Spider-Variant

She's got a couple of brothers.

Hey Steve, guess who's Amazing wife just bought him this letter for Valentine's Day. This guy!

No worries about tangent topics, IMHO. That Marvel Feature 1 art is not good. Very scratchy characters. I could see why Stan would not be happy. Look at these pencils of Ross from ASM 162. Very tight. I think Ross really hit his stride with ASM and I think ASM 161 and 162 were his and Mike's best work. His work on MTU (before ASM) still is lacking to me and it seems closer to the work he did in Marvel Feature #1.

I like Palmer's inks over Andru's pencils, but agree they do tend to overpower them. But I feel the same is true for the two issues John Romita inked Ross.

He went to DC comics after ASM. He did various projects, cover, etc. Wonder Woman, Superman, Vigilante come to mind off the top of my head. From Wiki "In 1978, Andru returned to DC to work as an editor, a position he held until 1986.[33] During this period his art appeared mostly on the covers of such titles as Action Comics and Superman. Working with writer Marv Wolfman and collaborator Mike Esposito, he co-created the syndicated comic strip The Unexplained in 1979. Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s, Andru and inker MR. Giordano were DC's primary cover artists, providing cover artwork for the Superman titles as well as covers for many of the other comics in the DC line at that time." Welcome to the Ross Andru thread, we're a small group of posters, but were dedicated.

Great books. Although I"ve always known Ross Andru penciled this book, it literally took me 45 years to figure out this book was the reason he didn't pencil Amazing Spider-Man 154 &155. DOH!

Great books. ASM 107 was one of the earliest bronze age comics my older brother bought off the stands. I didn't officially get into the game until ASM 153, the only comic I still own.

I'm going to bump this thread occasionally with the hope of finding a few more of the missing pages.

Great stuff. I'll give this a proper read when I get the chance.

Great stuff Steve. I'm in the Caribbean, slowly making out back home

It's on ebay right now. $40 will grab it. I would probably get it, but I'm heading out of town for two weeks.

I've never seen an art page offered from ASM 149. I wonder if he still has it all. Probably a nice value now.

Hey @Lee B., check out this letter (dated August 22, 1975) from Ross Andru to Jerry Thingval (the actor and comic art collector, as we had discussed earlier in this thread somewhere.) I find it very interesting because of the way Ross shared the original art during his run on Amazing Spider-Man, with him taking 100% of every other issue and Gerry Conway (who Ross misspelled Jerry) and Frank Giacoia (and later Mike Esposito) alternating on the issues Ross didn't receive back from Marvel. As Ross explains, Gerry Conway got 100% of the art from Amazing Spider-Man 149. Interesting..... Wonder if he still has it? The other interesting thing is that Ross talks about not knowing where his art will be available. But I think we now know, in the December 19, 1975 issue of The Buyer's Guide for Comic Fandom, which Lee shared with us earlier. I like when things come full circle.

Nice copy. Loved this issue.

Got my copy at the local Piggly Wiggly back in the day. I hadn't really ordered many back issues of MTU at that point, so these stories were new to me.

After identifying over 125 real life references that Ross Andru drew into his run on the Amazing Spider-Man, Giant-Size Spider-Man, and Superman vs the Amazing Spider-Man, I ran out of new material. Every now and again though, I like to take another look at locations I had unearthed in the past to see if I can discover something new. I have posted about the splash page to Amazing Spider-Man 156 before and highlighted Ross’s attention to detail. I wanted to dig more into the power plant he drew. This issue would have been on the stands in Feb. 1976 and Ross would have drawn it toward the end of 1975. The power plant Ross used for his splash was the Waterside Generating Plant (later Con Edison), constructed between 1896 and 1900. It was the first generating facility in New York City to produce alternating current. Ross first depicts this power plant (the story called it the 41st Street Power Plant) in Amazing Spider-Man 152, as Spidey searches for the Shocker. I was lucky enough to find photos of the plant from 1975. I love the detail Ross puts into his drawing, from the slope of the roof to the large window on the far left side. The plant was divided into two separate buildings, which Ross also drew. Ross was a man dedicated to his craft, going the extra mile to depict NYC and his effort was greatly underappreciated, IMHO.

Thanks Steve and all, appreciate the kind words.

@Get Marwood & I, check this out. My amazing daughter tracked down all my Ross Andru real-life reference posts, copied all the pictures, painstakingly organized them by issue number, and published a single copy of a book. Simply spectacular. And my equally as awesome wife got me this t-shirt and a spider-man sweat shirt as well. Loved them both.

Open up some Andru ASM issues and dig in. Best way to chase it away, lol.

I remember my older brother and I buying two copies of ASM 150 off the stands back in the day because he knew it was going to be a collector's item, lol. He was only 150 issues off.

I think I had the whole run. I liked Sal Buscema's version.

Wonder how much this page will go for? Inks by Mike Esposito. Pages are getting crazy prices. $34K for a great page from ASM158 recently. How great was this issue? Not the best story, but man, just a great crossover Nova.

I saw that page and that result. I wish I had that kind of dough.