Pre- Hero Marvels!!!! 16 16

[bc]

Happy Easter all!

-bc

[KirbyJack]

Orrgo never learns. I’ve told him a hundred times not to put all of his eggs in one basket. It’s a recipe for disaster while he’s doing all that hopping.

Edited April 15, 2022 by KirbyJack

[Jasonmorris1000000]

Whenever there’s danger involved in an Easter Egg hunt, call the Challengers of the Unknown 

[bc]

Another Egg-cellent cover

-bc

[bc]

May daze

-bc

[Mucheee1]

Recent purchases

[bc]

On 5/28/2022 at 5:09 PM, Mucheee1 said:

Recent purchases

Nice pickups!

-bc

[Mucheee1]

On 5/28/2022 at 5:18 PM, bc said:

Nice pickups!

-bc

Thanks. It took me a long time to find the right ST66, that is a hard book to find.

It was the last book I needed in a run from issue 59 to 93.

[KirbyJack]

Tales of Suspense #1 was where I first saw the work of Al Williamson. I was so excited about it that I showed it to my family.

[Jasonmorris1000000]

Wow!  Did you all see this?

On 2/26/2022 at 5:01 PM, MrBedrock said:

 

[bc]

On 6/5/2022 at 4:39 PM, Jasonmorris1000000 said:

Wow!  Did you all see this?

 

-bc

[bc]

I've been reading this site and the links it provides the last few days and came up with a very interesting nugget: Stan Lee never signed any of the post-Implosion PHM titles until TALES TO ASTONISH #24 (October 1961).

https://zak-site.com/MarvelMethodArchive/14.html

Patrick Ford

14 June 2016

How come no one has ever pointed this out? What were the pre-hero years at Marvel? That would be 1958-1961. So go look at Stan Lee's credits at the Atlas Tales .com website and what do you know.

https://www.atlastales.com/creator/7

From 1958 to the end of 1961 Stan Lee does not have one credit on any of the Marvel "monster books." Lee does sign hundreds of stories during that time. All Lee's writing is done for Westerns and the sexist "Dumb Broad" type books which seem to have been Lee's specialty.

So there are no Lee credits for TALES TO ASTONISH, JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, TALES OF SUSPENSE, AMAZING ADVENTURES, etc. But there are hundreds of credits for LIFE WITH MILLIE, KATHY, PATSY WALKER, MILLIE THE MODEL, MY GIRL PEARL, etc. And in fact there are no Lee credits on any of the Mystery/Monster books until TALES TO ASTONISH #24 (October 1961).

Kind of casts doubt on Lee's claims that he created the Marvel Method because he no longer had time to write full scripts for Kirby and Ditko.

Or did Lee just forget to sign every Mystery/Monster story from 1958 to October 1961 when he never forgot to sign hundreds of Westerns and "Dumb Broad" stories?

Patrick Ford: In order to fully appreciate this go to this link and scroll down to Lee's credits from 1958-Oct. 1961. There are hundreds upon hundreds of stories which Lee signed. There is not one story credited to Lee or signed by Lee in any of the Monster/Mystery books.

https://www.atlastales.com/creator/7

Patrick Ford: So when Lee and his house boy talk about Lee using the Marvel Method on Fin-Fang_Foom well why is it there aren't ANY monster/mystery stories until one month prior to FANTASTIC FOUR #1. And how come I'm pointing this out? You mean to say I'm the first person that has ever bothered to look?

Patrick Ford: I have heard Lee and Thomas explain that Lee "forgot" to sign his name once and awhile. Well the score is he never failed to sign once on any of the "Dumb Broad" books and there are hundreds and hundreds of them. And we are supposed to believe he never once remembered to sign a Mystery/Monster story until Oct. 1961? Get out!

Aaron Noble: Stan signed everything he wrote. Gag cartoon pages. Half page kid humor strips. Paper Doll pages. Hair-do's sent in by our readers.

 

-bc

[KirbyJack]

Interesting. Not sure how I feel about this yet. More thought is required.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/7/2022 at 12:30 AM, bc said:

I've been reading this site and the links it provides the last few days and came up with a very interesting nugget: Stan Lee never signed any of the post-Implosion PHM titles until TALES TO ASTONISH #24 (October 1961).

https://zak-site.com/MarvelMethodArchive/14.html

Patrick Ford

14 June 2016

How come no one has ever pointed this out? What were the pre-hero years at Marvel? That would be 1958-1961. So go look at Stan Lee's credits at the Atlas Tales .com website and what do you know.

https://www.atlastales.com/creator/7

From 1958 to the end of 1961 Stan Lee does not have one credit on any of the Marvel "monster books." Lee does sign hundreds of stories during that time. All Lee's writing is done for Westerns and the sexist "Dumb Broad" type books which seem to have been Lee's specialty.

So there are no Lee credits for TALES TO ASTONISH, JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, TALES OF SUSPENSE, AMAZING ADVENTURES, etc. But there are hundreds of credits for LIFE WITH MILLIE, KATHY, PATSY WALKER, MILLIE THE MODEL, MY GIRL PEARL, etc. And in fact there are no Lee credits on any of the Mystery/Monster books until TALES TO ASTONISH #24 (October 1961).

Kind of casts doubt on Lee's claims that he created the Marvel Method because he no longer had time to write full scripts for Kirby and Ditko.

Or did Lee just forget to sign every Mystery/Monster story from 1958 to October 1961 when he never forgot to sign hundreds of Westerns and "Dumb Broad" stories?

Patrick Ford: In order to fully appreciate this go to this link and scroll down to Lee's credits from 1958-Oct. 1961. There are hundreds upon hundreds of stories which Lee signed. There is not one story credited to Lee or signed by Lee in any of the Monster/Mystery books.

https://www.atlastales.com/creator/7

Patrick Ford: So when Lee and his house boy talk about Lee using the Marvel Method on Fin-Fang_Foom well why is it there aren't ANY monster/mystery stories until one month prior to FANTASTIC FOUR #1. And how come I'm pointing this out? You mean to say I'm the first person that has ever bothered to look?

Patrick Ford: I have heard Lee and Thomas explain that Lee "forgot" to sign his name once and awhile. Well the score is he never failed to sign once on any of the "Dumb Broad" books and there are hundreds and hundreds of them. And we are supposed to believe he never once remembered to sign a Mystery/Monster story until Oct. 1961? Get out!

Aaron Noble: Stan signed everything he wrote. Gag cartoon pages. Half page kid humor strips. Paper Doll pages. Hair-do's sent in by our readers.

 

-bc

@Prince Namormight be interested in this, and have a considered view.

[Prince Namor]

Because he didn't write any of them. It's as plain and simple as that.

Stan stopped writing horror/suspense/sci-fi around 1953, most likely because he feared or was embarrassed due to the Wertham outrage that was brewing.

We know what he DID write during that time because he SIGNED it. When he no longer was signing those stories, or 95% of ANY Atlas titles other than the dumb blonde comics or an occasional Western or 'zany' Humor story, it was because someone else was writing them. (Hank Chapman, Carl Wessler, Joe Gill, Don Rico, Jack Oleck, Al Hartley, Morris Reece, Al Jaffee - Atlas/Marvel had all kinds of writers at this time).

Michael J. Vassallo has done a great deal of research on this: http://timely-atlas-comics.blogspot.com/2018/12/stan-lee-1922-2018-timely-years.html

Truth is... Stan never even brought up those monster stories until AFTER they got retro popular. THEN he took credit for them. 

But if you read Kirby and Ditko's pre-Marvel work from 1954 to 1958, they BOTH were already prolific at writing and creating these stories on their own. They did these on their own in their early Marvel years of 1958 to 1961 until Stan got the idea to take credit for (i.e get paid) as the writer for those stories. 

It wasn't until Goodman started the process of selling Marvel that Stan began to change his story on the creation of the Superheroes, in order set himself up as the sole creator. Even then, he didn't bring up the monster stories, because he didn't see the need to claim ownership. LATER, once they got retro popular, and people could see there was a creative line to the creation of the original Marvel superheroes (Mole Man, Skrulls, Atomic Energy, Hulk... it all comes from Kirby's monster/sci-fi work he'd been doing for the last 10 years, including the last 3 at Marvel), THEN he saw the need to start claiming ownership of writing that stuff. 

Even though it's easy, in hindsight to see that was never the truth. 

Kirby and Ditko both were doing horror and sci-fi and monsters in the 50's, either with other writers or on their own.  

Kirby's superhero work from 1954-58 (yes, Kirby was already doing superheroes again in the mid-to-late 50's) reads like early Silver Age Marvels. 

I've already started, month by month, to show just what Stan, Jack and Steve were doing from 1954 to 1958 and...

It's easy to see where the creative energy of the Marvel Silver Age came from.

Yes, the Marvel Universe would've never been the same without Stan Lee's hand in it.

But without Kirby and Ditko it never would've existed at all. 

[Prince Namor]

Oh, and here's my thread (you get to read lots of FREE comics from 1954!)

 

[bc]

On 6/7/2022 at 8:59 AM, Prince Namor said:

Oh, and here's my thread (you get to read lots of FREE comics from 1954!)

 

Good stuff - been following that thread.

For the past few months, I've been documenting the early post-Implosion Job Codes (specifically the "T" series) and stumbled on the Vassallo blogs. The way they dissect the OA from that period is pretty incredible.

-bc

 

 

[bc]

Follow Up - Part 1

So I been doing some data mining on the Atlas Tales database.....

https://www.atlastales.com/search/n:7:c:w:s:s:b:1:e:1958:x:7:y:1963:z:s

That search shows all of Stan Lee's SIGNED credits from January 1958 until July 1963. Pretty much the post-Implosion Atlas to the rise of Marvel Comics.

In that time period, Stan signed 1,673 "jobs".

These "jobs" include everything from 1-9 page stories, including content pages (think the first page of Amazing Adult Fantasy), paper doll cutouts, activity pages, pin-ups, fashion pages and coloring pages. The guy signed everything he touched.

Yes, this splash page from Amazing Adult Fantasy 11 counts as 1 job.

The total number of jobs signed by Stan in the PHM titles is only 97.

That's only 6% of his total jobs signed during the entire period of January 1958 to July 1963.

As mentioned in the prior post, Stan's first signed job in the PHM era was TTA 24 with a cover date of October 1961 (the end of the big monster period).

But other than Amazing Adult Fantasy, Stan only did a single 5 page story for most of the later issues.

Here's the breakdown of Stan's signed jobs by PHM Title:

 

More to come....need a beer and want to save this.

-bc

[bc]

Follow Up - Part 2

Grand Comics Database vs Atlas Tales Database vs CGC

The GCD credits Stan with writing/plotting hundreds of the PHM stories BUT they notate he did not sign them with the "?" notation:

That story is from Strange Tales 72 (12/59).

There is no listing in the Atlas Tales database for the writers of any of the stories in that issue.

Roll back one issue to Strange Tales 71.

The GCD has 2 stories that they guess to be Stan's:

and

 

Again, the Atlas Tales database does not attribute any writer to any of the stories in that issue. That's a totally different rabbit hole we can go down later....

There are hundreds of other examples I can provide where the GCD "assumes" Stan was involved in the writing/plotting/scripting that he did not sign.

 

Now let's add in the CGC factor....

I have a slabbed copy of ST 71 for reference...notice they point out "Stan Lee story" (that's clearly using the GCD assumption):

 

The slabbing notes are actually mentioned in an exchange from here:

 

https://zak-site.com/MarvelMethodArchive/10.html

Jim Van Heuklon: another part of the problem is that CGC continues to blindly give writing to credit to Lee for the vast majority of these books.

Patrick Ford: They do and it's sickening. It's beyond a joke. It's reprehensible.

Patrick Ford: I'm not even saying they should credit Kirby as the writer. What they should do is note the dispute. Mention that Kirby and Lee are 100% at odds. And mover on. Instead they credit Lee. It's shameful and inexcusable.

Jim Van Heuklon: I sent Borock a message asking him to explain XXXX's blind devotion to the writing credits. We'll see if it warrants a response.

 

(I "XXXX"d out the other guys so I don't get this yanked.) The key part to me is Borock's CGC legacy ties.

 

It appears all the grading/slabbing companies are just crediting Stan with unverified jobs in their label & grader notes based on the GCD data.

-bc

[Mucheee1]

Based on the information, it seems that when Stan Lee did anything creative-wise he would certainly take credit for it, with his name plastered somewhere on the story art. Leads me to believe that if his name wasn’t on it somewhere, he really had nothing to do with the story. I noticed the Atlas Tales database attributes a story from TTA 21 to Lee, but all I see is Ditko’s signature. It does say at the bottom of the last page that if you like these stories, you can write to Stan Lee and tell him.

I wonder if Stan was figuring out that these type stories by Jack and Steve were popular, discovered they were popular by people writing in and telling him, and then he starting getting involved and getting credit.