Malacoda

OK, I'm throwing this one out to the group.....Cap & Iron Man are from Avengers #4, but where does Thor come from? Looks like Kirby inked by Colletta, so probably an interior panel from their Silver Age run on JIM/Thor? Anyone? Anyone?

This one actually uses (bad) re-drawings of the correct original Thor and Iron Man covers....

This is a subtle one, but if you look hard, you might just spot what they did here.

OK, let's end, for the moment, on a corker. John Romita had only just done this cover for ASM when Tony Isabella re-tooled it as a SMCW cover. The idea and the drawing of Spidey & the spider come straight off the original..... but the characters around the spider have been changed to match what was going on in SMCW that week.....but not with art from the comics it was reprinting. The Spider Man story is ASM #66, but the picture of Mysterio is tweaked from an interior panel in ASM #67 (he looks better with purple gloves). SMCW #68 reprints the Iron Man story from TOS #51, but the picture of the Mandarin is from an interior panel in TOS #50 and it reprints the first part of Thor #132, but the pics of Thor & IM are from the cover of GS Avengers #1 though I suspect that pic of Iron Man (and variations) originates somewhere else because it was already Iron Man's logo pic by this time.

MWOM #111 is clearly a repasting of GS Defenders #1, the Torch and the Thing have been completely re-drawn to replace Doc & the Surfer, but it looks like someone has used Gil Kane's Subby as the template for DD and just morphed Namor into DD.

The preceding issue is even better. Although MWOM is nominally reprinting Hulk stories from TTA, they are padding it out as much as possible, so before these FF issues were used as Hulk stories in MWOM 49, Avengers #3 was also reprinted as a Hulk story. But the cover art is from the Defenders. Note Hulk & Thor from Defenders #10, but also Subby is Neal Adams from Marvel Feature #1 which is the first appearance of the Defenders. Also, just to complete the loop, while Tony Isabella clearly agreed with Steve & Sal's note at the bottom of the page and used this interior panel as cover art, John Romita was not of the same mind and re-drew it for the cover of Defenders #10.

MWOM #49 swipes Big John's cover of FF #112. Amazingly, MWOM #49 is actually an FF vs Hulk story, but it's a reprint of FF #25, so the cover art is separated from the story by more than 7 years.

It's a rich and varied seam. For example, as you know, Jim Starlin drew a lot of the early UK covers. I always thought that his UK covers were recycling ideas and layouts from his US work, but in fact, the UK covers were some of his first work at Marvel and precede the US covers. For instance, MTU 27 is pretty clearly a re-drawing of MWOM 44.

LOL. superb. How did I miss that one?

This has to be a swipe surely? It's not just Spidey's fingertips scraping the wall, it's the positioning of both legs.

So, I was thinking, that Red Sonja cover where the vampires are coming out of 3 mirrors in front of her, there must be loads of covers like that. However, when I checked, they're not actually mirrors, they're tombs.... Having said that, this was is what I thought it looked like......

By the way, this FF cover is credited to Jerry Ordway, not as inker but as artist.

This is a bit off topic, but the UK covers are a happy hunting ground for oddly similar covers because they re-used artwork or bits of artwork from the originals and then used the original itself, like the Rhino on 2 consecutive MWOM covers.... in some cases, the replication was a little more obvious.... notice how it's not only the same Hulk cover, but we are threatened (again) with the end of the Fantastic Four and Daredevil is STILL facing his deadliest foe (which was presumably an artwork deadline). For those of you who won't sleep until you know, the 2nd one is actually the reprint of Hulk 160 which does feature the Tiger Shark. #154 actually reprints Hulk's startlingly brief visit to Counter-Earth from Hulk #158, with Tiger Shark nowhere to be seen. I suspect they had got the artwork for 159 ready, but got caught short with #154.

Indeed. And the most interesting thing about that is the copyright. As far as I was aware, Stan & Al Landau hired Ray Wergan to publish MWOM and the other titles from 1972 - 1979. So although we all called them 'Marvel UK', the employees in London were actually employees of Transworld. Tony Isabella's team in NY created the B&W pages and covers with such re-edits as were necessary. Then the plates were sent to London, where Transworld added the letters pages, editorial notes, adverts and so on, changed any references deemed incomprehensible to UK readers, removed editorial notes relating to US stories that had not yet been published and occasionally made scantily clad ladies less scant....... so what on earth was 'Magazine Management London Ltd.'? After Goodman's departure, Perfect Film re-structured everything under Magazine Management, so if there had been some kind of parent company overseeing the UK end, that would have been the name, but what was it? I assume it was just a company in name only so Marvel could re-register the copyrights under UK law, but I think that's the first reference I've seen to any such thing. Note how the Conan reprint above is credited to Magazine Management in the original but Marvel International in the reprint. That's because after Perfect morphed into Cadence, they subsumed everything under Marvel, not MM.

I stand chastened. Subject and object.

@Get Marwood & I I feel like Albert is trying to goad you and I into a full on nerd-off, biggest loser wins. Are we taking the bait?

Seriously?

As this is the Fly Club, we really should note that the Fly was Neal Adams first comic book art. Adventures of the Fly #4, Jan 1960. Adams did some test artwork as an audition for a job. When Kirby turned in the actual artwork, one of the pages featured a bottom wide panel where Tommy Troy transformed into the Fly. The editor preferred Adams rendition. He cut it out, replaced Kirby's version, and paid Adams, but only paid him for 1/3 of the page.

Well, you know the rules. We confidently assume it doesn't exist. And then @Garystar logs in and sends us a picture (from deep in his labyrinth) of the whole collection sitting on a shelf. And even the shelf is an autographed limited edition.

It was cancelled and re-started. Although the comic remains registered as the same title ('the Adventures of the Fly'), the masthead title changes from that to 'Fly Man' and there is break in publication. It was supposed to be published 5 times a year in Jan, April, July, Sept & Oct, after the October 1964 issue (30), it disappears for 7 months and then comes back as a bi-monthly title called Fly Man. It was a bit of hot mess before that anyway. Archie hired Simon & Kirby and they created him as a young orphan boy with only 4 powers (wall crawling, to see in all directions, to escape from any trap, presumably other than a really big venus fly trap, and acrobatic abilities). He originally transformed from a teenage boy to an adult male super hero in a Shazam stylie. S&K left with issue 4, after which the plot instantly jumps 9 years during which time he has retired from Flydom, and become an adult, now an attorney. With issue 5, he digs out his old ring and resumes super-heroing after 9 years. Thankfully, like all good attorneys, he has remembered to maintain a secret basement laboratory. After this, he begins to acquire a bewildering array of insect powers (the powers of all the world's insects possessed to the nth degree e.g. the strength of a million ants, flight as fast as a million flies, durability, the power to shatter materials by vibrating his wings like a cricket, web spinning, bio-luminescence, heat powers, resistance to radiation and the ability to mentally control insects, to name but nine). The seems reminiscent of Siegel & Shuster giving Supes the power of Super-Anything-We-Can-Think-Of. Post 31, when it gets re booted, it became more camp, probably due to the success of the Batman TV show. No idea who was distributing when it returned at 31. Wouldn't likely have been Miller as it was five-to-midnight there.

I recall there was a MAD paperback where the US edition printed something that couldn't be distributed here (something about the royal family), but it got reprinted, so they ripped out a single page from every one of 25,000 copies by hand. Logic would tell you the Playboy was a different version, but logic was so seldom in the driving seat. That said, the UK was an absolute gold mine for Playboy, so I could easily believe they fell over backwards to keep on the right side of the line here.

@themagicrobot that insert you've captured is a great find too. It illustrates how ludicrous the Obscene Publications Act was. Newsagents and wholesalers were forever asking for a list of banned publications or guidelines so they could avoid distributing them but they could never got one, so they just had to either pre-emptively guess what might qualify or wait for the raid and then go to court to argue for their stock back. T&P were doing this non stop by the mid 70's which is why Warner's wanted to get shot of them.

Those Playboy books were published by New English Library, an American owned UK book publisher who published a variety of often-sleazy paperbacks (and more respectable fare) from 1961 to 1981. They published under NEL, Signet and Mentor imprints. That being the base, I would guess that SBS is actually a retailer (Something Book Sellers).