
Marvel in the Silver Age
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Growing up in the 1960s, I was surrounded by pop-culture touchstones - The Beatles, The Man from UNCLE and Civil War News gum cards. The biggest influence on my life was Marvel Comics. I wanted to write something about the early days of Marvel, but felt it needed to be put in the right cultural context. So this is my Marvel Comics .
Marvel in the Silver Age
2M ago
BEFORE I DISCOVERED MARVEL COMICS IN THE MID-1960S, I was something of a Batman fan, specifically the stories of the 1950s (which I enjoyed in the Batman Annuals of the period and last years of the Jack Schiff era in the early 1960s. Back then, the go-to artist for Batman was Shelley Moldoff, who had jettisoned his Golden Age, Alex Raymond influenced style and aped the rather limited and cartoony abilities of Bob Kane.
As a direct literary descendant of the pulp hero The Shadow, Batman did quite a bit of shadow-casting himself, being that he was a "creature of the night, dark, terrible ..read more
Marvel in the Silver Age
2M ago
FOR MOST OF 1965, Journey into Mystery, Marvel's vehicle for the adventures of Thor, had increasingly come to focus on Thor the Thunder God rather than on Thor the Superhero. Starting with "The Trial of the Gods" in Journey into Mystery 116 (May 1965) we would see a lot more of Odin, Balder and the ever-machinating machinations of Thor's half-brother and arch enemy Loki, God of Mischief.
Though mostly reprints, the first Marvel Annual to feature Thor gave us a 15-page battle between the Asgardian God of Thunder and Hercules, son of Zeus.
Around the same time, Stan and Jack threw us an ..read more
Marvel in the Silver Age
4M ago
LAST TIME, WE LEFT THOR standing amid the ruins of deserted mansion, having defeated Mr Hyde and The Cobra, holding the stricken form of Jane Foster in his arms. Jane would recover, of course, but we wouldn't be party to that in the very next issue of Journey into Mystery.
Journey into Mystery 112 (Jan 1965) featured the "untold" story of Thor's epic battle with The Hulk during the earliest days of The Avengers.
Strangely, Thor's next outing in the title would be a kind of filler issue which gave us a flashback to the events of Avengers 3 (Jan 1964), a year earlier, in which Thor and ..read more
Marvel in the Silver Age
8M ago
WHEN I WAS TEN, nothing could beat the excitement of finding a "split cover" Marvel on the newsagent spinner rack. Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four were all well and good, but ... y'know, split covers. I mean two great heroes in one comic. That's a proper bargain.
We think of Marvel split covers as being a trademark style of the entire Silver Age but, incredibly, this little Marvel foible lasted just around a year (with a bit of overlap at either end).
The phenomenon was pretty much confined to Marvel's former fantasy titles, Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish, but Journey ..read more
Marvel in the Silver Age
11M ago
THE GHOST RIDER HAD ENJOYED A LONG RUN at his original home, Vin Sullivan's Magazine Enterprises, from late 1949 right through to the spring of 1955, in a variety of titles: Tim Holt (which became Red Mask), Best of the West, Bobby Benson and, of course, his own title The Ghost Rider. Dick Ayers, later to be one of Jack Kirby's most important Marvel inkers during the early 1960s, was the artist on every single episode of the character. So when comics fan Roy Thomas landed a job at Marvel Comics in 1965 as Stan Lee's assistant, he brought with him a broad knowledge of characters from earlier pe ..read more
Marvel in the Silver Age
1y ago
BACK IN THE 1960s IT WAS THE SUPERHEROES THAT CAUGHT MY ATTENTION. First, the colourful DC heroes like Flash and especially Green Lantern. Then by the mid-Sixties, I'd focussed more on the Marvel heroes. I was aware that Marvel published other titles from the house ads in the superhero titles, but as I've mentioned before in this blog, I was never much of a fan of war comics or cowboys. It wasn't until much later in my comic collecting endeavours that I began to appreciate that Stan was a pretty good writer in almost any genre.
Marvel had three western characters that stood the test of time ..read more
Marvel in the Silver Age
1y ago
WHEN I FIRST STARTED READING COMICS IN THE 1960s, not even the writers and artists were mentioned anywhere in the DC books I cut my teeth on, let alone the editors. It wasn't until I became involved in professional publishing that I began to grasp the scope of just what it is an editor does do.
My editorial life was never as glamorous or as important Ben Bradlee's, but I do love movies that depict the rigours and responsibilities of being an editor.
Back at the beginning of the 1970s, I had an aspiration to be a comic artist. I had all the kit ... Windsor & Newton sable brushes, a ..read more
Marvel in the Silver Age
1y ago
MY A-LEVEL ART TEACHER, MR HUSSEIN, would always talk about the importance of composition when it came to paintings and drawings. In fact he went to far as to spend one entire lesson showing us how to find the geometrical shapes in classical paintings, then he encouraged us to use the same techniques in our artwork.
Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man can be used to demonstrate how the Golden Rectangle works.
There was also much talk of Golden Triangles, and Golden Rectangles, and even something called the Fibonacci Spiral, but I'd stopped listening by that point. It wasn't until I became involv ..read more
Marvel in the Silver Age
1y ago
A YEAR ON FROM THE GREAT MARVEL EXPLOSION OF 1968 and it was becoming noticeable that Martin Goodman's grand plan to increase Marvel's output wasn't going to be sustainable.
When Marvel's total monthly page output went up from around 280 pages per month to about 400 pages, Editor Stan Lee needed to find more creators to produce the extra 120 pages of original story art he'd need just to keep the Marvel machine fed. He already had Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich helping out on scripting. He'd added Archie Goodwin and Arnold Drake in 1968 - both looked great on paper, Goodwin with long experience ..read more
Marvel in the Silver Age
2y ago
MARVEL COMICS MIGHT HAVE OWNED THE NAME CAPTAIN MARVEL, but I'm not entirely sure writer Stan Lee quite knew what to do with the character, after publisher Martin Goodman insisted the superhero be added to the company's lineup. After writing the first appearance himself, with the ever-capable Gene Colan on art, he handed the reins over to Roy Thomas, for me an indication that Stan didn't have a great deal of faith or interest in the project.
The first appearance of Captain Marvel in Marvel Super-Heroes 12 was scripted by Stan Lee. With the second appearance, Roy Thomas took over as write ..read more