As If He Isn't Eerie Enough

I thought a nice bookend to my earlier Dr. Strange post would be to show you these blast-from-the-past black light posters of the character that were created. The characters in the series included the Inhumans, the Fantastic Four, Sub-Mariner, Strange, Spider-Man, et al., and I could curse myself for throwing them away when I got tired of them (I wasn't yet a bona fide collector at that point--at least the kind that hung onto what they collected).

I think the posters were all released through Marvel's fan club at the time, Marvelmania. I had quite a few of these posters--they practically covered the walls of my bedroom, and the black light effect was indeed spectacular when they were displayed in that kind of wall-to-wall way. The only problem was that, well, you had to be in the room and have the black light on to enjoy them in their full effect--and you're pretty much stuck in your room doing nothing else for the duration. So the whole thing got old for me fairly quickly.

Still, the posters were outstanding.

Here's a double-page spread from Doctor Strange #171 by artist Tom Palmer, followed by its black light counterpart:

Aside from the word balloons being removed, there's been some modification of the original artwork, I suppose to give a greater light show effect--and the print is slightly wider. It's interesting to note that Palmer did the pencilling on this issue of Doctor Strange--as opposed to the inking, which is the work he normally does on a comic. His art here was, in turn, inked by artist Dan Adkins, who had been both pencilling and inking Strange through the transition from Strange Tales to Doctor Strange. An interesting about-face for both artists. Palmer, of course, would go on to ink Gene Colan, who would begin pencilling the book with the next issue. And the stellar work of that duo speaks for itself.

As you can see in the following posters, Strange's super-hero costume he wore for a time made for a much more bold and dramatic effect for these prints:

Though you really can't miss with Eternity as a backdrop.