I could draw feet like that!"). Self-deprecating humor. One more thing that you would never find in a DC comic from 1964.

Stan, as editor, had the responsibility (obligation) to revise and modify the work brought to him, as he saw fit. That is an important contribution to the final product, but in my opinion, it takes place after most of the creative work has taken place.

Stan had a couple of speed demons in Kirby and Ditko. (Later, Gene Colan and John Buscema were just as fast, turning out as much as 60 pages a month). He had the good sense to stay out of everyone's way, more or less. (Plus, he could dialogue a story in a couple of days, if necessary.) Later editors at Marvel, it seems to me, meddled a lot more, causing ruffled feelings and a lot of departures to rival DC.

From Wikipedia's fairly long entry on Iwerks: "Iwerks was responsible for the distinctive style of the earliest Disney animated cartoons and was also responsible for designing Mickey Mouse." There's also an award for technical achievement named after him, and he was named a Disney Legend in 1989. We can only hope that Jack Kirby will eventually get his due in the historical record in similar fashion.

So, Parisians read English newspapers? I checked online: as far as I can tell, this particular paper never existed.

Some interesting differences here when you compare Jack's margin notes to Stan's dialogue. In panel 2, Jack describes the guy at the door as a secretary: Stan changes this to the Grey Gargoyle's superior. I guess Stan came up with the Gargoyle's civilian name (Paul Duval)? Jack just calls him "our boy" above panel 3.

Interesting to see Dave Cockrum's positive letter on Sgt. Fury #6. He had a pretty good career in comics later on.

And so it ends?

The better Stan's collaborators were, the better the stories turned out, it seems.

I took it as a portmanteau of Lee and Ayers' first names. Still Mr. Ayers had an occasional beef with Stan around this time...

It's easy to underestimate the value of a memorable catchphrase. Stan had a boatload of those in the early 1960s. It may seem like a little thing today, but (for example) the Thing's battle cry. "It's clobberin' time" surely enhanced the entertainment value for the reader.