SYNOPSIS
!
SPOILER ALERT !
IRON MAN
Continued from Tales of Suspense
#87, where the Mole Man used a
device to cause the ground beneath the
Stark Industries factory to cave in and
the building to sink into the ground,
thus enabling him to capture an atomic
powered "earth borer"...
Iron Man, who was in one of the now
collapsed buildings, now discovers that
Pepper Potts was also in the factory, and
they both soon find themselves attacked
by the Mole Man's Moloids.
As comic book villains are apt to do,
the Mole Man explains his intentions at
great length, giving Iron Man enough time
and wiggle room to fight off the Moloids.
However, the Mole Man then unleashes a
fire breathing dragon and, while Iron Man
fights off this beast, kidnaps Pepper and
takes her back to the boring device.
When Iron Man (having defeated the
creature) catches up with them again, the
Mole Man orders him to show him how the
boring device works in exchange for
Peppers life. Iron Man uses a ruse and
actually instructs the Mole Man how to
cause the device to overload and explode,
escaping with Pepper just before all is
blown up, seemingly killing the Mole Man
in the process.
SYNOPSIS
!
SPOILER ALERT !
CAPTAIN AMERICA
At Avengers Mansion, Captain America
receives a distress call from somebody
who appears to be Bucky, telling him that
he's been a prisoner for all these years
on a remote island. Cap races off to the
rescue of his trusted WWII sidekick, not
knowing that he is being lured straight
into a trap, with the Swordsman and Power
Man having been recruited to face off
against Captain America upon his
arrival...
When Captain America arrives on the
remote island he quickly realizes that in
order to save Bucky's life he first has
to battle it out with both costumed
villains. He defeats both of them easily
but then finds himself trapped in what
seems to be an indestructible transparent
bubble.
As Cap is struggling but essentially
helpless, the villain who employed the
Swordsman and Powerman reveals himself.
The story continues on from this
cliffhanger in the next issue, where
readers will learn that it is the Red
Skull who has trapped Captain America...
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REVIEW & ANALYSIS
In 1966, Tales of Suspense
was one of Marvel's so-called two-feature
titles - a
comic book essentially shared by two different starring
characters in their own stories.
They were a staple
of Marvel Comics for several years throughout the 1960s, but the format wasn't the result of a voluntary
decision.
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The need to split one
comic book between two main characters
actually had its roots back in 1957, when
Martin Goodman's new choice of
distributing company for his comics,
American News Company, went out of
business unexpectedly. The fallout for Goodman and his Atlas Comics
was that they found themselves with no other choice
than to switch to Independent News as distributor. The snag:
unlike what the name suggested,
Independent was in fact owned by National
Periodical - who also happened to own
Goodman's rivals DC Comics. The
well-known outcome of this was that Atlas
and then Marvel Comics was limited by
contract to a monthly publishing output
of eight titles only (Cooke, 1998). As a result, Stan Lee
juggled with a mix of bi-monthlies,
cancelling Romance and Western titles, and turning Horror
books into Superhero titles - all in order to get the
distribution slots freed up for what was
selling: Marvel Comics' brand new and
different approach to the genre featuring
"superheroes in the real
world".
Once the old
Atlas horror and mystery titles had been
given over to Marvel's new superheroes
(albeit retaining their original titles),
yet another way of approaching the
limited distribution problem was the
two-feature title.
This formula
had already been successfully tested
since Strange Tales #110 (July
1963) when Doctor Strange joined the
Human Torch (who would later be replaced
with Nick Fury as of issue #135, August
1965). In late 1964 Tales to Astonish
became a split book too, with issue #60
(October 1964) featuring the Hulk and the
previous solo star character Giant-Man
(replaced by Namor the Sub-Mariner as of
issue #70) in separate stories. Iron Man
followed suit and began to share his Tales
of Suspense a month later with
Captain America (issue #59, November
1964).
Marvel
Comics finally broke free from the
distribution constraints in 1967 when
Independent was purchased by
Kinney National Company and they got a
new deal. The result was an explosion of
new titles as established characters
finally could be given their own comic
book - Tales of
Suspense, Tales to Astonish and
Strange Tales alone split to become
six titles instead of three.
By the time Tales
of Suspense #88 hit the
newsagent stands the Iron Man and Captain
America double-bill was well established,
and the two superheroes took turns for
cover appearances (after the two-feature
titles dropped the initial
"split-cover formula" as seen
above with Tales
of Suspense #66.
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| This would last until Tales
of Suspense #99 (March 1968), as the two
heroes got their own titles after that - Iron Man went on
to feature in Iron Man & Sub-Mariner #1 and
then a month later in Iron Man #1, whereas Cap
took the numbering with him and started out in Captain
America #100. Iron Man would always come first (Tales of Suspense
was, after all, "his" original title), and in
this issue his story starts out with a classic Gene
Colan splashpage, highlighting the underlying
vulnerability of Marvel's superheroes. The unfolding
events (still plotted by Stan Lee himself at the time)
feature more of Colan's breathtakingly dynamic and
cinematographic artwork, which worked well with Frank
Giacoia's inks. Two masters at work.
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| The following Captain America story, again scripted
by Stan Lee, was pencilled by another industry great: Gil
Kane. Born Eli Katz in 1926 in Riga, Latvia, he emigrated
to the US with his family in 1929 and grew up in
Brooklyn, where he developed an early interest in comic
books and landed his first job with MLJ (later Archie)
Comics in 1942. At the age of only 16, he left school in
order to be able to continue what had started out as a
summer job (Groth, 1996). He used the name "Gil
Kane" to sign his first inking work in MLJ's Zip
Comics #14 (May 1941) and subsequently stuck with it. |
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Gil Kane
(1926 - 2000)
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His first work
for what would later become
Marvel Comics featured in Young
Allies #11 (March 1944),
followed by uncredited ghost
artist work for Jack Kirby in
DC's Adventure Comics #91
(May 1944). Following highly
influential work for DC in the
Silver Age superhero revival
(e.g. Green Lantern), Kane also
worked on a number of Marvel
titles in the 1960s. He would
eventually not only become the
regular penciller for The
Amazing Spider-Man in the
early 1970s, but also Marvel's
preeminent cover artist
throughout that decade.
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| Gil Kane is especially remembered for his gripping
rendering of the story arc depicting the deaths of both
Gwen Stacy and the Green Goblin (Amazing Spider-Man
#121–122, June–July 1973). At that time,
sacrificing two high profile characters without a back
door to bring them back to life was highly unusual
(comparable really to Hitchcock shocking moviegoers in
1960 with the violent death of his female leading actress
Janet Leigh after only 47 minutes into Psycho),
and Kane's pencils suited the dramatic events well. His
artwork can truly be labelled classic mid-1960s to late
1970s and embodies what most comic book fans of that era
would describe as the kind of artwork that typifies what
they liked about comic book art: a dynamic approch to the
action of the story and a clear focus on the characters
involved (which could sometimes result in simple or no
backgrounds at all, as illustrated by the panels from Tales of Suspense #88
shown here). |
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House
of Mystery #180 (June 1969)
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Gerry Conway (who
scripted the famous Amazing
Spider-Man #121–122 issues)
described Kane as "a marvelous
draftsman and an idiosyncratic
storyteller" while also noting
that unless given a tighter plot (which
Kane himself preferred) his work "could
sometimes result in lopsided
storytelling; the first two-thirds of a
story would be leisurely paced, and the
last third would be hellbent-for-leather
as Gil tried to make up for loose
storytelling". (Conway in
Buchanan, 2009). It just goes to show
that comic books are always a team
effort. With writer Roy Thomas, Kane
helped revise Marvel's Captain, revamped
a preexisting character as Adam Warlock,
and co-created martial arts superhero
Iron Fist as well as Morbius the Living
Vampire.
Gil Kane is also remembered for one of
the most extraordinary cameos in comic
book history, being made the lead
character in writer Mike Friedrich's
story "His Name Is... Kane" in
DC's' House of Mystery #180 (June
1969). In this six-and-a-half-page tale,
pencilled by Kane himself, frustrated
comic-book artist Gil Kane kills his House
of Mystery editor, Joe Orlando - but
Orlando, himself an artist, then goes on
to enact revenge by drawing Kane into
artwork that is then framed and mounted
in the house, thus trapping him there.
Kane remained active as an artist,
also illustrating paperback novel and
record album covers, until his death in
January 2000.
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LIFE'S
A SWINGIN' SYMPHONY - 'NUFF SAID!
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| An absolutely integral part of being a Marvel Comics
reader and fan in the 1960s and 1970s were the letters
pages (aptly titled "Mails of Suspense" in this
case) and the monthly Bullpen
Bulletin. |
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These were the gathering
points for all "true
believers", where opinions amongst
readers as well as informations from the
House of Ideas as well as directly by
Stan the Man himself were handed out, and
they made you feel that you were a part
of something special - and sometimes fans
would check out these pages even before
reading the actual story material in the
comic book they were holding.
"As a
mad Marvelite, you're more than just
a reader - you're a friend! So drop
me a line soon as you can, I'll be
waiting, hear?" (Lee, 1972)
It was, of course, all by design, and
one of the major elements which so
successfully set Marvel apart from DC.
"What I
always tried to do with Marvel was to
make it seem like a club, like an
inner group that we knew about and
the outside world wasn't even aware
of. If you read Marvel you were on
the inside, you were hip, and it was
sort of an exclusive thing, limited
just to Marvel readers. And I tried
to talk to the readers as if they
were friends, not readers, so that
not only - hopefully - did they enjoy
the stories, but they enjoyed being
part of the Marvel mystique if you
might say, and I'm probably making it
sound much more profound than it
really was, but that's the way I
looked at it.
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I wanted
people to be aware of Marvel, and I
wanted people to know about the
mysticism and the magic and
marvelness of Marvel, and they say
that if you build a better mousetrap
the world will beat a path to your
door, but the world will only do that
if it knows the mousetrap exists, and
I didn't want us to be doing these
books in a vacuum, because you know
comic books had no advertising
budget, no promotion. There were no
ads on television, on the radio, in
newspapers - you just printed your
comic book and it was out there, and
I was sort of like Joan of Arc, I was
on a crusade, a mission, to let the
world know about the marvelous world
of Marvel. So in that sense, I guess
I was a little bit of a
huckster." (NN, 2003)
The
"mysticism
and magic and marvelness" of Marvel
was of course echoed (as always somewhat
tongue-in-cheek) by the famous
alliterations Stan came up with as titles
for the monthly Bullpen Bulletins.
These initially started out as part of
the two-page letters section of Fantastic
Four, which often concluded with a
"Special Announcements Section"
where Stan Lee responded to more general
letters and promoted other Marvel titles.
A vital element - "The Mighty Marvel
Checklist" - appeared for the first
time in this Special Announcements
Section in Fantastic Four #33
(December 1964). A separate "Merry
Marvel Bullpen Page" appeared in
comics cover-dated July and August 1965
(with the checklist and special
announcements still on the letters
pages), and the first stand-alone
"Marvel Bullpen Bulletins"
page, complete with checklist and special
announcements, finally made its debut in
the issues cover-dated December 1965.
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The Bullpen Bulletin was thus still a fairly new
concept to readers of Tales
of Suspense #88, and "Stan's
Soapbox" - another pivotal element of Marvel's
editorial page - was still more than a year out, first
appearing in the June 1967 issues. In the April 1966
Bullpen Bulletin, Stan touched on Marvel's TV shows going
international, Gene Colan's mishaps with his new
motorcycle as well as medical problems suffered by Larry
Lieber and Bill Everett (after all you want to know
what's going on with your friends), complete with a
little sting directed at Brand Echh (i.e. DC Comics)
suggesting they were into voodoo to hamper Marvel's
bullpen of creators, and more personal news concerning
the hiring of John Verpoorten, Roy Thomas forsaking
University for Marvel Comics, and Jack Kirby being fellow
artists' choice for best artist (or, as Lee would put it
in his self-caricaturing way, "pencil pusher").
Stan Lee wrapped it all up with one of his typically
upbeat and avuncular messages to readers:
"We're plumb outta room, so hang loose
and face front! Life's a swingin' symphony, and we
don't wantcha to miss a note of it! 'Nuff said!"
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FACTS & TRIVIA
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| Tales Of Suspense #88 went on sale in the
US on 1 October 1966 and was also made available roughly three months later to the UK market with
a pence price variant cover. |
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The Captain America story
was reprinted in Marvel Double
Feature #12 (October 1975), a Marvel
reprint title focussed on Tales
Of Suspense, together with the Gil
Kane cover. Typical for Marvel's
mid-1970s reprint titels, the Cap story
lost 2 pages and the cover received some
alterations to the colouring (actually
making it more consistent with the
colouring of Power Man's suit in the
actual story). Somewhat confusingly,
however, the Iron Man story had already
been reprinted (again leaving out two
pages) in Marvel
Double Feature #5 (August 1974); the
Iron Man story featured in Marvel
Double Feature #12 was taken from Tales
of Suspense #95 (November 1967).
While the cover has been
reprinted multiple times in Marvel's
various collected editions (Essentials,
Masterworks, Omnibus editions), it was
also used by international publishers.
Italian Editore Corno did
so no less than twice, for their Capitan
America #11 (1973) and Capitan
America Gigante #5 (1980). Mexican
publishers La Prensa adorned their Capitán
América #3 (1968) with Kane's
wonderful cover, as did Panini España
for their Marvel Gold: Capitán
América #1 (2011).
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| Although many readers at the time probably had little
to no interest in the small print Statement of
Ownership, Management, and Circulation which appeared
once every 12 months in the pages of their comic books,
they provide us with some interesting statistics
regarding print runs, actual sales, and subscription
numbers. Tales Of Suspense #88 contains such a Statement.
These had been required of publishers who shipped their
printed matters Second Class since the 19th
Century, but as of 1960 they were also required to list
their average paid circulation for the past twelve
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Printed sideways (so that if you
wanted to read it you had to turn your comic book
around 90 degrees) and in the smallest possible
of fonts, the Statement contained in Tales Of
Suspense #88
tells us that the title had an average print run
of 405,137 copies during the preceding 12 months
(although the issue nearest to the filing date
had a print run of 501,306 copies). Of this
average print run of 405,137 copies during the
preceding 12 months, 251,239 copies had been sold
through dealers, carriers, street vendors and
counter sales; 1,000 copies had been sold through
subscriptions. This averaged a total paid
circulation of 252,299 copies (up to 279,060
copies for the issue nearest to the filing date)
- which left an average of 152,838 copies counted
as "left over, unaccounted, spoiled
after printing". That's a whopping 38%
of the entire print run not generating revenue,
but actually still a lot better in comparison to
later years when this figure could even go up and
above 50%. The traditional distribution channels
for comic books were increasingly fraught with
problems and would ultimately prove to become
untenable, leading into the so-called direct
market.
My personal copy of Tales Of Suspense #88 also illustrates
another aspect of comic books at the time: the
care taken to produce this cheap product at the
printers could sometimes be lacking, and in this
case the stapling is way off the centre line of
the folded pagesheet. Such copies would later on
not grade highly and would become popular items
to have an artist involved sign at conventions (witness
Gil Kane's signature on this specific copy) in
order to raise its value.
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| No 1960's (and 1970s) Marvel comic book was, of course,
without third party advertising, some of which was
"okay" (mostly if it featured Marvel
characters) and some of which was, well, something else
(such as the infamous flea market ads promising anything
and everything). Tales Of Suspense #88 really featured it all.
Very noticeable is the amount of ads promising "from
home training" in all kinds of trades, along with a
full page ad offering a "second chance for High
School dropouts to get diplomas". Are we
therefore to assume that the Academy of Home Study
assumed that a substantial number of their target
customer base was to be found amongst comic book readers?
Not really, since their advertising campaigns in the late
1960s and early 1970s could be found up and down in
newspaper ads and even on matchboxes. Somewhat more
interesting, at least to younger and teenage readers,
were those sellers pushing items with outrageous
promises. Those of us who had their doubts even back then
will find Kirk Demarais' 2011 book Mail Order
Mysteries - Real Stuff from Old Comic Book Ads! highly
amusing. Listing and illustrating more than 150 "extraordinary,
peculiar and downright fraudulent collectibles whose
promises have haunted comic book fans for decades",
the actual items offered in these fabled ads were a let
down every time.
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| A classic example are the "200 soldiers
sets" (also advertised in Tales Of Suspense #88): the box turned out to be
the cheapest cardboard you could imagine, and the
soldiers were absolutely flat (i.e. almost two
dimensional) and all in the same pose (as described and
illustrated by Demarais). Still, there are some ads of
interest, such as the Electronic Computer Brain -
remember, the year is 1966. On the whole, however,
readers considered ads a nuisance unless they were
in-house plugs for other titles (merchandising was
gradually taking off, but still in its infancy). |
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| BIBLIOGRAPHY BUCHANAN
Bruce (2009) "Morbius the Living
Vampire", in Back Issue! #36
(October 2009)
COOKE Jon
B. (1998) "Stan the Man & Roy the Boy: A
Conversation Between Stan Lee and Roy Thomas", in Comic Book Artist #2,
Summer 1998
DEMARAIS Kirk (2011) Mail Order
Mysteries - Real Stuff from Old Comic Book Ads!,
Insight Editions
GRATH Gary
(1996) "Interview with Gil Kane, Part I", in Comics Journal #186 (April 1996)
LEE Stan (1972) "A special message from Stan Lee", editorial
published in UK Mighty
World of Marvel #1 (30 September 1972)
NN
(2003) "Stan
Lee Interview", contained as extra feature on the
double disk DVD release of the movie Daredevil
(personal transcript)
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The illustrations
presented here are copyright material.
Their reproduction for the review and
research purposes of this website is
considered fair use
as set out by the Copyright Act of 1976,
17 U.S.C. par. 107.
(c) 2021
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SPOTLIGHT
ON
