Featuring: Hulk Release: March 4, 1965 Cover: June 1965 12 cents Story and art by Marvel’s modern masters: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Inking: Mickey Demeo Lettering: Artie Simek 10 pages
With Ditko off the title, Kirby is back to take another shot at his co-creation. Stan shares the top billing with Jack for this triumphant return. The original Lee/Kirby run on Hulk lasted 5 issues. This one will make it around 15 or so. I’m expecting it to be largely immemorable.
We open with a trick out of the Ditko run. The last issue ended with Banner facing impending death and transforms to the Hulk just in time to be saved. Banner and Talbot are falling to their death when Banner transforms.
Hulk crosses the Pacific with leaps. Isle to isle, plane to plane.
That’s… a very long distance, even if you can jump very far. Maybe there are enough islands between Japan and Hawaii to hopscotch it, but it’s 2500 miles from Hawaii to California with nothing in between.
Featuring: Avengers Release: February 11, 1965 Cover: April 1965 12 cents Script: Stan Lee Layouts: Jack Kirby Pencilling: Don Heck Inking: Mickey Demeo Lettering: Artie Simek 20 pages
For several issues, Avengers had become a Lee/Heck production and was much the worse for it. Last issue had everybody working at Marvel pitch in. Now, Kirby is on hand with the layouts. Recall, we’re basically talking positioning of characters, but with that comes the storytelling, and this story is a cut above the last several issues. That’s likely Kirby’s hand. He’s been the missing ingredient. He’s back to do layouts for two issues, and they’ll be two of the best Avengers stories of the era.
Ordering is funny, as continuity is getting tight. Everybody is embroiled in multi-issue arcs, stories are flowing into each other; Avengers is always tricky continuity because it needs to be fit around the solo titles; and there’s a wedding any day now.
That’s why we already skipped ahead 5 months in our X-Men reading and are so far behind in our Dr. Strange and Hulk reading. Trying to fit it all together. This is the February issue of Avengers. We’re already mostly on to March, but about to read the January Thor. I think it all makes sense. This issue for significant reasons plainly takes place after the July issue of X-Men.
Featuring: Human Torch and Thing Release: March 11, 1965 Cover: June 1965 12 cents Written in the magnificent Stan Lee tradition! Illustrated in the majestic Bob Powell manner! Inked in the magiloquent Mick Demeo style! Lettered in the mortgaged Sam Rosen home! 12 pages
Due to the tightness of forthcoming FF chronology, we are reading ahead a bit in these Human Torch stories. Since Dr. Strange is still involved in a big saga, we are still holding off on reading Dr. Strange stories.
Dr. Strange at last gets half of the cover, but Kirby’s work here doesn’t quite do justice to the tale Ditko is spinning inside.
Stan notes the story will start in the middle. That is unusual for one of these stories, but it’s a classical storytelling technique, en media res.
This issue promises a surprise twist, an old villain in a new guise. I don’t want to spoil the big surprise.
Featuring: Human Torch and Thing Release: February 11, 1965 Cover: May 1965 12 cents Edited with reckless abandon by: Stan Lee Written with daring bravado by: Larry Ivie Drawn with brash impetuosity by: Bob Powell Inked with reckless vigor by: M. Demeo Lettered with a soggy penpoint by: S. Rosen 12 pages
Dr. Strange gets a small box on the cover to acknowledge his story.
Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the publication of Fantastic Four #1. Wish I could have timed my posts to have something better than this Human/Torch Thing story to celebrate with. So it goes. Happy birthday, Foursome!
Art by Alex Ross, inspired by Jack Kirby.
Lots to unpack from the credits page.
We’ve already met Mr. Demeo (Mike Esposito), as he also picked up inking on Iron Man this month.
Larry Ivie is a new name to us. He is an occasional comics writer and artist, and perhaps best known as a comics fan.
The blog, Professor H’s Wayback Machine, recently did a tribute series to Ivie’s work on his self-published fanzine, Heroes & Monsters.
This is the last we’ll see of Ivie for some time, but he’ll do occasional Marvel work here and there over the next couple decades.
Also unusual in the credits is a comic Stan Lee takes no writing credit on. This isn’t the first time, but it’s been a rare occurrence, and will become less rare. Stan still gets his name first in the credits somehow.
What we would today call editing is certainly a contribution that Stan makes to every one of these books, and not one to be taken lightly. The issues arise on the comics where he worked as an editor but credited himself as a writer.
Things are heating up in the Fantastic Four book, and there won’t be much space for solo adventures. So far, with only a few exceptions, Fantastic Four adventures have fit into a single issue, where one could easily imagine these Human Torch stories fitting in between the issues. But, as is the general trend these titles are taking, Fantastic Four stories are going to get more involved, with cliffhanger endings which lead us right into the next issue.
To that end, we’re going to knock out the next few Human Torch/Thing stories presently, getting us a little ahead with them. We’ll eventually revisit all these comics and read the Dr. Strange stories.
Thus subjecting myself and you to three of these in a row.
Featuring: Iron Man Release: February 11, 1965 Cover: May 1965 12 cents Story by Marvel’s merriest marcher: Stan Lee Art by Marvel’s most amiable artist: Don Heck Inking by Marvel’s dizziest delineator: Mickey Demeo Lettering by Marvel’s persnippiest pen-pusher: Sam Rosen 12 pages
We just spent several weeks reading Red Skull stories to prepare for this, and it’s an Iron Man story. What gives.
But I see Red Skull on the cover. Ah, flipping ahead, there are two stories in this comic. The second story is about Captain America and the Red Skull. Maybe we’ll get there tomorrow.
There’s a new name in the credits. Who is Mickey Demeo? Well, his real Name is Mike Esposito. He’s been working in comics since leaving the army in the late 1940s, and is best known for his decades of collaboration with Ross Andru. I know him best as an inker, but he was often the main penciller on his earlier work. He and Ross Andru started small publishers together in the 1950s, including Mikeross Publications, and MR Publications, which published Mr. Universe. Esposito and Ross had a decade-long collaboration on the character of Wonder Woman, which helped give a definitive and iconic look to the character. Together with writer Bob Kanigher, they co-created the original Suicide Squad and the Metal Men. Esposito will become a significant inker on Amazing Spider-Man, for a time in collaboration with Andru.
Why the alias? He probably doesn’t want DC to know he’s doing Marvel work. And it’s not just this title. He’s also inking this month’s Human Torch and Avengers adventures.
Here is a sampling of some early pencil work by Esposito.
Men’s Adventures #6 (Marvel, 1951)
Weird Adventures #3 (PL Publishing, 1951)
Girl Comics #8 (Marvel, 1951)
Blazing Sixguns #15 (Super Comics, 1963)
And here is some of his inking work in collaboration with Ross Andru.
Mr. Universe #2 (MR Publications, 1951)
All-American Men of War #6 (DC, 1953)
Get Lost #1 (Mikeross Publications, 1954)
Wonder Woman #58 (DC, 1958)
Brave and the Bold #25 (DC, 1959)
Showcase #37 (DC, 1962)
On to Iron Man. In this issue, Iron Man fights Iron Man!
Really, the new Iron man fights the old Iron Man.
That is, somebody steals Tony Stark’s new armor. So Tony has to put on his old armor to fight him.
11. Spider-Man and The Man-Thing from Giant-Size Spider-Man #5 (1975)
by Gerry Conway, Ross Andru, and Mike Esposito
Second Spidey entry. I really could have filled my list with Spider-Man. And a decent chunk of it with this stellar series. But I decided one from this series would have to do. Apologies to the excellent earlier issues where Spider-Man meets Shang-Chi, Doc Savage and Punisher. All contenders.
What do we have here. A lot of focus on character work. Conway uses his page count to shine a spotlight on everybody. It’s during the Clone Saga, so Gwen has mysteriously returned, and everybody is dealing with that. Gwen, Peter, Betty, MJ… we get the first hint of a characterization they will later go all in on for Mary Jane, for better or for worse. We see her on the edge of tears, but then quickly correcting when her Aunt comes in, and putting on a smile and talking about wanting to party. Defalco will later reveal that that’s all she was ever doing, and it will ring untrue.
Conway was more subtle in his treatment of MJ. Maturing her and bringing her and Peter together, while preserving her character.
We also get Curt Connors again turned into the Lizard and see this struggle through the eyes of his wife better than we have before.
We even get solid character work on one random character, a bankrupt chemist on the verge of suicide, whose fate is changed by an encounter with Man-Thing, and who emerges as the hero in the battle against the Lizard.
Not sure if we get good character work on the Man-Thing. You’d have to look closely into his eyes to see what he thinks of these events. All we know is he hears the Lizard’s call with other swamp creatures, and that he seems to respond to intense emotion.
12. Transformers and Spider-Man “Prisoner of War” from Transformers #3 (Marvel, 1985)
by Jim Salicrup, Frank Springer, Kim DeMulder and Mike Esposito
I’ll start the countdown with a comic of purely personal significance. To the best of my fading memory, this is the first crossover comic I ever read. It is also the first Spider-Man comic I ever read. To learn how much I like Spider-Man, I recommend just looking at the rest of my coming Christmas list. Transformers was the first series I ever sat down to seriously collect as a new comic reader. By “seriously”, I think I tracked down issues #2-5 in back issues over the course of several months… I would get much better at collecting when I got older.
Side note: That I got #5 confused the heck out of young me given that it’s a 4-issue limited series. It confuses the heck out of old me, too.
Anyways, in this issue, after Peter Parker is sent on assignment to Photograph the Transformers, Spider-Man and the Autobot Gears team up to rescue a human from Megatron.
Speaking of confusing things, this comic came out during Secret Wars. So Spider-Man’s costume was not only different from the one I knew from episodes of the old ’60s cartoon I’d seen on VHS, but it seemed to be somewhat alive. I think I briefly thought this Spider-Man and the other one might be two different characters.
Was marketing the motivation for this crossover? Probably. Isn’t it usually?
But this comic formed a bridge of childhood hobbies. In my earlier years, I watched cartoons like Transformers. Entering the second decade of my life, I would get really into superhero comic books, with Spider-Man being easily my favorite.
This was also certainly my first encounter with Nick Fury and SHIELD. But since the comic only called him “Nicholas”, it would probably be a little later before I learned his name.
