July 1971

My Marvels

My interest in new DCs had almost come to a halt (though I was still buying back issues of Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, the Legion Adventure, JLA, Teen Titans, and few other titles at the collectibles store on my block). As an aside: I was now very interested in baseball, and the summer of 1971 I had my transistor radio constantly tuned into the Yankees station. Yes, for my first full year as a baseball fan I was a Yankees fan (next year I would switch to the Mets and never look back ).

I started with the Yankees because my class had gone to a Yankees game and so I felt some sort of allegiance to them. So now when I went to the candy stores it was to buy multiple newspapers: the Times (for my parents), the News and the Post. I devoured the sports pages and cut out the Yankees box scores and pasted them into a spiralbound notebook I kept,  tracking the Yankees' wins and losses --mostly losses that year, as they were a miserable team! The superstar team of baseball during the time were the Baltimore Orioles, who happened to be in the Yankees' division (this was back when there were only 2 divisions in each league). The Os seemed invincible, at least in the American League. My father also had a subscription to Sports Illustrated and I loved reading those. Basically, following the Yankees and baseball in general and the everyday box scores and numerous articles about the AL satisfied my love for serialized drama, and became my go-to leisure reading material, replacing my DC comics reading. 


But there was still Marvel and I was still a fan of the Avengers and FF, and luckily there was still one reliable candy store in my neighborhood that regularly stocked the latest issues of those two series every month.   That July I bought these two fresh off the stands: 



Avengers #92: cover by Neal Adams (as if it's not obvious), interior art by Sal Buscema. I loved Sal's Avengers; he made them look cute and relatable. I also loved that Roy Thomas was including some conflict between Wanda and Vision; as we saw last issue they were attracted to one another but here in #92 Vision was pushing Wanda away. Oh the soap opera of it all   !  Finally there was some romance in this series and I couldn't wait to see how this would play out. For me it was always the human interest part that made comics interesting. Also, Wanda was my favorite Marvel character and I was glad to see her finally get some character development.  

Fantastic Four #115: Can you say bor-ing? Page after page of the Watcher droning on/expository background, then Reed turning "bad." Hadn't the FF just gone through this, with Ben turning against the team a few issues earlier? Plot by Stan, script/dialogue by Archie Goodwin. John Buscema did his usual masterful job drawing the "expository" section since it contained a lot of fanciful scenes, but his FF scenes were kind of pedestrian. It pains me to say that because he is about my favorite Marvel artist (along with Gene Colan), but you can tell his heart wasn't in superhero teams like the FF. 

Nothing I recall having, though I later acquired New Gods #5, Superman #243 (World of Krypton back-up story, plus sand creature saga continued).

Super Goo and Uncle Scrooge were possibilities, as I had a couple of each, but have never been sure which ones I had, other than the issue of Super Goof with Super Gilley.

August 1971 continued

My Marvels off the stands spinner-rack:




Fantastic Four #116: Okay, so I bought this one first and I was sorry I did. Pedestrian "we're the only one who can save the universe from this all-powerful being" and one member of team turns bad (Reed in this case). Ho hum.   By the way, this was the month Marvel expanded its page count (and price, to a whole quarter! Not good for a financially-strapped poor young 'un like me).  Anyway, with all these extra pages the story meandered and there seemed to be a lot of padding.  And as we know, next month Marvel went back down to its usual page count and reduced the price to 20 cents. DC didn't, so Marvel finally caught up in sales.

John Buscema was doing his best Jack Kirby imitation, aided and abetted by the great Joe Sinnott....but IMO this just resulted in watered-down Buscema. I know it was important to maintain the classic FF look, but here the art looked so simple, so basic. 

And what was with the cover?! Back then I hated those picture frame covers. I know it was done for uniformity and easier identification but to me it looked silly and yes, childish. And no more corner box faces with team members! Now there was just a single figure.


Avengers #93:  So here's the thing. When I bought Avengers #93 a few days later and looked at it alongside FF #116, I immediately noticed that they were both cover dated "November."  But ever since I started to read Marvel in 1967, I knew that a few monthly series were cover dated 2 months ahead of on sale month (Avengers, Daredevil, Thor) and others 3 months ahead, even though all were on sale at the same time. In other words, I'd expected Avengers #93 to be cover dated October, not November.  So what happened? Stuck as I was at this godforsaken vacation hotel, had I somehow missed an issue, namely the October issue??? 

To make matters worse, the previous Avengers comic I'd read had ended with the shaming of and dissolution of the Avengers team of Wanda, Pietro, Clint and Vision. This new comic, #93, opened with the Vision barging into Avengers HQ and falling flat on his face in front of Thor, Cap and Iron Man...and then several pages of Ant-Man(?! I thought Hank had quit superheroing a few issues ago) making his now-famous journey in the Vision's body.  Page after page after page after pa--you get the idea--of Neal Adams. Okay, okay, I know he's a great artist and all that, but what happened to Wanda, Pietro and Clint? This really didn't seem like it continued from #92; I really thought I had missed an issue. FINALLY halfway through this expanded comic Vision recounts what happened to his partners. 

Now of course this issue is considered a classic, and I can appreciate was Adams did; but back then I was so annoyed that the story I wanted to read--what happened to the Avengers--was interrupted by pages of (admittedly exquisite and masterful) art. 

Anyway, once I got home and checked that the previous issue was indeed numbered #92 I realized that I hadn't missed an issue. It was just that starting with the monthlies on sale in August, Marvel had synched up its comics' cover dates so the cover dates were now uniform.   So you'll see there's no October 1971 cover-dated issues for the Avengers, Daredevil and Thor.

Envious that you were able to buy so many comics back then ! As I have mentioned, during this time in my neighborhood--upper Manhattan--the candy stores seemed to be decreasing their stash of monthly comic books; instead, there were more and more magazines in the racks. And while I would shortly be going to school in midtown Manhattan--so I was in Grand Central every day--those great big newsstands in Grand Central stocked foreign and domestic  magazines*** as well as paperbacks--but not comics! 


***I soon became addicted to sports, film, and theatre magazines...but that's another story 

Time to play some catch up! Here's what I bought off the stands in September 1971  (yes, I know it's October and I'll get around to that, but first I need to post Sept. 1971). 


DC: A big nothing bought off the stands that month. Note,  I was still a fan of the Sekowsky Wonder Woman, but this month's issue, #197, contained reprints from just a couple of years earlier (the start of Sekowsky's run) and I already had those issues, so I didn't buy #197. The same thing would happen with #198 (on sale two months later). I remember being very annoyed that DC was reprinting such recent stories!  

Marvel: I managed to pick up my two regular Marvels: 



Avengers #94: Another installment of what we now know as the Kree-Skrull War, and I know it's considered a classic, but for me back then, ho hum. The art and story were just all over the place and not in a good way. This issue contained three "chapters"; the first and third illustrated in a to-my-eyes-hurried fashion by Neal Adams; and the middle chapter penciled by John Buscema (it's been reported that Buscema was called in because Adams was having problems with deadlines). Tom Palmer inked the whole thing. The two different pencilers was jarring, and made the issue seem like it was put together at the last minute. Coupled with last issue's sloppiness (for example, the Vision's headpiece was colored yellow throughout the book) plus what seemed to me a middle chapter that read as filler -- and not not very imaginative: Wanda and Pietro battling little creatures who were just like Star Trek's famous Tribbles--well, let's say this young reader wasn't very pleased back then.

Fantastic Four #117: The FF issue was even worse. Here Johnny went to look for Crystal, who'd been gone from the book since #105 (a year earlier in real time) and all of a sudden he discovers she never made it back to the Inhumans?? The fact that Johnny and Crystal hadn't stayed in touch at all since her departure was, to me, silly. Archie Goodwin was now writing the FF (since #115) and he did an okay Stan impression but the book was clearly sputtering.

This was a continued story/the first part of a two-issue story.  And as it turned out, #117 was the last issue of FF I'd buy off the stands. Due to poor distribution in my neighborhood as well as my own growing lack of interest in the FF, I never got issue #118. In fact I only read the conclusion of this story a few years ago in the FF Essentials volume.