Featuring: The Watcher
Release: July 9, 1964
Cover: October 1964
12 cents
A tale of most compelling merit by: Stan Lee
Illustrations of singular excellence by: George Tuska
Lettering of breath-taking adequacy by: Art Simek
5 pages
If you caught an early draft of my write-up for the previous issue, you saw me accidentally claim that was the final Watcher story. Either way, it ends with so little fanfare, that it’s hard to tell.
It’s hard to make a story about a character who never does anything. You’re tempted to have him do something in every issue, which is exactly what they did for this series.
The editor enthusiastically welcomes returning artist George Tuska. Tuska’s been working in comics since 1939, and worked for Marvel in the 1950s. Let’s see a sampling of his work.
The samples of Tuska’s work are from (in order, left to right, top to bottom):
- Mystery Men Comics #1 (1939)
- 64 Pages of New Captain Marvel Adventures #2 (1941)
- Crime Does Not Pay #22 (1942)
- Casey – Crime Photographer #1 (1949)
- Strange Tales #1 (1951)
- Adventures Into Terror #7 (1951)
If Lee was that excited to have Tuska back, you’d think he could have found a more interesting assignment than filling in on the final Watcher story.
Tuska will continue to do occasional fill-in work for Marvel over the next few years, before eventually settling into a longterm stint on Iron Man.
The rest of the series had been drawn by Stan’s brother, Larry Lieber. Sad he’s not the one to bring it to a close. He’s already started what will be a very long run on Rawhide Kid. We’re not generally reading the western titles, so this is the last we’ll see of Larry for a while. He will pop up again here and there for the occasional fill-in issue or special, so this isn’t good-bye forever.
Continue reading “Tales of Suspense #58, Story B”