Fearsome Changes!

During the Bronze Age, Marvel was more than eager to reprint much if not all of its bizarre material from its pre-superhero days. So comics like Where Monsters Dwell and Where Creatures Roam became common exhibits on the local spinner rack. My favorite of these was the giant-sized Fear. The potent punch of that title worked for me. Fear was straightforward, though admittedly you felt relatively little "fear" when actually reading these fun-loving monster tales of yore.

What is fun still is to compare the covers. Take a close gander at the cover of Fear #1 above and compare it to its source, the cover of Tales to Astonish #11 by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. You'll see a lot of changes made by Marvel's correction and color guru Marie Severin. She's taken the already antic image by Kirby and added several more little men menaced by the power of the oozing "Monstrom". Why they felt this need to spruce up the cover is anyone's guess, but it does add a small measure of added chaos to an already hectic scene.

Fear would endure as a totally awesome twenty-five center for six issues before reverting to regular size and then with its eleventh issue changed its cover name to "Adventures In Fear". That issue also saw the debut of a regular feature dubbed "Man-Thing" and the book took off, lasting for several years becoming the home for Morbius the Living Vampire for much of that time.

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