Category: Comic Books

A Month for Bugs

It was bad enough when the 1960’s was 50 years ago, but 60?? In June, 1962, unknown to me as a little boy in Wisconsin, Amazing Fantasy #15 was on newsstands, featuring the first appearance of Spider-Man.

Original, unpublished cover by Steve Ditko for Amazing Fantasy #15

Also that month, 60 years ago today, in fact, was B-Day. The Beatles had their first recording session with George Martin at EMI. John, Paul, and George, with Pete Best on drums.

https://www.beatlesbible.com/1962/06/06/the-beatles-first-abbey-road-recording-session/

Recording ‘From Me to You’ March 5, 1963

https://www.producingthebeatles.com/new-episodes/2018/11/19/006-not-so-simple-from-me-to-you-and-other-early-singles

https://www.curvebenderpublishing.com/

Blog Post Extra: Someone has pegged the distribution date of Amazing Fantasy #15 as June 5, 1962, 60 years ago yesterday. Also released that day was the debut of another Marvel Comics Group bug, in the person of Ant-Man.

https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2022/06/05/60-years-of-ant-man-spider-man-thor-and-larry/

Research Search

How to use the online database at the Billy Ireland Library & Cartoon Museum at Ohio State University.

http://osucartoons.pastperfectonline.com/

Numerical data on comic book sales is available on ComicChron. Between 1964 and 1965, what was the top-selling Marvel comic? Was it Spider-Man? The Fantastic Four? Neither title even appears in the list, and I suspect this is an error of omission.

https://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales/postaldata/1965.html

From 1965 to 1966, Spidey and the FF suddenly loomed large, and the relative rankings of Superman and Batman made a big swap. That was THE time when comic books and fandom exploded, bringing me along with it, thanks to the Batman TV show.

https://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales/postaldata/1966.html

Happy Boxing Day

Having nothing at the moment for Mother’s Day, I’ll use this instead. Borrowed from J.J. Sedelmaier on Facebook, a superb unpublished Jack Davis illustration. It was intended for MAD #26, 1955, the third issue after the switch from comic book to magazine format.

What a draftsman Davis was. He had such a confident mastery over his brushwork. He layered in so much detail and shading, and yet everything is perfectly clear and distinct.

Joe and Jon and the Not “Marvel Stuff”

Joe Sinnott holding a splash page from Sabrina the Teenage Witch #15, October 1973

Joe Sinnott produced a huge volume of art in addition to his massive output for Marvel. Joe worked, without credit, on many pages of Archie Comics, helping his good friend Jon D’Agostino with inking jobs, as explained in an interview excerpt you’ll find here.

https://alphabettenthletter.blogspot.com/2022/04/comics-jon-dagostino-colorist-artist.html

Working from Joe’s own logbook, my best buddy Denro took it upon himself to identify all of Joe’s work for Archie. The catch? Joe was able to write down only the names of the stories he worked on. Not even the titles of the books, let alone the issue numbers could be noted. Why? Because the publisher took the stories into inventory and didn’t necessarily know where they would end up appearing. Denro provides more information.

Jon D’Agostino lettered the stories and inked the faces, to maintain his “look” and to keep the characters on model. Then Joe would ink the rest of the figures, in most cases, and ink all of the backgrounds. So, the page was mostly done by Joe, but the characters would have Jon’s look – and of course the look of the penciller. This was the 1969 to 1973 era, when Archie was putting out a ton of books. Jon D’Agostino took on a ton of work and called on Joe when he had too many pages to do.

Joe just recorded the name of the story and how many pages he did. That’s the list I worked from to find the stories in the various Archie titles. It would have been a lot easier today, as most Archies have been indexed in the Grand Comic Database. But back then, when I did it, there was not much info. They actually used my info in the database, as they took it from Joe’s [now deleted] website, which was my info. Technically, they are incorrect in the database, as they credit the inks solely to Joe. It should be Joe AND Jon D’Agostino. But there’s so many issues to correct.

This story was penciled by Stan Goldberg, who was more commonly known as Stan G.

I was tempted to start this post with, “An Irishman, an Italian, and a Jew walk into a bar,” referring to Joe, Jon, and Stan respectively. But I thought better of it. 😉