Tuesday, October 7, 2014

What Are We Waiting For, Tiger?


Have a look at a cool experiment that was used in a 1970 issue of Invincible Iron Man--where the issue's cover also pulled double duty as the first page of the story, and the credits page continued the sequence seamlessly:



The story follows up on the events of the prior issue, where the Titanium Man is smuggled into the country to retrieve the Crimson Dynamo--and Tony Stark's love, Janice Cord, is killed as a result.



The issue still gets its splash page (albeit after the fact), when the Mercenary makes his move--which gives you an idea of the meaning of the story's title, relocated on the cover/"page one."

As far as I know, this is the one and only time this technique has been used in a Marvel comic. Can anyone recall another instance?

5 comments:

  1. I'm glad they abandoned that experiment !! Before I discovered Marvel comics I was reading UK comics aimed at the 4-8 age group (roughly) which were published by DC Thomson and it was their tradition (stretching back to the 1930's) to have no cover picture at all but instead the comic's first strip would feature on the front (under the masthead) so the cover would have a series of panels like all the inside pages.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Colan IS/WAS the best for Silver tales, but I really liked Tuska on IM during the Bronze. He always drew IM with the right amount of bulk and expression.

    I couldn't take Tuska on any other book, but he ruled on IM.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Actually, looking at the cover again, I didn't like most of Tuska's (or Kane) IM covers in the Bronze, despite what iconic work he did on interiors.

    Like this one, most IM covers depicted our hero in awkward or un-flattering positions.

    A lot of his ass in this one, for instance.

    Like "Really..? WHO was proofing these covers..?"

    ReplyDelete
  4. George Tuska was the artist on Marvel's adaptation of the first Planet of the Apes film and he was excellent on that - it's POTA that I first think of whenever Tuska is mentioned.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Careful, David--you may have inadvertently given me an idea for a future post! ;)

    ReplyDelete