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MARVEL
UK
SUPER SPIDER-MAN
WITH THE SUPER-HEROES
#190
SEPTEMBER 1976
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| Launched in September 1972,
Marvel Comics' UK imprint (commonly known and refered to
as Marvel UK) enjoyed immediate success, and a
steadily growing number of titles reprinted US material
following the standard 1970s UK comic book market format
of weekly publication and black and white printing.
Following up on the first (and flagship) title Mighty World of Marvel, the most successful and best loved
superhero from the House of Ideas, the Amazing
Spider-Man, was given his own weekly title in February 1973: Spider-Man
Comics Weekly. It would turn out to be one of the
longest running UK Marvel comic books (clocking up 666
issues over a 12 year publication run up until 1985) - a
fact somewhat obscured by no less than 10 title changes
along the way. The first of these occured in February
1976 when Spider-Man Comics Weekly became Super
Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes as of issue #158,
and essentially was the result of merging the successful Spider-Man
Comics Weekly with the somewhat less successful
weekly Super-Heroes, which had been launched in
March 1975. With the British economy sliding into deep
recession in 1976, both such mergers and the
resulting composite titles almost became a
trademark survival strategy for Marvel UK's weeklies as
they braved the harsh market conditions of the mid-1970s.
Almost
adding insult to injury, Marvel UK also had to fight for
readers in competition with the "real deal":
copies of US Marvel comics imported to the UK and sold as
"Marvel All-Colour Comics" (which
would eventually be known as "pence price
variants"). One way of pushing and promoting
black and white reprints over original colour material at
the newsagent was to be eye-catchingly flashy, and the
full colour covers of most Marvel UK weeklies did a
splendid job in that respect. Another way was, quite
simply, to be "different", and it is generally
assumed that this was the reasoning behind Marvel UK's
decision in late October 1975 to publish a new weekly
title (the by then seventh in total) called The Titans in a 8.5" x 11" (21,6 cm x 28
cm) landscape
format. Strikingly different in appearance, this highly
unusual format made it possible to reprint two original
pages side by side on one extra-wide page. While this
made the individual panels of a story appear rather
small, it gave readers an amazing amount of reprint
material per issue for their money - which made it all
the harder to decide whether this format was a cumbersome
nuisance or a fanboy blessing. The dilemma grew when Spider-Man
Comics Weekly became Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes in February 1976 and also switched to
the landscape format (which previously had remained an
exclusive for The Titans).
So let's
thumb through the 36 pages (or would that be 72 pages?)
of Super Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes #190,
which went on sale the week ending September 29th 1976.
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AMAZING
SPIDER-MAN
"The
Man's Name appears to be... Mysterio!"
Originally published in Amazing
Spider-Man #141 (February 1975)
Script - Gerry Conway
Pencils - Ross Andru
Inks - Frank Giacoia & David Hunt
Lettering - Artie Simek
Original
page count: 17
Reprinted pages: 17
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| Ever since the launch of
Marvel UK readers in Britain were used to having several
characters feature in one comic book title. As a
consequence, the individual storylines in one issue could
be as short as five or six pages, but given the weekly
publication schedule this didn't really make the stories
any harder to follow than e.g. with the monthly pause
between two US originals. It did, however, create a
distinct segmentation which wasn't always in true snyc
with the creative team's pacing for the original
material. The
landscape format of Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes -
which effectively doubled the page count the way it was
used by Marvel UK - made it far easier to reprint one
original US issue. Unlike the "original
landscape" Titans, where various characters
took turns in being the leading character thus treated,
it would always be Spidey who got a full issue reprint in
Super
Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes.
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But
having an entire US issue of Amazing
Spider-Man reprinted in one British Marvel
weekly was no novelty as the first 50+ issues of Spider-Man
Weekly had done just that. On the up side,
such a - hugely popular - concentration of Spidey
material made SMW (British marveldom
loved to refer to the individual weeklies by
using the acronyms of their - increasingly
lengthy - full titles) a winner for Marvel UK at
the newsagents. On the down side, it had the
British reprints eating their way through the
existing Silver Age and early Bronze Age
Spider-Man at an alarmingly high speed. Once past
the 50 issues mark Spider-Man Weekly
would start to split one original US issue and
run it over the course of two UK issues, but that
only served to slow down the problem a bit - in
essence, Marvel UK was still catching up with the
original material at a rate of two to one a
month.
Turning the cover,
the action immediately kicks in on the inner
cover page as Spidey finds himself in the
spotlight of a patrol car as he is cruising the
Manhattan streets in his Spidermobile.
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| A car chase is the
inevitable consequence (and the pop culture quote from
writer Gerry Conway that it makes Spider-Man feel "just
like Steve McQueen" is possibly just as
inevitable), and it all seems to go well until ol'
webhead makes a right turn down an alley down by the
waterfront where all of a sudden a strange purple fog
obscures his field of vision - until the Spidermobile
drives straight off the end of a pier and plunges into
the river together with its driver - who upon resurfacing
can't quite understand what happened and how what he
perceived to be an alley turned into a pier... |
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| As
Spider-Man is soon to figure and find out, there
can only be one person hiding in a strange mist
where strange things seem to be happening:
Mysterio. It has, however, been a while since
their last encounter (way back in Amazing
Spider-Man #67 in December 1968 - or, not
quite so long ago, in Spider-Man Weekly
#69 in June 1974), and this time things just seem
to go from bad to worse as Mysterio has been
joined by a whole gang of Spider-man's most
formidable foes: the Green Goblin, Doctor
Octopus, the Vulture, the Molten Man, Tarantula,
the Jackal, Hammerhead, the Grizzly, Morbius the
Living Vampire, and the Lizard. But things get even more
mysterious, as Peter Parker learns that Mysterio
died in prison a year ago... to be unravelled in
the next issue of Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes - which meant a mere week's
wait for UK readers.
A nice little yarn
featuring a villain who is so good at being bad
that really he should have been brought back a
lot sooner. The return of the
"Spider-Mobile", on the other hand,
definitely lacks that "good to have you
back" feeling. Thought up by Gerry Conway
for Amazing Spider-Man #127 (December
1973) after Stan Lee had been approached by Mego
Toys (who really really wanted a car to add to
their line of merchandising products...), it was
portrayed as the result of an engineering team
effort by Spidey and the Human Torch.
After 11 issues of
having it parked somewhere (it had a cloaking
device which made it look like any ordinary car
when not in use), Conway brought the Spidermobile
back out again, only to have it sink to the
bottom of the Hudson River after the first few
pages.
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Amazing Spider-Man #127 (December 1973)
Amazing Spider-Man #130 (March 1974)
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| It all came, with an escape
hatch, though, as Conway had Spidey thinking "They're
right, I should never have dragged this monstrosity out
of retirement. I'd chuck the whole thing and simply
forget it, if I hadn't made a deal with those clowns at
Corona Motors to build the stupid thing". |
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Paired
with the landscape format of Super
Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes and its
2-on-1 page reproduction, the uneven page count of Amazing
Spider-Man #141 resulted in a
"mixed" page - with the final page of
ASM #141 reprinted to the left and the splashpage
for the following feature to the right. While this wasn't problematic
per se, editorial at Marvel UK would
usually try to fill a landscape page of this type
with standard advertisements or, to a lesser
degree, for in-house announcements.
The reason for this
can clearly be seen here: nothing makes an
original US page reprinted this way look quite as
small as having a blown-up UK splashpage right
next to it, with word balloons twice the size but
only half as much text and large bold letters
spelling out the title of the next feature...
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| It was just
one of those things which, as mentioned before, made it
really hard to decide whether this format was a pain to
read or, given its massive page count of original
material reprinted in one issue, a fantastic deal to have. But then in this case it may just as
well have served to pull readers into the next feature of
Super
Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes #190, as the Mighty
Thor (evidently) faces Durok the Demolisher... |
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THE
MIGHTY THOR
"Durok
the Demolisher!"
Originally published in The
Mighty Thor #191 (August 1971)
Script - Stan Lee
Pencils - John Buscema
Inks - Joe Sinnott
Lettering - Sam Rosen
Total
page count: 19
Reprinted pages: 8 (+ UK Splashpage)
Original story title: "A Time of Evil!"
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| The need for additional
splash pages (i.e. large, often full-page illustrations
which open and introduce a story while at the same time
often containing the credits for the artistic team
involved) was a consequence of Marvel UK's concept of
having several features in one title along with a weekly
publication schedule. This meant that a story originally presented
in one US comic book was published over two or three (and
in some cases even more) weekly instalments. In addition to its
original function - to signal the beginning of a story
segment - the splash pages in Marvel UK's weeklies also
served the need to bring readers up to speed who had
missed the previous instalment(s), which ultimately also
helped accessibility for new readers. One approach was to
take a single panel from an original interior page and
blow it up to full page size, again adding title and
credit panels - such as the splash page taking readers
into the Mighty Thor feature running in Super
Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes #190. It is easy to
see how the original panel was blown up and reworked to
serve all of those purposes: adding a caption box at the
top containing a recap of previous events as well as a
(Marvel UK specific) title to the story, repositioning
the word balloons and partly changing their contents, and
finally adding a credit box at the bottom. Given that all
of this involved original artwork from the material
reprinted (in this case, that specific panel had been
reproduced in Super Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes
#189), splash pages like this one often felt
"right" (something which couln't always be said
of splash pages created in Marvel's NYC offices for
Marvel UK).
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In this
story from Mighty Thor #191, Loki - having taken the
Odin-Ring and claiming the throne of Asgard -
defeats both Thor and the Warriors Three and then
unleashes Durok the Demolisher, sending him forth
to ravage Earth - hence the (original) blurb for
the next issue: "Hell on Earth!" The Mighty Thor had joined
the ranks of Marvel UK in February 1973
in Spider-Man Comics Weekly #1 - as a
backup feature. And even though the Asgardian was
part of the original early 1960s "Marvel
Age" and certainly an important character
with regard to Marvel's publication history, Thor
never really made it to the front row of Marvel
UK's 1970s reprints. After a good three and a
half years of being a regular feature in the
pages of Spider-Man's title, he lost that slot
when that weekly became Super Spider-Man and
the Titans (merging the two landscape
titles) as of issue #199 on 1 December 1976.
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| So far, readers of Super Spider-Man
with the Super-Heroes #190 had been presented with
an entire US issue of Amazing Spider-Man and
half an original issue of Mighty Thor - and they hadn't even reached the
center pages of their comic yet. This illustrates what
great value for money the Marvel UK landscape titles were
- and also how quickly Marvel UK was burning through
original material to reprint, based on this formula. |
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However,
the de facto page count of 72 pages also
offered the opportunity to slot in more (mostly
in-house) advertising. Upon finishing the Thor
feature, readers were faced with a page promoting
two other Marvel UK weekly titles on sale at the
same time as Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes #190: Planet of the Apes #102 and Mighty World of
Marvel #209.
The
key element to Marvel UK's success in the 1970s
was its authenticity - its faithfulness in
reproducing both the visual and editorial house
style of Marvel, established by the Maestro
Supreme Stan Lee. As such, the in-house
advertising always served a double purpose at
Marvel. First and foremost it was, of course, a
way of telling the readers of one comic book
title that there were other weeklies available
which would not just be interesting too but which
were "more triumphs from Marvel".
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| And in that
sense - and just as importantly - the in-house ads also
helped and served to establish and strengthen the Marvel
house style. Another important part of this distinctly
unique and recognizable concept of communication were the
regular letter pages. Involving readers was a completely
alien concept to most if not all British comic book
publishers, and Marvel UK not only talked to and with its
readers through editorial pages, but actually asked for
and encouraged readers to participate and be a part of it
all - the famous "(secret) club atmosphere"
which Stan Lee kept pushing and which, of course, went
down well with British kids and teenagers who most likely
had also had their fair share of exposure to Enid
Blyton's adventure books, Secret Seven and Famous Five. In the case of Super
Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes letters from
readers wound up in Spidey's Super Mail, of
which there were two full pages in issue #190.
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| The letters
pages in all of Marvel UK's weeklies always came with
some snappy artwork, but the most interesting aspect from
today's perspective is seeing how individual readers
writing in were travelling at vastly different speeds
through the Marvel Universe. Some were in the know about
"no prizes" and how to get them, such as Paul
Upton from Merseyside (he clinched one here), while
others clearly were less
seasoned fans and blissfully unaware of the fact that
these were all reprint comics and that making any
suggestions as to future plots or changes in the creative
team line-up were, of course, completely futile. And then
there was the fairly regular stream of readers writing in
about the US imports to the UK, the "pence price
variants", and those asking for colour to
replace the black and white printing. Editorial answered them all politely
and in the house style of the club, and everybody seemed
happy and continued to write in - like John Porter from
Sutton. He raised a
good point in this issue of Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes when
he noted that "you have a problem in that
several of the stories in S[uper]S[pider-Man] are being
published almost consecutively with their USA
counterparts". Editorial didn't feel that way
(or didn't feel like admitting it), but the problem was
obvious to those who understood the American comic book
market: if you have eighteen to twenty original pages a
month and you reprint those on a weekly basis, you are
bound to catch up with the original material, and
reprinting entire issues (as in the first year of Spider-Man
Weekly and now in Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes) only meant that Marvel UK would catch
up with and then run out of original material fast.
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From this perspective,
publishing Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes in landscape format was not
only a bad idea from a commercial point of view
(it was effectively a comic book sold at half
price week after week, de facto offering
72 pages for 9p compared to the 36 pages of the
regular portrait format weeklies, also sold for
9p in late 1976), it also had a massive editorial
headache almost built into it. The landscape format did,
however, also offer opportunities the regular
weeklies didn't have, such as having an almost
Cinemascope-like centrespread every week.
In-house
advertisement often used an entire page as well,
such as the example here promoting the
"Super Spider-Man Roadshow" which
stopped by at various ABC cinemas throughout the
second half of 1976.
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INVINCIBLE
IRON MAN
"What Price Life?!"
Originally published in Invincible
Iron Man #19 (November 1969)
Script - Archie
Goodwin
Pencils - George Tuska
Inks - Johnny Craig
Lettering - Jean Izzo
Total
page count: 20
Reprinted pages: 6
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| Super
Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes had five separate
features in every issue in 1976, so it was clear that it
could not all be the entirety or a half of original US
issues - and in issue #190, it was Iron Man who got the
short end of the stick. |
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| The serialisation into weekly
instalments of, on average, six to eight pages
was standard procedure for most of Marvel UK's
reprint features in the 1970s. The landscape
format of The
Titans and Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes did allow for more material
to be included in one issue, but there would
always be storylines which would be cut into
smaller segments. But then these segments were
published on a weekly schedule, and British comic
book readers were used to this formula. The Iron Man story reprinted
in Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes #190 was the most vintage
material - and had indeed been available to UK
readers before, back in November 1969, the actual
cover date of Iron Man #19.
This
original US comic book had been part of a print
run destined for export to the UK which therefore
featured a British
currency price cover (in this
case still in pre-decimal currency, i.e. one
shilling [1/-]) while the inside pages remained
unaltered. Bulk shipping across the Atlantic
resulted in these export comic books catching up
with their cover date (which in the US was three
months ahead of the actual publication date,
giving comic books an extended shelf life).
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| For Marvel UK's editorial,
this was something of a bothersome instalment, as this
story had kicked off in US Iron Man #17 and then
moved back and forth between Iron Man #18, Avengers
#69, Iron Man #19 and, for its conclusion, Avengers
#70. No doubt a measure aimed at boosting sales of
Iron Man's title by getting regular Avengers
readers to pick up (and hopefully stay with) the title,
it certainly required some extra planning for reprint
schedules. |
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The
plot is all about Midas, a gluttonous villain who
like his namesake from Greek mythology, craves
riches, and along the way of trying to stop him,
Tony Stark / Iron Man face up with Madame Masque
and a Tony Stark "Life Model Decoy" (a
well-used and typical 1960s Marvel Comics plot
device) with a twist in the form of having
developed intelligence and now wanting to run
Stark Industries itself. In the course of it all
Archie Goodwin weaves in some dream sequences,
which by way of their nature allow for pretty
much everything, including lots of cameo
appearances featuring superheroes and villains
alike. |
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| It is the kind of story
that rarely disappoints its readers, not the least due to
the heavy dose of Marvel Universe it conveys. More of
this, however, would have to wait until the next issue of
Super
Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes. Pushing the pause button in these
cases (i.e. somewhere in the page count of an original US
issue) was usually fairly easy for Marvel UK editorial as
they would simply insert - or squeeze in, as illustrated
here - a text box at the bottom of the original panel
reading "CONTINUED NEXT ISH!". |
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THE
INVADERS
"A Valkyrie Rising!"
Originally published in Invaders
#1 (August 1975)
Script - Roy Thomas
Pencils - Frank Robbins
Inks - Vince Coletta
Lettering - John Costanza
Total
page count: 18 (3 Parts)
Reprinted pages: 9
Original title: "The Ring of the Nebulas!
(Part Two: A Valkyrie Rising!)"
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| The newest material to be
reprinted in Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes #190, this adventure from the first
issue of the Invaders' ongoing series was only slightly
more than one year old - and a first for readers in great
Britain. For although they would find pence price copies
of The Invaders #3-40 at their newsagent, the
first two issues as well as the final issue (#41) were
not distributed in the UK [1]. The material was representative of
Marvel's Bronze Age expansion, but the Invaders
actually had their roots in the Golden Age and creator
Roy Thomas' love for the characters of that era. Based on
the All-Winners Squad from Timely's All Winners Comics
#19 (Fall 1946) and #21 (Winter 1947), the line-up was
almost identical: Captain America, his sidekick Bucky,
the original android Human Torch, the Torch's sidekick
Toro, and Namor the Sub-Mariner.
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Thomas
first introduced them in Avengers #71
(December 1969), though they weren't called
Invaders and only consisted of Namor, the
original Human Torch and Captain America. The
team next appeared in its own try-out title (Giant-Size
Invaders #1) in 1975 followed by its ongoing
series The Invaders. Set in World War Two with the
heroes fighting the Axis powers, the series
introduced a number of British heroes to the
ranks of the Invaders (such as Union jack and
Spitfire) as well as several Nazi villains and
even supervillains.
Reprinting an odd
number of pages left one half of a landscape page
free, and following on the heels of the Invaders
instalment were the "merely magnificent
meanderings that mean almost everything"
- i.e. the bullpen bulletin page.
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| Essentially an expanded
checklist of all of Marvel UK's titles on sale the same
week as Super
Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes #190, it tied in
well with the Invaders as one bulletpoint item told
readers not to forget that "the biggest
bombshell in Marvel British history is gonna happen in
just two short weeks." |
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Readers
who possibly were in some doubt as to what
editorial might be refering to found their clue
on the next full landscape page. The House of
Ideas had come to the conclusion that the time
was right for some original content to feature in
Marvel UK's line, and turned out a character
whose name said it all: Captain Britain.
He was heralded as "all new", "all
different", "the world's
newest and greatest super hero" and,
perhaps most importantly with a view towards
Marvel's UK comic book market share, "all
British".
Captain
Britain #1 would hit the newsagent stands
two weeks after Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes #190, on 13 October 1976,
featuring an eight page colour origin story
written by Chris Claremont, drawn by Herb Trimpe,
inked by Fred Kida, and - yes indeed - coloured
by Marie Severin.
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SPIDER-MAN
"From the Negative Zone: Annihilus!"
Originally published in Marvel
Team-Up #2 (May 1972)
Script - Gerry Conway
Pencils - Ross Andru
Inks - Jim Mooney
Lettering - Sam Rosen
Total
page count: 21
Reprinted pages: 10 (plus 1 UK landscape splash
page)
Original title: "And Spidey Makes
Four!"
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| Publishing Super
Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes as a landscape
format weekly which reprinted an entire issue of Amazing
Spider-Man pushed the accelerator down in a
substantial way with regard to Marvel UK catching up with
the original US material. By the time SSMSH #190
hit the newsagent displays, the inventory of original
material from Amazing Spider-Man had shrunk to a
mere 18 months' worth of US issues; given the publication
schedule at the time, that stock would last a mere four
and a half months in Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes. But as the popularity of Spider-Man
practically demanded a substantial presence every week,
editorial even introduced a second Spidey feature. Marvel UK thus turned
to Marvel Team-Up, which had kicked off in the
US in March 1972 for similar reasons that it was now
being reprinted in Super Spider-Man with the
Super-Heroes: A second title would allow Marvel to
cash in on the popularity and selling strength of
Spider-Man.
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As the
title implies, Marvel Team-Up brought
together two or more Marvel characters for one
story - and the
lead billing was given to Spider-Man for 140 of
its 150 issues. Initially a fixed team-up with
the Human Torch (as featured here), this was
changed into a revolving door formula which
increasingly also featured less known Marvel
characters. As
most issues were self-contained, supporting casts
were scarce and the plots had to come straight to
the point in much the same way every issue:
Spider-Man or another Marvel character encounters
one or more super-villains (no less than four of
them in this story: Sandman, Wizard, Trapster
plus Annihilus from the Negative Zone), the paths
of the two heroes cross, they help each other
out, things don't go too well at first but in the
end, after a lengthy fight ensues between all antagonists,
good ultimately prevails.
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| Nevertheless, the 1970s
issues of Marvel Team-Up had their own charm,
due in large parts to the seasoned writers, pencillers
and inkers who worked on the stories. And now Super Spider-Man
with the Super-Heroes was providing UK readers with
their first chance to actually
get a taste of the very early Marvel Team-Up
yarns - although the title as such could be seen at the
time at newsagents who carried Marvel US comics exported
to and priced for the British market. |
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| However, the first 23 issues of Marvel
Team-Up had not been exported to the UK at
the time of publication so British pence
price issues only became available
as of Marvel Team-Up #24 in August 1974. As of then, the title was
widely distributed in the UK, missing only issues
#38, #81 and #102-111 [2]. The stories from Marvel
Team-Up would typically be reprinted as half
an original issue per weekly copy of Super
Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes. This
required a custom-made splash page for every
other issue, and in some cases the Marvel offices
in NYC gave their best for those. Case in point
is the splash page used here - a beautiful
landscape format image pencilled by Larry Lieber
and adorned with all the necessary classic splash
page regalia.
Due to its landscape
format, Super Spider-Man with The
Super-Heroes
was always going to be both an oddity and a
treasure chest for readers.
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| It was a comic book which
at times felt slightly awkward but ultimately gave
readers an incredible amount of stories and number of
characters a week for 9 pence in 1976 - virtually double
in comparison to what the regular format reprint titles
would offer at the same price. Positive and negative
opinions regarding the landscape orientation seemed to be
fairly evenly split if the letters pages are an indicator
to go by. |
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The
almost counterintuitive overall feel of this
oddball format (which didn't work that well on
newsagent racks either) is illustrated by the
back cover of Super Spider-Man with The
Super-Heroes #190 - in order to be able to
actually read the in-house ad on posters
featuring Marvel heroes and learn the details of
how to get them, readers had to turn their comic
book 90 degrees, i.e. to what would have been
considered "standard format"
orientation. But
then the the landscape format Marvel UK weeklies
were not to last much longer, anyway. The
Titans and Super Spider-Man with The
Super-Heroes merged in October 1976, to
become Super Spider-Man and The
Titans. When this in turn became Super
Spider-Man & Captain Britain in July 1977
(following the cancellation of Captain Britain's
own weekly), the title reverted from landscape
back to standard.
Unusual as it was,
the landscape format of the Titans and Super
Spider-Man with The Super-Heroes was a real game changer for
as long as it lasted, providing readers with a
massive dose of Marveldom every week. As for the
size of the panels on a 2-on-1 landscape page, it
should be noted that the regular Marvel UK
weeklies actually blew up the original material
quite a bit to fit their standard "British
Magazine size".
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| The paper used for the
British weekly was generally a superior type of newsprint
in comparison to the quality grade used for US comics at
the time. As a result, the Marvel UK weeklies usually
kept better, but as the scans used here illustrate they
ultimately were just as prone to the common paper degradation processes (most importantly yellowing) if
stored in a warm place and exposed to light. To make
things worse, paper used in the 1970s had a high level of
acidity (as can also be seen from many paperback books
from that same period). And finally, Super Spider-Man
with The Super-Heroes also illustrates that Marvel UK wasn't all reprint. Leaving
aside Captain Britain, a huge number of splashpages and
covers were produced in Marvel's New York offices for the
British weeklies.
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"Larrupin'
Larry Lieber (...) has also come aboard to
handle the issues which we produce for an
ever-growing army of Marvel fanatics in Great
Britain. Wouldja believe they're on sale weekly
over there; so we're bettin' that Larry'll be
kinda busy." (Stan's
Soapbox, September 1977 Bullpen
Bulletins, Marvel [US] Comics)
Stan Lee's brother
had, in fact, already been quite busy for Marvel
UK even before taking on the job as editor of
Marvel's British department, pencilling covers
and other material (such as the cover of Super
Spider-Man with The Super-Heroes #189, inked
by Frank
Giacoia).
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| The cover of Super Spider-Man
with The Super-Heroes #190 essentially uses the
cover of Amazing
Spider-Man #141, but due to the landscape format the
group of villains facing Spidey had to be stretched out
horizontally, resulting in some reworking (e.g. the
altered leg position of the Jackal or the hands and
tentacles of Doc Ock) and changes to the word balloons.
In comparison, a German reprint of ASM #141 was able to
simply reuse the original cover as such. |
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| NOTES [1] According to the Comic Book Price Guide for Great
Britain
[2] According to the Comic Book Price Guide for Great
Britain
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Uploaded
to the web 6 May 2015
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