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"Prototype" issues?

Started by electricprune,

62 posts in this topic

AtlasFan

AtlasFan

Posted
Posted
With the wealth of knowledge here, I know most will have opinions. I'm hoping a few have actual facts.

 

What does everyone think about some of the older "prototype" issues? To me, most of them just seem like b.s. to increase the value of a book. Did someone at Marvel go back to Tales of Suspense 9 or 16 and decide to come up with Iron Man for issue 39? When issues 9 and 16 came out, did KMarvel hope to test them to develope something different in the near future?

 

Journey into Mystery 66? I can't see someone going back to that and coming up with The Hulk. Or, did people write in when it came out and suggest it was a cool character, but make him stronger, smaller, and lose the hair/fur? Oh, and makie his arms bigger too.

 

Has anyone within Marvel ever said these actually were prototypes they wanted to base future characters on? Or that someone went back and based a popular character on some of the previous ones?

 

I can see the Rocky/Sgt. Rock thing. I know there are many others that I'm not familiar with. What do you guys think?

 

Prototypes...my favorite topic!

 

JIM #66 was a prototype in name only. As a matter of fact, there were a couple of other Atlas characters named "Hulk"...I never saw this book as a true Hulk prototype.

 

I would classify KRAA from TOS #18 and BRUTTU from TOS #22 as true Hulk prototypes...

TOS_18.jpg

TOS_22.jpg

 

KRAA was a naitive who was transformed into a monster after being exposed to radiation from a secret Commie H-Bomb test in the African jungle.

 

BRUTTU was a weak milksop of a scientist who was exposed to a ray that transformed him into a powerful monster.

 

I don't believe that there was ever a specific intent to turn any of the Marvel prototypes into heroes... rather I think that the soon-to-be Marvel bullpen drew upon characters and plot points in the monster stories and used them to flesh out the Marvel heroes. Perhaps a better term for the pre-hero characters would be "precursors" rather than prototypes...but prototypes sounds cooler and I dont think its going anywhere!

Bill

 

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electricprune

electricprune

Posted
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Posted
With the wealth of knowledge here, I know most will have opinions. I'm hoping a few have actual facts.

 

What does everyone think about some of the older "prototype" issues? To me, most of them just seem like b.s. to increase the value of a book. Did someone at Marvel go back to Tales of Suspense 9 or 16 and decide to come up with Iron Man for issue 39? When issues 9 and 16 came out, did KMarvel hope to test them to develope something different in the near future?

 

Journey into Mystery 66? I can't see someone going back to that and coming up with The Hulk. Or, did people write in when it came out and suggest it was a cool character, but make him stronger, smaller, and lose the hair/fur? Oh, and makie his arms bigger too.

 

Has anyone within Marvel ever said these actually were prototypes they wanted to base future characters on? Or that someone went back and based a popular character on some of the previous ones?

 

I can see the Rocky/Sgt. Rock thing. I know there are many others that I'm not familiar with. What do you guys think?

 

Prototypes...my favorite topic!

 

JIM #66 was a prototype in name only. As a matter of fact, there were a couple of other Atlas characters named "Hulk"...I never saw this book as a true Hulk prototype.

 

I would classify KRAA from TOS #18 and BRUTTU from TOS #22 as true Hulk prototypes...

TOS_18.jpg

TOS_22.jpg

 

KRAA was a naitive who was transformed into a monster after being exposed to radiation from a secret Commie H-Bomb test in the African jungle.

 

BRUTTU was a weak milksop of a scientist who was exposed to a ray that transformed him into a powerful monster.

 

I don't believe that there was ever a specific intent to turn any of the Marvel prototypes into heroes... rather I think that the soon-to-be Marvel bullpen drew upon characters and plot points in the monster stories and used them to flesh out the Marvel heroes. Perhaps a better term for the pre-hero characters would be "precursors" rather than prototypes...but prototypes sounds cooler and I dont think its going anywhere!

Bill

 

Thanks, Bill! That's the info I was shooting for. In your opinion, do most of these precursor issues warrant higher value? Have collectors driven up demand in the market, or is it somewhat manufactured?

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Ken Aldred

Ken Aldred

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Show me the Iron Man.

Smash1939cfo.jpg

 

Here's one of the stories, from Smash Comics 8...

 

Golden Age 'Iron Man' (a robot)

 

To the right of the first story page you will see a link to a quite terrible GA Black Panther character as well.

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AtlasFan

AtlasFan

Posted
Posted
With the wealth of knowledge here, I know most will have opinions. I'm hoping a few have actual facts.

 

What does everyone think about some of the older "prototype" issues? To me, most of them just seem like b.s. to increase the value of a book. Did someone at Marvel go back to Tales of Suspense 9 or 16 and decide to come up with Iron Man for issue 39? When issues 9 and 16 came out, did KMarvel hope to test them to develope something different in the near future?

 

Journey into Mystery 66? I can't see someone going back to that and coming up with The Hulk. Or, did people write in when it came out and suggest it was a cool character, but make him stronger, smaller, and lose the hair/fur? Oh, and makie his arms bigger too.

 

Has anyone within Marvel ever said these actually were prototypes they wanted to base future characters on? Or that someone went back and based a popular character on some of the previous ones?

 

I can see the Rocky/Sgt. Rock thing. I know there are many others that I'm not familiar with. What do you guys think?

 

Prototypes...my favorite topic!

 

JIM #66 was a prototype in name only. As a matter of fact, there were a couple of other Atlas characters named "Hulk"...I never saw this book as a true Hulk prototype.

 

I would classify KRAA from TOS #18 and BRUTTU from TOS #22 as true Hulk prototypes...

TOS_18.jpg

TOS_22.jpg

 

KRAA was a naitive who was transformed into a monster after being exposed to radiation from a secret Commie H-Bomb test in the African jungle.

 

BRUTTU was a weak milksop of a scientist who was exposed to a ray that transformed him into a powerful monster.

 

I don't believe that there was ever a specific intent to turn any of the Marvel prototypes into heroes... rather I think that the soon-to-be Marvel bullpen drew upon characters and plot points in the monster stories and used them to flesh out the Marvel heroes. Perhaps a better term for the pre-hero characters would be "precursors" rather than prototypes...but prototypes sounds cooler and I dont think its going anywhere!

Bill

 

Thanks, Bill! That's the info I was shooting for. In your opinion, do most of these precursor issues warrant higher value? Have collectors driven up demand in the market, or is it somewhat manufactured?

 

I think the demand us warrented and genuine. These are great stories and its fun to find to look for and find new prototypes.

 

Even DC had some prototypes...Lets take Negative Man, for example. Not the most popular hero, but you can see that he did have a couple of precursors.

 

HOM_84.jpg

SA_54.jpg

 

 

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bluechip

bluechip

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Posted
MovieFunnies1930spider-manvillain.jpg

 

Spiderman1954BenCoopercostumead.jpg

 

Spiderman1954BenCoopercostumepre-Ma.jpg

 

Spiderman1954UncannyTales26.jpg

 

 

BenCooperspidermanHalloweenpic1956C.jpg

 

BenCooperspidermanMASK1954.jpg

 

Spider-manletterslogoCU.jpg

 

 

Pretty cool... what are the dates on these?

 

The spider-man gangster appeared in a newspaper strip in 1930 that was reprinted in a centaur comic in 1938 (the company that would become Timely and which was run at the time by Stan Lee's uncle).

 

The Ben Cooper spider man costumes are from 1954, as is the The Uncanny Tales 26 (published by Marvel before it was called Marvel, with Stan Lee editing)

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bluechip

bluechip

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I believe the Ben Cooper costume is actually from 1963 -- it was one of the very first Spider-man merchandised items.

 

If it was from 1954 someone at Marvel would have a lot of 'splainin to do!

 

I have an original copy of the ad from an industry toy magazine and it's early 1954. The fact that Marvel did business with BenCooper for years after would seem to mitigate any need for 'splainin. It's possible that someone at marvel or ditko himself saw these costumes. In fact if you mix andmatch the elements of the different version of the costumes you can assemble a costume that is very close to the spidey of 1962 only in yellow and black stead of blue and red

 

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AtlasFan

AtlasFan

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As it happens the other side of the ad was in my photobucket gallery. date is in the corner

 

Spiderman1954costumead2pg.jpg

 

That is interesting. I don't believe that Joe Simon mentions any of this in his book on the origin of Spider-man. If the date of this catalog is indeed the 1950's, then it would seem to suggest that Lee, Kirby, and/or Ditko (take your pick) swiped the costume and name of Spiderman from a Halloween catalog! Could some obscure, nameless children's costume designer be the true creator of Spider-man? Fun to think about!

 

Could you post the image of the Spiderman costume with the date? That would be most insightful...

 

Even if it was a wild coincidence, it would also explain the long association between Ben Cooper Costumes and Marvel...maybe the Ben Cooper company let Marvel use Spider-man to get exclusive right to their other heroes? I would think that a lawsuit would have popped up as soon as Spiderman took off -- then again, they could have settled out of court.

 

I still have doubts that the Spiderman image is from 1954. This simply could be a reprint of past Ben Cooper Catalogs - the 1954 ad on one side and the 1963 ad on the other. If Ben Cooper were promoting their goods at a Toy Fair, why wouldnt they promote it on both sides of the ad -- and why repeat the most of the same images?

 

It would be most interesting to ask Stan about this...

 

I wonder if any of these pre-AF15 spiderman costumes still exist...

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bluechip

bluechip

Posted
Posted
As it happens the other side of the ad was in my photobucket gallery. date is in the corner

 

Spiderman1954costumead2pg.jpg

 

That is interesting. I don't believe that Joe Simon mentions any of this in his book on the origin of Spider-man. If the date of this catalog is indeed the 1950's, then it would seem to suggest that Lee, Kirby, and/or Ditko (take your pick) swiped the costume and name of Spiderman from a Halloween catalog! Could some obscure, nameless children's costume designer be the true creator of Spider-man? Fun to think about!

 

Could you post the image of the Spiderman costume with the date? That would be most insightful...

 

Even if it was a wild coincidence, it would also explain the long association between Ben Cooper Costumes and Marvel...maybe the Ben Cooper company let Marvel use Spider-man to get exclusive right to their other heroes? I would think that a lawsuit would have popped up as soon as Spiderman took off -- then again, they could have settled out of court.

 

I still have doubts that the Spiderman image is from 1954. This simply could be a reprint of past Ben Cooper Catalogs - the 1954 ad on one side and the 1963 ad on the other. If Ben Cooper were promoting their goods at a Toy Fair, why wouldnt they promote it on both sides of the ad -- and why repeat the most of the same images?

 

It would be most interesting to ask Stan about this...

 

I wonder if any of these pre-AF15 spiderman costumes still exist...

 

The costumes do exist. I have one. Had a spare that I traded off some years ago. They had both showed up on ebay about the same time.

 

The images are separate pages but definitely the same ad from the same trade magazine. It was a standard double-truck ad. And as I recall there are dates on the back as well.

 

The picture of the kid wearing the costume is also from the 1950s, and was I believe dated as such by the developer, as was the custom at the time,. coincidentally it had showed up on ebay about the same time as the costumes and I had bid on it thinking it would go for a few tens of dollars at most but I got sniped and it sold for hundreds, while the costumes themselves went virtually unnoticed.

 

I don't know that I would say marvel swiped the costume or the name. Marvel had the rights to the "spider-man" character as depicted as a gangster, dating back to 1938. There was a spider man fairy tale book also out in 1954, and as you can see by the uncanny tales, marvel had a cover character called spider man in 1954, though he was a monster.

 

As for the costume, a case could be made that ditko might have seen the various costumes and remembered them, even subliminally. But I guarantee you that no other team of artist and writer would have come up with the same spider-man, even if they had been given the same costume. But what can I say, Ditko himself seems to put too much emphasis on the costume when he talks about who created what. Ditko's far greater contribution, in my view, was the sensibility he brought to the character's personality and his approach to storytelling.. It was in tune with Lee's sensibility and with what Lee wanted for the character, and they made a perfect team on it. If they had managed to get along better, they would probably have created many more great characters.

 

 

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bluechip

bluechip

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One thing I forgot which is potentially interesting is the all-important hyphen in the name of Spider-man. There had been several characters called spider man in comics in the 1950s by other publishers, but none of them had a hyphen. But before any of them, Marvel had a character called spider-man, spelled with a hyphen, in 1938. The title page of AF15 had originally been written without a hyphen, and was covered over just prior to publication with a new logo that did have a hyphen. It may have been that they simply preferred it with a hyphen. But in the realm of copyright law, tiny things like that can make a big difference in claiming original ownership

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