As I was looking over the first volume of Atlas Era Masterworks, I noticed something Odd about the Tales to Astonish logo.
There is an exclamation point at the end of the title on the first eleven issues of Tales to Astonish!
This had never attracted my attention before, as I'd never seen any of the first 36 or so issues.
I had noticed that the logo had not changed any until aproximately issue 60 and the appearance of the Hulk in the masthead.
And then I noticed something else that was odd. There's a chunk missing out of the "O" in Astonish...
just the same way that is' missing out of the "O" in the Thor masthead. Over in Thor, we had discussed why it's there in the letterspages, and some hack quipped that they just thought Jack Kirby had gotten hungry sitting at his drawing board. But it was never answered.
Obviously, when the Hulk started appearing in half of the book, he got half masthead billing...and when the Sub-Mariner started in #70, he got the other half billing.
But do you know how long it took before the Tales to Astonish small lettering changed locations in the title? Strangely enough, the final three issues, #99, 100 and 101 have the small lettering moved to over the top of the character's names.
Considering that Marvel knew at that point that the book was about to be split apart, it's curious to me that they did that. I skimmed through www.comics.org and saw they were very good about flipping the lead billing back and forth, depending on who was on the cover that month, but of course, all good things come to an end.
Amazing what astonishing things you can learn from the Masterworks series....
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Angel and the Ape abruptly dumped the Ape from the title and logo, opting to focus in its final issue on the female lead (although the Ape still figured into the storylines). That's not the odd part, though. If you check the masthead, you'll see that the official title of the new comic is "MEET ANGEL" which includes the quotation marks. I've never seen any other comic book whose official title included the quotation marks. You don't see the quotation marks on the front cover, but they're there in the small print in the indicia. Definitely oddball.
I'm sure that there are better examples but since I just flipped through these. COMBAT KELLY #1 had "Combat Kelly" in smaller font than "The Deadly Dozen."
But by #5, "Combat Kelly" was much bigger and they went from "THE Deadly Dozen" to "HIS Deadly Dozen".
BTW, this was ONE depressing series, even for a war title!
"Battle Action, the way you like it...."
It's funny cause I remember "Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders"...which seemed to be a naval version of Sgt. Fury and the Howlers.
I thought of another odd one. The Kree Captain Mar-Vel shows up in Marvel Superheroes #12 & 13. Then he goes off to his own solo title, "Marvel's Space Born Hero...Captain Marvel". The title remains this way for six issues, and then suddenly is changed with issue #7 to "Captain Marvel". The CGD lists the series that way, as two separate entries.
(Issue #7 is also notable for one other amazing, supendous achievement...and I'm not talking in the art or writing department of a thoroughly forgetable story with Quassimoto and robots... It's printed in the letter's pages!)
In addition to the exclamation mark going away, the Astonish logo was redrawn with issue 12 to make the ends of the letters ragged. I assumed this was intended to kinda-sorta evoke the feeling that it was painted with a brush (the missing chunk of the 'O' representing where the brush stroke doesn't meet up cleanly). Same holds true with the Thor logo.
Speaking of Thor and logos, the cover of #337 showed Beta Ray Bill shattering the Thor logo, but I didn't fully appreciate the gag for years: The shattered logo wasn't just a design choice for that cover; it actually cleared the deck for a new logo which debuted on the issue that followed. (Thor similarly dispensed with the 'Jack Kirby Collector' logo on the 36th cover of that magazine.)
The same stunt was done with the Teen Titans, with Captain Rumble breaking up the logo on issue #15, though a new permanent logo didn't arrive until issue #19.
Ah yes, I remember the impact of Thor #337 very much. Everyone was caught off-guard by how GOOD the storyline was suddenly. Nobody could find a copy after the word spread.
I understand that Neal Adams had wanted to do the same thing with the X-men logo when he started on the book, and in fact had designed a logo/title with the individual X-men chained to the block letters (al la Christ crucified, but someone in management objected, so he redesigned the cover and it became the Living Pharaoh clutching the logo instead. That one saw print. The original exists and is reprinted in the appropriate X-men Masterworks volume back-up materials.
PS: I've noticed that most silver age Marvel titles are done in distinctive fonts or designs, but it's not unusal for two mags to share the same type face or font. Example: Fantastic Four and Amazing Adult Fantasy
Kirk G said:
I understand that Neal Adams had wanted to do the same thing with the X-men logo when he started on the book, and in fact had designed a logo/title with the individual X-men chained to the block letters (al la Christ crucified, but someone in management objected, so he redesigned the cover and it became the Living Pharaoh clutching the logo instead. That one saw print. The original exists and is reprinted in the appropriate X-men Masterworks volume back-up materials.
For those that don't have the Masterworks, the original Adams cover you describe can be seen at this site:
http://www.povonline.com/Alternatecovers.htm
The "Combat Kelly" part of the name of the above title was recycled from a 1950s Korean War-themed title. It started during the war and continued after it, and was one of Marvel's longest-running titles of the period