Four Colour Yesteryears: By Crom! The Glory Years Of The Savage Sword Of Conan, Part III

In Four-Colour Yesteryears we delve back into the past to look at the periods, events and creators that helped shape the medium.

Rob N: By the time Savage Sword Of Conan had reached double figures it had firmly established itself as one of the best comics of the Bronze Age. It was obvious that a lot of effort was being put into the magazine, but this of course raised the question: how long could it continue that way? The detail in Alcala’s inking alone suggested the poor man must have been manacled to a drawing board sixteen hours a day, with a Stygian Slave Master beating him if his ink pen hesitated for a moment. Virtually every issue had something special worth recommending. 'Iron Shadows In The Moon' was another Buscema/Alcala masterpiece in issue #4, while Neal Adams (at that point in time an artist who could do no wrong as far as comic fans were concerned) contributed first class art to #14’s adaptation of 'Shadows In Zamboula' (which begins with a wary Conan spending a night in a traveller’s lodge in a desert shanty town where the bedrooms are designed to offer up the sleeping guests to a tribe of cannibals with filed teeth who live in the ruins nearby. Decades later this sort of story would become a staple of modern horror, which again goes to show how ahead of his time Howard really was, writing this kind of tale in the early 1930s), but it was issues #16 to #19 that really set the high watermark in the title’s history. Readers were treated to not one but two of the greatest serials ever to feature in a swords and sorcery title. Buscema and Alcala collaborated together again on one of Howard’s greatest stories, 'People Of The Black Circle', a tale set in the Hyborian Age equivalent of Afghanistan during a time when Conan was a hill chieftain commanding a tribe of cutthroats. Featuring one of Howard’s more plucky heroines – the Devi Yasmina – 'People Of The Black Circle' treads the careful line between historical style realism and flights of imaginative fantasy that sets the author’s finest work head and shoulders above that of his subsequent imitators.

Meanwhile, picking up a handful of pages that Barry Smith had finished just before he walked out on Marvel, young up and coming artist, Tim Conrad, completed an adaptation of my all time favourite Robert E Howard story, 'Worms Of The Earth', and effectively cranked the art up to ‘11’, something avid readers of Savage Sword, already spoilt by the gorgeous full page spreads of Buscema/Alcala, didn’t think was possible. In it purest black and white form, the art on 'Worms' is somehow subtle and epic at the same time. The double page spread of a spear armed Bran mounted on his horse, gazing over a cold wet marshland as geese take flight in the distance almost carries the sound of the wind with it. Sadly, the recent Dark Horse reprint was a digitally coloured version which looks garish in comparison with the original. Set during the Roman occupation of Britain, 'Worms' is one of Howard’s finest Lovecraftian tales and it manages to evoke the same sense of cold dread, chilling atmosphere and bleak horror as ancient Dark Age tales such as 'Beowulf'. In setting himself up to combat the might of Rome, Pictish chieftain Bran Mak Morn makes a pact with an ancient race that fought his own thousands of years ago, before being driven into bowels of the earth to devolve into something much less than human. Those of you who have seen Neil Marshall’s 2005 horror film, The Descent, will have some idea of the forces Bran carelessly seeks out in the dark caves beneath the wet, windswept moors, hoping to use them against his enemies, despite the warning: “there are weapons too foul to use, even against Rome.”

But by now the black and white range of titles was contracting. The horror titles in particular were suffering as Marvel cancelled Dracula Lives, Tales Of The Zombie, and Vampire Tales in quick succession. The popularity of Conan had prompted Marvel to release a second Howard inspired title, Kull And The Barbarians, but sales had not been kind and like the horror titles it faced the chop after just a few issues. Even Savage Tales, where the black and white ‘Codeless’ Conan experiment had first began, ran out of publishing steam soon after it hit double figures. Savage Sword however seemed immune to the ebbing tide. Conan remained popular, but with the black and white magazine line dying around it, some of the spark faded in time. It would be untrue to suggest that after, say, issue #20 Savage Sword lost its way, but there was a slow and noticeable decline setting in. No longer was it a case that every issue was a stand out purchase worthy of high praise. Good stories still lay on the horizon, but the very best were now in the past. Part of the problem lay in the exhaustion of the source material. Roy Thomas had burned his way through the very best Howard stories in a brief few years, gorging himself like a kid allowed to run free in a chocolate factory. More and more he had to now cannibalise non-Conan tales, or adapt Conan stories written by authors such as Andrew J Offutt, Karl Edward Wagner and L Sprague De Camp, none of whom really captured the savagery of Howard’s original prose. The problem was, in using up the original Howard tales, Savage Sword was no longer, well… savage. In addition, without the family line of other black and white titles around it, Savage Sword was no longer part of an imprint that warranted a separate editorial team and earmarked budget. Now it was just an odd size Marvel title that had to compete for resources with the code approved colour comics. Savage Sword would continue to present great stories for many years to come, but the intervals between them appearing grew longer as the decade drew to a close. Eventually Savage Sword would rack up an impressive run of 235 issues, only calling it a day and hanging up its broadsword in July 1995. But by then Roy Thomas, the driving force behind Marvel’s Conan, was a distant memory. He left after issue #60, and that point is considered by many the date at which Savage Sword was past its prime.

Dark Horse has since acquired the official Howard licence (though all of Howard’s stories published in his lifetime are now out of copyright in the public domain, at least so far as English law is concerned) and is pursuing a reprint policy for the material that first appeared in Savage Sword Of Conan. Unfortunately it is reprinting the material based on subject matter, so the Conan tales appear in one set of volumes, the Solomon Kane tales in another, and the Kull tales in yet another, while 'Worms Of The Earth' has been digitally coloured (for which read vandalized) in the pages of their recent anthology title, called Robert R. Howard's Savage Sword. As Dynamite own the rights to Red Sonja (since she’s not technically a Howard character, she’s not covered by the same licence) any Sonja tales that appeared in Savage Sword are unlikely to appear in any Dark Horse volume. Similarly, they seem to be leaving out the text articles.

Four Colour Yesteryears: By Crom! The Glory Years Of The Savage Sword Of Conan, Part II

In Four-Colour Yesteryears we delve back into the past to look at the periods, events and creators that helped shape the medium.

Rob N: John Buscema had gone on to replace Barry Smith in the colour series, Conan The Barbarian, beginning with issue #25. A workhorse of a penciller, Buscema had been the first choice for the title but since Stan considered the character something of a gamble, he had vetoed Buscema on the grounds that his page rate was too high to warrant wasting on an untried property. As it happened, Buscema had never been particularly comfortable drawing superheroes. Despite leaving his mark on titles like the Avengers and Thor in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s with some of the finest art of his career, he had never enjoyed working on those books. He was however keen on characters like Conan. Like Kirby before him, Buscema was able to draw both well and quickly. Stories in Savage Sword would have the luxury of a larger page count, but coming on top of the monthly colour book (plus whatever other titles Buscema was committed to) it would be a heavy workload. Furthermore, there was an expectation that art for the black and white magazine titles would be more detailed, especially when it came to backgrounds. One answer was to find a suitable inker who could embellish the rough pencils with the level of detail that Buscema himself wouldn’t have time for.

In recent years Marvel had been casting its net further afield for new artists in response to a number of high profile departures from the bullpen. Stan Lee and Roy Thomas had noticed Warren comics had been recruiting some impressive talent from the Spanish art studio, Selecciones Illustrada, and this prompted them to turn their attention to an emerging group of artists from the Philippines, chief amongst them Alex Niño, Rudy Nebres and, most importantly for the purpose of this article, Alfredo Alcala. Not only were they turning out top quality art, but they were comparatively cheap to employ, something that Stan Lee appreciated in his role as businessman. Alcala was taken on as Buscema’s principle inker on Savage Sword Of Conan. As the cliché goes, it was a match made in heaven. There is a scene in the film Chasing Amy where a comic book fan has a go at Jason Lee’s inker character, calling him a ‘Tracer’. Lee tries and fails to defend the noble task of inking as other fans berate him for simply tracing over a proper artist’s work. Had he thought about it, his character could have shut the critics up by simply pointing to sample pages of Alcala’s breathtaking work in the pages of Savage Sword Of Conan #2, because no Marvel fan had ever seen art like it before. Looking at Buscema’s pencil layouts (or even his finished work with other inkers in the colour comics) and comparing it to the pages of 'Black Colossus', inked by Alfredo Alcala, is like comparing the Bob Dylan original of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ with the Hendrix cover version. Where Vince Colletta was infamous for erasing ‘excessive’ pencil lines that he would otherwise have had to ink, Alfredo Alcala seemed to consider empty white space on a page something of a challenge. His Conan pages took on the fashion of an elaborate wood cut design with incredibly detailed cross hatching and lines of ink that varied from feather light touches to the semblance of thick black treacle. There was no mistaking the fact that with Alcala inking, Buscema’s art had reached new heights of magnificence that would never again be equalled. My initial reaction to seeing the art in issue #2 was something along the lines of, “this deserves to be hung in an art gallery.”

Savage Sword swiftly became the first choice place to adapt Howard’s original stories. Some of the shorter pieces, such as 'Tower Of The Elephant' and 'Rogues In The House', had appeared in the colour comic, but now that Savage Sword was top dog, Thomas could go to town with the extra length page count. Highlights included ‘A Witch Shall be Born’ in #5, which featured the iconic scene of Conan nailed to a cross to die in the desert, biting the neck of a vulture that descended to feast on him. Up and coming Frazetta-wannabe paperback illustrator, Boris Vallejo, contributed one of several striking covers that he would paint for Marvel over the years. Alex Niño illustrated a superb non-Conan Robert E Howard story, 'People Of The Dark', that Roy Thomas converted into a Conan one for #6. Thomas was very aware that the source of original Hyborian tales was extremely limited and so from day one he pursued a policy of rewriting many of Howard’s other tales (even ones set during the early 20th century in an Indiana Jones style) into full-blooded Conan stories in a way that annoyed some prominent Howard purists.

Each issue of Savage Sword would offer a range of material. There would always be a lead Conan story, usually with art by Buscema. Other Howard characters such as King Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane and Red Sonja appeared in back-up strips, alongside text based articles and pages of commissioned ‘pin-up’ art. It’s worth mentioning at this point though that Red Sonja, of chainmail bikini fame, is not officially a Howard character, as Howard never included a Red Sonja in any of his Hyborian Age stories. He had however written a Russian character called Red Sonya in a swashbuckling adventure story set during the 16th century, entitled 'Shadow Of The Vulture', which Roy Thomas and Barry Smith had converted into a Conan tale, thereby creating the Hyborian Sonja.

To be concluded tomorrow in Part III...

Four Colour Yesteryears: By Crom! The Glory Years Of The Savage Sword Of Conan, Part I

In Four-Colour Yesteryears we delve back into the past to look at the periods, events and creators that helped shape the medium.

Rob N: One of the most innovative aspects of Marvel in the early years of the Bronze Age was their foray into publishing a range of black and white magazine format titles under the Curtis imprint. Stan Lee had noticed the success of the Warren range of comics such as Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella. Not only did they sell well, but they were exempt from the Comics Code Authority on account of the fact that newsstands racked them with magazines instead of in the kids’ comic section. Marvel at the time was keen to expand in new directions. The superhero boom of the 1960s had run its course as far as new titles were concerned. While the likes of the Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man were still big sellers, Marvel (and indeed DC) was struggling to launch new costumed crimefighter brands that caught the imagination of the public in the same way their flagship creations had. Diversity was suddenly the order of the day, and during the early ‘70s Marvel launched an ambitious range of horror, SF, adventure and swords & sorcery titles aimed at an older ‘university student’ market.

Conan of course was already a moderately successful Marvel property, having been licensed from the Howard estate in 1970 when (ironically) their first choice, a run of the mill Conan/John Carter of Mars hybrid called Thongor the Barbarian by Lin Carter, turned out to be too expensive since Carter wanted in excess of $150 an issue for Marvel to use his creation. In theory, had Carter accepted the fee originally offered (he later did, after Conan became successful and he realised, perhaps a little too late, that a successful comic book would translate into extra sales for his novels) then the publishing history of Conan in the comics medium might have looked very different indeed. Marvel did have one problem though. Robert E Howard’s brutal barbarian was anything but politically correct - relatively speaking that is. Compared to John Norman’s Gor novels for example, the Conan stories were practically fluffy Narnia tales, but that aside, with his habit of hewing skulls and thieving and drinking and chasing semi-naked ‘wenches’, he was hardly the clean cut hero that the Code expected. To carry the stamp of approval, the original blood thirsty and ‘spicy’ prose had to be toned down in the colour comics where the Comics Code Authority frowned upon ambiguous sexual innuendo, let alone an exposed nipple or two. Here, Roy Thomas and Barry Smith often found themselves having to reluctantly make changes after consulting with the censors in charge of the Code. It seemed then that a black and white magazine exempt from such draconian rules would be the perfect vehicle for a more adult version of the colour series.

Conan’s first foray in this new format was in the pages of Savage Tales where Barry Smith pencilled and inked his magnum opus, 'Red Nails', spread between issues #2 and #3. One of the greatest swords and sorcery tales ever written by any fantasy author, and (in my opinion) the finest adaptation into the comics medium of any prose work, 'Red Nails' would be Barry’s swan song for many years as by the end of it he was feeling burnt out and disillusioned with Marvel and comics in general. While drawing the marathon long adaptation he underwent some bizarre transcendental and cosmic revelation (painstakingly detailed in his rather tedious to read, but beautiful to look at, hardcover book, Opus) of the kind that usually only ever happens to people like Grant Morrison after he’s downed a potent cocktail of absinthe and magic mushrooms. But if you’re going to burn out and fade away, you may as well do it on a high point, and 'Red Nails' was most definitely that. Set during the mid point of Conan’s life, we find him chasing Valeria of the Red Brotherhood across a southern wilderness because, frankly, he intends to have sex with her and won’t take no for an answer. By the time Conan catches up with Valeria, they encounter a fabulous lost city called Xuchotl that is totally enclosed under a roof. The torch-lit city inside is a labyrinth of four-tiered chambers and sweeping galleries in which the last survivors of the opposing tribes of the city prowl through the gloom, hunting one another in the twilight years of a pointless civil war that dates back decades. Like Clint Eastwood’s amoral Man With No Name, Conan (along with Valeria) is drawn into the age old conflict with tragic results. It’s arguably Howard’s best Conan story (though 'People Of The Black Circle' comes a close second) and it showcases Roy Thomas and Barry Smith at the height of their narrative powers.

Such was the critical success of 'Red Nails' that Stan Lee gave Thomas the nod to launch a Conan specific title, The Savage Sword Of Conan, leaving its parent, Savage Tales, to showcase the adventures of Tarzan wannabe, Ka-Zar instead.

Continued tomorrow in Part II...

Four-Colour Yesteryears: Atlas Shrugged (Briefly…), Part III

In Four-Colour Yesteryears we delve back into the past to look at the periods, events and creators that helped shape the medium.

Click here for Part I and here for Part II.

By Rob N

So Atlas had launched in a blaze of glory and the fanfare of golden trumpets. But this was the mid-70s, and surely the writing was on the wall from day one, for if the mighty Marvel couldn’t keep new titles in print how could Johnny-come-lately Atlas expect to do any better? Yes, comics were cheap, and kids could easily buy seven comics with their weekly pocket money, but there were also space hoppers and chopper bikes to lust after, not to mention those all important Action Man accessories like the M*A*S*H style helicopter with the working rotor blades, or the Saracen armoured car. Savage Combat Tales featuring Sgt Stryker’s Death Squad might have had an eye-catching title, but once past the cover it really had to pull out all the stops to get between an eleven year old boy and a new Action Man with gripping hands. And between you and me, it didn’t.

Martin Goodman’s business plan was built around a single important principle: make the Atlas comics look like Marvel comics because Marvel comics sold well. Unfortunately, despite a few similarities in character concepts, the Atlas line didn’t look anything like Marvel. For starters there were relatively few superhero comics, and crucially perhaps, the spandex comics that did exist didn’t seem to sit in a shared ‘Atlas universe’. If you had to pinpoint one of the most important factors influencing Marvel’s success in the ‘60s, it was the idea to place all the books within the same continuity and occasionally have stories and characters cross over from one book to another. That such a basic factor could be overlooked by a company that wanted to imitate Marvel, and was after all run by the publisher who used to run Marvel, is bizarre.

Very soon Goodman began to criticise the scripts and art that landed on his desk because it wasn’t ‘Marvel’ enough for him. To add to this, Martin’s son, Chip, had been placed in a position of authority within Seaboard, and the general feeling amongst artists and writers was that Chip didn’t really understand the industry. Back in the days when Chip Goodman worked for Marvel, Roy Thomas remembered a typical scene with the man when he discussed a Wild West title:

"It was a Western cover and Chip sent back word that he wanted all the bad guys in the story inside and on the cover to be wearing animal masks. We asked why and he said, 'I don't know. Maybe it'll sell better.'"

Only a month or two after the initial launch of the colour books, where sales figures were reputedly as low as 13% of the print run (though interestingly, a figure as low as 25% to 30% sales was considered acceptable to break even in those days), Martin Goodman panicked and decided that on the whole his titles all looked wrong. Out of the blue he gave instructions to radically change many of the ongoing titles overnight. Some of the changes were as extreme as you could imagine. Chaykin’s atmospheric pulp ‘30s adventurer, the Scorpion, became a costumed superhero in the 1970s in issue #3, drawn in a simplified Jack Kirby style by a new art team (Chaykin was thrown off his own creation). I recall picking up the issue in a state of mild confusion, thinking, this is crap.

Morlock 2001, an SF comic set in the future, was radically overhauled when Goodman suddenly decided that SF comics wouldn’t sell. Frank Thorne’s Lawrence Of Arabia serial was axed because it had Arabs in it (presumably this blindingly obvious revelation wasn’t understood at the commissioning stage…), and Jeff Jones (arguably one of the finest painters of paperback covers during the period) was turned away from doing covers because Goodman didn’t like his style (for which, read, Jeff Jones didn’t draw the old fashioned Marvel way). Goodman had strong opinions on what made a good cover. He wanted the art plastered in word balloons and lots of text, whereas his creators fought a battle to let the art speak for itself. In desperation they would sneak art through the production process, keeping it away from Martin Goodman’s attention until it was too late to change it.

With sales figures bottoming out, the page rates, originally so very attractive to experienced talent, were mercilessly cut to reduce costs. Within just a few months of launching in a blaze of glory, Atlas came crashing to the ground before any title had chalked up a fifth issue. The mocking (and relieved) laughter from the boardrooms of Marvel and DC must have echoed through their buildings in reply.

For a long time Atlas has been consigned to the recycling bin of history, but recently the trend for revisiting every nostalgic property has come home to roost even here. A recent copy of the Previews catalogue announced that a select few Atlas creations are getting a second chance in print. For those who are curious, there will be a relaunch of two of the old titles: The Phoenix and The Grim Ghost. Jason Goodman (Grandson of Martin) is behind the retro move, but how these properties will perform in a very crowded marketplace is anyone’s guess.

Four-Colour Yesteryears: Atlas Shrugged (Briefly…), Part II

In Four-Colour Yesteryears we delve back into the past to look at the periods, events and creators that helped shape the medium.

Click here for Part I.

By Rob N

The Atlas war machine had a sizeable pay chest to draw on, and Martin Goodman understood that he needed recognizable creator names to sign up if he was going to batter Marvel into submission.

Approaches were made to notable freelancers in an attempt to poach talent from Marvel and DC. This had been a period in which some big names had walked out on their regular jobs, when artist/writer grievances against the ‘work for hire’ system were beginning to bite, and Goodman perhaps thought he might get them onboard. As an incentive he offered higher page rates, the return of artwork and (allegedly) some rights to newly created characters, all of which was pretty much unheard of in the offices of Marvel and DC. He even made an approach to ‘Rascally’ Roy Thomas, recently an ex-Editor-in-Chief at Marvel, but Roy wisely felt that Atlas had bitten off more than it could chew and politely declined. These tempting contracts weren’t a sign of benevolent altruism on the part of Martin Goodman, but rather born out of necessity, because if you were an established writer or artist, jumping ship from Marvel or DC to an untried - and therefore risky - new venture wasn’t something you did lightly. Especially as there was always the risk that signing on to do any work at all for Atlas might result in burning your bridges with the editorial staff at Marvel and DC. Yes, you were technically a freelancer on a work for hire contract, but DC in particular didn’t take kindly to you working in tandem with Atlas.

The signing on package was good enough to tempt many famous names, including Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson, Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, Alex Toth, Frank Thorne, Ernie Colon, Michael Fleisher, Mike Kaluta, Al Milgrom, Neil Adams, Pat Broderick, Marshall Rogers, Pablo Marcos, John Severin, Russ Heath, and Archie Goodwin, but crucially many of those names contributed relatively little material. Neil Adams for example was arguably the biggest name in the industry at that time, but Atlas squeezed little more than some covers out of him. One of the problems Atlas faced was that Marvel and DC quickly moved to protect their key creators, and in some cases writers and artists made hardly secret enquiries to Atlas to prompt their existing employers to offer them a raise. If you were looking to get a better deal from Stan Lee, then making some loud overtures to Atlas might prompt an improved page rate at Marvel.

A kid perusing the stack of #1s that had filtered through to Britain in early 1975 (in those days we were always a good three to four months behind US distribution) might be forgiven for thinking someone had drawn up a list entitled ‘genre stereotypes – pick one and draw a comic based on it’ for there was more than just a whiff of familiarity about some of them. This was closer to the truth than we imagined, as apparently Atlas had originally intended to purchase the rights to instantly recognisable properties such as the Spider, the Avenger, Godzilla, Kolchak the Night Stalker and the Omega Man, but when Goodman realised how much that was likely to cost, he opted instead for a time honoured ‘plan b’: plagiarise and get something similar for free.

Planet Of Vampires was sort of Planet Of The Apes, but with vampires instead of monkeys. The Brute was a second rate Hulk. Iron Jaw was, well, Conan frankly, but with a metal jaw, bad attitude towards women and not very good artwork. Mind you, having said that this was the early ‘70s when nearly all swords and sorcery characters were essentially Conan in different loincloths. But still, a metal jaw? Not the best idea in the world. How was he going to kiss the half-naked and hysterical Vendhyan princess after he saved her from a slavering Lovecraft demon? He wasn’t.

Blazing Battle Tales featuring Sergeant Hawk and Savage Combat Tales featuring Sgt Stryker’s Death Squad almost sounded like a Sergeant Fury or Sergeant Rock pastiche. Of the other titles there were Dirty Harry style police stories (the imaginatively titled Police Action) and a Shang-Chi rip off called Hands Of The Dragon to cater to the already fading martial arts craze. The Grim Ghost was like the Ghost Rider only on a horse. And there were some slushy love stories for the girls. I obviously don’t know anything about slushy love story comics of the Sixties or Seventies because they were soppy, and anyway, I didn’t have a young sister who’d buy stuff like that.

In fact, the more we delved through this mountain of new material, the more familiar it all seemed. But of course when you’re eleven years old that’s not necessarily a problem, because if there’s something you enjoy, then what you’ll also enjoy is more of the same. Eleven year-old boys don’t really want innovation – they want fully grown men in colourful costumes punching one another in the face or shooting one another with big guns, forever and ever without end.

But in amongst the slush were a few eye-catching moments. Howard Chaykin was a name to watch and he drew an atmospheric adventure title called The Scorpion, set in the pulp era 1930s, full of period detail – something that would soon become his trademark in years to come. The legendary Steve Ditko (and all eleven year-old boys in 1975 knew who he was thanks to the recent Marvel UK reprints of early ‘60s Spider-Man and Doctor Strange stories) contributed a superhero title called The Destructor, that Marvel and DC would probably have wanted if only for the fact it was Steve (almost as important as Jack Kirby) Ditko. And there were also a couple of black and white magazine format comics that were designed to compete with the Warren titles (and indeed Marvel’s own answer to the Warren titles). Horror title Develina was so similar to Vampirella/Satana that it stretched even the acceptable bounds of plagiarism, but Thrilling Adventure Stories was sort of a mixed bag of anything violent that the writers and artists cared to produce and I have fond memories of the stories in issue #2

Next in Part III: The failure of Atlas.

Four-Colour Yesteryears: Atlas Shrugged (Briefly…), Part I

In Four-Colour Yesteryears we delve back into the past to look at the periods, events and creators that helped shape the medium.

By Rob N

In late 1974/early 1975, young British comic fans were confronted by a sudden explosion of new titles when they made their weekend pilgrimage to the local newsagents in search of imported American titles. Their sticky fingers, stained with cheap choc-ices, flicked through a larger than usual crop of comics that included lots of unfamiliar issue #1s. This was not an altogether unusual phenomenon for during the last three years both Marvel and DC had been firing off short-lived new titles at an alarming rate, desperately trying to stake out new ground and recreate some of the excitement of the early Marvel boom of the mid-‘60s. But this time around the masthead on these new titles was wholly unfamiliar. Not Marvel, not DC, not even Charlton (a third rate publisher of frankly substandard comics that no serious Marvel or DC fan was going to waste his money on, thank you very much!) but a new company called Atlas.

What’s this, asked the superhero-obsessed 11 year-olds as they regarded the titles with a mixture of interest and suspicion? Lots of #1s in a format exactly like Marvel or DC? Could this be the start of something really big and for once we’re in at the beginning? Could these new books one day be worth as much as Fantastic Four #1 if we don’t crease the spines too much?

The brainchild of ex-Marvel publisher, Martin Goodman (who had been in charge of the company throughout the 1960s – essentially Stan Lee’s boss) and Larry (brother of Stan Lee) Lieber, plus some bloke from Warren Publishing (who has nothing to do with Stan Lee, so history glosses over him, but his name is Jeff Rovin if you really must know), Seaboard Periodicals was set up as the first direct competition to Marvel since it in turn had taken on the mighty DC and wrestled it to the ground. Legend has it that Atlas was intended as retribution against Marvel, for when Martin Goodman had sold the company, pocketing a vast cheque in the process, he had stipulated that his son, Chip, should be retained as Editor-in-Chief. The promise can’t have been much more than a gentleman’s handshake between consenting weasels, as shortly after Goodman Sr exited the building, his hapless son, Chip Goodman, was replaced by a newly promoted Stan Lee who seized the coveted number one spot with Borgia-like supremacy and skill.

Atlas of course was the name that Marvel used to publish under in the 1950s, and that alone was an immediate broadside and challenge to the House of Ideas that looked on with wry amusement as a new company sought to establish itself overnight during a period that had not exactly been kind to experimental new titles. For Atlas had no intention of dipping a careful toe in the water – it would launch with a slew of monthly comic books designed to cover all genres simultaneously, and damn the torpedoes.

Early indications of success seemed promising. Jim Steranko’s comics magazine of the time, Mediascene, was quoted as saying: "Obviously angered by the bizarre treatment accorded his son, Martin Goodman re-entered the comics field with an operation that has come to be referred to as 'Vengeance, Inc.' With his previous contacts, a sound financial status, an infallible business sense sharpened by a lifetime in publishing, and a reputation for fair play, Goodman's position looks implacable."

It goes to show in hindsight how little Mediascene knew about launching a new comic company, for within a few short months Atlas was destined to disappear without trace.

Next in Part II: Ditko, Vampires & Chaykin.

Four-Colour Yesteryears: The Magus - Adam Warlock and the Birth of COSMIC Comics, Part II

In Four-Colour Yesteryears we delve back into the past to look at the periods, events and creators that helped shape the medium.

By Rob N

Click here for Part I.

The Magus story began with a brooding and soul-searching Adam Warlock reflecting on his recent experiences, having exiled himself to a desolate planet out in the fringes of known space. His moment of introspection is savagely interrupted when a young girl appears, hunted by a small group of assassins. Adam intervenes but fails to save her life. Using the power of his soul gem he reanimates her corpse long enough to learn that the killers were loyal foot soldiers belonging to the Universal Church of Truth, a baroque theocracy that controls a vast empire of planets. Adam listens to the dead woman as she describes the activities of the Church that resembles a futuristic Spanish Inquisition regime. At the head of the church is their God – the Magus – a mysterious Wizard of Oz-like figure who speaks only through his high priests. Swearing to avenge the girl’s life, Adam is once again given a purpose as he flies through deep space in search of this mighty empire.

It doesn’t take him long before he encounters a battleship belonging to the church that easily overpowers him. Inside are thousands of prisoners – alien life-forms who don’t conform to the approved standard of this religion (that being the human bipedal form made in the image of the Magus). Adam helps them break free and in doing so gains a companion for the remainder of his quest – a light-hearted, wise-cracking troll called Pip – and learns that the gemstone on his forehead possesses the power to drain a man’s soul. This it does when Adam fights the ship’s Captain, Autoclycus, who turns out to be a noble man that sincerely believes he is bringing peace and order to the universe. Adam is horrified to learn that having unwittingly ‘killed’ the man, the essence of his victim’s soul now lives on inside his vampiric gemstone. Sadly for Adam, as time goes on, the stone forces him to kill more and more people in order to feed itself.

Jim Starlin was undoubtedly a fan of Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné stories as the similarities are hard to ignore. Adam’s brooding intensity and his symbiotic relationship with his soul-stealing gemstone mirrors Elric’s own fatal destiny with his sword, Stormbringer. Like Elric, Adam grows to despise the stone set into his forehead (another Moorcock similarity, as Moorcock’s Dorian Hawkmoon character also had a sentient gemstone set into his forehead), but is unable to rid himself of it. When, eventually sickened by the way the stone uses him as a vessel to kill people, Adam does try to remove it, but finds that the stone has absorbed part of his own soul as a safeguard and that he cannot exist without it. Warlock’s brooding and doomed manner is counterpointed by his companion, Pip, in much the same way that Elric’s intensity is lightened by his supporting character, Moonglum of Elwher.


By now Adam has learnt the truth about the Magus. The God of the Universal Church of Truth is in fact Adam’s future self who travelled back in time to found the religion 5,000 years ago. Not only that, but the Magus has manipulated events to ensure Adam will try to confront him, for it appears that Adam is doomed to follow a path that is already set in stone. He will attempt to stop the Magus, but in trying will set in motion the events that will ultimately create the Magus and establish his 5,000 year legacy of conquest. Adam comes to realise also that the Magus has created a peace of sorts. The empire stands for order and life, a point that will weigh heavily on his conscience very soon.

Having made his way to the capital of this Theocracy, Warlock encounters the Matriarch – a sexy femme fatale who runs the church in the Magus’s name. She tries to tempt Adam into supporting her ambitions, pointing out that they could replace his future self and rule a vast empire together. Adam resists and incurs her wrath. He is captured again but this time his enemies try to brainwash him. Hallucinating, he undergoes a psychedelic fantasy, infamous in the history of Bronze Age comics for being a less than subtle satire of Marvel itself. In a memorable sequence, Adam finds himself in a Ditko-like universe populated by miserable clowns modelled on writers and editors who worked for the House of Ideas. They toil unceasingly, building huge piles of stinking rubbish because that’s the way things are always done at the publishing company. As Adam watches, the mountains of garbage eventually collapse, undermined by a few diamonds in amongst the muck. “Someone keeps putting it in there when we're not looking,” says one of the editorial clowns, obviously annoyed that Marvel’s quality control can’t totally eradicate originality and good writing from its drone-like processes. The story goes that the satire was obvious to anyone who worked within Marvel, but that Jim Starlin used to deliberately submit his finished pages so close to the deadline each issue that there simply wasn’t time for the editorial department to tell him to change anything. By the time the likes of Roy Thomas noticed, the comic had already been printed.

Eventually Adam’s own force of will overloads the brainwashing machine and, combined with the intervention of Gamora – a slinky, sexy, green skinned assassin, dressed in what can only be described as a skin tight, fishnet body stocking, and looking all the better for it – he is free. Gamora has been sent by her master, an enemy of the Magus who shares Adam’s wish to destroy the God. Her orders are to decide whether Adam stands a chance of preventing himself from becoming the Magus. If he can, she is to help him. If not, she is to kill him. Her master turns out to be Thanos – Starlin’s arch-villain from the Captain Marvel series. Thanos is in love with Death, quite literally, and his opposition to the Magus adds a complexity to Adam’s dilemma. For despite all the horror and suffering the Magus has inflicted over the last 5,000 years, he has, or (more importantly) will stop Thanos from committing universal genocide. Again we see the similarity with Moorcock’s Eternal Champion saga, as the Magus and Thanos represent the polar opposites of Law and Chaos and Life and Death. It is no longer as simple as stopping the villain, for the villain it appears is preserving the life of the universe from an arguably greater threat. Should Adam defeat the Magus if in so doing he gives free rein to the nihilistic ambitions of Thanos?

Now the Magus shows himself for the first time, confronting and taunting Adam and his allies. Everything is pre-ordained claims the demigod, as he has seen all this happen before when he was still Adam Warlock, struggling vainly against his future self. As the stakes grow more serious, and as all the dominoes seem to fall into place, Adam begins to suspect that the only way he is going to break this cycle is to do the unthinkable, and kill his (near) future self before he can become a world conquering monster. But that of course will mean his own death. What happens next is that rare thing in comics – a satisfying conclusion that plays out beyond the confines of the Magus story, to the end of Starlin’s short-lived run. Due to the changing fortunes of the title, the last two parts of Starlin’s epic appeared in the guise of an Avengers annual and a Marvel Two-In-One annual (see the checklist at the end of this piece).

Starlin’s run was unusual as it was an early example of a proper ‘auteur’ work in Marvel comics. As both writer and artist, and with minimal editorial control exercised by others, Starlin had a degree of creative freedom that other writers and artists could only envy. The series was to establish his reputation as an author of cosmic storylines that he carries with him to this day.

Jim Starlin’s Warlock saga (the central Magus story begins with Strange Tales #178 and concludes with a coda of sorts in issue #12 of Warlock, though arguably the entire run should be read as a whole for reasons that only become clear with issue #11 of Warlock):

Strange Tales #178 to #181
Warlock #9 to #15
Marvel Team Up #55 (of minor, inconsequential interest)
Avengers Annual #7
Marvel Two-In-One Annual #2

The complete collection is available as a reassuringly expensive Hardback reprint: Marvel Masterworks Warlock Volume 2 (RRP £45.00), for those who sneer at the possibility of a double dip recession.

Four-Colour Yesteryears: The Magus - Adam Warlock and the Birth of COSMIC Comics, Part I

In Four-Colour Yesteryears we delve back into the past to look at the periods, events and creators that helped shape the medium.

By Rob N

Marvel in the early 1970s was an energetic and vibrant creative force that constantly experimented with new genres and themes in search of the next big thing. Concerned that the basic superhero format had peaked and could soon decline, Stan Lee encouraged a degree of experimentation in the early years of the Bronze Age that remains unsurpassed throughout Marvel’s turbulent 50-year history. By the start of the decade, the old guard of the 1960s were still working in the bullpen, looking very much like the cast of Mad Men. But now their ranks had swelled with an influx of long-haired hippies keen to take things in a new direction, beyond the old fashioned Lee/Kirby designs that had established Marvel as the number one comic book company in the US.

In keeping with the times, the early Seventies was the birthplace of COSMIC, a ‘space is deep’ subgenre of science fiction that was enjoying its moment in the sun in contemporary pop culture. While Jack Kirby had of course toyed with cosmic SF elements in his superhero art, he had always done so as an outsider in a smart sports jacket, with a sensible military grade haircut, smoking a cigar. His take on Cosmic was influence by old pulp SF like E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen series, where heroes were always ramrod-straight science professors with Pro Football sidekicks, possessing neat brylcreemed hair and smoking a pipe as they investigated swirling technicolour dimensions and exotic and complicated machines with names like ‘The Ultimate Nullifier’. The new writers and artists on the other hand were weekend freaks, young creative types who embraced the psychedelic music of Haight Ashbury and the trippy stargate sequence at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. They grew their hair long, read William Burroughs, Philip K Dick and Michael Moorcock and some of them quite possibly took drugs. Allegedly.

Jim Starlin was one of the new arrivals at Marvel. Only 23 when he landed his first paid work with the House of Ideas, he quickly made a name for himself by revamping Captain Marvel with his Thanos saga. In this we see the first seeds of what was to become his lifetime obsession with Cosmic SF. But what is 'cosmic'? Wiktionary defines it so:

1) Of or from or pertaining to the cosmos or universe.
2) Infinitely or inconceivably extended; vast.

It is in a sense a form of SF that resembles an LSD trip. Indeed, you’d be hard pressed to find a simpler definition of Cosmic than to basically point your finger at the sleeve art of Hawkwind’s 'Space Ritual' LP. That’s it in a nutshell. Even down to the naked dancers covered in swirling body paint, gyrating in front of a psychedelic oil projector. Cosmic was the sign of the times, and Jim Starlin’s Adam Warlock/Magus saga was about as good as it was ever going to get. Not only was it a personal creative peak for the writer/artist, but it would establish a pattern, shared background and theme for many of Marvel’s epic stories to come.

Adam Warlock was a minor Lee/Kirby character from the pages of Fantastic Four and Thor, originally named Him. Roy Thomas had spun the character off into a short lived series of his own, sending him to Marvel’s Counter Earth (a planet on the opposite side of the sun to our world, and therefore permanently out of sight – an idea presumably lifted from John Norman’s infamous Gor series) as a thinly disguised Jesus Christ analogy, to redeem a planet created by the High Evolutionary (in surrogate God mode) that was being corrupted by the Man Beast (don’t ask). During the course of the story, Thomas had given the character a new costume and a soulgem embedded in his forehead (a gift from the High Evolutionary) that acted as an all-purpose blaster ray. Starlin was to take the concept of the gemstone much further.

With very little back-story accumulated to date, Starlin had pretty much a clean slate to work with when he began the Magus story in the pages of issue #178 of Strange Tales. Originally one of the monster mags that Marvel had inherited from its previous incarnation as Atlas in the '50s, Strange Tales had gone on to showcase solo stories featuring Doctor Strange and Nick Fury before being cancelled to make way for their own comic books. Marvel had then recently revived Strange Tales as a platform in which to try out new concepts, none of which proved popular enough to warrant more than a footnote of a footnote in the history of the Bronze Age. Issue #178 was to change all that.

Next in Part II: Warlock vs The Magus!

Four-Colour Yesteryears: Wonder Woman - The Emma Peel Years

In Four-Colour Yesteryears we delve back into the past to look at the periods, events and creators that helped shape the medium.


By Rob N

Towards the end of the late Sixties DC decided to undertake a serious revamp of their existing superhero line of titles. Marvel had steadily gained ground during the previous decade to overtake DC as the most popular brand of comic books. Part of Marvel's success was due to their more realistic (for the period) characters and stories and the introduction of complex interwoven continuity. DC comics in the Sixties by comparison hadn't evolved from the earlier format of ludicrous tales of super dogs, freckle-faced side-kicks with comical names, wacky villains and two-dimensional characters that seemed to reflect a comfortable and outdated 1950s view of America.

Seemingly overnight DC made major changes to its big titles in a brave attempt to make them more realistic to an older readership. The Teen Titans accidentally allowed someone to die and subsequently they got rid of their costumes, vowed not to use their super powers unless absolutely necessary, and became a kind of Mission: Impossible team in bland grey overalls. Batman lost his rogues gallery of colourful villains and became (the now familiar) grim Dark Knight who tackled ordinary criminals. Green Lantern teamed up with Green Arrow and Black Canary and began to tackle various social issues such as heroin addiction, ecological concerns, the persecution of Native Americans. Perhaps most drastic of all, Wonder Woman gave up her powers, studied martial arts, opened a swinging Sixties boutique and became an Emma Peel clone from issue #179 onwards.

The TV series The Avengers had proved very popular in the US and the Diana Rigg character of Emma Peel became the template for a new (Women's Lib) version of Wonder Woman in the early Seventies. The bizarre super villains disappeared and, after Steve Trevor was killed off (a liberated woman doesn't need a boyfriend taking up space in her comic) for the first time along with the Amazons of Paradise Island leaving Earth to travel to a different dimension, Diana Prince was taken on by a blind martial arts expert called I-Ching. He taught her to fight in much the same way that Stick would teach Daredevil in the 1980s when Frank Miller revamped his origin.



Wonder Woman resigned from the Justice League and became a sort of roving freelance secret agent, tackling James Bond style villains. With the loss of her powers she no longer seemed to have a problem with killing people. Long before she broke the neck of Maxwell Lord in Infinite Crisis, she was happily machine-gunning nasty Chinese soldiers on one controversial cover of her comic book. Despite the more realistic approach to the series, early stories were still by and large quite juvenile in an Austin Powers kind of way. The comics now look very dated with mini-skirted dolly birds, bizarrely attired hippies, and laughable Jason King style leading men who were supposed to be hairy-chested studs, probably with the aid of liberal applications of Brut aftershave and big gold medallions.

A brief two-part storyline reunited Diana Prince with the Amazons when Ares, God of War, decided to invade Paradise Island with Diana being summoned to lead her people into battle while her mother lay in a coma. Essentially the plot harkened back to the 300 Spartans battling the Persian army at Thermopylae, as the outnumbered women faced a numerically superior force. Diana of course wins in the end.

Towards the end of this 26-issue run deadlines became a problem and there were several reprint issues. Unfortunately the reprint material was taken from the new look run and therefore readers found themselves shelling out money for stories they had read only a year and a half ago. DC had also opted to increase the price of their comics from 15¢ to 25¢ by adding extra pages of reprint material, usually taken from their Golden Age archives. The price increase proved to be a commercially bad move and the extra pages were quickly removed, allowing for a 5¢ price drop. This became the standard for both Marvel and DC thereafter.

When Denny O'Neill came aboard as writer and editor he seemed keen to push the title into a far darker, more serious place. His two-part story, The Beauty Haters, began in #199 and the cover of that comic must have come as a real shock to both readers and newsagents alike. It was an exquisitely crafted and striking piece of art by leading paperback illustrator Jeff Jones, but it featured a terrified looking Diana Prince kneeling on the floor of a stone dungeon, clad only in a thin white night gown, her hands chained to the wall as a menacing hooded executioner with an axe stood in the background guarding her. It was softcore bondage material and it was quite risqué for its time. The next issue continued the trend with a frightened Wonder Woman chained helplessly to a stone slab in the same dungeon as a menacing figure emerged from a dungeon doorway. Dick Giordino became the regular artist from #200 (replacing the hack artist Don Heck who is most famous for ruining all those early issues of the Avengers) and his pencils added a touch of realism to the stories. This dark, gothic look was part of the new DC house style from a period when their covers in particular were very striking. Issues #201 and #202 hinted at how good this comic could have been in later months as O'Neill crafted his first proper ‘new direction’ storyline with great art and a plot in the style of his classic Ra's al Ghul Batman tales. It featured evil Tibetan monks, Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider style trappings, a smattering of the occult, a mercenary Catwoman, and a visit to a swords and sorcery dimension populated by Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (to introduce and launch their own title the following month). It was classic high adventure storytelling and at last the comic seemed to be working. With the O'Neill/Giordino creative team onboard things now looked very promising indeed.

But then DC had a change of heart and with #204 Diana Prince regained her powers, put back on the familiar red and blue bathing costume and we were back to the old style of costumed crime-fighting. Part of this was due to a dip in sales. The new look Wonder Woman had been a step too far for lots of of the faithful DC readers. Many people didn't want their heroes to look ordinary. DC had been ahead of its time. Fifteen years later Alan Moore would be a household name for taking this kind of radical approach to superhero comics, but in the early Seventies fandom wasn't ready for this level of realism. The new look Wonder Woman had also angered the burgeoning feminist scene - although radical feminists were hardly DC's target market, certain feminist magazines (in particular Gloria Steinem's Ms) had railed against the de-powering of Wonder Woman. This, they argued, was typical of male writers who didn't like the idea of a woman being the equal of Superman and Batman. They seemed to miss the point that DC was applying the same re-conceptualisation approach to all of its titles. Even the untouchable Superman had seen his powers reduced to a fraction of his previous might. But DC became nervous of the adverse publicity and replaced the O'Neill/Giordino team just as it was about to actually deliver some stories on a par with the classic O'Neill/Adams Batman and Green Lantern comics.

Looking back, the 26-issue run is something of an oddity, even by DC standards where revamps are now a regular occurrence. Virtually an entire comics line had been transformed from storylines reminiscent of the Batman TV series to something more in keeping with Brian Michael Bendis’ approach to Daredevil. That it didn't work was due to a readership that wasn't ready for it and a series of writers who didn't really know how to handle it. In retrospect it was like DC asking Chuck Dixon to write Watchmen.

Four-Colour Yesteryears: The 'Third Age' Of Jack Kirby, Part V

In Four-Colour Yesteryears we delve back into the past to look at the periods, events and creators that helped shape the medium.

By Rob N

Click here for Part 1, here for Part 2, here for Part 3 and here for Part 4.


If there had been criticism levelled at Kirby for what he had done in turning the clock back for Captain America, that was nothing compared to the outrage fans felt when Jack relaunched Black Panther. The bar had been set extremely high with the Don McGregor run in Jungle Action: the story arc, Panther’s Rage, was a master class in how to write superhero fiction with literary merit. The later issues in particular, when T’Challa embarked on a quest to track down and avenge himself against Erik Killmonger, stood head and shoulders above most other Marvel product. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the McGregor run was, to earlier appearances of the Panther, what Jimi Hendrix’s version of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ was to the Dylan original.

Kirby of course couldn’t even begin to approach the quality of McGregor’s writing, and to his credit he didn’t try. He delivered his usual light-hearted adventure escapism with an endless display of inventiveness, but the problem was he was doing it to a sacred cow of comic book literature. It would be like John Byrne writing/drawing a sequel to Maus, only doing it in the style of Sergeant Fury and his Howlin' Commandos.

It just didn’t seem right. McGregor had crafted a realistic Africa, packed with detail and social commentary. When he had taken the Panther back to America, he had involved T’Challa in the inherent racism of the Southern states, with the Klan forefront in the story. It was weighty, serious storytelling. Jack Kirby’s Quest For King Solomon’s Frog wasn’t really in the same league. And yet Kirby wasn’t consciously trying to annoy anyone. He was simply telling the sorts of stories he enjoyed writing – bizarre flights of fantasy, barely grounded in the real world. He didn’t seem to understand this new found ‘realism’ in comics. It wasn’t something he wanted to do. For Jack, comics were supposed to be fun. He didn’t want to adapt his style to this soul searching, more solemn world.

Machine Man was a character that had appeared in two issues of 2001: A Space Odyssey. By all accounts the character (quite obviously a machine built to look like a man) seemed to appeal to fans, perhaps because of its Spock-like qualities. The popularity must have been misjudged as the solo title bombed and was cancelled before it really had a chance to go anywhere.

Why Marvel thought that Devil Dinosaur would succeed remains a mystery to me. The tale of a monkey boy and his red dinosaur friend, having prehistoric adventures together, couldn’t possibly have been a serious stab at launching a commercial hit title, and yet it appeared on the spinner racks with the usual Marvel hype. Perhaps they just assumed it couldn’t be any worse sales wise than anything else Jack came up with. It failed to last even a year.

The writing was on the wall. Kirby’s titles for Marvel in the Seventies had proved no more successful than his titles for DC. Kirby began to drift aimlessly, still producing great covers at a reasonable pace, but his heart was no longer in the comics industry. When the chance came to work in TV animation, he made the big leap and left Marvel for the second and final time.

The story of Kirby and Marvel sadly doesn’t have a happy ending. Later in the Eighties, Marvel bowed to pressure and began to return original artwork to the artists responsible for them. When Jack tried to reclaim his art though, he was presented with a four-page document which Marvel required him to sign first. It was a seriously restrictive document designed to counter any possibility of Jack claiming any part in the creative process of Marvel. Gary Groth, editor of the esteemed Comics Journal summed up the document in issue 101:

"The Agreement Marvel demands Kirby sign is a degrading document. In addition to strengthening their rights to own material he created - rights about which they are obviously concerned - the Agreement revokes his constitutional right to seek redress in a court of law if he so chooses; it denies him the right to help other artists dispute 'Marvel's complete, exclusive and unrestricted worldwide right to ownership of the copyright' to [their] work; denies Kirby the right to exhibit his own artwork without first notifying Marvel; allows Marvel access to make copies of the original artwork they returned; states that Kirby cannot sell his own artwork unless the buyer signs a copy of the same Agreement; and so on."

Marvel had begun to display a callous attitude towards the writers and artists who had created the stable of characters and concepts that was its bread and butter. Marvel Editor in Chief, Jim Shooter, in particular made the following statement in court in 1986 (in the case of Fleisher v. The Comics Journal) which illustrates only too well how important writers and artists were deemed to be by the corporate hierarchy:

NORWICK: "Wouldn't you agree that it is Michael Fleisher (the writer ‘credited’ with authorship of the story under discussion) and not the editor who is associated with that particular story? Wouldn't you agree with that?"

SHOOTER: “That's a mistake that a fan would make. Anyone in the profession would know better."

NORWICK: “Do you think it's unfair for people to associate the writer with the product that is published under that writer's name?"

SHOOTER: "I think that the fact that the writer's name is on the material is a courtesy. It's something that Stan Lee started doing in the '60's."

That same year Stan Lee was asked at the San Diego comic convention about Jack’s creative input in the 1960s. Did Lee feel that Jack had played any part in creating any of the characters Marvel was famous for?

"As far as I can remember these things happening, I was the editor and head writer at Marvel, and Jack was an artist who worked for us." – Stan Lee

There in a nutshell was Jack’s legacy in the eyes of corporate Marvel and the man who had relied on him for a decade. Jack was "an artist who worked for us."

Contemporary Marvel artist, Gil Kane, offered the following comments regarding the level of input an artist could expect from Stan Lee:

"Stan, on the other hand, would give you very little. I remember in this particular sequence that I think had to do with Gwen Stacy, he told me: 'I'd like you to draw a character like Broderick Crawford as the villain.' But that was about it. So I put together what I could from the material we had done before. I mean, there's a kind of continuity that gives you at least a direction for the material, from what preceded it. I'd build it up and bring it in, and he'd take a look at it: 'Yeah, yeah, yeah... Oh, geez, I don't like this at all.' And although I didn't say it to him, I'd think in my mind: 'Well, why the fuck don't you write it yourself? You're getting paid for it!' But we all went through that. Including Jack. Jack made up all those stories, and I'm positive he'd made up practically all the characters, with very few exceptions." – Gil Kane (THE COMICS JOURNAL #186).

The legacy of the third age of Jack Kirby is still with us today. The characters and concepts he was responsible for at both DC and Marvel have been resurrected many times after he left. Darkseid, the New Gods, the Eternals, even such minor characters as Machine Man and OMAC have inspired many other writers and artists over the years to the point where they are now a permanent feature of both sets of comic book mythologies. There is no doubt that Kirby will always be remembered as a fantastic visual artist, but in addition to that his character concepts live on too.

But above all else, the third age of Jack Kirby does point to a definitive answer to the question of how big a part he played in the creation of the Marvel Universe. No one doubts that Kirby created the plethora of characters from the New Gods onwards when he was free of Stan Lee’s shadow. Now get a pen and paper and make a list of the equivalent concepts Stan Lee came up with after he was no longer working with Kirby. Or come to that, what Stan Lee created in the twenty years he was writing before working with Kirby in the early Sixties. Not a very big list, is it? Not a very big list at all.

Jack Kirby: "an artist who worked for us." – Stan Lee.