Welcome to Thursday’s thrifty, tireless, and always thoughtful Daily Mega Comics Group Updates!

Thursday is Everyone Time! 😉 We’ve got more artist’s and writers than you can count on 2 hands today from  YouTube. This one titled: Once Upon A Time: The Super-Heroes. This is a very nice little documentary style series.  In it you will hear from such greats as Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, John Romita, Mark Evanier, Neal Adams, Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino, Alex Ross and many more plus see art from countless comics. There is a link to part 2-10 when this one finishes playing! Yes, you may be here a while if you watch each 10 minute segment consecutively! If you are running short on time just come back later and watch one at a time. If you leave a window open for this page it will allow you to pick up where you left off.  Enjoy!

We’ve heard from just about everyone about comics now, so let’s just read some comics!

Humants # 4:

Whew, boy! We start this page off with a bang! Well, actually a “Koom” but let’s not split hairs. 😉 The stage has been set, we’ve got all our characters in their places now we are ready to rock and roll!

Chosta seems to be the apple of Perimeter’s eye as he tries to shoot her down. But he’s finding it’s not like shooting fish in a barrel. The Herald is keeping Smasher Quinn and The Tower pretty busy as well. We don’t see The Shyster anywhere on this page but you can bet he’s lurking about waiting for an opportune time to take advantage of someone’s misfortune, true to his namesake.

Hang onto your hat, web wayfarer! The action won’t slow down in the least from here on out to the end of this issue!

Project New Man # 4:

Yesterday’s Page! Now we know the identity of Ebenezer Baal is actually Dr. Hubert Rolph! Remember him for issue 2? Sure you do.

Things are looking a little grim for Fawn. Rolph has taken out all his anger on her it seems even more so than on Nick and Bearcat.

Note the remark from Nick in the last panel of today’s page. It ties into a sub-plot running in Humants today.

We’ll have a new page of Project: New Man #4 Friday!

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Click the images for today’s web comics updates.

Check out Thursday‘s posts for Project: New Man and Humants’! CU2morrow!

Welcome to Friday’s fantastic, friendly neighborhood, fun loving, Daily Mega Comics Group Updates!

Friday! Whew! 😀 What a week! Paper work! That’s about all we’ve done this week!

So we decided to take a little break and browse some old favorite covers. We enjoyed our little stroll down memory lane so much we decided to share some of our findings with you. Enjoy the gallery! You will find Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Gene Colon, Jim Steranko, John Romita, Wally Wood, Bill Everette, Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia, Don Heck, Vince Colletta and Neal Adams classic work that was the foundation of Marvel Comics back in it’s heyday in the 1960’s! Over all it was the Silver Age of Comics but it was called by Stan Lee, who wrote most of the scripts for these milestone issues, the Marvel Age! I think Roy Thomas wrote one or two as well. 😉 These are the writers and cartoonists that most influenced us, but there were others as well, and we’ll share those one day soon.

Next week! We are still officially on sabbatical but should have some noticeable improvements to the site next week. Keep your fingers crossed and we might even have a preview or two of our new titles too. So bear with us a little longer please.

Have a nice weekend! Other than Basketball there’s not a lot going on this time of year. Most of the country is still enveloped in the icy grip of a very long Winter but Spring is just around the corner so hang in there. So much for Global Warming, eh? 😉 Remember Y2K!

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Click the images for today’s web comics updates.

CU Next Week!

Marvel’s Greatest Covers #1

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Like the Man said, “’nuff said!”

Welcome to Friday’s favorite, fan requested, fat free, Daily Mega Comics Group Updates!

Friday? What happened to the week?! 😀 Well, things have not exactly come off on schedule this week. We had hoped to have another post for you this week but we just couldn’t do it. We did finally get all our 2008 bookkeeping out of the way and now it’s in the accountants hands to get it ready for Uncle Sam. Whew! We’re glad that’s over.

Everyone loved the 60’s Marvel cover gallery we put up last week we decided to do it again. We give you more reasons why Marvel was such a success in the 1960’s! Again brought to you by  Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Gene Colon, Jim Steranko, John Romita, Wally Wood, Bill Everette, Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia, Don Heck, Vince Colletta, Steve Ditko, Chic Stone, Paul Reinman, Dick Ayers, Gil Kane, John Severin, Maria Severin, Herb Trimpe, Jay Gavin, George Tuska and Neal Adams. Without these talents there well may not have been a Marvel Comics! Marvel today owes all it is to these founding fathers who along with Stan Lee and Roy Thomas gave us the Marvel Age of Comics!

In the day, covers were designed to maximize the attention of buyers at newsstands. It was not as much about the art as it was selling that issue! Some were more like ads than covers. Early on Stan Lee populated the covers with word balloons and all manner of hyperbole. The covers themselves had to tell a story enough to entice the customer to pick it out from among all the other choices. As the 1960’s rolled on less words were on the cover, often just the title logo and maybe the name that issues story. So take another stroll with us down memory lane and see how Marvel, the small upstart of that day, got there foot in the door to make the sale.

Next week! We will start back to posting more often as we get back on schedule. We’ll clue you in on what’s been going on behind the scenes and start getting you prepared for the debut of our new titles.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Click the images for today’s web comics updates.

CU Next Week!

More Reasons For Marvel’s Success Cover Gallery:

Have a nice weekend!

Welcome to Monday’s monolithic, majestic, memorial which is the Daily Mega Comics Group Updates!

Oops! We promised another Mega Comics Bullpen Bio today didn’t we? Well, instead how about a tribute to the guy whom without there would be no Mega Comics, no Marvel Comics, and not much , if any DC Comics! We just posted some of this over on Facebook but we wanted to put it up here as well.

Jack Kirby has inspired an industry!  🙂 Back in ’94 Mark Poe was Central Mailer for the APAzine, Alpha Omega. When the news of Jack Kirby’s passing away reached us we were greatly saddened as all his fans were. We did a tribute cover for Alpha Omega based on the cover art for Captain America # 193 by Kirby and John Romita, which heralded Jack’s return to Marvel in the mid ’70’s. On AO’s cover, Cap is unmasked as Jack with Stan Lee as the Falcon over a Kirby Cover collage background. Speaking of Stan, if not for him there would not have been a Marvel Comics either! It was Jacks’ creative vision, but it was Stan’s marketing savoir faire that sold the package! But we’ll do a tribute  to Stan another day. We did another Kirby Tribute cover in the very next issue of Alpha Omega #56 which was Mark’s inking over several separate Kirby pencil drawings which he had made into a composite scene.

This is all a part of the big kick off this Thursday’s Facebook Comic Con! That’s right only 3 days until the official launch of the first ever Facebook Comic Con all online and accessable anytime 24/7!

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Click the images to go to the site or for a larger image view.

CU2morrow!

Welcome to Monday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Thanks! 🙂 We want to let everyone know how we appreciate the support we received for our “Summer Schedule” announcement last week. It seems not only is every Mega Maniac content with it, but several have also said their own schedules have gotten a bit fuller with the onset of summer and so it works out mutually! It must be fate, eh? 😉

If you will kindly scan your eyes to the right: you will notice our part time publisher and sometimes cartoonist, Mark Poe’s sketch rough of a tribute to Dave Simons he was commissioned to do by some friends of Dave’s over at the Facebook Comic Con. Mark was honored to do it, being a big fan of Dave’s inking as well as his penciling. Mark wanted something special so he based his idea off the cover Dave did for What If # 53. This is just the thumbnail draft and the full size pencils he has not yet begun. In this piece Mark will also be recreating/paying homage to pencils from Jack Kirby,  Gene Colon and John Romita, three of the ’60’s Marvel Age greats. Mark then plans to ink the whole thing as closely as he can in Dave’s own inking style. Stay tuned to updates as the work progresses. 😀

Mega Tales #1 featuring Tess will continue Wednesday. Yes, another page in our heroine’s premier story will be available. So be here Wednesday for page 18!

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Check out Friday‘s posts for Mega Tales! CU Wednesday!

Welcome to Monday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

No, that’s not a Kirby Original Pencil Sketch. 🙂 We wish it was. This is a detail from the Dave Simons’ Tribute cover art Mark is doing as a commission for the folks over at the Facebook Comic Con. This is one of 3 cameo images on the cover which we showed a few days ago. A thumbnail sketch of the whole can be seen below in a previous post. The original sketch is one Jack Kirby did in 1975. Mark reported he had a blast recreating this from the scan of the original he had. “You get a new appreciation for the artist when you attempt to recreate their art line for line.” Mark has started the Gene Colan cameo and then will go on to the John Romita piece. He has a little of the large image of Dave penciled as well. He says he is trying to do this as much “old school” as possible since this represents Dave and the artists from the ’60’s and ’70’s. So it is being penciled on Bristol board, and then the inks will be done directly over the pencils with brushes and India ink. The logos and masthead will be done on computer but then printed out and pasted on for the finished old school look. We’ll keep scans of pencils and inks and do a color version in the computer also. Click on the image to see a larger version in a separate window. 😀

Remember the Atlas Comics titles from the mid ’70’s? Mega Comics Group certainly is not the first to be inspired by the ’60’s and ’70’s Marvel titles. One of the first, if not the first, was Atlas Comics which was around in 1974-75. This was the second company to be called Atlas. The first was a predecessor of Marvel back in the ’50’s. This Atlas, which is often referred to as Atlas/Seaboard so as not to confuse it with the elder Atlas and since Seaboard Periodicals was the parent company, was started by former Marvel publisher Martin Goodman. Mr Goodman was really ticked off at Marvel and Stan Lee, his nephew, in particular for ousting his son Chip Goodman from the Editor-in-Chief position he had been promised to retain after Martin sold Marvel to Cadence Industries. There seems to have been some valid reasons for Chip’s firing but Martin would not hear of it. He started Atlas Comics and made Chip the publisher, at least in title, to get back at Marvel. He was succeeding and Atlas was on it’s way to ousting Marvel from the position they had stolen away from DC just a couple years prior with a ingenious marketing ploy which Martin Goodman used to outmaneuver and finally outsell DC. At Atlas he had hired away a lot of Marvel‘s top talent and brought back legends like Steve Ditko and Wally Wood to super hero comics. he installed the first original art return and royalties program which later Marvel and DC would adapt.  However, as is the case all too often, when bosses try to micromanage the talent pool, they dry it up. Infighting, resignations by key personal as well as the inability to weather market storms put Atlas and Seaboard out of business after one year. Rather then gaining his much sought revenge on Marvel, Goodman merely proved that Stan Lee, with his ability as the go between Editor-in-Chief at Marvel between Publisher Martin Goodman and the talent pool was one of the biggest reasons for Marvel’s success and managing to hold onto most of it’s top talent, like Jack Kirby and Roy Thomas, through those crucial years of the ’60’s and ’70’s. It is noteworthy, however, that even Stan was unable to prevail and keep everyone happy which resulted in Marvel losing Steve Ditko and Wally Wood early on and later Jack Kirby. Read more about it at the Atlas Archives web site.

Friday will be the day for the next Tess page update. Yes, we will announce now that Friday will be Tess Day. It’s better all around if we just go ahead and target Friday’s as our new page release day of our Summer Schedule. But we’ll still do a Wednesday Blog update as well… if we have anything left to talk about. 😉 So be here Wednesday for a new Blog and then back Friday for page 20 of Mega Tales #1! Thanks for stopping by. 😀

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Check out Friday‘s posts for Mega Tales! CU Wednesday!

Welcome to Wednesday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Progress Report: Dave Simons’ Tribute  Art!  🙂 Mark Poe, publisher in training and part-time cartoonist, has been working, every chance he gets, on the  Dave Simons’ Tribute cover art commissioned by some of the folks over at the Facebook Comic Con. We showed you the thumbnail concept sketch he did a few days ago, and we have also pasted in below so you can compare it to the current piece. Mark reports he is in stage 2 of the process, penciling the image on Bristol board. He has gotten most of it, as the scan to the right shows, but still have a little more to complete on the top. He started with the  Jack Kirby piece and worked around. “Why?” we asked. He said the Kirby cameo was the most detailed so he wanted to get that one out of the way first. He said the Gene Colan and John Romita pieces were challenging just to match the style but Kirby’s background  was the hardest on detail of the 3. Mark will try to finish the pencils this week and start the inking and do the logos and lettering. Click on the image to see a larger image in a new window.  🙂

Here you see the original thumbnail of the art. You can click this image to see a bigger one and compare to the work in progress. The original thumbnail was not proportionally correct so the layout was adjusted for the full size penciled version. and below is the original cover Dave Simons did which this Tribute was inspired by  🙂

Mega Tales #1 Page 20 will here Friday. We hope you can join us. Thanks! 😀

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Check out Last Friday‘s post for Mega Tales! CU Friday!

Welcome to Wednesday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Today we have a little bit of everything. Here’s another Golden Age Public Domain Profile leading up to the start of our Mega Spectacular which will be featuring  some of these characters in the title. We also have some “best of” material remembering some of the stories we covered in 2009. Let’s get it rolling with the “Prince of Eygpt! “

Profile: Ibis the Invincible. Real Name: Prince Amentep. First Appearance: Whiz Comics #1 (1940) Original Publisher: Fawcett. Created by: Bill Parker and Bob Kingett .

In 12th Dynasty Egypt, 4000 years ago, Prince Amentep is imprisoned by the evil magician the Black Pharaoh, his rival, because Amentep, a.k.a. Ibis, is not as powerful a magician as the Black Pharaoh. However while Ibis is imprisoned a relative gives him the “Ibistick,” a magic wand with which the user can control or create any object. Ibis uses his newly gained powers to escape from jail and then defeat the Black Pharaoh. Unfortunately Ibis’ beloved fiancé, Princess Taia of Thebes, was wounded during the final battle. So Ibis puts her under a spell so that she will not die but will sleep for 40 centuries and Ibis puts himself in a trance as well, to be with her. Then he awakens in 1940, covered in mummy wrappings and residing in an American museum. After awakening, he goes to Europe, awakens Princess Taia, and then embarks on a quest to fight crime and evil. Ibis is a magician, but most of his powers come from the Ibistick, which can do almost anything; but later becomes powerless against black magic.

Remembering Events From 2009

Last year was great in a lot of ways but overall a very tough year as well. Sadly, in 2009 we lost a good friend and artist to cancer, Dave Simons.

The Best of Daniel Best & Dave Simons!  🙂 If you have been reading our blogs for the past year you have heard of the untimely passing of comics artist and inker Dave Simons. We’ve done our tributes and shared those of others with you. This however is probably the best one. It’s Dave’s officially authorized web site which the artist himself commissioned his good friend Daniel Best to build long before his death from complications with cancer. Daniel has tons of great info about Dave’s life and career and a lot of examples of his art.

To quote Daniel from the site’s homepage: “Within this site you’ll find several of Dave’s original concepts and properties, along with some vintage art and details on Dave’s life, art and career.  This site was established in 2008 with the full approval and input from Dave.  The site was Dave’s idea, and it was his desire to use it to showcase all aspects of his work and art.  He was proud of the site and the contents contained within and this site will remain the only Official Dave Simons’ web-site on the Internet.

Humants #5 What happens when you try to administer first aid to an unconscious Humant? Well, in the case of Chaosta things could get pretty scary when she wakes up and thinks she is still battling the Renegade Humants! Man Ark and Sojourner find a lot of trouble for their efforts! We meet a new character, National Security Special Agent Roger Douglas. The Renegade Humants did survive and they have an interesting surprise for a totally unsuspecting adversary, and not at all who you might expect! More on Gregory Lawthers as he repairs Devastax and his dilemma in bringing back Devlin Delano from where ever he has been taken by Megeddon. We also hear from Scamp. Last but not least, more on Victor Torrent, Moniel Khonte and Professor Sanders. Oh, and a fellow named Omnispawn stops by for a visit too. Don’t miss this one from Freazie White, Jr. who writes and pencils as new inker, Anthony Gray does his thing and adds some nice tones too! Billy Leavell Letters and Edits! PLUS: We have an offbeat Bearcat backup tale featuring a brand new character! By Mark Poe, Freazie White, Jr., Mark Alan Lester and Billy Leavell! Featuring lots of never before published material!

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

CU Friday!

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

TGIF! Today we have videos of 2 Legendary Personalities!

Another special Friday treat! 😀 Stan Lee needs no introduction! He is the co-creator of the Marvel Comics Group legends along with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, John Romita, John Buscema and more helpers than we can list in this small space! They started a company which had such momentum in the ’60’s it continues to profit the company, now simply called Marvel, today nearly 50 years later! Stan was the visionary, the sales man, the motivator that got it rolling and kept it going even in the hard times when comic books were not selling as they once had.

William Shattner who is most fondly remembered as Captain Kirk from the original Star Trek is no less famous! The Shatt has been a starship captain, a cowboy, a policeman, a lawyer and played many other roles in between, as well as a director, writer and businessman!

Here we have a couple clips from interviews featuring both men. Unfortunately, we don’t have the full interview, but what we do have gives some insight into both. Also there is an extra clip of a TV interview Lee did in 1977. Enjoy! 😀

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

CUMonday!

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

TGIF! Hoo boy! Talk about Legendary Personalities! We’re loaded today!

The first vid up is Drawing Super Heroes Parts 1-3! 😀 John Romita starts it off drawing Spider-Man! Then we see the likes of some more well known comic book artists drawing: Joe Kubert, with his rendition of another Batman, John Buscema breathes life into Captain America, Bill Sienkiewicz renders Electra, Dave Gibbons, does a Dr. Manhattan style Green Lantern, and Travis Charest, wraps it all up with Superman! Whether fan, artist or both it’s a big kick getting to see these guys in action. From an artist’s stand point these clips serve as a tutorial for techniques and tools to use in doing comic art. Ever wonder how they do what they do? Wonder no more! Just check it out on the YouTube video!

Next up a great little trailer for John Buscema. A Suspended Animation video review, produced by Mark Allen showing highlights and milestones of Big John’s stellar career in the comics Industry! Mr. Buscema was second only to Jack Kirby in his volume of work during the Marvel Age and became one of two artists, the other being John Romita, which Stan Lee went to first with any project after Jack left for DC Comics in ’71. To see more of Mark Allen’s musings check out his blogsite: www.fourcolorcommentary.blogspot.com.

Did you hear about the first issue of Action Comics selling for $1,000,000? Yep! Too bad your mom sold all your old comics in a yard sale, eh? 😉 Take a look:

On the Mega Comics Home Front: Mark has been working on the Mega Spectacular title story which acts as a frame for reprinting some of the great super heroes stories now the Public Domain. But don’t let that fool you! This story is much more than just a frame for filling pages. This project has taken on a life of it’s own and we’ll be showing you some previews of that soon. So hang in there, Mega Maniacs! We’ve had some delays but really even with more than 300 pages of comics on this site already with Project: New Man, Humants and Mega Tales/Tess we’ve not gotten started yet! You’ll see why soon!

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

CUMonday! Have a nice weekend!

Welcome to Friday’s Daily Mega Comics Group Updates!

Have you ever felt overwhelmed? Have you ever felt like you have got so much to do and so much more you have promised you would do that it looks like there is just no way to get it all done? That’s where we are now! We are approaching our second anniversary here at the Mega Comics Group virtual offices and frankly we’ve done a lot! We have posted about 300 pages of comic book story and art. We use to know the exact number but we’ve forgotten now! 😉 We’ve also put up about the same number of blogs plus page by page commentary and info on each page of comic art plus a whole slew of sketches, concept drawings and whatnot, not to mention all the industry news and tributes! A new reader of this site could literally spend days reading all the material we have posted here. But don’t get the idea we are tooting our own horn here! Perish forbid! But then since it is our horn who else would toot it? 😉 So whats the point of this little bit of braggadocio? Just a little reminder to ourselves and whoever else might be interested that even though we may be just a tad bit behind schedule we are far from done! We are in the process of trimming out the fat and getting to the meat of what we want to do here with Mega Comics Group! We’ll borrow a phase from our esteemed Publisher-In-Training and Creator of Catch Phrases, Mark Poe and say we will “Begin Again!” Yeah, whenever you feel overwhelmed with obligations, don’t give up, just stop, reorganize and “Begin Again!”

Next week! We will start a new little feature we want to call Archives Spotlight. This is something we’ve had in mind for several months actually but had not thought of exactly how to do it. As we said in the above introduction, we have somewhere around 300 pages of comic art on this site. It takes more than half a gig to hold it all on our server and yet we don’t think we have utilized it to it’s fullest. For that short sightedness we apologize. But we hope to make amends with the Archives Spotlight. Too often once comics on a web site are posted initially it’s like the  work goes into the archive limbo never to be mentioned again. That should not be. So, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we’ll put the spot light on our archived titles and re-present them as we did when we first posted them. We realize everyone does not like re-runs but we do have new readers coming in all the time so they may appreciate our spotlighting what’s in the archives. Some older readers will enjoy seeing them again.

Also Next Week: We’ll give you the lowdown on just what ol’ Stan “The Man” Lee is doing these days and it has nothing to do with Marvel Comics.

And to set the stage for our Archives Spotlight… While this is not our comics it is  one of the tributes to our heroes who inspired us to attempt publishing comics in the first place! We are doing a re-posting of the 150 Reasons Marvel Comics Succeeded cover gallery we posted about a year ago. Enjoy!

Everyone loved the 60’s Marvel cover gallery we put up last week we decided to do it again. We give you 150 reasons why Marvel was such a success in the 1960’s! Again brought to you by  Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Gene Colon, Jim Steranko, John Romita, Wally Wood, Bill Everette, Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia, Don Heck, Vince Colletta, Steve Ditko, Chic Stone, Paul Reinman, Dick Ayers, Gil Kane, John Severin, Maria Severin, Herb Trimpe, Jay Gavin, George Tuska and Neal Adams. Without these talents there well may not have been a Marvel Comics! Marvel today owes all it is to these founding fathers who along with Stan Lee and Roy Thomas gave us the Marvel Age of Comics!

In the day, covers were designed to maximize the attention of buyers at newsstands. It was not as much about the art as it was selling that issue! Some were more like ads than covers. Early on Stan Lee populated the covers with word balloons and all manner of hyperbole. The covers themselves had to tell a story enough to entice the customer to pick it out from among all the other choices. As the 1960’s rolled on less words were on the cover, often just the title logo and maybe the name that issues story. So take another stroll with us down memory lane and see how Marvel, the small upstart of that day, got there foot in the door to make the sale.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

150 Reasons For Marvel’s Success Cover Gallery:

[svgallery name=”60sMarvelCovers2″]

Have a nice weekend! CU Monday!

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Remembering Dave! It has been almost a year since the passing of comics’ great artist and inker,  Dave Simons. In the months since we lost him  Bob Almond and the guys over at the Inkwell Awards came up with the idea of the  Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship which will be honored at the Joe Kubert Art School. The scholarship will accomplish what Dave often did during his life which was to help young artists get the training and encouragement they need to break into the comics field. Follow the link over to the page and  see how you can  get these two high quality prints, Atomic Robo by Blake Wilkie and Tribute to Dave Simons by Mark Poe which are available for anyone who donates $25 (cash only donation) or more to the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship.

Mark’s Remarks. I had the privilege of meeting Dave Simons on Facebook in early 2009. He and I were part of the Facebook Comic Con. I joined one of the Fan Pages for Dave. Dave had a re-occurrence of cancer in late 2008 which he had beaten a few years prior to this event. When I got to meet him was right after he came back from the hospital after an extended stay. Dave didn’t talk about the cancer much, he really didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him or obligated to help him. He was more interested in talking about what he loved to do which was to draw.

As anyone can see from examples of his work, he was a very skilled artist. But even though he loved to draw, most of his art career had been spent embellishing over other artists pencils with ink. He was very good at that!  Inking over another artist is a talent not all pencilers possess. Some pencilers can’t even ink their own art much less that of anyone else! Inking is not just going over the artist’s pencil lines with ink. If that is the inkers approach he will only ruin a great penciling job. An inker can make or break the pencil artist.  The inker has to emphasize what the pencil artist did in graphite with india ink. It’s a lot easier said than done! Yet it has not always gotten equal billing with penciling but rather thought of as an after thought of the drawing.

Dave understood all this and it  showed his true character. See, Dave loved to draw and ink but, even more so, he loved to talk to people and loved to help them.  This trait was evident in the man throughout his career at Marvel, and everywhere he worked and even through the very painful days he endured the last couple years he lived. Dave wasn’t out to get the best deal for himself and let everyone else fend for themselves. He wanted to help others have the chance to make it just as he had.

Dave was very prolific in his career which spanned almost 40 years. He churned out a lot of work in that time. He was dependable  and could make deadlines two qualities which alone will earn the respect and a lot of work  in the business.

Dave learned his craft from two of the best Marvel had in the early days. John and Sal Buscema. Looking at Dave’s pencils  and John’s, it is easy to see who was Dave’s main influence in the beginning.   Dave was inspired by John’s work on such titles as Silver Surfer and the Avengers in the ’60’s. Dave began his inking career over Sal’s pencils. Working to impress the Buscema’s, particularly John, lead Dave to the next level: inking over Gene Colan’s work! Just as not every comic artist can ink another artist’s pencils, not every inker, even the most skilled could interpret Mr. Colan’s detailed, moody drawings. Having learned at the feet of the Buscema brothers, Dave was ready to tackle the challenge of inking Gene’s art.  He did not shy away from it in the least and went on to ink a lot of Gene’s work.  Gene, years later, said Dave was one of the few who actually knew how to ink his pencils.  Praise doesn’t get much better than that! The approval of one of the first Marvel Bullpen artists who was instrumental in laying the foundation for Marvel Comics along with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita and John Buscema is not an easy thing to come by.

I can relate somewhat to Dave’s experience starting out working with one of his chief inspirations. I’ve penciled and  inked a few independent comics. Dave was one of my chief inspirations for inking when I was a kid. During the ’70’s, specifically, when I really began to understand how to do art for comics. I studied the books I collected just as Dave did. I had my favorite pencilers, Jack Kirby,  John Romita, John Buscema, Wally Wood, Gil Kane, Neal Adams and others. But I also had my favorite inkers: Joe Sinnott, Wally Wood, Dick Giordano, Dave Simons, Terry Austin and others. These are not listed in preference but more in order of when I discovered them. When I joined up with the FBCC I did an early tribute to Dave. It was an inked drawing of Daredevil and Dave. The first one didn’t impress Dave much. He gave me a few tips and I corrected it. The revised one won Dave’s approval. That was a proud moment for me! It would have been enough just to get to meet one of my childhood hero artists, but to actually get to work on some art for him and gain his approval was awesome! I did another tribute with several of the characters Dave had done over the years which he also liked. Of course I’m the least of some of the artists Dave helped out. The list is larger than I can show here but among them are great names like: Mike Mignola , Armando Gil, Gerry Acerno and many more.

When I first learned Dave passed away, last June it was a very sad day to say the least. I had been thinking of ordering a commission from Dave. I had almost narrowed down my list to the one character I would ask him to draw when Stacey Aragon contacted me with the news. The emotion I felt was very similar to when I heard of Jack Kirby’s passing back in ’94, but this one hurt just a little more. As much as I admired him, I never got to meet and become friends with Kirby. Stacey and Daniel Best both let me know how much it meant to Dave that he had so many fans. Daniel said at one point Dave had questioned whether his career really had any meaning. After the great show of affection he received from fans, largely at the FBCC, he was reassured he had.

A few days later Stacey Argon asked me to do another tribute to Dave. I jumped at the chance! I spent several days trying to think of what would honor my friend’s life and work. I finally arrived at the idea inspired by Dave’s cover for What If # 53. It was not an easy piece of art to do. I was trying to do the actual art as much like I thought Dave would do it as I could. Such an undertaking was hard enough with my hectic schedule at the time. Then factor in the emotions of Dave’s passing and the difficulty level is increased three fold! The effort was worth it in the end and  though I had refused payment for the job from Stacey, I was rewarded a few days later with a surprise gift from Stacey and Bob Shaw. The great drawing of Power Girl Dave had done now hangs in a place of honor in my office. This to me was far better than any monetary payment I could have ever received!

But it did not end there, the last tribute I did honoring Dave is now one of two posters which are given to for anyone who donates $25 or more cash to the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship. The other piece of art is the awesome Atomic Robo by Blake Wilkie!

Each year the Joe Kubert Art School will select a promising student who  will be granted $1,000 to assist in their tuition, in Dave’s name. The first series of funds have  already been handed to the Kubert School and the current round of auctions will see funds handed over after this years Inkwell Awards for the 2011 intake.

All of the money for the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship is supplied by the sale of donated art. Donations come from all sources and from all kinds of people. You can checkout all the details over on the Inkwell Awards site: Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship.

We have a couple of YouTube videos of the character which Dave was most associated with and for some of us the first work we remember being credited to him: Ghost Rider!

Archives Spotlight

We continue our look back at our previously posted web comics. We’ll be looking at all that’s come before with this feature and adding new comments as well. This month we are reviewing Project: New Man! Stay tuned to this section Monday, Wednesday and Fridays for more news on our archived titles.

Project: New Man #1 – Page 8 – Okay, here’s the action everyone asked for, just 8 pages into the story! Hold onto your socks, it won’t be slowing down any for a few pages!

Looks like New Man was right on the money with his hunch! The perp uncovers some very heavy duty fire power in the back of his truck. New Man doesn’t hesitate to act on his training thanks to Dr. Johnathan “Chief Thunder” Thunderstorm and his team which we will soon meet: The Thunder Hawks! However, the results are not exactly what Dave had envisioned.

Mark’s Remarks: I caught a lot of flak for the design of the automatic weapon the Mall Killer used. The consensus was it was not very realistic and that I should have used reference. This was in the days before the internet so getting reference was not so easy as it is now. However, I did use reference. I had an old G.I. Joe which carried a weapon like the one I drew up. I was somewhat vindicated a year or two later when Rob Liefield and company drew up some of the biggest, most unrealistic weapons which could be imagined! 😉 But if I had it to do over I think I would have given him an M-16.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

CUMonday!

Welcome to Friday’s favorite, fan requested, fat free,  Mega Comics Group Updates!

TGIFriday already? Geeze! What happened to the week?! 😀

We’re getting a little excited about the Golden Age Heroes Project! That’s because we’re seeing pencils and inks our esteemed Publisher-In-Training and resident cartoonist at large, Mark Poe has been doing on said project. We can’t show you just yet, ’cause he’d have a cow if we did! 😉 But next week we should start to see at least a preview of the first 100 page book we have been calling Mega Spectacular #1. That name by the way, may be subject to change for a few reasons, one being we’re beginning to suspect it’s too close to or flagship title Mega Tales (Which is on sale now if you look at our ad to the right of this column! Unabashed plug!). So look for that title to change as we mix it up a bit.

We have some new target dates! Sure we’ve given you dates before and we, for one reason or another, did not get the promised publication out. We admit it! The beauty of first doing this stuff on the web is it’s more flexible. We have not missed any deadlines for Distributors or anything like that. Which, if you don’t know, is a cardinal sin in this business! Plus you get to see a lot of the behind the scenes turmoil we go through to get all this done! AND we have gotten most of what we promised out on time like the 4 issues of Project: New Man which you can still read in it’s entirety right on this site! And then there was the Humants 5 issues series! Then we brought you the first adventure of Tess, the Living Tesseract in Mega Tales #1, which those lucky enough to be paying attention got to read all of, on the web, before we cut it back to a 10 page preview promoting the printed addition. That issue is on sale now just in case you have not heard. 😉 So there! We’re not total bums! Just part time bums. But enough of this frivolity! What we started off to tell you is: we have set our target date for September to have the Golden Age Heroes Project up and going. We also tentatively may have Mega Tales #2 ready to start. All Mega Bullpeners and Maniacs take note! So hang in there, hombres! Like the lady sang “We’ve Only Just Begun!” Not bad for a 2 year old, eh?

And now a bit of a re-posting from one of our Friday blogs from last year: Hmmm…Actually we’ve used this gig twice in the past year haven’t we? Oh well, some things are worth a second or third look! Enjoy!

Everyone loved the 60’s Marvel cover gallery we put up last week we decided to do it again. We give you 150 reasons why Marvel was such a success in the 1960’s! Again brought to you by  Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Gene Colon, Jim Steranko, John Romita, Wally Wood, Bill Everette, Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia, Don Heck, Vince Colletta, Steve Ditko, Chic Stone, Paul Reinman, Dick Ayers, Gil Kane, John Severin, Maria Severin, Herb Trimpe, Jay Gavin, George Tuska and Neal Adams. Without these talents there well may not have been a Marvel Comics! Marvel today owes all it is to these founding fathers who along with Stan Lee and Roy Thomas gave us the Marvel Age of Comics!

In the day, covers were designed to maximize the attention of buyers at newsstands. It was not as much about the art as it was selling that issue! Some were more like ads than covers. Early on Stan Lee populated the covers with word balloons and all manner of hyperbole. The covers themselves had to tell a story enough to entice the customer to pick it out from among all the other choices. As the 1960’s rolled on less words were on the cover, often just the title logo and maybe the name that issues story. So take another stroll with us down memory lane and see how Marvel, the small upstart of that day, got there foot in the door to make the sale.

No Final Video trailer for Mega Tales #1 Yet! This has been another learning process indeed! We have the video looking good in iMovie and in Quicktime. When we get it to YouTube we are losing something in the translation. But we’ll keep on until we get it.

Next week! We will get back to looking at the hottest conventions going on this summer. Sorry we missed that Monday, but as always, see the large ad in the right hand sidebar to go to the page with all the convention info on it.Possibly a preview of that Golden Age Heroes Project. And lot’s more! See ya then!

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Archives Spotlight

We continue our look back at our previously posted web comics. We’ll be looking at all that’s come before with this feature and adding new comments as well. This month we are reviewing Project: New Man! Stay tuned to this section Monday, Wednesday and Fridays for more news on our archived titles.

Project: New Man #1 – Page 28 – Shhhh. Listen to the conversation.;-)

Mark’s Remarks: Dave analyzes his real first adventure since becoming New Man. Max adds his years of experience as guidance for our hero. Just how Max got involved in the project will be revealed in the next issue which we’ll roll out in just a few more days at the conclusion of this landmark publication.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

CU Next Week!

Have a nice weekend!

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Art MARKings!

Again we have been bombarded by rush orders  of every sort with our job at the local small town print shop. Plus work has to continue on established projects , a couple of which, fortunately are almost completed. Then we’ll be singing “Oh Happy Day”!

One or two more for the road! The last, at least for now, in a small series of new drawings Mark Poe, our esteemed Publisher-In-Training and resident pencil pusher recently drew up partly for exercise and for a soon to be announced project with another company. More on that soon. All of these are takes on hero archetypes such as the fire hero, rock hero, and here the speedster. As we told you previously Marks’ idea is to simplify the drawings in an effort to make them easier to understand without the sacrifice of needed detail to tell a story. Mark cites the old comic book masters such as Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, John Buscema, Dave Simons, Neal Adams, Wally Wood, Will Eisner, John Romita, SteveDitko just to name a few, as primary reference. While at the same time keeping in mind what more recent artists such as Bruce Timm and Darynn Cook and others have done. Mark’s goal is to consistently use a drawing style that is like the best of all combined.

And here, to the right is the piece that started all this streamlining. This one was done  many months ago. Mark actually did more than one version of this as he fine tuned the style. These are some characters we hope to see in a story sometime in the future.

Enjoy your weekend! Stay warm and watch some football!

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Archives Spotlight

We continue our look back at our previously posted web comics. We’ll be looking at all that’s come before with this feature and adding new comments as well. This month we are reviewing Project: New Man #2 and Humants #1! Stay tuned to this section every Friday for more of our archived titles.

Project: New Man #2 – Page 8 – Note what New Man says as he walks away: “…I was once as deluded as yourself.” We had a few hints of Dave’s past in Project: New Man #1 but in the pages that follow we find out a lot more of his shady past. A shady past for a superhero is nothing new these days nor was it in the early 90’s when this was written. However, Dave’s sordid history may have been one of the more extreme at the time for a character aspiring to be a superhero as we’ll soon see. That’s about all we can say at this point so stay tuned, reader!

Mark’s Remarks: Freazie White, Jr. added a lot to this scene. Although I had plotted this part pretty much on my own and penciled it accordingly, Freazie saw a little more character development potential in this scene. Freazie humanized the character of New Man. In my version he came across maybe a little too cocky and gung-ho and apparently forgetting where he came from.

My way of plotting then , and now, was to do thumbnails on letter size or half letter size sheets, and write captions as I do the rough breakdown of the action. Then I would pencil the full size pages on 11 x 17  art boards. Freazie would script from the pencils using my roughed in script as a guide. Fortunately for the reader, Freazie fine tuned my story. 😉 I think I’ve learned a little and matured somewhat as a writer since then, but I have to credit Freazie for showing me the way.

Humants #1 – Page 7 – A somber scene… which is a prelude to the drama to come!

Mark’s Remarks: Very nice effects on this page, if i do say so myself! 😉 One of my favorites in this issue. Freazie never got much credit but he did some great storytelling with his pencils! He’s gonna do some more real soon, he tells me!

The Zipatone works better here! Allan Lewis and myself get credit for the tones on this one. I think we got it a bit better balanced here. Some pages we overdid with halftones and the art lost some of it’s contrast. I think contrast is a very important part of comic art whether it’s a color or black and white book.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

CU Next Friday!

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Can you believe it? Here we are just a week away from Thanksgiving here in the good ol’ US of A! The year has just flown by and 2011 is just around the corner!

More Kirby Treats!

As promised in last Friday’s blog… This week we’re taking a peek at some more, never before published on thes digital pages Jack Kirby art which Mark Poe, our esteemed Publisher-In-Training and aspiring inker has done in the not so distant past…

What can I say about Jack Kirby that has not already been said? Well, probably not a whole heck of a lot! There have been books, interviews, magazines, songs, video tributes and just about everything imaginable said about the late, great Mr. Kirby! Certainly everyone reading this and certainly everyone who has collected comics for any length of time knows who he was and what he has done. As I wrote before Jack Kirby inspired an industry!  That’s not to say, as some critics would try to infer, I’m saying that Jack created the industry single handed. He had a lot of capable and talented help! 😉 All kidding aside, almost every seasoned professional I’ve ever read after, even guys like Will Eisner and Wally Wood, who both had more than a little impact on comics history themselves, credit Kirby with being one of a very few who inspired the industry to greater heights consistently. He was one of the Founding Fathers, along with the other two I just mentioned, for the Comic Book Industry. Even though the styles differed the impact they all made was no less significant.  ’nuff said! 😉

So with all that in mind, let’s check out the art! The first piece I’ve showcased on this page is one of the best pages from one of the best issues of Jack’s original New God’s series; #6 The Glory Boat. This piece is lifted straight out of the book with great inks by Mike Royer. Mr. Royer has often been credited as being Kirby’s most faithful inker. That is to say, he inked Kirby’s pencils as close to the original sketch as possible, more so than any other inker. I put this one here, not because I did anything on it, other than scan it, but for reference and just ’cause I like it a lot! Besides it looks better to lead off the blog with a nice color image! 😉

Next up is a great pic of Orion, one of my favorite Kirby characters of the ’70’s era. This particular drawing is a recreation of one of Kirby’s original model sheets which became part of the cover for New Gods #1. If I’m not mistaken this particular image was a fan commission. I don’t have the copy of the pencils right now but I’m including the inked drawing. These are my inks over a photo copy of Kirby’s pencils. Click on the drawing to see a larger view.

Big Barda was also one of the New Gods… Jack Kirby’s women were liberated before there was any national movement for the cause! Barda is no doubt one of Kirby’s strongest female characters, no pun intended. 😉 This sketch is likely from another fan commission. With this as with all the inkings I have presented here, I tried to stay as faithful to the sketch as I possibly could. Click on the drawings to see a larger view.

Mr. Miracle was another great ’70’s character from King Kirby! The Super Escape Artist! What a concept! Jack could come up with the best twists on old concepts! So instead of another Super Hero he gave us a Super Entertainer, more or less. Scott Free had one of the best back stories in the business and his costume was perfect for the character. This is another sketched fan commission I’m sure.

So why did I do these inkings? Well, the latter two I think may have been for a contest. I don’t remember if I ever actually entered it. These were done 2 or 3 years ago. The Orion sketch I just wanted to ink! That’s the biggest reason for doing any of it, just for the fun of inking it. But also, I found out long ago it helps me to be a better artist when I ink another artist’s work. There are things that I often don’t see just looking at the art until I ink it.  I get a new perspective and appreciation for the artist as I put ink to their pencil lines.

I have more Kirby Inkings… But I will save those for another post.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Enjoy the weekend!

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Archives Spotlight

We continue our look back at our previously posted web comics. We’ll be looking at all that’s come before with this feature and adding new comments as well. This month we are reviewing Project: New Man #2 and Humants #1! Stay tuned to this section every Friday for more of our archived titles.

Project: New Man #2 – Page 10 – Some great shots of New Harbour City which is part of the Five Lakes Megalopolis, in which the Humants are running around in as well, at this same time. We were trying to tie the Project: New Man and Humants cast together and if you are reading close you have already picked that up in a few places.

Shhh… Be very quiet. Looks like Dave is nodding off. Poor guy is probably all tuckered out after what he’s just been through. If this were on TV we’d see the screen get all fuzzy as our star fades off into a dream… But that will have to wait until Chapter 2!

Mark’s Remarks: The Moriah Building was inspired greatly, at least in concept, by the Baxter Building and the sky scrapper headquarters of Doc Savage and his Amazing Five which, even though it was never named in the stories, was inferred to be the Empire State Building. The idea of the heroes headquarters being an office building was always fascinating to me. So I had to use it for the Thunder Hawks, and New Man.

Later in the Humants title Freazie White, Jr. unveils another interesting concept for a headquarters. I don’t think he meant to,  because he was never much of a Doc Savage fan, but Freazie used Doc’s other headquarters… that of an old renovated warehouse.

If you like Doc Savage or never heard of him but would like to hear and see more, check out DC Comics new Doc Savage series.

Humants #1 – Page 9 – Some cool introduction shots of Magistar. The Five Lakes Megalopolis was Freazie’s tribute to the Detroit Michigan area with all it’s sprawling suburbs.

Mark’s Remarks: Using the cityscape as a backdrop in somewhat the style  of those ’60’s and ’70’s Marvel books, Freazie wanted to portray a scene somewhat like Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and John Romita often did with Spider-man. Spidey was always hanging out on the rooftops of New York mulling over his life events usually talking to himself in the process trying to make sense of it all. So then we find Magistar doing a similar thing here, going over in his mind the sequence of  incidents leading up to his current situation. Freazie decided to narrate  the characters musings rather than using word or thought balloons to supply the supposition. As an avid reader of comics himself, no doubt Freazie was thinking that was more in line with the comics of the dark and gritty ’90’s. Personally I liked it, but I often wonder if comic book writers of the day as well as today may take the seriousness tone a bit too far. Freazie would often try to strike a balance and add in humor every chance he got particularly with characters like Man-Ark and The Herald, who we’re about to meet. They played well against the angst Magistar often portrayed.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

CU Next Friday!

Welcome to Monday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Cyber Monday, Stan Lee, and the Justice League Movie!

MOANday! 😀 But it’s also Cyber Monday which mean we’ve got some great deals to pass on for your Christmas Gift Shopping! Check out these special links to get Digital copies of your favorite  Mega Comics titles for up to 50% off the regular price using the cover links to DriveThru Comics or some site wide discounts using the DriveThru and Indy Planet ad links! Printed copies are available from Indy Planet.

Stan Lee needs no introduction! He is the co-creator of the Marvel Comics Group legends along with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, John Romita, John Buscema and more helpers than we can list in this small space! They started a company which had such momentum in the ’60’s it continues to profit the company, now simply called Marvel, today nearly 60 years later! Stan was the visionary, the editor, the writer, the publisher, the sales man, and the motivator that got it rolling and kept it going even in the hard times when comic books were not selling as they once had.

 Now, he’s not much more than a figure head and spokesman for Marvel but they still honor the Grand Father of Comics and he still consults and cameos in the Marvel movies. Stan, never to be idle, is heavily involved with his POW Entertainment company and the latest project is The Stan Lee Subscription Boxes.  There is a Comic Box which includes special, limited edition Stan Lee cover comics AND a bigger box containing special limited edition collectables! The box subscription is monthly and bi-monthly and starts at a mere $19.99 a month. Find out all the details @ https://www.stanleebox.com.

Justice League the Movie! Okay, we’re all super hero fans here, but we are on record as saying Batman Verses Superman was just plain bad. However, the company might have made up for the flop with this latest Justice League movie. We don’t know if it’s in the Avengers class but it is the 2nd best movie DC has done in years. The best being the Wonder Woman movie from last year. WW steals the show in the Justice League too!

Use the Justice League promo photo here to view the Justice League trailer. It’s great! You don’t want to miss this one, folks. Enjoy! 😀

CU-Soon!

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Happy Birthday, John Romita!

Happy Birthday, John Romita! John V. Romita Sr., better known among his peers and fans as simply John Romita was born January 24, 1930. The week was his 88th Birthday. For those younger folks who may not know, he is an American comic-book artist best known for his work on Marvel Comics’ The Amazing Spider-Man and for co-creating the character The Punisher. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2002.

Romita is the father of John Romita Jr., also a comic-book artist, and husband of Virginia Romita, for many years Marvel’s traffic manager. (Source: Wikipedia)

Spider-Man – John Romita is best remembered for his rendition of Spider-Man. Romita has more than once admitted how intimidated he was to take over the book from the departing, co-creator of the character, Steve Ditko. He did have some big shoes to fill, but he came through like a champ and re-established the look of Spider-man and his supporting cast and with Stan Lee turned it into Marvel’s biggest selling title, even bigger than their flagship book, the Fantastic Four.

Mary Jane Watson – In the ’60’s Romita was responsible for the look of Mary Jane Watson, Peter Parker’s soon to be girlfriend and eventual wife and ex-wife. Romita was the first to draw Mary Jane Watson who Lee and Ditko had teased readers with references to in dialog but did not show her until Romita assumed the penciling chores on Amazing Spider-Man.

Art Director- Romita acted as the Art Director at Marvel from the late ’60’s up until the late ’80’s. Romita was responsible for designing the look of the Marvel line.

He was responsible for designing packaging for merchandise, titles and character concepts. He designed the first costumes of The Punisher and Wolverine. Although the designs have been altered over the years the basic elements Romita assigned to them have endured the passage of time. Before he assumed the role of Art Director Stan and Jack shared that position with Stan having final say in most everything.

Mark’s Remarks: John Romita was a great influence on my artwork early on even more so than Jack Kirby. The reason for this is I did not start getting Marvels until the close of the ’60’s. Because of the Spider-Man animated cartoon series I came into comics collecting as a Spidey fan. I went on to become an even bigger fan of the FF later. Being a Romita fan first is somewhat ironic because Kirby influenced Romita as well as every artist at Marvel for decades. I did not know that until years later. I was not as a big fan of Kirby’s early Marvel work which I accessed mainly through Marvel’s reprint series. Some of this was due to Kirby’s evolving style as the 60’s went on. Kirby peaked at Marvel from ’65 through 67. He was still great after that period but his style kept evolving and became more abstract after the peak years. In my younger years I favored more realism in the artwork like that of Neal Adams. Another reason for this was the quality of the reprints. I was fortunate to latch onto some low grade original issues of the Fantastic Four years after their initial print runs and the quality compared to  the reprints blew me away!

One of my most cherished memories of the ’70’s Marvel line was the return of Jack Kirby to  Captain America!  Cap #193 leaped off the stands at me, it seemed, with an awesome cover by my two favorite Marvel artists of that time, Kirby and Romita! Both men could do some great work on their own but it was something special when Romita inked Kirby. It reminded me a great deal of occasions when Wally Wood would ink Kirby’s pencils.

The ’60’s and ’70’s were some great years to be collecting comics and developing my cartoon art skills. I had inspiration not only from Romita and Kirby but also Gil Kane, Wally Wood, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Rich Buckler, Jim Steranko, Marie Severin, John Severin, Bill Everette, Don Heck, Steve Ditko, Jim Starlin, Al Milgrom, Frank Brunner, Dave Simons, Gene Colan, Val Maynerick, Jim Moony, Barry Windsor-Smith, Neal Adams, John Byrne, Frank Giacoa, Joe Sinnott and more than my ol’ memory can recollect at this time. It was a special time and fun to recall.

Onward!

Mark

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Archives Spotlight

Archive’s Spotlight is designed to look at all which has come before and add new comments as well. This posting we are reviewing Project: New Man #4 pages 25-26!

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Project: New Man #4 – Page 25 – No art changes on this and the next page. Panels 4 & 5 of page 25 has some minor script changes. Every panel got script changes on page 26. Again since we are prepping these books for printing with Ka-Blam Comic Book Printing and digital sales at IndyPlanet as well as DriveThru Comics, we are revising script and art which needs adjusting before going to press. See if you can spot the changes.

CU Next Week!

Fair Use reference to intellectual property of other companies are intended for historical and informational accuracy only. Mega Comics Group™ or Mega Graphics, LLC™ does not represent or have any relationship to any other company or entity or their intellectual property unless otherwise clearly noted. Mega Tales™ and © 2010 Mega Graphics LLC, unless otherwise noted herein.  Project: New Man™ and  Humants™ and © 2010 Freazie White, Jr. D.B.A. Legacy Comics. Tess, the Living Tesseract™ and © Stephen Greg Legat and Mark Poe. All rights reserved. Mega Graphics LLC, licensor.

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Happy Birthday, Sal Buscema!

Happy Birthday, Sal Buscema! Sal Buscema  was born January 26, 1936 and has either penciled or inked for Marvel Comics from 1968 through 1996, where he enjoyed memorial stints primarily as a penciler on titles such as X-Men, the Avengers, Marvel Team-up, Captain America, the Defenders, Rom, Space Knight and  a ten-year run as artist of The Incredible Hulk. He worked at DC including penciling Batman, Superman, and Superboy stories, and inking the Creeper, Wonder Woman, and other characters’ stories and then back at Marvel where he continued to make deadlines faster than Quicksilver until around 2013 before retiring. He is the younger brother of comics artist, the late John Buscema. (Source: Wikipedia)

The ’70’s Marvel Line – Sal Buscema is probably best remembered for his 10 year run as penciler of The Incredible Hulk. Buscema  drew and inked many of the Marvel Characters during the 70’s and he was considered the go-to artist if a book was late and needed a fast fill in. But he did several long runs as penciler on titles as well. He also supplied Marvel with some of it’s most dynamic covers of that decade! Check out this cover he did for The Avengers #89! Whew! You can feel the heat from the energy cascading the distressed figure of Captain Marvel!

Captain America – Next to Jack Kirby, Sal was THE artist for Captain American in the 70’s. He might not have been the most detailed artist, especially depending on who inked his work, but he had the same sense of dynamics which Cap’s original artist did. Many fans had a hard time accepting Sal’s many successor’s on the book even though many of them were fine artists in their own respect. Except for maybe John Byrne, none of the other pencilers had that powerful, action packed, explosive quality Sal’s pencils conveyed. Sal’s work always was better when he inked it himself. He always had more detail when he did the whole art job. Some of the best examples of that was work he did on the Avengers with Roy Thomas. He also did the final issue (#66) of the original run of the original X-Men following Neal Adams before it went into it’s reprint run. Sam Grainger inked that one which is very detailed.

The Defenders- Another title which Sal Buscema was THE artist on was The Defenders. He was the first penciler on the regular series and penciled most of the first 50 issues. Keith Giffen retained some of that dynamic when he assumed penciling chores but he was the bestow Sal’s successors.

Spider-Man – Sal Buscema drew Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up and later in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man. The stories always had that Sal Buscema dynamic story telling but Sal drew Spidey a little too stout at times. It was almost as if Captain America had put on Spidey’s costume. Later, in his career Sal would re imagine his Spider-Man and he seemed a little more like the agile wall crawler Steve Ditko and John Romita drew so well.

Mark’s Remarks: Sal Buscema was another great influence on my artwork. During the ’70’s At the time I was more attracted to realistic art like Neal Adams. I was torn between choosing abstract, more simplistic cartooning, like Sal Buscema and John Romita and the more realistic detail of Adams, Jim Starlin, Frank Brunner, John Buscema and others. Pencilers like Jack Kirby still had a powerful draw on me. Sal was not as abstract as Kirby but not as realistic as Adams. Sal could do great detail work when given the time but a lot of his ’70’s work was abbreviated in the Kirby vein, sacrificing a little detail in favor of simple but powerful action sequences.

Sal Buscema was the original artist for the Defenders!  This pin up was contained in the back of Defenders # 6. Notice the dynamic, Kirbyish action poses of our heroes. This is a good representation of most of the powerful but simple artwork Sal did in the ’70’s. In an article I once read by Alex Toth, he alluded to something that has stuck with me. This is not a direct quote but it was something like:  “It’s not what you draw but what you don’t.” Minimalism is a technique every cartoonist has to perfect. Too much artwork is overworked. I know mine has been. I’m constantly trying to refine mine and learn better minimalistic techniques. Contemporary cartoonists like Bruce Tim and Darwyn Cooke have mastered this technique in recent years. Both artists tend to use more abstract methods than realistic so they really fit into the Kirby category more so than the Sal Buscema and John Romita column.

Even though officially retired now, or semi-retired might be more appropriate, Sal is still  active making occasional convention appearances. He is still doing outstanding art for Marvel, DC, and others. He’s doing some great inking on the  Black Dynamite series for IDW. Happy birthday Mr. Buscema! Thanks for all the great comics!

Onward!

Mark

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Archives Spotlight

Archive’s Spotlight is designed to look at all which has come before and add new comments as well. This posting we are reviewing Project: New Man #4 pages 21-22!

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Project: New Man #4 – Page 21 – No art changes on this and the next page. Panel 5 of page 21 has some minor script changes. Almost all the script changes on page 22. Again since we are prepping these books for printing with Ka-Blam Comic Book Printing and digital sales at IndyPlanet as well as DriveThru Comics, we are revising script and art which needs adjusting before going to press. See if you can spot the changes.

CU Next Week!

Fair Use reference to intellectual property of other companies are intended for historical and informational accuracy only. Mega Comics Group™ or Mega Graphics, LLC™ does not represent or have any relationship to any other company or entity or their intellectual property unless otherwise clearly noted. Mega Tales™ and © 2010 Mega Graphics LLC, unless otherwise noted herein.  Project: New Man™ and  Humants™ and © 2010 Freazie White, Jr. D.B.A. Legacy Comics. Tess, the Living Tesseract™ and © Stephen Greg Legat and Mark Poe. All rights reserved. Mega Graphics LLC, licensor.

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Stephen J. Ditko was born November 2, 1927 and passed away on June 29, 2018. He was an American comics artist and writer best known as the artist and co-creator, with Stan Lee, of the Marvel Comics superheroes Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.

Ditko studied under Batman artist Jerry Robinson at the Cartoonist and Illustrators School in New York City. He began his professional career in 1953, working in the studio of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, beginning as an inker and coming under the influence of artist Mort Meskin. During this time, he then began his long association with Charlton Comics, where he did work in the genres of science fiction, horror, and mystery. He also co-created the superhero Captain Atom in 1960.

During the 1950s, Ditko also drew for Atlas Comics, a forerunner of Marvel Comics. He went on to contribute much significant work to Marvel. In 1966, after being the exclusive artist on The Amazing Spider-Man and the “Doctor Strange” feature in Strange Tales, Ditko left Marvel for reasons he never specified.

Ditko continued to work for Charlton and also DC Comics, including a revamp of the long-running character the Blue Beetle, and creating or co-creating the Question, the Creeper, Shade the Changing Man, and Hawk and Dove. Ditko also began contributing to small independent publishers, where he created Mr. A, a hero reflecting the influence of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Ditko largely declined to give interviews, saying he preferred to communicate through his work.

Ditko was inducted into the comics industry’s Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1990, and into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994.

Ditko learned that his idol, Batman artist Jerry Robinson, who was teaching at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (later the School of Visual Arts) in New York City. Moving there in 1950, he enrolled in the art school under the G.I. Bill. Robinson found the young student “a very hard worker who really focused on his drawing” and someone who “could work well with other writers as well as write his own stories and create his own characters”, and he helped Ditko acquire a scholarship for the following year.”He was in my class for two years, four or five days a week, five hours a night. It was very intense.” Robinson, who invited artists and editors to speak with his class, once brought in Stan Lee, then editor of Marvel Comics’ 1950s precursor Atlas Comics and, “I think that was when Stan first saw Steve’s work.”

Ditko began professionally illustrating comic books in early 1953, drawing writer Bruce Hamilton’s science-fiction story “Stretching Things” for the Key Publications imprint Stanmor Publications, which sold the story to Ajax/Farrell, where it finally found publication in Fantastic Fears #5 (cover-dated Feb. 1954). Ditko’s first published work was his second professional story, the six-page “Paper Romance” in Daring Love #1 (Oct. 1953),published by the Key imprint Gillmor Magazines.

Shortly afterward, Ditko found work at the studio of writer-artists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who had created Captain America and other characters. Beginning as an inker on backgrounds, Ditko was soon working with and learning from Mort Meskin, an artist whose work he had long admired. “Meskin was fabulous,” Ditko once recalled. “I couldn’t believe the ease with which he drew: strong compositions, loose pencils, yet complete; detail without clutter. I loved his stuff”.^[12] Ditko’s known assistant work includes aiding inker Meskin on the Jack Kirby pencil work of Harvey Comics’ Captain 3-D #1 (Dec. 1953). For his own third published story, Ditko penciled and inked the six-page “A Hole in His Head” in Black Magic vol. 4, #3 (Dec. 1953), published by Simon & Kirby’s Crestwood Publications imprint Prize Comics.

Ditko then began a long association with the Derby, Connecticut publisher Charlton Comics, a low-budget division of a company best known for song-lyric magazines. Beginning with the cover of The Thing! #12 (Feb. 1954) and the eight-page vampire story “Cinderella” in that issue, Ditko would continue to work intermittently for Charlton until the company’s demise in 1986, producing science fiction, horror and mystery stories, as well as co-creating Captain Atom, with writer Joe Gill, in Space Adventures #33 (March 1960). He first went on hiatus from the company, and comics altogether, in mid-1954, when he contracted tuberculosis and returned to his parents’ home in Johnstown to recuperate.

Marvel Days

After he recovered and moved back to New York City in late 1955, Ditko began drawing for Atlas Comics, the 1950s precursor of Marvel Comics, beginning with the four-page “There’ll Be Some Changes Made” in Journey into Mystery #33 (April 1956); this debut tale would be reprinted in Marvel’s Curse of the Weird #4 (March 1994). Ditko would go on to contribute a large number of stories, many considered classic, to Atlas/Marvel’s Strange Tales and the newly launched Amazing Adventures, Strange Worlds, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish, issues of which would typically open with a Kirby-drawn monster story, followed by one or two twist-ending thrillers or sci-fi tales drawn by Don Heck, Paul Reinman, or Joe Sinnott, all capped by an often-surreal, sometimes self-reflexive short by Ditko and writer-editor Stan Lee.

These Lee-Ditko short stories proved so popular that Amazing Adventures was reformatted to feature such stories exclusively beginning with issue #7 (Dec. 1961), when the comic was rechristened Amazing Adult Fantasy, a name intended to reflect its more “sophisticated” nature, as likewise the new tagline “The magazine that respects your intelligence”. Lee in 2009 described these “short, five-page filler strips that Steve and I did together”, originally “placed in any of our comics that had a few extra pages to fill”, as “odd fantasy tales that I’d dream up with O. Henry-type endings.” Giving an early example of what would later be known as the “Marvel Method” of writer-artist collaboration, Lee said, “All I had to do was give Steve a one-line description of the plot and he’d be off and running. He’d take those skeleton outlines I had given him and turn them into classic little works of art that ended up being far cooler than I had any right to expect.”

The Creation of Spider-Man

The original cover for Amazing Fantasy #15 by Steve Ditko. The published AM #15 cover, which is pictured below, was drawn by Kirby and inked by Ditko.

After Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Stan Lee obtained permission from publisher Martin Goodman to create a new “ordinary teen” superhero named “Spider-Man”, Lee originally approached his leading artist, Jack Kirby. Kirby told Lee about his own 1950s character conception, variously called the Silver Spider and Spiderman, in which an orphaned boy finds a magic ring that gives him super powers. Comics historian Greg Theakston says Lee and Kirby “immediately sat down for a story conference” and Lee afterward directed Kirby to flesh out the character and draw some pages. “A day or two later”, Kirby showed Lee the first six pages, and, as Lee recalled, “I hated the way he was doing it. Not that he did it badly — it just wasn’t the character I wanted; it was too heroic”.

Lee turned to Ditko, who developed a visual motif Lee found satisfactory, although Lee would later replace Ditko’s original cover with one penciled by Kirby. Ditko said, “The Spider-Man pages Stan showed me were nothing like the (eventually) published character. In fact, the only drawings of Spider-Man were on the splash [i.e., page 1] and at the end [where] Kirby had the guy leaping at you with a web gun… Anyway, the first five pages took place in the home, and the kid finds a ring and turns into Spider-Man.”

The iconic AM #15 cover by Kirby and Ditko which introduced the world to Spider-Man!

Ditko also recalled that, “One of the first things I did was to work up a costume. A vital, visual part of the character. I had to know how he looked … before I did any breakdowns. For example: A clinging power so he wouldn’t have hard shoes or boots, a hidden wrist-shooter versus a web gun and holster, etc. … I wasn’t sure Stan would like the idea of covering the character’s face but I did it because it hid an obviously boyish face. It would also add mystery to the character….”

Much earlier, in a rare contemporaneous account, Ditko described his and Lee’s contributions in a mail interview with Gary Martin published in Comic Fan #2 (Summer 1965): “Stan Lee thought the name up. I did costume, web gimmick on wrist & spider signal”. He added he would continue drawing Spider-Man “if nothing better comes along.” That same year, he expressed to the fanzine Voice of Comicdom, regarding a poll of “Best Liked” fan-created comics, “It seems a shame, since comics themselves have so little variety of stories and styles that you would deliberately restrict your own creative efforts to professional comics[‘] shallow range. What is ‘Best Liked’ by most readers is what they are most familiar in seeing and any policy based on readers likes has to end up with a lot of look-a-like (sic) strips. You have a great opportunity to show everyone a whole new range of ideas, unlimited types of stories and styles—why FLUB it!”

From 1958 to either 1966, or 1968  (accounts differ), Ditko shared a Manhattan studio at 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue with noted fetish artist Eric Stanton, an art-school classmate. When either artist was under deadline pressure, it was not uncommon for them to pitch in and help the other with his assignment.  Ditko biographer Blake Bell, without citing sources, said, “At one time in history, Ditko denied ever touching Stanton’s work, even though Stanton himself said they would each dabble in each other’s art; mainly spot-inking”,  and the introduction to one book of Stanton’s work says, “Eric Stanton drew his pictures in India ink, and they were then hand-coloured by Ditko”.  In a 1988 interview with Theakston, Stanton recalled that although his contribution to Spider-Man was “almost nil”, he and Ditko had “worked on storyboards together and I added a few ideas. But the whole thing was created by Steve on his own… I think I added the business about the webs coming out of his hands”.

Spider-Man debuted in Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962), the final issue of that science-fiction/fantasy anthology series. When the issue proved to be a top seller, Spider-Man was given his own series, The Amazing Spider-Man.  Lee and Ditko’s collaboration on the series saw the creation of many of the character’s best known antagonists including Doctor Octopus in issue #3 (July 1963);  the Sandman in #4 (Sept. 1963);  the Lizard in #6 (Nov. 1963);  Electro in #9 (March 1964);  and the Green Goblin in #14 (July 1964).  Ditko eventually demanded credit for the plotting he was contributing under the Marvel Method. Lee concurred, and starting with #25 (June 1965), Ditko received plot credit for the stories. 

One of the most celebrated issues of the Lee-Ditko run is #33 (Feb. 1966), the third part of the story arc “If This Be My Destiny…!”, and featuring the dramatic scene of Spider-Man, through force of will and thoughts of family, escaping from being pinned by heavy machinery. Comics historian Les Daniels noted, “Steve Ditko squeezes every ounce of anguish out of Spider-Man’s predicament, complete with visions of the uncle he failed and the aunt he has sworn to save.” Peter David observed, “After his origin, this two-page sequence from Amazing Spider-Man #33 is perhaps the best-loved sequence from the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko era.”  Steve Saffel stated the “full page Ditko image from The Amazing Spider-Man #33 is one of the most powerful ever to appear in the series and influenced writers and artists for many years to come.”  Matthew K. Manning wrote that “Ditko’s illustrations for the first few pages of this Lee story included what would become one of the most iconic scenes in Spider-Man’s history.”  The story was chosen as #15 in the 100 Greatest Marvels of All Time poll of Marvel’s readers in 2001. Editor Robert Greenberger wrote in his introduction to the story, “These first five pages are a modern-day equivalent to Shakespeare as Parker’s soliloquy sets the stage for his next action. And with dramatic pacing and storytelling, Ditko delivers one of the great sequences in all comics.”

More at Marvel

After drawing the final issue of The Incredible Hulk (#6, March 1963), Ditko created the supernatural hero Doctor Strange, in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963). Ditko and Lee shortly thereafter relaunched a Hulk series as a short feature in the anthology Tales to Astonish, beginning with issue #60 (Oct. 1964). Ditko, inked by George Roussos, penciled the feature through #67 (May 1965). Ditko designed the Hulk’s primary antagonist, the Leader, in #62 (Dec. 1964).

Ditko also penciled the Iron Man feature in Tales of Suspense #47–49 (Nov. 1963 – Jan. 1964), with various inkers. The first of these debuted the initial version of Iron Man’s modern red-and-golden armor, though whether Ditko or cover-penciler and principal character designer Jack Kirby designed the costume is uncertain.

Though often overshadowed by his Amazing Spider-Man work, Ditko’s “Doctor Strange” artwork has been equally acclaimed, for its surrealistic mystical landscapes and increasingly psychedelic visuals that helped make the feature a favorite of college students. “People who read ‘Doctor Strange’ thought people at Marvel must be heads [i.e. drug users],” recalled then-associate editor and former Doctor Strange writer Roy Thomas in 1971, “because they had had similar experiences high on mushrooms. But … I don’t use hallucinogens, nor do I think any artists do.”

Eventually Lee & Ditko would take Strange into ever-more-abstract realms. In an epic 17-issue story arc in Strange Tales #130–146 (March 1965 – July 1966), Lee and Ditko introduced the cosmic character Eternity, who personified the universe and was depicted as a silhouette whose outlines are filled with the cosmos. As historian Bradford W. Wright describes,

The cartoonist and fine artist Seth in 2003 described Ditko’s style as “oddball” for mainstream comics. Whereas Kirby’s stuff clearly appealed to a boy’s sensibility because there was so much raw power, Ditko’s work was really delicate and cartoony. There was a sense of design to it. You can always recognize anything that Ditko designed because it’s always flowery. There is a lot of embroidered detail in the art, which is almost psychedelic.”

Whichever feature he drew, Ditko’s idiosyncratic, cleanly detailed, instantly recognizable art style, emphasizing mood and anxiety, found great favor with readers. The character of Spider-Man and his troubled personal life meshed well with Ditko’s own interests, which Lee eventually acknowledged by giving the artist plotting credits on the latter part of their 38-issue run. But after four years on the title, Ditko left Marvel; he and Lee had not been on speaking terms for some time, with art and editorial changes handled through intermediaries. The details of the rift remain uncertain, even to Lee, who confessed in 2003, “I never really knew Steve on a personal level.” Ditko later claimed it was Lee who broke off contact and disputed the long-held belief  that the disagreement was over the true identity of the Green Goblin: “Stan never knew what he was getting in my Spider-Man stories and covers until after [production manager] Sol Brodsky took the material from me … so there couldn’t have been any disagreement or agreement, no exchanges … no problems between us concerning the Green Goblin or anything else from before issue #25 to my final issues”.  Spider-Man successor artist John Romita, in a 2010 deposition, recalled that Lee and Ditko “ended up not being able to work together because they disagreed on almost everything, cultural, social, historically, everything, they disagreed on characters….” 

A friendly farewell was given to Ditko in the “Bullpen Bulletins” of comics cover-dated July 1966, including Fantastic Four #52: “Steve recently told us he was leaving for personal reasons. After all these years, we’re sorry to see him go, and we wish the talented guy success with his future endeavors.”

Regardless, said Lee in 2007, “Quite a few years ago I met him up at the Marvel offices when I was last in New York. And we spoke; he’s a hell of a nice guy and it was very pleasant. … I haven’t heard from him since that meeting.”

Return to Charlton and Days at DC

Back at Charlton—where the page rate was low but creators were allowed greater freedom—Ditko worked on such characters as the Blue Beetle (1967–1968), the Question (1967–1968), and Captain Atom (1965–1967), returning to the character he’d co-created in 1960. In addition, in 1966 and 1967, he drew 16 stories, most of them written by Archie Goodwin, for Warren Publishing’s horror-comic magazines Creepy and Eerie, generally using an ink-wash technique.

In 1967, Ditko gave his Objectivist ideas ultimate expression in the form of Mr. A, published in Wally Wood’s independent title witzend# 3. Ditko’s hard line against criminals was controversial and he continued to produce Mr. A stories and one-pagers until the end of the 1970s. Ditko returned to Mr. A in 2000 and in 2009.

Ditko created a panoply of  DC Comics characters, including: the Creeper; Hawk and Dove; Stalker; the Odd Man; Shade, the Changing Man and another version of Starman.

Ditko moved to DC Comics in 1968, where he co-created the Creeper in Showcase#73 (April 1968) with Don Segall, under editor Murray Boltinoff. DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed that Ditko’s art on the Creeper stories made “them look unlike anything else being published by DC at the time.” Ditko co-created the team Hawk and Dove in Showcase #75 (June 1968), with writer Steve Skeates. Around this time, he penciled the lead story, written and inked by Wally Wood, in Wood’s early mature-audience, independent-comics publication Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon (1969).

Ditko’s stay at DC was short—he would work on all six issues of the Creeper’s own title, Beware the Creeper (June 1968 – April 1969), though leaving midway through the final one—and the reasons for his departure uncertain. But while at DC, Ditko recommended Charlton staffer Dick Giordano to the company, who would go on to become a top DC penciller, inker, editor, and ultimately, in 1981, the managing editor.

From this time up through the mid-1970s, Ditko worked exclusively for Charlton and various small press/independent publishers. Frank McLaughlin, Charlton’s art director during this period, describes Ditko as living “in a local hotel in Derby for a while. He was a very happy-go-lucky guy with a great sense of humor at that time, and always supplied the [female] color separators with candy and other little gifts”

For Charlton in 1974 he did Liberty Belle backup stories in E-Man and conceived Killjoy. Ditko produced much work for Charlton’s science-fiction and horror titles, as well as for former Marvel publisher Martin Goodman’s start-up line Atlas/Seaboard Comics, where he co-created the superhero the Destructor with writer Archie Goodwin, and penciled all four issues of the namesake series (Feb.–Aug. 1975), the first two of which were inked by Wally Wood. Ditko worked on the second and third issues of Tiger-Man and the third issue of Morlock 2001, with Bernie Wrightson inking. (Source: Wikipedia.com)

Steve Ditko was not done. He went to and fro from Marvel to DC and also did work for several independent comics companies from he remainder of his years. There was no slowing down for Ditko until 1998 when he officially retired. But he still did work now and then for many publishers. Several books of his collected stories have been published. Mr. Ditko racked up numerous awards from 1962 all the way up to 2015. He will be missed but his work will remain to inspire and entertain many more generations.

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Monday we were told the sad news of Marvel Comics founding father’s passing. Stan “The Man” Lee died Monday, November 12,  2018 at the age of 95. We posted the news that day, just a plain black background with Stan’s signature, his date of birth and death and the word “Excelsior!” which we borrowed from the TheRealStanLee.com web site. We were so numbed by the news that’s really all we could think to do. But it seemed appropriate. Today, we want to do a bit more. We’ve started with the basic information from Wikipedia, and added our own memories from readings of articles and books about the Marvel Age and Stan Lee and added photos and pieces of art from all over.

Stan Lee • 1922–2018

A cool animated gif we found on the web. We could not find the artist’s name to credit him, but it’s so cool we just had to share it.

Co-Creator of

Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Ant-Man and the Wasp, the Mighty Avengers, Daredevil, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, The X-Men and MORE characters and titles than we have room to list!

Stan and his Marvels!

Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber on December 28, 1922. He passed on November 12, 2018. He was an American comic book writer, editor, publisher and briefly president of Marvel Comics Group, as well as fulfilling some of these roles for other companies. He is best remembered as the writer, co-creator and editor-in-chief presiding over the founding of Marvel Comics,  during the Marvel Age lasting from 1961-1970 and leading to its expansion from a small division of a magazine publishing house to a large multimedia corporation in itself.

Stan Lee working with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and several artists—co-created the fictional Marvel comic book characters: Spider-Man, the Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Black Panther, the X-Men, and—with his brother, co-writer Larry Lieber—the characters Ant-Man, Iron Man, and Thor. He pioneered a more complex approach to writing superheroes in the 1960s, and in the 1970s challenged the standards of the Comics Code Authority, indirectly leading to it updating its policies.

After retiring from Marvel, Stan remained a public figurehead for the company, and frequently made cameo appearances in movies based on Marvel characters. Meanwhile, he continued independent creative ventures into his 90’s until his death in 2018.

Stan Lee was inducted into the comic book industry’s Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2008.

Early Life

Stanley Martin Lieber was born on December 28, 1922, in Manhattan, New York City, in the apartment of his Romanian-born Jewish immigrant parents, Celia (Solomon) and Jack Lieber. His father, trained as a dress cutter, worked only sporadically after the Great Depression. Stan had one younger brother named Larry Lieber. He said in 2006 that as a child he was influenced by books and movies, particularly those with Errol Flynn playing heroic roles.  By the time Stan was in his teens, the family was living in an apartment in The Bronx. Stan described it as “a third-floor apartment facing out back”. Lee and his brother shared the bedroom, while their parents slept on a foldout couch.

Stan attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. In his youth, he enjoyed writing, and entertained dreams of one day writing the “Great American Novel”. Stan said that in his youth he worked such part-time jobs as writing obituaries for a news service and press releases ; delivering sandwiches for the Jack May Pharmacy to offices in Rockefeller Center;  ushering at the Rivoli Theater on Broadway; and selling subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune newspaper. He graduated from high school early, aged 16½ in 1939, and joined the WPA Federal Theatre Project.

Early Comics Career

One of the last series Stan wrote for Marvel was “Stan Lee Meets…”. This one featured Spider-Man. Other “meetings” featured the Thing, the Silver Surfer and Dr. Strange.

Stan Lee became an assistant in 1939 at the new Timely Comics, a division of Martin Goodman’s pulp magazine company, with the help of his uncle Robbie Solomon. Timely, by the 1960s, would evolve into Marvel Comics. Stan Lee, whose cousin Jean was Goodman’s wife, was formally hired by Timely editor Joe Simon.

Stan was not much more than a “go-fer” at first. “In those days the artists dipped the pen in ink, so I had to make sure the inkwells were filled”, Lee recalled in 2009. “I went down and got them their lunch, I did proofreading, I erased the pencils from the finished pages for them”. Marshaling his childhood ambition to be a writer, young Stanley Lieber made his comic-book debut with the text filler “Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge” in Captain America Comics #3 (cover-dated May 1941), using the pseudonym, Stan Lee, which years later he would adopt as his legal name. This initial story also introduced Captain America’s trademark ricocheting shield-toss.

Two issues later, Stan graduated from writing filler to actual comics scrpting with a backup feature, “Headline Hunter, Foreign Correspondent.” Stan’s first superhero co-creation was the Destroyer, in Mystic Comics #6 (August 1941). Other characters he co-created during this era which fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books include Jack Frost, debuting in U.S.A. Comics #1 (August 1941), and Father Time, debuting in Captain America Comics #6 (August 1941).

When Joe Simon and Jack Kirby left in 1941, Martin Goodman promoted Stan, who was only 18 years old, to be the interim editor. Stan showed a knack for the business that led him to remain the comic-book division’s editor-in-chief, as well as art director from that time until 1972. 30 years as interim editor has to be a record! 😉 He remained in that capacity until he succeeded Goodman as publisher.

Stan Lee served in the U.S. Army Signal Corp. His function eventually was a writer of publications.

Stan Lee entered the United States Army in early 1942 as a member of the Signal Corps, repairing telegraph poles and other communications equipment. He was later transferred to the Training Film Division, where he worked writing manuals, training films, slogans, and occasionally cartooning. His military classification, he says, was “playwright”; he adds that only nine men in the U.S. Army were given that title. Vincent Fago, editor of Timely’s “animation comics” section, which put out humor and funny animal comics, filled in until Stan returned from his World War II military service in 1945. Stan was inducted into the Signal Corps Regimental Association and was given honorary membership of the 2nd Battalion of 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord at the 2017 Emerald City Comic Con for his prior service.

In the mid-1950s,  Stan wrote stories in a variety of genres including romance, westerns, humor, science fiction, medieval adventure, horror and suspense. In the 1950s, Lee teamed up with his comic book colleague Dan DeCarlo to produce the syndicated newspaper strip, My Friend Irma, based on the radio comedy starring Marie Wilson. By the end of the decade, Stan had become dissatisfied with his career and considered quitting the field.

The Marvel Revolution

In the late 1950s, DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz revived the superhero archetype and experienced a significant success with its updated version of the Flash, and later with super-team the Justice League of America. In response, publisher Martin Goodman assigned Stan Lee to come up with a new superhero team. Stan’s wife, Joan, suggested that he experiment with stories he preferred, since he was planning on changing careers and had nothing to lose.

Stan Lee and Marvel Cinematic Universe Characters

Stan acted on that advice, giving his superheroes a flawed humanity, a change from the ideal archetypes that were typically written for preteens. Before this, most superheroes were idealistically perfect people with no serious, lasting problems. Stan introduced complex, realistic characters who could have bad tempers, fits of melancholy, and vanity; they bickered amongst themselves, worried about paying their bills and impressing girlfriends, got bored or were even sometimes physically ill.

The first superheroes Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby created together were the Fantastic Four, inspired by the Kirby adventure team, Challengers of the Unknown, Jack did for DC Comics a year or so prior to returning to Marvel. The team’s immediate popularity led Stan and Marvel’s illustrators to produce a cavalcade of new titles. Again working with Jack Kirby, Stan co-created the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, and the X-Men; with Bill Everett, Daredevil; and with Steve Ditko, Doctor Strange and Marvel’s most successful character, Spider-Man, all of whom lived in a thoroughly shared universe. Lee and Kirby gathered several of their newly created characters together into the team titled The Avengers and would revive characters from the 1940s such as the Sub-Mariner and Captain America.

Stan Lee’s Auto-biography: Excelsior

Comics historian Peter Sanderson wrote that in the 1960s:

DC was the equivalent of the big Hollywood studios: After the brilliance of DC’s reinvention of the superhero … in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it had run into a creative drought by the decade’s end. There was a new audience for comics now, and it wasn’t just the little kids that traditionally had read the books. The Marvel of the 1960s was in its own way the counterpart of the French New Wave… Marvel was pioneering new methods of comics storytelling and characterization, addressing more serious themes, and in the process keeping and attracting readers in their teens and beyond. Moreover, among this new generation of readers were people who wanted to write or draw comics themselves, within the new style that Marvel had pioneered, and push the creative envelope still further.

Stan meets the Thing in 2006.

Stan Lee’s revolution extended beyond the characters and storylines to built a sense of community between fans and creators. He introduced the practice of regularly including a credit panel on the splash page of each story, naming not just the writer and penciller but also the inker and letterer. The credits and even the story introductions and sometimes  the narration in the middle of the story spoke directly to the reader with a friendly, chatty style. Stan remarked that his goal was for fans to think of the comics creators as friends. A sign he was succeeding showed up in fan mail they received which began with “Dear Stan and Jack” rather than the customary “Dear Editor.” Letter columns became a focal point of each issue and fans would buy the books and quickly flip to the back to see if their letter made it into he letter sections. The letter pages grew from 1 to as many as 3 pages, some of which were filled with the latest news and goings on of the Marvel Bullpen. The regular news soon found its own page in each issue in addition to the letters page as the Bullpen Bulletins page. Another extension of this friendly policy was Stan’s recorded messages to the newly formed Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club in 1965. The record contained not only Stan’s voice but the voices of most of the Marvel Bullpen artists.

The Stan Lee meets the Thing cover was a homage to the classic FF # 51.

Throughout the 1960s, Stan acted as the head writer, art director and editor in chief for all of Marvel’s new super-hero and adventure titles. He moderated the letters pages, the Bullpen Bulletins pages which included his monthly column called “Stan’s Soapbox”, signing off with his trademark motto, “Excelsior!” (which he borrowed from the New York state motto) and wrote endless promotional copy for ads. Stan would probably never been able to pull this off without adapting a system that was used previously by various comic-book studios. Stan’s version and the success he had with using it, inspired it becoming known as the “The Marvel Method”. Typically, Stan would brainstorm a story with the artist either in his office or on the phone and then prepare a brief synopsis rather than a full script. Based on the synopsis, the artist would fill the allotted number of pages by determining and drawing the panel-to-panel storytelling. After the artist turned in penciled pages, Stan would write the word balloons and captions, and then oversee the lettering and coloring. In effect, the artists were co-plotters, whose collaborative first drafts Stan built upon.

Stan’s greatest innovation would come back to bite its master. Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko gradually became disillusioned with the Marvel Method and wanted credit and more pay for the extra work they were doing which they saw as actually writing the stories. They felt Stan was just filling in the words from their notes in the margins. There was a little more to it than that. Actually, Jack and Steve should have gotten paid more and plotting credit, which was something later artists would receive. But at this time in Marvel’s beginnings it just wasn’t happening. Martin Goodman was the publisher and the guy who signed the paychecks. He looked at the bottom line. He was not concerned with the way the books were produced as long as they produced a profit. He wasn’t going to give any of the artists any more than he had to. Stan has said many times he would have done things different if not for Publisher Goodman’s veto.

Stan Lee and Steve Ditko were great as a creative team on Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. Unfortunately, the two both had their own vision for the characters which eventually lead them in different directions altogether.

Following Steve Ditko’s departure from Marvel in 1966, John Romita Sr. became Stan’s collaborator on The Amazing Spider-Man. Within a year, it overtook Fantastic Four to become the company’s top seller. Lee and Romita’s stories focused as much on the social and college lives of the characters as they did on Spider-Man’s adventures. The stories became more topical, addressing issues such as the Vietnam War, political elections, and student activism. Robbie Robertson, introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #51 (August 1967) was one of the first African-American characters in comics to play a serious supporting role. In the Fantastic Four series, the lengthy run by Lee and Kirby produced many acclaimed storylines as well as characters that have become central to Marvel, including the Inhumans and the Black Panther, an African king who would be mainstream comics’ first black superhero.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s finest achievement was the “Galactus Trilogy” that ran in Fantastic Four #48-50 (March-May 1966). The continued storyline chronicled the arrival of Galactus, a cosmic giant who wanted to consume all the planets natural resources, proceeded by his herald, the Silver Surfer. Fantastic Four #48 was chosen as #24 in the 100 Greatest Marvels of All Time poll of Marvel’s readers in 2001. It seemed to many at the time and looking back years later that after only 4 years of the Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were really just getting started. It was perhaps the pivotal milestone of the Marvel Age. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that “the mystical and metaphysical elements that took over the saga were perfectly suited to the tastes of young readers in the 1960s.” Stan  would soon discover the the story was a favorite on college campuses. Lee and artist John Buscema launched The Silver Surfer series in August 1968.

Stan “The Man” Lee in 1975

The following year, Stan Lee and Gene Colan created the Falcon, comics’ first African-American superhero in Captain America #117 (September 1969). Then in 1971, Stan indirectly helped reform the Comics Code. The U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare had asked Stan to write a comic-book story about the dangers of drugs and Stan conceived a three-issue subplot in The Amazing Spider-Man #96–98 (cover-dated May–July 1971), in which Peter Parker’s best friend becomes addicted to prescription drugs. The Comics Code Authority refused to grant its seal because the stories depicted drug use. The anti-drug context was considered irrelevant. With Goodman’s cooperation and confident that the original government request would give him credibility, Stan had the story published without the Comics Code seal. The comics sold well and Marvel won praise for its socially conscious efforts. The CCA subsequently loosened the Code to permit negative depictions of drugs, among other new freedoms.

Stan also supported using comic books to provide some measure of social commentary about the real world, often dealing with racism and bigotry.  “Stan’s Soapbox”, besides promoting an upcoming comic book project, also addressed issues of discrimination, intolerance, or prejudice.

In 1972, Stan stopped writing monthly comic books to assume the role of publisher. His final issue of The Amazing Spider-Man was #110 (July 1972) and his last Fantastic Four was #125 (August 1972).

Stan Lee Presents:

In the 1970’s Stan the Writer / Editor In Chief became Stan the Publisher.

In later years, Stan became a figurehead and public face for Marvel Comics. He made appearances at comic book conventions around America, lecturing at colleges and participating in panel discussions. Stan Lee and John Romita Sr. launched the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip on January 3, 1977. Stan’s final collaboration with Jack Kirby, The Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience, was published in 1978 as part of the Marvel Fireside Books series and is considered to be Marvel’s first graphic novel. Stan Lee and John Buscema produced the first issue of The Savage She-Hulk (February 1980), which introduced the female cousin of the Hulk and crafted a Silver Surfer story for Epic Illustrated #1 (Spring 1980).

Stan moved to California in 1981 to develop Marvel’s TV and movie properties. He was an executive producer for, and made cameo appearances in Marvel film adaptations and other movies. He occasionally returned to comic book writing with various Silver Surfer projects including a 1982 one-shot drawn by John Byrne, the Judgment Day graphic novel illustrated by John Buscema, the Parable limited series drawn by French artist Mœbius, and The Enslavers graphic novel with Keith Pollard. Stan was briefly president of the entire company, but soon stepped down to become publisher instead, finding that being president was too much about numbers and finance and not enough about the creative process he enjoyed.

Stan Lee’s The Traveler

Peter Paul and Stan Lee began a new Internet-based superhero creation, production, and marketing studio, Stan Lee Media, in 1998. It grew to 165 people and went public through a reverse merger structured by investment banker Stan Medley in 1999, but, near the end of 2000, investigators discovered illegal stock manipulation by Peter Paul and corporate officer Stephan Gordon. Stan Lee Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February 2001. Peter Paul was extradited to the U.S. from Brazil and pleaded guilty to violating SEC Rule 10b-5 in connection with trading of his stock in Stan Lee Media. Stan was never implicated in the scheme. In 2001, Stan Lee, Gill Champion, and Arthur Lieberman formed POW! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment to develop film, television and video game properties. Stan announced a superhero program that would feature Ringo Starr, the former Beatle, as the lead character. Additionally, in August of that year, Stan announced the launch of Stan Lee’s Sunday Comics, a short-lived subscription service hosted by Komikwerks.com. From July 2006 until September 2007 Stan hosted, co-created, executive-produced, and judged the reality television game show competition Who Wants to Be a Superhero? on the Sci-Fi Channel. On March 15, 2007, after Stan Lee Media had been purchased by Jim Nesfield, the company filed a lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment for $5 billion, claiming Stan had given his rights to several Marvel characters to Stan Lee Media in exchange for stock and a salary. On June 9, 2007, Stan Lee Media sued Stan Lee; his newer company, POW! Entertainment; and POW! subsidiary QED Entertainment.

In 2008, Stan wrote humorous captions for the political fumetti book Stan Lee Presents Election Daze: What Are They Really Saying? In April of that year, Brighton Partners and Rainmaker Animation announced a partnership POW! to produce a CGI film series, Legion of 5. Other projects by Stan announced in the late 2000s included a line of superhero comics for Virgin Comics, a TV adaptation of the novel Hero, a foreword to Skyscraperman by skyscraper fire-safety advocate and Spider-Man fan Dan Goodwin,  a partnership with Guardian Media Entertainment and The Guardian Project to create NHL superhero mascots and work with the Eagle Initiative program to find new talent in the comic book field.

Stan promoted Stan Lee’s Kids Universe at the 2011 New York Comic Con. In October 2011, Stan announced he would partner with 1821 Comics on a multimedia imprint for children, Stan Lee’s Kids Universe, a move he said addressed the lack of comic books targeted for that demographic; and that he was collaborating with the company on its futuristic graphic novel Romeo & Juliet: The War, by writer Max Work and artist Skan Srisuwan. At the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International, Stan announced his YouTube channel, Stan Lee’s World of Heroes, which airs programs created by Stan, Mark Hamill, Peter David, Adrianne Curry and Bonnie Burton, among others. Stan wrote the book Zodiac, released in January 2015, with Stuart Moore. The film Stan Lee’s Annihilator, based on a Chinese prisoner-turned-superhero named Ming and in production since 2013, was released in 2015.

Stan Lee Re-imagined Batman with Joe Kubert.

In his later career, Stan’s contributions continued to expand outside the style that he helped pioneer. An example of this is his first work for DC Comics in the 2000s, launching the Just Imagine… series, in which Lee re-imagined the DC superheroes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. Manga projects involving Stan include Karakuri Dôji Ultimo, a collaboration with Hiroyuki Takei, Viz Media and Shueisha, and Heroman, serialized in Square Enix’s Monthly Sh’nen Gangan with the Japanese company Bones. In 2011, Stan started writing a live-action musical, The Yin and Yang Battle of Tao.

This period also saw a number of collaborators honor Stan Lee for his influence on the comics industry. In 2006, Marvel commemorated Stan’s 65 years with the company by publishing a series of one-shot comics starring Stan himself meeting and interacting with many of his co-creations, including Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, the Thing, Silver Surfer, and Doctor Doom. These comics also featured short pieces by such comics creators as Joss Whedon and Fred Hembeck, as well as reprints of classic Stan Lee-written adventures. At the 2007 Comic-Con International, Marvel Legends introduced a Stan Lee action figure. The body beneath the figure’s removable cloth wardrobe is a re-used mold of a previously released Spider-Man action figure, with minor changes. Comikaze Expo, Los Angeles’ largest comic book convention, was rebranded as Stan Lee’s Comikaze Presented by POW! Entertainment in 2012.

At the 2016 Comic-Con International, Stan introduced his digital graphic novel Stan Lee’s God Woke, with text originally written as a poem he presented at Carnegie Hall in 1972. The print-book version won the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Outstanding Books of the Year Independent Voice Award.

Cameos

Stan Lee received the National Medal of Arts in 2008 from President George W. Bush.

Stan Lee and his collaborator Jack Kirby appear as themselves in The Fantastic Four #10 (January 1963), the first of several appearances within the fictional Marvel Universe. The two are depicted as similar to their real-world counterparts, creating comic books based on the “real” adventures of the Fantastic Four.

Stan was parodied by Jack in comics published by rival DC Comics as Funky Flashman. Jack later portrayed himself, Stan, production executive Sol Brodsky, and Flo Steinberg as superheroes in What If #11 (October 1978), “What If the Marvel Bullpen Had Become the Fantastic Four?”, in which Stan played the part of Mister Fantastic. Stan also made numerous cameo appearances in many Marvel titles, appearing in audiences and crowds at many characters’ ceremonies and parties, and hosting an old-soldiers reunion in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #100 (July 1972). Stan appeared, unnamed, as the priest at Luke Cage and Jessica Jones‘ wedding in New Avengers Annual #1 (June 2006). He pays his respects to Karen Page at her funeral in Daredevil vol. 2, #8 (June 1998), and appears in The Amazing Spider-Man #169 (June 1977).

In 1994, artist Alex Ross rendered Stan Lee as a bar patron on page 44 of Marvels #3.

Stan Lee’s How To Draw SuperHeroes!

In Marvel’s “Flashback” series of titles cover-dated July 1997, a top-hatted caricature of Stan as a ringmaster introduced stories that detailed events in Marvel characters’ lives before they became superheroes, in special “-1” editions of many Marvel titles. The “ringmaster” depiction of Stan was originally from Generation X #17 (July 1996), where the character narrated a story set primarily in an abandoned circus. Though the story itself was written by Scott Lobdell, the narration by “Ringmaster Stan” was written by Stan, and the character was drawn in that issue by Chris Bachalo.

Stan and other comics creators are mentioned on page 479 of Michael Chabon’s 2000 novel about the comics industry The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Chabon also acknowledges a debt to Stan and other creators on the book’s Author’s Note page.

On one of the last pages of Truth: Red, White & Black, Stan appears in a real photograph among other celebrities on a wall of the Bradley home.  Under his given name of Stanley Lieber, Stan Lee appears briefly in Paul Malmont’s 2006 novel The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril.

In Stan Lee Meets Superheroes, which Lee wrote, he comes into contact with some of his favorite creations. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby appear as professors in Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #19.

Stan Lee’s Mighty 7!

In Lavie Tidhar’s 2013 The Violent Century, Stan appears – under his birth name of “Stanley Martin Lieber” – as a historian of superhumans.

There were many more projects Stan had a hand in. Some were successful while others were not. We mentioned mostly the best. Stan Lee was never at a  loss for ideas. A few he had he may well have preferred they be lost after less than favorable receptions, but those were the rare exceptions. Of course, as we wrote in the opening paragraphs of this tribute, when it’s all said and done, what Stan Lee will be remembered for was The Marvel Age of Comics from 1961 through 1970 which laid the foundation for the Marvel Universe and the multimillion dollar enterprises which were born out of it. It’s hard to imagine how the world would have been if Stan Lee and the Marvel Bullpen had never been. It would have certainly been a lot less entertaining.