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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 6:44am | IP Logged | 1 post reply
What to do with the power out?

Well, this morning I decided to plunge into the Past by grabbing at random one of my hardbound FF volumes. As it turned out, the one containing issues 10 thru 21, plus the first Annual.

What a treasure trove! First Impossible Man appearance, first dust-up with the Hulk, first Red Ghost, first Mad Thinker, the Super-Skrull, Rama-Tut, the Molecule Man, and finally the Hate-Monger (featuring the first “present day” appearance of Nick Fury, minus his eye patch.)

The art, in general, is incredibly rough. Kirby was doing what today would be called breakdowns, and depending on the inkers to refine the images. Big a fan as I am of Dick Ayers, some pages look like he was using a brush more suited to house painting! And what a lurch when “George Bell” takes over the interiors with 21.

Speaking of George (actually Roussos), it was he whose hard, angular inks gave us our first glimpse of the “rocky” Thing.

Stan’s scripts are rough around the edges, too. “Purple” hardly begins to cover it!

Still, I was 13, and mesmerized.

(A point of special interest is a house ad for the first issue of X-MEN, running the month after it came out!)

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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 7:00am | IP Logged | 2 post reply
Oh, and in 16 Alicia says in so many words that she loves the Thing and doesn’t want him to change!
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Michael Penn
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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 8:01am | IP Logged | 3 post reply
Rough art, rough writing, but lightning bolts of creation
just exploding out of them!
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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 8:14am | IP Logged | 4 post reply
So true! And what’s amazing is how Kirby blasted the action off the page while restricting himself to six panel grids!
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Michael Penn
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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 8:29am | IP Logged | 5 post reply
Jack Kirby's work in those early Marvel years absolutely
takes my breath away. The definition of dynamic!
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Eric Ladd
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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 9:08am | IP Logged | 6 post reply
Makes you wonder about the refining process in creative endeavours. Specifically, when does refining cease to make something better? I think we can all agree there is room for improvement, but at what point does that diminish the raw energy of the art or the big ideas of the writing and scripting?
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply
Re: The ad for X-Men #1... Fantatsic Four and Amazing Spider-Man were the first titles to bear a given month on the covers... and the X-Men I think were in the last week to do so, so the November 1963 dated FF and Spidey would have been out only a week (or maybe two) after X-Men #1 was released. I partly figured this stuff out back when I had enough '60s Marvels to see which title was first to get the Pop Art Productions label and which the last, as well as first and last to drop it. You can do the same real easily now though with the Mike's Amazing Newsstand filter.

December 1965 cover dates: Spider-Man #31 and FF #45 have the last 'Pop Art's, X-Men #15 of the same month is the first issue to not carry it. Take that Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein!

Oh... I was a flipping Trainspotter wasn't I? :^|
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply
The last issue of Kirby & Ayers' Love Romances comic, July 1963 dated, came out around the same time they were doing FF... I guess that freed up the time for Avengers and X-Men to be launched with a date two months further on! Did anyone miss this title?


Kirby worked on a bi-monthly Sgt. Fury also launched around this time, it became a monthly with Ayers solo starting it's second year.

Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 06 August 2020 at 4:07pm
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Ted Pugliese
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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply
Wow! What it must have been like to be a comics fan
then!

However, in retrospect, it probably didn't feel much
different than it did to some of us "younger" (people
have died for less) readers. In fact, I probably felt
the same way reading your Alpha Flight at the very same
age.
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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply
Probably not. I’m not sure if you’re saying AF was your introduction to Marvel, as the FF was for me, but the experience of Marvel in the early 80s was very different from the early 60s. Remember, Marvel back in my early reading days was barely a niche alongside the monolith that was DC—not to mention Archie Comics, Harvey Comics, Dell Comics and a swarm of others. I discovered FF5 accidentally, in a wall of comics.*

I’d been there for much of DC’s “silver age” rebirth—Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Atom and lesser luminaries like Cave Carson and the Sea Devils—but Marvel just kept punching us in the face!

Good times!

—————

* Key to the Executive Washroom to the first to correctly name where that was!

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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply
"name where that was!"

The Edmonton Airport?
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Paul Gibney
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Posted: 06 August 2020 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply
Eaton's department store?
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