Ok, how about this for an idea. We take it in turns to post a favourite (British spelling) comic cover every day. This went really well on the comic fan website that I used to frequent. What we tried to do was find a theme or subject and follow that, until we all got bored with that theme. I'd like to propose a theme of letters of the alphabet. So, for the remainder of October (only 5 days) and all of November, we post comic cover pictures associated with the letter "A". Then in December, we post covers pertaining to the letter "B". The association to the letter can be as tenuous as you want it to be. For example I could post a cover from "Adventure Comics" or "Amazing Spider Man". However Spider Man covers can also be posted when we're on the letter "S". Adventure Comic covers could also be posted when we're on the letter "L" if they depict the Legion of Super Heroes. So, no real hard, fast rules - in fact the cleverer the interpretation of the letter, the better, as far as I'm concerned.
And it's not written in stone that we have to post a cover every day. There may be some days when no cover gets posted. There's nothing wrong with this, it just demonstrates that we all have lives to lead.
If everyone's in agreement I'd like to kick this off with one of my favourite Action Comic covers, from January 1967. Curt Swan really excelled himself here.
Discussion and voting on future monthly themes takes place on the "Nominations, Themes and Statistics for A Cover A Day" thread. Click here to view the thread.
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This was my first Hulk experience. Interestingly, his appearance in Fantastic Four 12 went on sale three weeks before Hulk 6, the last issue of his original run.
After this, Stan kept spotlighting him. He was featured in Avengers 1, 2 and 3. Next, he was featured in Fantastic Four 25 and 26. Then Spider-Man 14. Then Marvel Tales Annual #1, which reprinted his origin story along with everyone else’s except the FF and the X-Men. Lastly, he battled Giant-Man in Tales to Astonish 59. In Tales to Astonish 60, Hulk finally had his own feature again, inaugurating the “split book” format, which was closely followed by Strange Tales and Tales of Suspense, thereby dumping Marvel’s non-super “suspense” stories. This enabled Marvel to do its best within DC’s restrictive distribution system, which was one of the reasons that the original Hulk series was cancelled.
Hulk's appearances between the cancellation of his title and the beginning of his new series in Tales to Astonish supports Stan Lee's version of the era. (I love Stan Lee, but he's not the most reliable narrator.) He says Martin Goodman canceled Incredible Hulk not because its sales were poor (which is objectively true), but because Goodman's gut told him that monsters as a fad were on the way out, and Westerns were due for a revival (Goodman replaced Incredible Hulk with a Western title, Two-Gun Kid I think). When Lee wrote Hulk into Fantastic Four #12, he would have already known that Incredible Hulk was canceled, so it's the beginning of a pattern where he wrote the Hulk into every Marvel book as a guest-star where he could.
One obvious book was Avengers, which combined every existing Marvel existing character, except Spider-Man and the membes of the Fantastic Four.
(Lee has said repeatedly that he thought at the time that Spider-Man worked best as an alienated teen who shouldn't be accepted by other superheroes, like the Avengers. Avengers #11 and Avengers Annual #3, where Lee ahd the opportunity to add Spider-Man to the team but went out of his way to avoid it, seems to support his assertion. The Fantastic Four didn't need exposure in other books, as it was Marvel's best-seller, and the expected breakout star, Human Torch, already had a feature in Strange Tales. Doctor Strange debuted a few months before Avengers #1, and The X-Men #1 debuted the same month, too late to be included. Daredevil #1 was 1964.)
So naturally the Hulk was included in Avengers #1, along with the other unaffiliated characters. But Lee made him an antagonist to the others in the first two issues as a member of the team, and again in the third issue after quitting the team. Like Spider-Man, Lee seemed to think that Hulk didn't really work in a team framework, and wrote him right out.
He obviously meant for the character to have his own series, and finally found a home for him in Tales to Astonish. Hulk fought Giant-Man (the current star) in issue #59, and then got his own series in #60. Lee repeated this approach the next month in Tales of Suspense, where Captain America fought Iron Man in issue #58, then got his own series in #59. That eliminated the last outlet for short "suspense" stories, as Strange Tales was already featuring Human Torch/Doctor Strange stories, and Journey Into Mystery was running Thor/Tales of Asgard stories. Giant-Man would be replaced by Sub-Mariner, and Human Torch would be replaced by Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., yielding what I consider the Golden Age of Marvel split books, But the advent of the Captain America strip meant there was no home for the short suspense stories that had been Marvel's bread and butter in the late '50s. Superheroes were in, monsters were out. So Goodman was right about one thing, anyway.
In a way, this mirrors what Roy Thomas did later when The X-Men was canceled*. The X-Men and its villains starting to appear everywhere after The X-Men #66 (1970), from Fantastic Four (Magneto) to Avengers (Sentinels) to Marvel Team-Up (X-Men and Iceman) to Incredible Hulk (Havok and Polaris, Mimic, Vera) to Captain America (everybody) to Astonishing Tales (Beast solo series) until the title was eventually revived in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975). Marvel includes those stories in its X-Men omnibus line, and I wish they'd do the same for Hulk.
* Yes, I'm aware it continued as a reprint title.
I am reminded of one particular Dave Berg "Lighter Side" strip from Mad magazine. In it, a boy is putting together a plastic model kit when an adult walks by and comments how, when he was a kid, they had to buy a set of plans and a block of balsa and first cut an shape all the pieces before putting them together, then fashion the sides from paper and dope. Then the kid says,"I guess now you're going to tell me that those were 'the good ol' days,' and the man responds, "Hell, no! These are the good ol' days!"
When I was a kid, it took me months (if not years) to assemble the "interim" Hulk appearances (as I called them), most of them reprints. Today's collectors have all that work done for them in Marvel's "Man or Monster?" Epic Collection, which collects, in release order: Fantastic Four #12, 25-26, Avengers #1-3 & 5, Spider-Man #14, Tales to Astonish #59, and Journey Into Mystery #112 as well as Hulk #1-6. Hell, this is the Golden Age of Comics!
So they have been collected in order! That's awesome!
I almost mentioned this Epic Collection book. Everything before the Hulk's Tales to Astonish ongoing series!
So that is why Hulk turned up in the first Green Goblin story (Amazing Spider-Man #14), just a couple of months before Tales to Astonish #59.
IIRC, Incredible Hulk was replaced by Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos. That's why Steve Ditko drew Hulk #6 so Jack Kirby could work on Fury.
It was Amazing Fantasy that got cancelled for Two-Gun Kid. Imagine a world where we saw Two-Gun Kid; No Way Home!
This matches what I've heard before. Issues 1, 2 and 8 of Amazing Spider-Man have shorter stories that IMO were originally intended for Amazing Fantasy to allow for the suspense* backups.
* They were actually "Steve Ditko's Twilight Zone"
Archie And Me #33 Feb 1970
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