Hepcat

Not nearly to the same extent though because the Editors at DC all seemed so intent on protecting their own turf that they were reluctant to acknowledge characters that weren't their own. It wasn't until Action Comics 314 in mid-1964 that Mort Weisinger recognized a DC character other than Batman that was outside his own bailiwick. Similarly Editor Jack Schiff never acknowledged the other Editors' characters except Superman in the "Batman" titles until he was removed from the titles in 1964. Editor Robert Kanigher absolutely ignored the rest of the DC Universe until he was removed from Wonder Woman in 1968. (Good riddance to both those hacks.) And Aquaman editor George Kashdan ignored the existence of all other heroes until Aquaman's wedding issue in late 1964: Even Julius Schwartz was slow to cross pollinate his titles with other characters even if they were his own. I clearly remember it being a wildly exciting event when the Flash first x-over into Green Lantern 13: Schwartz in fact had to be told by Irwin Donenfeld late in 1963 to give Superman and Batman bigger roles in the Justice League. Schwartz had been reluctant to do so because Superman and Batman were respectively in Weisinger and Schiff's bailiwicks. Donenfeld had to make it clear that DC and not those other Editors "owned" the characters. But why had Donenfeld not read the riot act to his Editors three to four years earlier? "God damn it this is one company so start working together!" Meanwhile Stan Lee was doing it from the very start at Marvel. The Hulk had been around for only five issues before x-over into Fantastic Four 12. And the Fantastic Four x-over into the very first issue of Amazing Spider-Man! And then heroes and villains were x-over all over the place. See above for between titles! But Stan Lee also had one issue seguing into the next with dangling story lines right from the start. How soon did the Thing quit the Fantastic Four at the end of a story? Issue #3? The Hulk quit the Avengers at the end of issue #2 and they spent how many issues looking for him then? Was Aunt May sick for one issue or continuously? And what about next issue's villain peaking out and plotting the downfall of the hero on the last page or two of the current issue? This was a constant of Stan Lee's doing at Marvel but rare at DC. Yes. It seems that the "brain trust" at DC didn't look beyond the covers of Marvel comics when they tried to determine why Marvel comics were starting to sell better than previously. They saw only the lousy cover art with all the messy blurbs promising "Action!" So beginning with the issues cover dated June 1965 they decided to undercut one of their own strengths that being DC's slick high quality house look covers with messy Marvel style cover blurbs: What geniuses! Undercut one of your own strengths to imitate a competitor's weakness! Let's just say the move didn't exactly entice me to start feverishly buying DC comics again. I was more actively buying Drag Cartoons and Creepy magazines by then. Less than a year later they compounded the above blunder exponentially by having their entire comic line ape the silliness/campiness of the Batman TV show thus alienating their previous fan base. (To Mort Weisinger's credit, he was the Editor who stayed the course and refused to let his titles be infected by the silliness of the TV sjhow.) So of course when the Batman craze/fad ended in early 1968, DC was left with few fans/customers. They had to rebuild from scratch. I agree. After all I'm one of those "old" collectors who wants his comics like his women - raw!

My favourite Eclipso cover: A nicely stacked damsel in distress does it for me every time!

I agree that Stan's building of a Universe was a key to making Marvel comics more popular. And I agree that the vibe of Marvel comics was simply more fun! Where I disagree is that the characters were more "human". They were more human only if you define being juvenile as being more human! Consider. Marvel heroes were constantly squabbling with each other and actually getting into frequent punch-ups! That's not adult behaviour. Adult behaviour is the way the Justice League members over at DC got together and treated each other in a civil friendly manner. I also strongly disagree that the artwork at Marvel was "better". Yes, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were consummate pros at telling stories in pictorial form, but sadly their drawings left a lot to be desired. Kirby's anatomy was horrible. Rather than looking sleek and sexy, his women looked like fire-plugs. Meanwhile Ditko's faces all too often looked harsh and ugly even when they should have been attractive or even gorgeous. The artwork of Curt Swan, Murphy Anderson, Carmine Infantino, Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, Di ck Dillin, Gil Kane (at least pre-1966) and later Neal Adams and others over at DC was much more attractive and thus appealing (certainly to me). In fact it was the artwork more than anything else that put me off from actually buying Marvel comics in 1963-64. They looked junky low-end-of-the-market to me especially in comparison to the slick DC house look.

Truth! What Stan Lee did by building a Universe with interwoven storylines was not just make Marvel comics more collectible, but actually force Marvel readers/buyers to be collectors! Not only could you not just buy one, you had to frequently refer to back issues of even other titles. DC made it easy to buy just the one comic with almost entirely standalone stories; Marvel made it nigh impossible. For that Stan Lee must be credited. And present day Marvel collectors should credit Stan Lee for the increased availability of Silver Age Marvel comics in comparison to those of other companies. Plus curse Stan Lee for their continued greater popularity and much higher prices! As primarily a DC collector, I benefit from and am cursed by neither.

Okay! I'll give you some more secrets from a musty ancient crypt:

Though I was already familiar with Superman and Batman comics from the barber shop or wherever, the first superhero comics I distinctly remember reading were the Adventures of the Fly in early 1961. I remember reading them at Lamont & Perkins drugstore a block away on Wortley Road before they chased me out, at which point I'd head for Tyler & Zettel's pharmacy six or so blocks to the south on Wortley Road. I think the first issue of the Adventures of the Fly that caught my eye was #12: Bethlehem copy ' I believe these drug stores only stocked Archie, Dell, Harvey and Classics Illustrated comics which is why the Fly was the first superhero to catch my attention. The closest two variety stores/grocery stores from which I bought bubble gum cards and various penny candies didn't stock comics. The best selection of comics in the immediate neighbourhood was at Ken's Variety four blocks away but I usually didn't have to travel that far to spend what little money I had. Moreover what was the point of making the four block trek to Ken's to be tempted by comics I didn't have the money to buy? Therefore I just don't remember seeing any of the DC superhero titles such as these that would have been on many newsstands/magazine racks at the time: But then Adventures of the Fly 13 turned out to be even more of an eye opener for me: Because inside were these ads heralding the introduction of Fly Girl and the Jaguar! I also read through the Adventures of the Jaguar 1 when it first hit the newsstand at Lamont & Perkins or somewhere: Northland copy I was spellbound by this dashing new hero! The issue also included this tantalizing ad for the mysterious Fly Girl: Who would shortly make her debut appearance in Adventures of the Fly 14: Bethlehem copy These comics left such a profound impact on my impressionable young mind that Fly, Fly Girl and Jaguar have remained among my very favourite comic book characters and superheroes to this very day! I now have nearly complete runs of both Adventures of the Fly and Adventures of the Jaguar in generally very nice condition including the first two issues of the Fly from 1959 which feature Joe Simon & Jack Kirby artwork: Nonetheless these issues of the Adventures of the Fly and the Adventures of the Jaguar didn't yet prompt me to start up a collection of superhero comics. Quite simply at the age of nine I didn't have the money. A dime was a serious piece of currency in those days. A Canadian dime contained exactly 0.06 ounces of silver meaning that at the present moment's silver price of U.S.$24.91 per troy ounce it was worth U.S.$1.49 or Cdn.$2.03 in today's terms. Two packs of cards containing a total of eight cards and two sheets of bubble gum, a ten ounce bottle of pop including the two cent deposit, a full size chocolate bar, a good sized bag of chips or a two scoop ice cream cone could be had for a Canadian dime in those days. That's right, two scoops! Even a penny was a not insignificant bit of currency. A penny could get you a proper sized briquette of Dubble Bubble or Bazooka gum.

Silver again but in a whole bunch of action shots!

Truth! It's something I've found very frustrating since I re-started collecting comics in the 1970's.

Hey, I support your right to crack. So crack away!

Silver: When did you start acquiring slabs for your collection? I seem to remember that you used to avoid them.

For whatever reason you seem to believe that the bean counters were wrong. But they were correct. The affected books of which you're speaking were not selling. This may well have been because they were being stolen. But it's irrelevant in any case. DC and Marvel weren't getting enough sales to generate adequate revenues from those titles so they were cancelled. It's just that simple. There's no reason to posit any conspiracies. Or are you suggesting that DC and Marvel should have continued to publish those books just to avoid tarnishing the reputations of the creators with then and future fan boys? Well that would have been inane. Companies simply don't operate that way.

Maybe so. Hopefully though you're not buying into the conspiracy theory that the first wave of Jack Kirby titles were cancelled because of jealousy or some sort of grudge Carmine Infantino harboured against Jack Kirby. Certain Kirby fan boys have actually advanced this theory and for that reason they dislike Infantino.

Horsies galore in the background of this one:

You have it backward. It's the conspiracy theorists (like those who deny the Moon landing, believe that 9-11 was an inside job with U.S. government involvement and think that comic titles were cancelled because of some unfair vendetta as opposed to poor sales) who argue that there have been cover-ups. The reason comic titles were cancelled in the 1960's and 1970's is that they weren't selling enough. And falling off the back of a truck or being stolen somehow in no way constitutes being sold. I suspect that Jack Kirby's New Gods and Forever People titles were partially or even largely victim to DC's marketing blunder of raising the price of their comics to 25 cents.

Okay! You make a lot of good points regarding how/why Marvel achieved growing sales in the 1960's, but this all still occurred while Stan Lee was the Editor-in-Chief. That's where the buck stopped. He was the ringmaster. Without Stan Lee to hold it all together, the comic production efforts at Marvel descended into near shambles in the 1970's (which was still a cut or two above the complete shambles at the creator owned Image Comics in the 1990's of course).

Great title! I love the way Stan Lee was bold enough to satirize Marvel's own heroes. Here's another:

Yes, I think that was one of the two main keys to hooking the kids who were the predominant market for comics back then. The other was the loose threads left at the end of many/most stories and the interwoven cross-title storylines. But that's now, and you're just some other old guy now. I'm interested in how/why Marvel hooked so many youngsters into being part of the Merry Marvel Marching Society back in 1962-66.

A different Goliath:

Why? That fan boy stuff wasn't reflective of the mass market for comics. Clearly not. Otherwise they would not have been cancelled.

Sounds like a bunch of hokum to me, i.e. an oldtime conspiracy theory.

I didn't realize comics needed to be "saved". Hopefully though you're not trying to argue that it was Jack Kirby who did the saving....

You're right! Stan's time would have been much better served promoting comics to the most promising target market, i.e. elementary school kids.

I may be in a minority, but I just don't like Nick Cardy's artwork particularly after the mid-1960's when it became more and more stylized. For one thing his women were just too round for my liking. My favourite DC Romance cover artist may well be Jay Scott Pike: (The above not mine.)

That's precisely the kind of slabbed comic that's a collector's dream! A low number bringing down the price for "defects" that don't much impact a comic's eye appeal.

We certainly shouldn't ignore the Atlas Westerns: