AtlasFan

Nice books... (thumbs u I'd agree and say that ST #89 is the all-time pre-hero Strange Tales book... I think for JIM..it would be #62. Here is my old copy, I no longer own it though... Even though it wasn't super high-grade...I still miss it. Nice, but my favotire JIM cover is this one: The awesomeness of this Ditko cover cannot be matched!

ST 97 is a fantastic cover. But still not as popular as this one:

Great cover, never seen it before. (thumbs u A lot of work for the colorist on this one! Er..um...what's that guy in the water doing? I dont think I would want to go swimming until they clean out the pool...

ST 97 rivals TTA 29 as my all-time favorite pre-hero cover:

Wow, who would have thought that the world's first online newspaper would have come out of a Dale Evens comic book. Boggles the mind...

I like Heddy in pants! <3

WOW. What a story. Was there ever such a writer as Ray Bradbury? Was there ever such an artist as Wally Wood? No people in the story, but the narrative and illustrations are riveting. Will we ever see the likes of these giants again?

Pics, pics, pics! ....I wanna see pics of these gems!

I thought his name was Ock?

Ahh. A good question for the advanced pre-hero collector...what to do once you have collected ALL the Marvel pre-hero books? There are a number of paths (or combinations thereof...): 1) Start collecting the "monster apocrypha". Such as the monster issues that cross into the Atlas Western and Romance titles. 2) Start collecting Ditko Charlton Anthology titles. The art and stories vary in quality, but there are a (very) few gems there that are just as good as some of Steve's Marvel pre-hero stories. 3) Charlton Monster comics - issues of Konga, Gorgo, Reptilicus... 4) Star Spangled War Stories - dinosaurs, dinosaurs, and more dinosaurs! 5) DC Sci-Fi anthology titles - great art, great stories. Its particularly fun looking for Marvel prototypes in these DC books! 6) Harvey Sci-Fi anthology titles - lots of decent Kirby stories (maybe even a Marvel prototype or two!). 7) Crestwood titles - Black Magic, Strange Worlds of Your Dreams, etc. lots of good 50's Simon & Kirby horror/fantasy. Any other suggestions? Bill

I think Maneely would have been a good fit for the pre-hero fantasy stories, but he was not a super-hero artist. Aside from Black Knight and the Yellow Claw (maybe?) I dont think he was ever involved in the creation of a super-hero. Jack, of course, had lots of experience with heroes long before 1961. I am sure that Maneely could have cranked out stories about Kirby-created-heros with no problem - a Maneely Hulk would have been very interesting.

For me, per- hero Marvels begin December 1958 with Strange Worlds #1, Strange Tales #67 & Journey into Mystery #50. This is we're the beginning of the Kirby/Ditko dominance begins, and mostly Kirby/ Ditko covers from there out. You would naturally include later per-hero titles like Amazing adventures, Amazing Adult Fantasy, Tales of Suspense & Tales to Astonish. Don't leave out Strange Tales annual #1. I'd also include a few of the Marvel western books that had Monster/ super-villain-like characters. Kirby on board makes the real difference to me. I would also include Ditko and Heck. Kirby, Ditko & Heck are the Triumvirate artists of the pre-hero era! ...and dont forget World of Fantasy #16 - that was also one of the first pre-heros - too often forgoten.

Yes...Master...I..will..sell...beaumonts...my...TOS#1 -- if..I...ever...get...one.

This would have made a great Roy Lichtenstein painting!

(thumbs u OOBA DOOBA thats a nice book! Is that the restored copy that Metropolis had (has?) for sale. I almost pulled the trigger on that one but it was a tad above my price range.

This is the kind of high-brow talk that really gets my goat...in this day and age, where does someone get off calling comic book art "low"? I can hear them now saying: "I say, ol' boy that Lichtenstein is a genius! He took lemons and made not lemonade, but champagne!". Even if RL had created a panel of his very own (and had not lifted it from the lowly comic book artist) its just one image frozen in time. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to really get out of it other than an image of a really big panel from a comic book? A good comic book artist has a "director's eye" and is able to put together a series of images to tell a story - something RL had never done. Frazetta (who was scoffed at by the high brow art community) said that he found it much easier to create a painting with a single image than to create an entire comic book story.

I am sure that Mr. Beck is a wonderful humanitarian, but remember, since Rubenstein is his client, any bad press about JR could affect Beck's bottom line. It’s just good business to take (or at least appear to take) some action to rectify the problem.

TTA #2 - the cover is pure Ditko!

I suggest you put the comic panels next to photos of the paintings and look at them closely, or even project one image over the other.. They do look to the untrained eye as if they are exact copies, but they are not and again, Lichtenstein wasn't copying, he used the iconography of the comic panels to achieve an emotional and intellectual response, which was to elevate the contextual imagery to a status it did not otherwise have. That sure sounds like a lot of that thar "long-hair" artsy-fartsy talk. I guess if you say it enough to yourself, and you are in a group of like-minded goatee-bearded, beret-wearing folks who are saying the same thing - I guess you start to believe it. Where I comes from, we have a saying...no matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.

the works weren't "ripped off". they were used as icons, which is a fair use practice.. I can appreciate that you think Roy was stealing from your sacred cows, but it just isn't really the case.. If you want to claim about thefts and credits.. or more to the point "influences", then you must know that it was only 25 years or more after Tec 27 that Bob Kane said (in conversations with Steranko for his History of Comics) that he was influenced by and copied the Shadow, the movie the Bat from 1929 and most specifically the Black Bat from Black Bat pulps in 1933 which has an uncanny visual comparison to Batman. I do not believe that Kane gave one ounce of credit to the creators, nor did he pass any of the millions he made from Batman to the authors. Same goes for Shuster, who readily mentioned that Phillip Wylie's book "Gladiator" was a major influence in 1933 for him to create the fanzines which led to Superman. For out-and-out swipes, how many comic artists have swiped Michaelangelos "Pieta" without notation, starting with Jim Starlin. the comics business is rife with outright theft from other mediums without any credits what-so-ever to the original creators. Lichtenstein didn't "steal" anything. He sourced images that he changed into canvasses, which has been the way of art for hundreds of years. You can't impose the mores of today's society on life of the past as the "rules" have changed, and this is what it means to be a historian. Big difference between an influence (Black Bat & The Shadow for Kane and Gladiator and John Carter for Shuster) and taking another artist's work LINE FOR LINE and calling it your own.

I also take note when RL is called a "comic book artist" - he is nothing of the kind. A comic book artist needs to have the "director's eye" with the ability to compose scenes, build suspense, etc. as the story requires - the comic book artist is a story teller. RL never (to my knowledge) published a comic book story - he just reproduced panels representative from other's creativity.

It's not like we didn't already know that Russ Heath was the artist of the source material. And, as such, it's not like he hasn't already benefited from the limited association with Lichtenstein already. How much more do you think he would have benefited had he been explicitly credited? Do you think he would have gotten more comic work? Do you think Leo Castelli would have signed him up to do fine art? I think it's highly probable that his life would have turned out pretty much exactly the same way, same for all the other artists whose material Lichtenstein appropriated. Do you think they'd all be living in mansions, rolling deep with their posses and poppin' Cris' in the back of their Bentleys had Roy mentioned their names in the liner notes? I'm with you that RL should have given credit where credit was due, but that Russ Heath has fallen on hard times has nothing to do with any lack of attribution on Lichtenstein's part. Who is to say how things may have turned out for Russ if he was named as a source from the start - the point is we will never know because RoyBoy never publically gave credit where credit is due. He more or less traced Russ' panels, increased the size and called it his own? I wonder if I publish a book of Charles Dickens' works in large print, can I clain it as an original work of my own... I guess it would have been beneath RL to acknowledge that his work could even remotely be influenced by some scribblings in a (oh dear!)...comic book.

Oddly enough "souffle" in English is also "soufffle" in French...

A nice pair of raw umber background covers!

I wonder who the real artist was? Sheesh!