Forty Years ago this Month

[dan bailey]

I rarely buy comics just because I love the cover, especially when I've already got the stories inside (courtesy, in this case, of Essential Sub-Mariner), but a few months ago I made an exception for this one --



Everett at his best, IMHO.

[Cei-U!]

I've heard it said that Marvel planned to have their books at 25 cents beginning with this month as well but changed their minds and dropped down to the 20 cent price point in order to undercut DC, something they apparently did with great success. I'm not sure if this is true or not, though; the double-sized issues seem more like they were intended for one month only to celebrate the anniversary. Can anyone clarify?

It is true. If you look at many of the next two months' follow-up issues--Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk and Iron Man are the first to come to mind--it's obvious the stories were intended for a single 25-cent issue, necessitating assorted back-up features to fill out the second issues. Other titles, however, seem to have had long enough lead times to avoid this, though clearly the plots were conceived with the larger format in mind.

Either way, I love the frame cover design and the 20 cent font Marvel started using the following month, while the 25 cent era at DC is also one of my favorite designs of all time. So this batch of months, starting with August, 1971, is about the pinnacle for me in terms of cool cover design.

The artists, on the other hand, absolutely hated the frame design and badgered Roy Thomas mercilessly until he got rid of it... or so I've heard. I dont blame them. I think those covers look like crap (though the actual art was usually good).

Cei-U!
I summon the contrarian view!

[dan bailey]

The artists, on the other hand, absolutely hated the frame design and badgered Roy Thomas mercilessly until he got rid of it... or so I've heard. I dont blame them. I think those covers look like crap (though the actual art was usually good).

Cei-U!
I summon the contrarian view!

From what I've gathered, Kurt's viewpoint here is the opposite of contrarian, in that most mentions I've seen of this format have been extremely negative.

[InfoBroker]

Re: twice the pages, twice the thrills at Marvel

Read the Bullpen Bulletins for the months prior to Marvel's tenth anniversary celebration. Several titles got a headstart at the new size and price (Conan and Astonishing Tales come to mind immediately).

The near over night decision by Martin Goodman to shuffle back to 20 cent and 36 pages instead of 52 caused all kinds of problems with schedules and covers. Lots of contents shuffled, moved, rebranded (Dr. Doom pages by Colan and Everett reworked into Sub-mariner continuity for example).

Read the Bullpen pages afterwards as well. Some titles stayed on at 52 pages (Marvel Spotlight, Marvel Feature) and Dracula is mentioned as being a 52 pager as well as Marvel Premiere (Warlock), but by the time of their release in November and December of 1971, they were repackaged into 36 pagers for 20 cents. But they did drop several ad pages to get the extra pages to fit.

The page jump was not just to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first issue of the FF. The goal was to lift the page count, so they could increase the cover price and make the profit points compete with the other higher priced newstand magazines of the time.

-jb the "wishes they has stayed 52 pages" ib -

[Drusilla lives!]

Seems interesting to note that there was a heck of a lot of reprinted material being put out at this time by both Marvel and DC.

That war for newsstand space between the two was clearly in full swing. Kinda makes me feel now that the comic fans of the day were indeed just pawns in it all.

[MDG]

The artists, on the other hand, absolutely hated the frame design and badgered Roy Thomas mercilessly until he got rid of it... or so I've heard. I dont blame them. I think those covers look like crap (though the actual art was usually good).

Comic cover design's always been a struggle between serving capital 'A' Art and making the books stand out/easy to find on the stands. I'm sure at this point, as they were starting to overtake DC, they wanted even more to portray a house style that might lead readers to now books.

Always surprised how later ECs (the New Directions) cut down the space for the art.

Hate that Daredevil logo though--always have.

[keilthetarheel]

That war for newsstand space between the two was clearly in full swing. Kinda makes me feel now that the comic fans of the day were indeed just pawns in it all.

I don't know, there were plenty of Archie comics and kids comics like the Beagle Boys and Casper right on the newsstands and spinner racks back then

[Rob Allen]

At this point I'd been back into comics for maybe six months after a hiatus of almost two years. I was still a Marvel zombie; didn't buy a DC or Charlton for another few months - and then only because I recognized Kirby and Ditko artwork. I also had an inexplicable aversion to the bigger, more expensive "specials" and "annuals", so I don't have any of those. I didn't start buying the Marvel monster reprint books until later also; at the time I thought the only good stuff from the 50s was pre-code; these post-code stories seemed watered-down by comparison.

As others have said, this was a great period to be a comics fan. The Marvel books from their 25-cent month are some of my favorites ever.

[Drusilla lives!]

Well, as far as what I see on Mike's site for that month it looks pretty odd... lets see... right off the bat, most of those Marvel annuals (all five of them) consisted of reprints in whole or part. Then the monster books (all three), all reprint material there... and those five (!!!) western comics, I'll bet they consist of reprint material as well.

Then DC had what looks like at least four or five titles that consisted of old material. And what about Gold Key? At some point Boris Karloff and the other titles went "reprint" as well.

[CaptCleghorn]

Seems interesting to note that there was a heck of a lot of reprinted material being put out at this time by both Marvel and DC.

That war for newsstand space between the two was clearly in full swing. Kinda makes me feel now that the comic fans of the day were indeed just pawns in it all.

Back even before this month, there was a small store owner in my hometown who only carried 25 cent comics. That really puzzled me and I actually asked the owner why he didn't have all the other books the other stores carried. He answered me matter of factly, that the quarter books brought more profit and paid more money per space on his shelf.

It felt kind of nice to get a serious "grown-up" answer to a comic book question, even if the guy did have a neighborhood rep for pinching pennies so hard he made Lincoln cry. But, he was looking at his bottom line and had an understanding of how his business worked.

[prince hal]

Seems interesting to note that there was a heck of a lot of reprinted material being put out at this time by both Marvel and DC.

That war for newsstand space between the two was clearly in full swing. Kinda makes me feel now that the comic fans of the day were indeed just pawns in it all.

If we were pawns then, I didn't mind, because I loved getting all that old stuff for waht was then still a bargain.

[The Darknight Detective]

If we were pawns then, I didn't mind, because I loved getting all that old stuff for waht was then still a bargain.

Same here.

The biggest treat for me was reading a story my father had also read as a kid. He got a kick out of seeing them again all those years later.

[MWGallaher]

Wasn't there some kind of legal consequence of Marvel's price hike/price reduction? Seems I recall something where they had to make some kind of legal restitution and apology in the Bullpen Bulletins about that...

[Drusilla lives!]

If we were pawns then, I didn't mind, because I loved getting all that old stuff for waht was then still a bargain.

Same here.

The biggest treat for me was reading a story my father had also read as a kid. He got a kick out of seeing them again all those years later.

Hey, who am I to talk... I have a few of those reprint issues myself.

But I do find it odd nevertheless, there's really less new material being published at that time then I had ever realized before. What were they doing to keep the comic book medium fresh and vibrant? Where was all the new talent? Heck, never mind the new talent, what about the old talent? One more reprint book was (IMO) one less new book that somebody might have been penciling, inking, etc.

[Scott Harris]

From what I've gathered, Kurt's viewpoint here is the opposite of contrarian, in that most mentions I've seen of this format have been extremely negative.

Oh, yeah, I am definitely in the minority when it comes to this cover design. But as a fan of covers with strong design element -- as opposed this, say, the current tendency at Marvel to just have a logo and the image without any graphic design work at all -- I still think the frames are great.

And while I understand why some artists hated it, for me the frames enhance the artwork rather the detract from it. First of all, it pushes most of the text off of the image itself and down into the bottom edge of the frame. Obviously, this isn't true across the board, especially when it comes to word balloons, but for the most part it cleans up the image by providing space specifically for the text hype.

Secondly and most obviously, it provides an actual frame for the image, which I find pleasing -- though, of course, the effectiveness of this does depend somewhat on the choice of colors for the frame, which can in some cases cause the graphic design elements to become the most obvious element of the cover, either positively or negatively. Again, though, framing the art is just pleasing to the eye, which I suspect is a primary reason why most art is framed.

Thirdly, for me, most of the room used by the frame is useless or dead space on a cover anyway. I mean, what exactly is an artist going to draw behind the logo or under the text that is going to significantly add to a cover? Those parts of the covers are usually designed to be useless anyway, because the artist knows that they are going to be pasted over. So for me, this separation enhances the cover by uncluttering it visually -- the logo and words are crisp and likewise, while the image is smaller, usually we get to see the whole thing.

Lastly, artists that use the frame well -- and part of my love of the frames may be due to the fact that Gil Kane was essentially Marvel's house cover artists during this era and he was great at this -- can enhance the impact of the cover. I'm specifically thinking of Kane's habit of having the central figure break outside the frame, which gives the figure a unique 3-D quality, as though he's flying right off the cover. It really pops in a way that the images wouldn't if the frames weren't there to provide the contrast. Kane did a lot of this on Daredevil and Iron Man, with covers like these:






Or, interestingly, on this great cover, where the moon breaks the frame, becoming a major design element in the process (also echoing and balancing the white circle behind the mini-DD on the other side of the cover:




I'm just a big fan of strong design on my comic covers. Compare this era to, say, the last half of the 70's, where it was pretty much just the MCG strip across the top and that was it, with the rest available for artists, and I think you'll see what I mean because that era produced some of the most boring, lifeless and unimaginative covers of all time. They just sit there. The frames, on the other hand, jump out.

Anyway, that's my two cents. As I said, I also consider the DC design from the same era (carrying through the beginning of the 20 cent era) to be their best design period as well, so suffice it to say that 1971-72 is pretty much top of the line in cover design as far as I am concerned.