Television Comics!

These covers fascinate me because apparently it was sufficient to simply show kids watching television to generate interest in a comic, or at least that seems to be the thinking on the first trio of covers for this run. The kids are just static observers of the grand screen, a television screen far far bigger than any of its time.


By the fourth installment they had to add the notion of three-dimensional interplay to liven it up a bit. And "Willy Nilly" has become a puppet, a reverse Pinnochio scenario if you will.

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The Well-Read Stooge!

I love pictures of folks reading comics. It's a neat peek into the past when comics were an everyday part of the mainstream culture and not just a sometimes-profitable-for-the-next-big-movie offshoot of pop-culture.

Above the last incarnation of the Three Stooges (Joe DeRita, Moe Howard, and Emil Sitka) from 1971 read some Dell and Gold Key comics from the early 60's. Below are the comics they are reading. Apparently Sitka, taking the place of Larry Fine, was part of the Stooges only for this publicity shoot.




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Comic Book Cover Collage!

How many artists does it take to make a comic book cover? Well the answer can be surprising. The cover for the British comic above is better called a collage of various images lifted from a variety of Marvel sources by several different artists from many different years.



The primary struggle between Hulk and Thor is from a splash page by Sal Buscema and Frank Bolle in The Defenders #10. This is issue is part of the great Avengers-Defenders Clash.


The Sub-Mariner figure in the background is lifted from the cover by Neal Adams for Marvel Feature #1 which debuted The Defenders.



And if I don't miss my guess, the Wasp figure is a flopped and recolored image by Jack Kirby and Chic Stone for The Avengers #12. That one I'm less certain of to be honest. (NOTE: I was wrong. See the UPDATE below for the correct information.)

The Iron Man figure in the background looks familiar too, but I haven't located the source on that one. Anyone know? (See UPDATE below.)

One thing is for sure, some Marvel staffer who put this The Mighty World of Marvel cover together was adept with the scissors, and had a keen eye for good artwork.



UPDATE: As it turns out, someone does know where that Iron Man pose came from. BrittReid informed me that the Iron Man figure comes from Captain America #100 by Jack Kirby and Syd Shores, and as it turns out so does the Wasp figure, which I mistakenly thought came from The Avengers #10. This begs the question of why the Subby figure on this cover was not yanked too, since the pose to the Adams cover is so similar. Thanks Britt.

SECOND UPDATE: Ironically after I made this post yesterday, I found this at The Groovy Agent where Rich Buckler talks about this hectic time when covers like the one above were produced.

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Dell's Other Frankenstein!

In this post I showcased the 1964 attempt by Dell Comics to represent the classic Frankenstein story. Two years later when the second issue of this series finally dropped, their interests were far from the original source material. Writer Don Segall and artist supreme Tony Tallarico gave Dell a superhero.


At this same moment in time Dell was trying to make superheroes out of Dracula...


and Werewolf. Dracula is weird and fun, and Werewolf tries to be a thriller, but it's Frankenstein that to my mind makes the lasting impression. Here's the wacked-out story from issue number two, the debut of Dell's green-faced "superhero" Frankenstein.





































There were two more issues of Dell's Frankenstein before this random revision of Mary Shelley's creation was once again allowed to rest in peace.



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