Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Mighty World Of Marvel... Nuff Said!
Before music took over my teenage life, there were comics. Specifically Marvel Comics. I loved them...
The stories dreamt up by Stan 'The Man' Lee, Jack 'King' Kirby, Steve Ditko and others were fuel for my imagination. I travelled with the Fantastic Four into the heart of the Negative Zone, conjured arcane spells with Doctor Strange to battle the Dread Dormammu, rode the celestial currents with the Silver Surfer and sympathized with Spider-Man as he went into battle with Doctor Octopus whilst nursing a terrible cold...
The superheroes created by those creative powerhouses in the Marvel Bullpen have become part of modern mythology, something Lee and Kirby could never have dreamt of back in November 1961 when the first issue of Fantastic Four hit the newsstands.
About once a year I revisit those strange, magical tales that so captivated me as a child, and for a few hours I'm in the most comforting place imaginable.
Anyone else feel as fond as I do of the mighty world of Marvel?
- More from Patrick Crowther.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Some classic Marvel covers...
Fantastic Four
Doctor Strange
Silver Surfer
and last but not least your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man!
Oor Wullie ....
The Broons.
Sorry...
you've lost me.
Jings
Crivvens, help m'boab
What are you two on about?
boh...
Oh... it's a comic.
This thread is about Marvel in particular.
New Gods
only one I read, collected and enjoyed.
I binned them years ago, the shame...
That was the series created by Jack Kirby...
after his return from exile at DC, right? Very good it was too as I remember it.
not quite
All the New Gods (or Fourth World) stuff was created for DC and is now available in rather handsome hardback collections. It's good stuff.
His return to Marvel saw him write, draw and edit Captain America, Black Panther and the Eternals among others.
Oh yes... right you are.
I was getting New Gods mixed up with The Eternals. Sorry Jack...
Stop it
You'll make me cry. I had Daredevil #1 amongst my collection but I got bit by the music bug. Sold the lot (cheaply) and bought a reel-to-reel. *sniff*
This will make you feel better...
When I was 14 I sold around 1,500 comics to Forbidden Planet for £100. £100 in 1983 was more money than I'd ever seen in my life. The trouble is, included amongst those comics were Fantastic Four No.3, Spider-Man No.4 and many others of great value. I reckon if I'd kept them they'd be worth a few grand at least....
only the really early ones are worth owt
the rest you'd be lucky you get £100 for now
fraid, much as I love comics
never that big a fan of "tights and capes" much prefer toothy and similar, never got the bug for american comics, although i don't mind spidey and batman the rest never gripped like Dredd Nemisis, Johnny alpha and the rest.
Alan Moore knows the score as far as I'm concerned.
Where did my comics go?
My prized Marvel comics, that is. I was similarly obsessed with them between the ages of around nine and 12 and I distinctly remember that my half-a-crown pocket money (this is the mid-to-late 1960s) wasn't quite enough to buy the two or three titles (Captain America, Daredevil and Fantastic Four mainly) that I absolutely needed every week. I had to scrounge a few extra pence every time.
The grey matter sheds information at an alarming rate these days, but I simply do not remember ever building up a collection of these comics, which should have amounted to a towering pile after a year or so. Did I give them away to less affluent pals? Not likely, unless I suffered an unnoticed personality transplant a few years later.
Did my madly tidy mum throw them out on a regular basis. Highly likely, but I'm sure I would have protested.
I really can't remember. I'll have to ask my mum. She's 73 but seems to have more intact brain cells than me.
Uh...
I *have* kicked the habit, for about 10 years or so now, but here's some of the Marvel-related stuff I acquired...I think I'm a good 10-15 years after your era, though Patrick (and don't feel too bad about selling yours for a hundred - I got £600 or so for a collection that I once foolishly believed would pay a decent chunk of the mortgage off)
Wow... original X-Men artwork!
I would have died if someone had given me some original Jack Kirby artwork when I was a kid. Is it very expensive to get hold of this stuff?
And Nick, those early FF and Spider-Man comics weren't my era, but I bought reprints and old copies as a kid in the 1970s and early 1980s. Then more recently I started buying the Marvel Masterworks reprint series.
Expensive...?
...Nowadays, yes, I fear it is. Gone are the times when you could pick up pages directly from the artist or from a convention for a few quid. Ebay has changed everything. You could probably pick up a late period Kirby for something not too earth shattering, but for something from the FF period, you'd be looking at $2-3k plus, I'd imagine. There's one on ebay at the moment, actually (http://tinyurl.com/9hvfo8) - check out the pencilled note at the bottom - that'll be from Jack to Stan.
I quit when the double page spread from X-Men 137 went for around $40k! There are bargains still to be had if you go for less famous artists though.
I don't know if you've had a chance to see any original pages, but they are spectacular - most are A3 size (though the New Mutants cover above is 3' x 2; !) and they frame up beautifully.
Lovely Bolland piece
- do you still own that or is it one you sold on? That one turns up quite frequently in interviews with him, I believe.
It's hanging just above my head as I type...
...I believe it's Bolland's only cover for Marvel, and they lost it just prior to going to production! It never actually graced a newsstand, but after turning up again, it was included as a pin-up in the back of the book.
The most amazing thing about Bolland's work is that there are no mistakes, no Tippex, every line confident and in the right place. The yellowing on mine is from the glue where the original paste-on logos have come off.
Brian Bolland is one of the greats...
his work on 2000AD is legendary. Now where did I put my Bolland-drawn Judge Death poster?
Ah, thanks for the memories...
I loved Spider Man, Daredevil and The Fantastic Four. Does anyone remember the "What If" Marvel comic series, where they would present alternate realities? For example, they once did one where ther person standing next to Peter Parker got bitten by the radioactive spider, instead of him. They were fantastic!
Death of Captain America
following the recent death of Caps (Steve Rogers at any rate) Marvel did a What If... Iron Man died instead of Captain America. It ties into Civil War and a lot of the stuff happening in the current Marvel universe.
Comics
Films for people who can't do joined-up pictures.
(Being crassly provocative: it's what Sunday mornings were made for.)
Provocative but interesting...
because I always prefer the comic books to film adaptations. The genius of Jack Kirby and the other great Marvel artists wasn't so much what they drew as what they left out. There was space in their stories that would be filled in by excited kids like me.
And in general I would say that my love of art and photography had its root in my reading comic books. The artwork in those Marvel books was so astonishing to me as a child that I would religiously do my own versions (I even sent some to Stan Lee once and got a letter back from him saying how much he'd liked them). This led to my going to art galleries, wanting to be creative myself...
Of course
I can only enjoy them these days on a nostalgia-trip level, though, in the same way as Airfix kits or bubble-gum cards. As sources of entertainment for the 21st century, rather than part of the me of the 1960s, I'm afraid they don't do much for me. My loss, I'm perfectly prepared to admit.
Patrick,
there's no need to defend comics as a conduit to so called "higher" artforms they stand by themselves. As for film isn't film comics for people who need 24 pictures a second when one would do.
I wasn't suggesting they are a 'lower' art form...
I feel quite the opposite. I believe the classic Marvel stories from the 1960s and early 1970s to be art, full stop.
oh, Archie -
Comics - film scripts for directors that can't read paragraphs.
Excelsior!
I was a mainlining Marvel junkie at the age of 11 and still occasionally revisit that wonderful universe of Stan and Jack's. Have you noticed how modern Marvels have abandoned the idea of the avuncular, omniscient narrator, the guy who'd always pop up in captions to say "Let's leave the action there, bunkie, for meanwhile, over at Avengers mansion..." I think that's a shame. That personable, ironic voice helped to give the Marvel universe a really welcoming, comforting sense of coherence. I think it's a colder place without it.
FOOM!
I agree, it gave the Marvel comics a personality and a "voice" that set them apart from DC (and others,) and made Stan Lee the legend he is today (though there remains much controversy that he made his name at the expense of other creative geniuses by implying that everything with the Marvel name on it came out of his head...)
The Marvel "fan club" FOOM! (Friends Of Ol' Marvel) was just as knowing, and often produced spoof comics taking the mickey out of their characters, and the whole genre of superheroes for that matter... I remember one cartoon of a happy looking hero leaving a brothel, one girl whispering to another: "Well, there's another illusion shot to hell..."
The crucial difference between Marvel and DC...
was that Marvel's stories were set in real places. So as a kid I used to imagine that if I went to New York City I could see Spider-Man swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper. DC had Metropolis or Gotham City... no thanks, I'll stick with Stan the man.
memories....
This thread has got me thinking back wistfully to my Marvel collecting years in the early 80s. After a period of buying the weekly Marvel UK black and white reprints I had the desire to progress to the 'harder stuff' - comics actually from the USA (and in colour !). As there were no comic shops locally the only places that stocked them were a couple of newsagents in the town centre - they had a pile of newly imported issues (i.e. 3-4 months old) stacked on a corner shelf every few weeks. Unfortunately the selection seems to be completely random and limited to a single copy of any particular issue (latecomers beware) which made the task of compiling any sort of collection pretty futile (double-sized anniversary issues seemed to be particularly victims of this non-appearance scenario, which was annoying as they were usually the climax to important plots - nearly 30 years on I still don't know what happened in X-Men 137).
Then again they were only 10p, allowing me to take away huge fistfuls of the things despite my pocket-money sized budget. If I were young now (these ramblings prove I'm obviously not) the prices charged these days would probably scare me off to the nearest bittorrent site.
You have an option!
I've just found out you can read comics online via subscription!
http://www.marvel.com/digitalcomics/titles/Uncanny_X-Men.1963.137
Adopts curmudgeonly pose....
comics on a computer screen - it's not the same really , is it ?
It's a different matter if they reproduce all the adverts as well though....
http://www.seanbaby.com/hostess.htm
No, it most certainly isn't the same...
but it's an another option I suppose. I'd want the ads too... remember these?!
In less reputable corners of the internet...
..you can find complete collections of any title you might care to hazard, available to download.
I am a complete ignoramus when it comes to the Internet...
I have never downloaded a song and half the stuff people write about on the Word site I have absolutely no clue about!
I have to say, though, that the idea of getting stuff without paying for it really doesn't appeal to me. It devalues whatever it is that I might want to buy.
Power comics
I never really got into actual Marvel Comics but as I recall the Power Comics of the 1960s and early 70s had many of the same characters.
Certainly I remember reading The X Men, The Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Spiderman et al in Fantastic and Terrific.
Were these essentially the same as the American versions? They were certainly the same writers and artists so I assume they were.
Comics on cd
-agree they're not the same, but it's an affordable way of getting the set - I got 100s of Mad Magazine on cd rom, I know you can get Spierman, and - I think - there's an X-Men one too.
Don't ask me how I know - but a lot of the torrents have the ads included.
I love this photo of Stan Lee taken back in 1973...
He looks like Burt Reynolds in the film 'Boogie Nights'...
Sir, you were (and are) a dude of the highest order.
Met 'The Man' a few years ago
when he was promoting a Marvel Encyclopedia (can't lay my hands on it at the moment) and he signed it for me. 'To Matt - Excelsior! - Stan Lee' is probably my most treasured possession.
That is...
brilliant. I'm dead jealous!
If I ever met Stan Lee I would be completely at a loss for words... he gave me so much enjoyment as a kid I wouldn't know how to thank him.
Uncanny
!!!!!!!!!!!
That's genius! Des Lynam and Stan Lee... are the same person! DER-DER-DERRRR! (that's 'shock horror dénouement music', by the way)
Were Power comics
"Fantastic" and "Terrific", b&w british prints using all the Marvel characters/stories but not in colour? And all the weird little tales such as parallel universes inside a drop of water on another planet. I nearly gave up my Beano subscription in favour of those, but my Dad talked me out of it, perhaps as he preferred the Beano.
Check out some new books from the Bullpen
Planet Hulk (and Prelude To Planet Hulk)
Kurt Busiek's - Marvels
Civil War
The Ultimates
Are all written or the more mature reader, well post-teens, and touch on everytyhing from Reality TV, Government enforced unmasking and registration of of super heroes. Marvel Universe seen through a New Yorkers perspective
Marvel Essentials collections are great way to collect bumper amounts of vintage editions without walloping your pocket - yes, they're black and white reprints - but you'll not worry by a couple of mags in
Do wish someone would reprint the Kiss comics or Planet of The Apes series though...
Marvels
Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross's Marvels, surely. While the writing is top notch, Ross's art is exquisite. I'd be happy to read just about anything he'd painted, although with the recent 'Justice' series for DC I felt that the writing was not entirely deserving of the Ross brush. A friend of mine reckons he paints everyone as Cary Grant though...
Quite True
Have you checked the Alex Ross anthology - Mythology.
Genius,literally.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mythology-Comics-Art-Alex-Ross/dp/1840239417
Strange Comics
Inspired by Andrew Harrison's Home Service entry in last month's issue I went looking for his recommendations. Here for your enjoyment is the NSFW Amputee Love http://www.reddit.com/r/nsfw/comments/7lnnn/amputee_love_comic_1_feb_75_...
Comics?
Never saw the attraction of comics and graphic novels.
Aren't they just for people who can'tmanage a whole book or those that should get out more?
Errrrr...
no, they're not. Next...
Sam Jackson's
interview in the Word on the subject of his comic fandom (appearances in Unbreakable, Iron Man, the Spirit), explains how his mother used to make him read 'one of the classics' by Dickens or Stephenson etc for every eight or so comics. Seems a pretty good way to get your kid reading Tale of Two Cities or Kidnapped, I guess. The point is that the two co-exist. You wouldn't sit down at half-five every night and eat a three course meal, would you? It's like saying singles are just for people who can't listen to albums.
Maybe you should try reading one?
Or is reading words and looking at pictures at the same time too difficult?
That's a bit rich, anything
Anyone, everyone on this site, by definition, should get out more........
im still reading and buying comics
Im 37. I still love em and , yes I do get out enough. And yes I can read a novel as well. And yes, the wife thinks Im weird.
I've been reading Marvel
I've been reading Marvel comics for 40 years and drawing them for the last 10. Drawing Spider-man professionally is as big a kick as it was when I did it for fun as a kid.
To all the sarky nay-sayers, comics are as valid an art form as any other, capable as much complexity and depth as any film or novel. Yes, even some super-hero books too! Any book by Jaime Hernandez or Dan Clowes or Ed Brubaker can compete with anything out of Hollywood.(I might be a bit biased with that last one as Ed and I have been producing the award winning Criminal for Marvel for the last couple of years.)
Sean
www.seanphillips.co.uk
* Bows down *
We are not worthy.
Dead good Sean. Whatever happened to your artwork for Super Heppo and the Boy Ellen v super baddie Squirrel Man? Would pay good money to see THAT...!
Smashing stuff, right enough.
(Um, but he put a link to his own website here, rather than on his bio. How is that different from those what we have soundly chastised? Only seeking consistency. Or can we ignore it in those we enjoy the content. O the perfidy, the perfidy......)
Ooh sorry. Can I edit that
Ooh sorry. Can I edit that out?
No
I think it is called *relevant* to a topic not started by himself and links to a Marvel artist, who just so happens to be himself.
Besides, I'm waiting for my request.
Super Heppo - can hurl mighty trivia at an escaping blogger from 300 yards.
The Boy Ellen - has the power to know what the Grateful Dead are doing right now.
Squirrel Man - can change the mood on the Word blog with just one phrase...Mitford Sisters.
Marvel and DC Vaults
Well worth a wallop
http://www.amazon.co.uk/DC-Vault-Museum-Book-Collectibles/dp/0762432578/...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Marvel-Vault-Museum-book-Collectibles/dp/0762428...
Which one's Squirrel Man?
Which one's Squirrel Man? What's his secret identity?
Reminds me of a National Lampoon cartoon...
... we see a man trapped in a room, tied to a chair, his clothes have turned to rags, he has years of beard growth and is covered in cobwebs, when though the door crawls...
"Snail Man - thank heavens!"