Silver Age reading room.

[rodan57]

It did get rather undeservedly buried. I enjoyed reading and posting in it.

[Mark 1]

I read one of my favorite TOS books to my son this weekend. TOS 48. We were really enjoying his new suit and the cool story.

 

 

[rodan57]

Amazing Spider-Man #30 • November 1965 • August 1965 newsstand

 

It's the lead-in to the Master Planner (Doctor Octopus) trilogy that ends so triumphantly for Spider-Man in issue #33.

 

This issue is beautifully drawn by Ditko and dialogued by Lee. Ditko and Lee weren't speaking to each other by this time, so Lee does blunder a bit by attributing the leadership of the gang in the story to the Cat instead of the Master Planner (whose image, Ditko doesn't introduce until the next issue).

 

 

 

 

Page 11 has some classic Spider-Man athletics and humour. The visual slapstick of the last panel made me laugh out loud. I remembered this panel from when I first read this book thirty years ago. Talk about great story telling.

 

 

 

 

By the by, I got this one from Foolkiller. I've been looking for a nice copy for quite a while. The crease at the top is virtually unnoticeable first hand and the cover gloss is newsstand fresh.

[Ant-Man]

I just realized that there are two Silver Age reading room threads (the other has a lower case "a" in "age"). I thought I was losing it for a second ...

 

Picked up reading copies of Daredevil #27 & Fantastic Four #47 at C2E2.

 

DD is the conclusion of his battle with Stilt-Man & the Masked Marauder from #26 and has a Spider-Man x-over to boot. I love crossovers in the silver age when they actually meant something & the heroes were not always happy to see one another. Heck, even the villians aren't convinced that they should be joining forces, so this is a huge lovefest all around. Throw in a rocky relationship between Matt & Karen Page and you've got a Marvel-style soap opera. Matt has to out his twin brother as being Daredevil in order to escape the clutches of the Marauder, so you know Karen will never forgive him. At least DD & Spidey were able to put aside their differences long enough to thwart the bad guys.

 

FF is the conclusion of the first Inhumans arc. Not the most dramatic conclusion I've ever read. In fact, I found this issue more comedic than anything else. It reads as if Sue & Reed are fresh off their wedding (don't have a time line in front of me), and Sue is feeling a bit ignored. Sure, Maximus is looking to take over the world, but my husband must realize that I'm not just one of the boys. What to do? Try a new hairstyle! Your ship is headed for a rough landing? Turn yourself invisible afterwards and make everyone look for you in a state of panic! I got the sense that Ben really wanted to clobber her. Like I said, not the most dramatic conclusion I've ever read, but at least Stan was nice enough to inform readers that they didn't want to miss the next ish, "The Coming of Galactus".

 

 

[rodan57]

FF #47 also had one of the great all time covers from first 100 issues. An epic portrayal of the Hidden Land.

 

[rodan57]

Strange Tales #132 • May 1965 • February 1965 newsstand

 

 

 

Ditko's Dr. Strange is a largely unappreciated gem. In this issue, Strange is on the run from Baron Mordo who has been channeling the powers of the dread Dormammu.

 

Face to face in confrontation, the Dormammu, not content to feed power to Mordo, possesses Mordo in order to savour the defeat of Strange. One more epic battle among many.

 

[rodan57]

My last from a small stack of books I just picked up. A decent looking copy from the very tail end of the period I collect.

 

Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commados #25 • December 1965 • October 1965 newsstand

 

 

Apparently in the GCD, there's a bit a of inking debate as to whether Kirby was inked by Giacoia or Tartaglione (who does the interior).

Funny, I'd always thought, just looking, that it had been Colletta.

 

It's one of those strange little stories in which you need to overlook a yawning plot gap and just enjoy the action.

 

The Red Skull plans to blow up Fury's army base through infiltration and by disguising himself as Captain (Happy) Sam Sawyer.

 

For some unfathomable reason, the Skull, as Sawyer, tells the returning from battle Comandos that the army base has been compromised by a master of disguise and that they are the only group of soldiers that he can trust. You'd think there would be a better way to get the Commandos onto the base and blow it up -- without giving away his complete modus operandi.

 

Needless to say, the Red Skull is suitably defeated -- though we never get to see the Skull in "costume". It make you wonder if Lee had originally planned a more generic Nazi master of disguise.

[rodan57]

Journey Into Mystery #114 • March 1965 • January 1965 newsstand

 

 

I was happy to pick a copy of this up on eBay. I haven't had a copy for years. It's a CGC 8.0W which I've liberated from its tomb.

 

I posted this book a couple of days ago in "New in your Silver Age collection ..." where I mentioned that my first copy of this was bought at age twelve while I was on vacation in Ireland.

 

It was 1970 and this book was still on a Dublin comic rack five years later -- just for me apparently. I picked it up along with a newsstand "fresh" Amazing Spider-Man #27 and Daredevil #8. They all had a discreet little one shilling ink stamp on the front covers.

 

It has a great Lee/Kirby/Stone first story. These were the days when it was still fresh to have Loki create villains to defeat Thor when he, himself, was either unwilling or unable to do so.

 

I do remember that as a young reader, I found Crusher Creel's ability to mimic the powers of all that he touched to be fascinating. It was a story arc that continued right into issue #122 -- one of my favourite JIM covers.

 

 

 

 

#114 also had a fine Tales of Asgard story -- an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood.

 

 

 

 

I am a fan of house ads and this issue had two. When I first started collecting, these were the only method to learn what early issues looked like.

 

 

 

It's always a bonus to come across a "Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation". The increasing popularity of JIM was clearly reflected in the numbers. The annual average of monthly sales was 204,700 but the latest to filing was 250,200.

[nmtg9]

Excellent rodan.

 

I too loved the house ads and statement of ownerships. I would spend hours looking at them - especially for earlier issues that were not in the collection (yeah the 'borrowed but never returned' ones' )

[trmoore54]

This is a great thread...thought I'd give it a

 

Just picked up AAF #8 and there's some great stories...the first "The Krills" is really cool but the 2nd one "The Yo-Yo" was a masterpiece...I'll try and scan it and post it this weekend...

 

 

[mysterio]

This is a great thread...thought I'd give it a

 

Just picked up AAF #8 and there's some great stories...the first "The Krills" is really cool but the 2nd one "The Yo-Yo" was a masterpiece...I'll try and scan it and post it this weekend...

 

 

Hey, I just picked up an AAF #8 as well! Mine is slabbed, however, so I'll have to look forward to your posts on it.

[trmoore54]

This is a great thread...thought I'd give it a

 

Just picked up AAF #8 and there's some great stories...the first "The Krills" is really cool but the 2nd one "The Yo-Yo" was a masterpiece...I'll try and scan it and post it this weekend...

 

 

Hey, I just picked up an AAF #8 as well! Mine is slabbed, however, so I'll have to look forward to your posts on it.

 

Crack that baby out Art!

[rodan57]

This is a great thread...thought I'd give it a

 

Just picked up AAF #8 and there's some great stories...the first "The Krills" is really cool but the 2nd one "The Yo-Yo" was a masterpiece...I'll try and scan it and post it this weekend...

 

 

Hey, Tom

As my AAF 8 gives new meaning to the phrase, "beat up", I'd thought I might save you the time and potential damage to a better book. (thumbs u

 

 

 

 

 

[trmoore54]

THX Dan! Really appreciate your posting! I really dig those kooky yo-yo moves in the 2nd page bottom panel...plus the kid being named Tommy was cool for me as well...

[*Bronze age fan*]

This is a great thread...thought I'd give it a

 

Just picked up AAF #8 and there's some great stories...the first "The Krills" is really cool but the 2nd one "The Yo-Yo" was a masterpiece...I'll try and scan it and post it this weekend...

 

 

Hey, Tom

As my AAF 8 gives new meaning to the phrase, "beat up", I'd thought I might save you the time and potential damage to a better book. (thumbs u

 

[frozentundraguy]

Kudos to Tom for bringing this thread to the fore, and to Dan for the Yo Yo story

from AAF 8, not too mention Sgt Fury, FF, ASM and Strange Tales just before. (thumbs u

 

Strange Tales 68 - April 1959

 

 

 

 

In the story "Last Warning Evacuate Earth", aliens warn of an impending attack on earth. However they have targeted convention delegates who appear to be inebriated, a young biker couple who are to hip to worry, or others who are just indifferent or too busy to listen. In the end the aliens call of the attack assuming the people of earth are too powerful to be concerned, and therefore must be too strong to overcome.

 

 

 

In "Trapped in Tomorrow" a greedy inventor of a time machine travels ahead 50 years to 2010 to glean information on the stock market and other events so he can return to 1960 and make a killing. As he is preparing to return, he's demoralized to find he parked his time machine in an electronic garbage disposal field and was lucky not to be present when it was disintegrated.

 

[frozentundraguy]

Strange Adventures #144 - September 1962

 

 

In the two part tale, "When the Earth Blacked Out", the Atomic knights encounter furry blue mole men sowing odd plants that emit black smoke. Events are not going well for the knights when Bryndon hits upon the idea of using fire fly's for light with pumpkins as the delivery mechanism, to derail the mole men's plans of world domination, since light from a conventional heat source would be detected and foiled from a great distance by the mole creatures.