Stan, Jack, and Steve - The 1950's. (1957) Jack Kirby's Marvel Age has already begun!

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Prince Namor · July 27, 2022

ON NEWSSTANDS JULY OF 1957!

House of Mystery #66 (Ruben Moreira cover) - Jack Kirby story, pencils and inks.

Prince Namor · July 27, 2022

ON NEWSSTANDS JULY OF 1957!

My Greatest Adventure #17 (Ruben Moreira cover) - Jack Kirby pencils and inks, not sure who wrote the story.

Prince Namor · July 27, 2022

ON NEWSSTANDS JULY OF 1957!

Tales of the Unexpected #17 (Ruben Moreira cover) - Jack Kirby pencils and inks, not sure who wrote the story.

Prince Namor · July 27, 2022

ON NEWSSTANDS JULY OF 1957!

Out of this World #5 - Steve Ditko would do the cover and 4 stories, all written by Joe Gill.

Story ONE - a Ditko Monster story

Prince Namor · July 27, 2022

ON NEWSSTANDS JULY OF 1957!

Out of this World #5 - Steve Ditko would do the cover and 4 stories, all written by Joe Gill.

Story TWO

Prince Namor · July 27, 2022

ON NEWSSTANDS JULY OF 1957!

Out of this World #5 - Steve Ditko would do the cover and 4 stories, all written by Joe Gill.

Story THREE

Prince Namor · July 27, 2022

ON NEWSSTANDS JULY OF 1957!

Out of this World #5 - Steve Ditko would do the cover and 4 stories, all written by Joe Gill.

Story FOUR

Prince Namor · July 27, 2022

ON NEWSSTANDS AUGUST 1957

For August Stan Lee wrote:

Zero Titles

Atlas only released 8 titles to the Newsstand.

Just so this post isn't completely empty....

In my research I discovered some interesting things, such as how much Stan relied upon John Severin to do covers, especially for new titles.

This isn't to imply he didn't use Maneely, there's a reason Maneely didn't do as many in the 12 month time period shown (cover dates October 1956 through September 1957), but it's interesting to compare his numbers even to Bill Everett who was a cover drawing machine in the 1950's for Atlas.

Atlas released 444 titles between Oct 1956 and Sept 1957 (37 a month)

John Severin did 100 of them including 7 of the #1 issues.

Bill Everett did 93 of them including 2 of the #1 issues.

Joe Maneely did 60 of them including 2 of the #1 issues.

Dan DeCarlo did 28 - just between those 4 they did 281 of the 444 covers (63%)!

It's interesting that Stan relied so heavily on Severin to push those new titles.

Part of this was due to Maneely's work load - he did 471 interior pages, 4 TIMES what Severin did.

The other is that Joe was regularly working on Newspaper strips with Stan, in particular the Mrs. Lyons' Cubs strip.

Stan would spend a lot of time working on trying to get numerous ideas to take hold as regular strips in the newspaper.

In fact, it's a little strange to have heard Stan talk about how burned out he was in the second half of the 50's and then see the amount of effort and work he put into trying to make these newspaper strip ideas a success. He used most of his favorites: Maneely, DeCarlo, Colletta... You can read more about this in Alter Ego #150 from January 2018 in Ger Apeldoorn's "Get Me Out of Here!", STAN LEE's Thankfully Fruitless Attempts To Escape Comicbooks (1956-1962)."

Twomorrows has a Free Preview showing a few of the pages from the story at their web site.

sfcityduck · July 27, 2022

On 7/27/2022 at 10:14 AM, Prince Namor said:

In fact, it's a little strange to have heard Stan talk about how burned out he was in the second half of the 50's and then see the amount of effort and work he put into trying to make these newspaper strip ideas a success.

First, thanks for posting that Alter Ego article. Great stuff I'd never seen before!

Second, why is it strange that Stan was making an effort to get into newspaper strips if he was burned out on comics? The newspaper strips were always viewed as more lucrative and less work. Foster, Raymond, Caniff were all famous cartoonists being written up national magazines and living very nice lifestyles. In this same time period, Kirby made his own foray into the strip world with Sky Master of the Space Force. It's a very logical move for a guy who was burned out on the comic book grind to want to move to the more relaxed world of a daily and/or Sunday strip. To me, Stan trying so desperately to get out of comic books is entirely consistent with him being burned out on comic book work.

Edited July 27, 2022 by sfcityduck

sfcityduck · July 27, 2022

One observation on Goodman and covers. I'd be curious if any comic company outside of an LB Cole enterprise was more prone to do a bait and switch on covers than Timely/Marvel. Think about it. The company started its very first issue published with a cover by Frank R. Paul - who did no interior art. Soon they'd be using a LOT of covers by Schomburg - who did no interior art. In the 60s, they'd have preferred cover artists - even though they weren't doing the interior art. Nothing pissed me off more than in the 1980s then seeing a comic with a beautiful Michael Golden cover, like an issue of ROM, and realizing that interior art sucked (I bought the comic for the cover anyway). I dunno, it just seems Marvel was more likely to do this than DC, perhaps because DC had such a house style for its Superman and Batman books. Or maybe I'm wrong, it's just an impression. I guess if I'm right, it was likely a proven sales strategy. I'd note that when Marvel had strong interior artists like Byrne, they transitioned from Cockrum covers (which extended into the Byrne run) to Byrne's. Maybe also with Kane and Starlin? Again, probably smare sales strategy to have the best artist available to do the cover.

Prince Namor · July 27, 2022

On 7/27/2022 at 1:43 PM, sfcityduck said:

One observation on Goodman and covers. I'd be curious if any comic company outside of an LB Cole enterprise was more prone to do a bait and switch on covers than Timely/Marvel. Think about it. The company started its very first issue published with a cover by Frank R. Paul - who did no interior art. Soon they'd be using a LOT of covers by Schomburg - who did no interior art. In the 60s, they'd have preferred cover artists - even though they weren't doing the interior art. Nothing pissed me off more than in the 1980s then seeing a comic with a beautiful Michael Golden cover, like an issue of ROM, and realizing that interior art sucked (I bought the comic for the cover anyway). I dunno, it just seems Marvel was more likely to do this than DC, perhaps because DC had such a house style for its Superman and Batman books. Or maybe I'm wrong, it's just an impression. I guess if I'm right, it was likely a proven sales strategy. I'd note that when Marvel had strong interior artists like Byrne, they transitioned from Cockrum covers (which extended into the Byrne run) to Byrne's. Maybe also with Kane and Starlin? Again, probably smare sales strategy to have the best artist available to do the cover.

It seems like Marvel used that tactic a lot. A whole lot. I still didn't like buying a DC Superman with a Neal Adams cover and getting a Curt Swan interior though...

Prince Namor · July 27, 2022