Post by Prince Hal on Feb 24, 2018 17:13:07 GMT -5
A Comic Fan’s Memories, Part 28
Marvel Annuals
A couple of entries ago I wrote about my first Marvel comic (Sgt. Fury 16), which I found in January, 1965, lost and lonely on a shelf at Maxie’s, a luncheonette on the Avenue. Why my memory of buying that comic 53 years ago is more vivid than the memory of what I had for lunch 53 minutes ago is a mystery of life better left to philosophers and gerontologists. If you’ll recall, I’d been reading and buying comics for a couple of years by that time, but until that fateful January day, I’d never seen a Marvel comic.
So, you might think that nabbing that first Marvel would have meant that I began buying Marvels left and right… but you’d be wrong.
It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy Sgt. Fury 16, but that I still wasn’t seeing many Marvels. However, it was around this time that I began hanging out more often with a kid from across the street whom I only knew from neighborhood football games or from “playing army,” as we called running through everybody’s backyard with our Daisy burp guns and plastic Mattel tommy guns. Billy and I always were in the gang of kids who’d go to the movies to see whatever was the big movie at the time, especially the war movies, like "The Great Escape" and "Von Ryan’s Express." Those two in particular were among the most “wicked” (in the sense of cool) movies we’d ever seen.
Turned out that Billy also liked war comics, especially Sgt. Fury. And he had a few issues that came out in the spring of 1965 that I read at his house. So I have Billy to thank, really, for getting me more hip to the Marvel Universe. It was at his house that I read Sgt. Fury 18, which contained one of the great comic stories ever, “Killed in Action.” I won't spoil it if you've never read it. Nuff said, front-facer!
My first Marvel A truly classic comic! Sgt. Fury 18 splash page
And no, I didn’t mean one of the great Sgt. Fury stories ever, I meant one of the great comic stories ever. As much as I loved the DC war books, Sgt. Fury 18 made me a full-on Fury fan. It had the perfect mix of action and melodrama, and in a key departure from the DC war stories, it was a self-contained chapter in a longer saga; the events it described built on what had gone before and would affect the future of the characters, and in particular, Nick Fury.
Rock’s adventures, by contrast, were episodic. I loved them for their grit, for the ferocity of Kubert's artwork, and for the hard-bitten style of Rock's narration, don't get me wrong. But, one issue Easy Company would be in Italy, the next in France, and the one after that in North Africa. An alert reader -- and I was becoming one as I read more and more comics -- realized that the regulars in the cast were in no real danger. They were always around, no matter when during the war the episodes took place. The replacements or new guys, like the poor bastards in the Enterprise crew who accompanied Kirk and Spock to the new planet of the week, might be cannon fodder, but then again, they might appear just that one time to drive the plot of the story and then never be seen again amongst the Easy regulars.
![](http://www.startrek.com/uploads/assets/articles/300e40ac52d9be2125fe63ffae42b1e8208b3001.jpg)
Sid, never seen before or since, in "No-Return Hill." RIP, red-shirted anonymous yeomen...
In Sgt. Fury, and in the rest of the Marvel Universe, based on my reading of the letters pages, which were forever cross-promotinng, from the Mighty Marvel Checklist (Bullpen Bulletins didn't premiere until the December '65 issues), and even from the ads for upcoming books, stories were interwoven, unlike most DC stories. There was a little of this at DC – the Legion jumps to mind – but not to the extent that it seemed to occur at Marvel.
![](https://i.pinimg.com/236x/29/db/52/29db52ede6904404dfdf4002395e3ea1--marvel-comics.jpg)
Before there were Bullpen Bulletins...
I was really enjoying my introduction to the Marvel Universe, that spring, however patchy and protracted it was.
However, the summer of ’65 would jump-start my initiation as a Merry Marvel Marcher, again, thanks to my pal Billy.
Somehow he found copies of four of the six annuals Marvel released that summer. The only two he would not buy were the two that came out in August: Millie the Model (who cared?) and Marvel Tales 2 (we never even saw a copy of this one).
![](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/8/8f/Marvel_Tales_Vol_2_2.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/300?cb=20090902190322)
Meh-llie the Model If only!
Billy and I would often got to the store together looking for comics, but we never bought the same issue. He’d buy one or two and I’d buy one or two others. We did this for two reasons: to maximize our reading pleasure, but also because, many times, we’d only see one copy of each issue. That was the case with the Thor annual (actually Journey into Mystery Annual 1), for instance. I still recall seeing it sitting all by itself on the nearly bare magazine rack at the Hi-Way Sweet Shoppe, aka Tony’s (Tony was the bookie, remember?).
THOR!? There's a comic called THOR? A "vain, humorless dullard" vs. a "dim-witted clod. Bring it on!
He bought that one. I have no idea if I bought anything that day, to be honest (Billy always had more money than I did), but I do remember how fascinated I was by this, the first Marvel super-hero book I was able to read. The cover was enough to grab me. First of all, it starred Thor, whom I knew from stories I had read and reread in two mythology books that I had found in our cellar, where my father kept a few shelves of books he had used as a teacher. Both of those collections emphasized the Greek gods and myths at the expense of the Norse gods, but they became my favorites from the moment I’d first read about them. So a comic about Thor!? I was in!
But that was hardly all. Thor was fighting Hercules in one story. I loved Hercules, too. In another story, Thor fought Loki, that dastardly half-brother of his, whom I knew and loathed from my mythology books, in another.
And there were three other stories, with villains I’d never heard of: the Lava Man, the Radio-Active Man, and the Demon Duplicators. "Wicked," as we would've said.
![](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/2/2a/Journey_into_Mystery_Vol_1_95.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070412123926)
Thor's Rogues Gallery, 1965
I think I borrowed the comic from Billy and read it at home in what must have been an hours-long journey to the undiscovered country that was Marvel Comics.
At some point, Billy also bought the second Spider-Man Annual, the one in which he teamed with Dr. Strange. That was a mind-blower. I don’t think I understood what the heck was going on with this guy Dr. Strange. And that artwork! The first page alone stopped me dead in my reading tracks. The whole story was a banquet for the eyes. And with the valuable info the reprints provided, I felt as if I had a handle on this guy Spider-Man.
![](http://betweenthepagesblog.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a5924ef0970b01b7c8ab06ec970b-pi)
I wouldn't have even known to ask if this artist was on drugs....
But even the eerie, otherworldly art of Steve Ditko was nothing compared to what awaited me in July. Earlier that summer, my next-door neighbor Tommy put up a tent in his backyard behind his garage, and a bunch of us brought out stacks of comics to read in there. We even left them in there, lurning that tent into our own comics library. (I remember distinctly bringing my Captain Storm #1 out there. A big hit because we'd all loved the movie "PT 109.") Those poor comics wound up pretty damp, naturally, but we didn’t care. They probably also picked up the overpoweringly heavy canvas smell of the tent, too, but we didn't care. Smelling that thick canvasy aroma was the low, low price you paid to be able to be outside in a driving rainstorm reading comics.
I know; I paid that price many a time. Until that tent was taken down and we moved on to our next interest, I would go over there every day to dig into that pile of comics looking for one in particular, one that Billy had contributed. For me it was like finding the Book of Kells or scrolls from Atlantis, because it unocked secrets of a world I knew little about and was as close to a Marvel Comics primer as I was likely to find.
Within its thick, damp pages I read the granddaddy of all “event” comics, a crossover epic featuring legions of heroes, scores of villains and dozens of supporting characters compressed into just 23 pages of non-stop action. Within those pages majesty mingled with slapstick, drama with action, derring-do with romance. I'd never read anything like it.
But that part of the story will have to wait until next time…
Marvel Annuals
A couple of entries ago I wrote about my first Marvel comic (Sgt. Fury 16), which I found in January, 1965, lost and lonely on a shelf at Maxie’s, a luncheonette on the Avenue. Why my memory of buying that comic 53 years ago is more vivid than the memory of what I had for lunch 53 minutes ago is a mystery of life better left to philosophers and gerontologists. If you’ll recall, I’d been reading and buying comics for a couple of years by that time, but until that fateful January day, I’d never seen a Marvel comic.
So, you might think that nabbing that first Marvel would have meant that I began buying Marvels left and right… but you’d be wrong.
It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy Sgt. Fury 16, but that I still wasn’t seeing many Marvels. However, it was around this time that I began hanging out more often with a kid from across the street whom I only knew from neighborhood football games or from “playing army,” as we called running through everybody’s backyard with our Daisy burp guns and plastic Mattel tommy guns. Billy and I always were in the gang of kids who’d go to the movies to see whatever was the big movie at the time, especially the war movies, like "The Great Escape" and "Von Ryan’s Express." Those two in particular were among the most “wicked” (in the sense of cool) movies we’d ever seen.
Turned out that Billy also liked war comics, especially Sgt. Fury. And he had a few issues that came out in the spring of 1965 that I read at his house. So I have Billy to thank, really, for getting me more hip to the Marvel Universe. It was at his house that I read Sgt. Fury 18, which contained one of the great comic stories ever, “Killed in Action.” I won't spoil it if you've never read it. Nuff said, front-facer!
![](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/e/e3/Sgt_Fury_Vol_1_16.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/300?cb=20081119143802)
![](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/9/95/Sgt_Fury_Vol_1_18.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/300?cb=20081119144010)
![](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/4/46/Nick_Fury_and_Pamela_Howley_together_for_the_last_time_in_Sgt_Fury_and_his_Howling_Commandos_Vol_1_18.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/307?cb=20141104001944)
My first Marvel A truly classic comic! Sgt. Fury 18 splash page
And no, I didn’t mean one of the great Sgt. Fury stories ever, I meant one of the great comic stories ever. As much as I loved the DC war books, Sgt. Fury 18 made me a full-on Fury fan. It had the perfect mix of action and melodrama, and in a key departure from the DC war stories, it was a self-contained chapter in a longer saga; the events it described built on what had gone before and would affect the future of the characters, and in particular, Nick Fury.
Rock’s adventures, by contrast, were episodic. I loved them for their grit, for the ferocity of Kubert's artwork, and for the hard-bitten style of Rock's narration, don't get me wrong. But, one issue Easy Company would be in Italy, the next in France, and the one after that in North Africa. An alert reader -- and I was becoming one as I read more and more comics -- realized that the regulars in the cast were in no real danger. They were always around, no matter when during the war the episodes took place. The replacements or new guys, like the poor bastards in the Enterprise crew who accompanied Kirk and Spock to the new planet of the week, might be cannon fodder, but then again, they might appear just that one time to drive the plot of the story and then never be seen again amongst the Easy regulars.
![](https://ifanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Our-Army-at-War-Vol.-1-87-1959-722x1024.jpg)
![](http://www.startrek.com/uploads/assets/articles/300e40ac52d9be2125fe63ffae42b1e8208b3001.jpg)
Sid, never seen before or since, in "No-Return Hill." RIP, red-shirted anonymous yeomen...
In Sgt. Fury, and in the rest of the Marvel Universe, based on my reading of the letters pages, which were forever cross-promotinng, from the Mighty Marvel Checklist (Bullpen Bulletins didn't premiere until the December '65 issues), and even from the ads for upcoming books, stories were interwoven, unlike most DC stories. There was a little of this at DC – the Legion jumps to mind – but not to the extent that it seemed to occur at Marvel.
![](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7141/6724122361_d4e5e02eef_b.jpg)
![](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--Z5L5oQEmC0/Uh-cPSHFp7I/AAAAAAAAAb4/_cXOfgQr_94/s320/tta066_hseAd_crop.jpg)
![](https://i.pinimg.com/236x/29/db/52/29db52ede6904404dfdf4002395e3ea1--marvel-comics.jpg)
Before there were Bullpen Bulletins...
I was really enjoying my introduction to the Marvel Universe, that spring, however patchy and protracted it was.
However, the summer of ’65 would jump-start my initiation as a Merry Marvel Marcher, again, thanks to my pal Billy.
Somehow he found copies of four of the six annuals Marvel released that summer. The only two he would not buy were the two that came out in August: Millie the Model (who cared?) and Marvel Tales 2 (we never even saw a copy of this one).
![](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/5/5e/Millie_the_Model_Annual_Vol_1_4.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/300?cb=20101025185055)
![](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/8/8f/Marvel_Tales_Vol_2_2.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/300?cb=20090902190322)
Meh-llie the Model If only!
Billy and I would often got to the store together looking for comics, but we never bought the same issue. He’d buy one or two and I’d buy one or two others. We did this for two reasons: to maximize our reading pleasure, but also because, many times, we’d only see one copy of each issue. That was the case with the Thor annual (actually Journey into Mystery Annual 1), for instance. I still recall seeing it sitting all by itself on the nearly bare magazine rack at the Hi-Way Sweet Shoppe, aka Tony’s (Tony was the bookie, remember?).
![](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/a/a5/Journey_into_Mystery_Annual_Vol_1_1.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/300?cb=20090317101004)
![](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PIaoiHRqIe0/USdo3icFvuI/AAAAAAAAD-s/qmAH6poE4-M/s640/Hero-Envy-Thor-vs-Hercules1.jpg)
THOR!? There's a comic called THOR? A "vain, humorless dullard" vs. a "dim-witted clod. Bring it on!
He bought that one. I have no idea if I bought anything that day, to be honest (Billy always had more money than I did), but I do remember how fascinated I was by this, the first Marvel super-hero book I was able to read. The cover was enough to grab me. First of all, it starred Thor, whom I knew from stories I had read and reread in two mythology books that I had found in our cellar, where my father kept a few shelves of books he had used as a teacher. Both of those collections emphasized the Greek gods and myths at the expense of the Norse gods, but they became my favorites from the moment I’d first read about them. So a comic about Thor!? I was in!
But that was hardly all. Thor was fighting Hercules in one story. I loved Hercules, too. In another story, Thor fought Loki, that dastardly half-brother of his, whom I knew and loathed from my mythology books, in another.
And there were three other stories, with villains I’d never heard of: the Lava Man, the Radio-Active Man, and the Demon Duplicators. "Wicked," as we would've said.
![](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/8/85/Molto_%28Earth-616%29_from_Journey_into_Mystery_Vol_1_97_0001.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070505122525)
![](https://i.pinimg.com/236x/1b/0b/76/1b0b76dd9df01826ecedf3959ea12164--spandex-capes.jpg)
![](https://dreager1.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/jim93_vsradioactiveman.jpg)
![](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/2/2a/Journey_into_Mystery_Vol_1_95.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070412123926)
Thor's Rogues Gallery, 1965
I think I borrowed the comic from Billy and read it at home in what must have been an hours-long journey to the undiscovered country that was Marvel Comics.
At some point, Billy also bought the second Spider-Man Annual, the one in which he teamed with Dr. Strange. That was a mind-blower. I don’t think I understood what the heck was going on with this guy Dr. Strange. And that artwork! The first page alone stopped me dead in my reading tracks. The whole story was a banquet for the eyes. And with the valuable info the reprints provided, I felt as if I had a handle on this guy Spider-Man.
![](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/f/f2/Amazing_Spider-Man_Annual_Vol_1_2.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/300?cb=20180114211301)
I wouldn't have even known to ask if this artist was on drugs....
But even the eerie, otherworldly art of Steve Ditko was nothing compared to what awaited me in July. Earlier that summer, my next-door neighbor Tommy put up a tent in his backyard behind his garage, and a bunch of us brought out stacks of comics to read in there. We even left them in there, lurning that tent into our own comics library. (I remember distinctly bringing my Captain Storm #1 out there. A big hit because we'd all loved the movie "PT 109.") Those poor comics wound up pretty damp, naturally, but we didn’t care. They probably also picked up the overpoweringly heavy canvas smell of the tent, too, but we didn't care. Smelling that thick canvasy aroma was the low, low price you paid to be able to be outside in a driving rainstorm reading comics.
I know; I paid that price many a time. Until that tent was taken down and we moved on to our next interest, I would go over there every day to dig into that pile of comics looking for one in particular, one that Billy had contributed. For me it was like finding the Book of Kells or scrolls from Atlantis, because it unocked secrets of a world I knew little about and was as close to a Marvel Comics primer as I was likely to find.
Within its thick, damp pages I read the granddaddy of all “event” comics, a crossover epic featuring legions of heroes, scores of villains and dozens of supporting characters compressed into just 23 pages of non-stop action. Within those pages majesty mingled with slapstick, drama with action, derring-do with romance. I'd never read anything like it.
But that part of the story will have to wait until next time…