Redrawn Faces in MSH #14?

It is well-known that when Jack Kirby came over to DC in the early 1970s and started working on Jimmy Olsen as well as other titles, that Superman and Jimmy Olsen's faces were redrawn by DC staff artists like Al Plastino and Murphy Anderson. But it appears that this practice actually started at Marvel.

I've already talked about the bizarre one-off Amazing Spiderman story that appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes #14. At least according to a note Stan appended to that story, Johnny Romita was ill and so Ross Andru was pressed into service to fill in for the Jazzy one for a single issue. But Romita apparently recovered and met the deadline, so the story was shelved.

There were a couple of oddities about this story. First, although Andre's longtime inking partner, Mike Esposito, was already inking ASM under the nom de plume of Mickey Demeo, he was not given this assignment; instead the tale was inked by Bill Everett. And second, it looks very much like Romita redrew the faces of Gwen and Mary Jane here:

A friend of mine named Jeff pointed this out to me in an email. As I noted in response to him, what clinches it for me is that while MJ and Gwen both look reasonably normal, Harry doesn't look like himself at all; he looks more like the Sandman. This also gives us a clue that the story must have been drawn well before the publication date of May 1968, as Romita had changed Gwen's hairstyle by then to make it longer. She looks more like she did in 1967:

By 1968 her hair was much longer and straighter:

Wonder Woman 155

Even by the standards of the Silver Age Wonder Woman, that's a mind-boggling cover.

Back in the 1960s, young boys were off in the woods, playing army, possibly the dumbest game ever invented. Girls tended to want to play house, which certainly seemed dumb, but they were actually practicing the roles they were expected to grow into. The hope was that they would find a good man and settle down, just like Mommy had. Of course, there was also the fear that they would fall for the wrong man, or that only the wrong types would want to date them.

These hopes and fears were expressed and marketed to in many ways. For example remember the girls' board game, Mystery Date?

Note the reaction from the girl when she opens the door to discover the "dud" waiting to take her out. One of the amusing things about this ad is that by the 1970s, when these girls were dating for real, most of them were likely to date someone even more shabbily attired than him.

The covers of Lois Lane are filled with images of her falling for the wrong man:





The Wonder Woman story starts out similar to Wonder Woman #125, which I reviewed a few years ago. She's having problems with the men in her life being too aggressive:

She has similar encounters with Bird-Man and Manno, the Merman, during the latter of which we learn an interesting fact about Wonder Woman's physiology:

There's also this amusing bit:

King Kong's escaped again? What a pain!
She also gets some unwanted attention from an octopus. You have to see it to believe it:

So after all that excessive affection, she is intrigued when she meets a monster prince who rejects her friendship:

But when he destroys his castle during a battle with the Amazons who've come to befriend him:

We learn that's the real way to Wonder Woman's heart:

And she decides to marry him. There's an interesting statement on prejudice here:

Wow.

And so we get the scene on the cover. But at the last moment the groom gets cold feet:

There follows a zany sequence where a flying sphinx attacks her, and the monster helps save her and turns into a handsome dreamboat. But as they are falling off a cliff, he gets angry again and changes back into his monster self and rejects her, leading to this denouement:

Comments: Obviously the story is an insane remake of Beauty and the Beast. But it is redeemed a bit by the positive characterization of Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman 156--Return of the Golden Age

One of the things that I've been meaning to do is look back through the comics to see when the concept of comics being "collectibles" first started; this must be a fairly early example, with an August 1965 cover date. Marvel Collectors' Item Classics started the same month, so obviously by then the news was getting out about the value of the older issues.

This issue also demonstrates the growing influence of fandom. In 1961 and 1964, Wonder Woman was selected by the Alley Awards as the "Worst Comic Book Currently Published."
While that is a bit unfair, I suspect what the fans were getting at was more like "The worst comic that used to be good."

In response, Robert Kanigher decided to give the fans what they wanted; a Golden Age-type story with Golden Age-type artwork. Does it work? Mostly it does. Oh, it's zany, but the GA Wonder Woman was quite wacky. The story starts out with Steve Trevor telling Diana Prince that he always knew his Wonder Woman was worth a million, and now he has the proof:

How'd you like to be able to buy early Golden Age issues for $100 per copy?

Intrigued, Wonder Woman visits the Dream Merchant (a fictional comic book shop). She starts reading an old comic and suddenly finds herself pulled into the story:

Incidentally, although the Brain Pirates were featured in a Golden Age Wonder Woman story in Sensation Comics #82, there is only a superficial similarity between that tale and this one.

The Brain Pirate tries to steal Wonder Woman's brain, but she throws off his control. However, he succeeds with Steve Trevor:

There follows a zany battle with the pirates over Steve's "brain"; at one point they load it into a cannon and threaten to fire it far out to sea. She prevents them from doing that, but she's stymied when they control Steve and order him to shoot her if she does not submit:

Just then the Holliday girls and Etta Candy happen to be rowing by, and the pirates threaten to ram them. Wonder Woman prevents this:

Err, but isn't she supposed to be only as strong as a normal woman when her bracelets are welded together? She returns to the pirate ship and is there when the Holliday girls attempt to rescue her by swimming to the ship. But the Brain Pirates capture the girls' brains, and the ship takes off for outer space.

After landing on the Brain Pirates' world, they torment Wonder Woman by making all the passengers walk the plank, into a shark-infested sea. Wondy fights off the sharks, and saves Steve and the Holliday girls:

She gets them safely to land, but the Brain Pirates still control them and force Steve and the girls to capture Wonder Woman. The BPs parade their slaves into their city. They attempt to kill Wonder Woman but she manages to avoid their spears and swords. Then comes the dartboard scene shown on the cover. She manages to get a dart to pierce the chains holding her bracelets together, and now she's free. The leader of the Brain Pirates makes a deal:

Except, as you can probably guess, the brains of Etta, Steve and the Holliday Girls are inside that box. Fortunately Wonder Woman realizes this, grabs the box and her friends, calls for her plane, and gets everybody safely back to Earth. And in the end Wonder Woman pops back out of the comic and into the store where she ponders:


The next two issues were done in Silver Age style and featured the memorable Egg Fu. Wonder Woman #159 featured a retelling of the origin of the Amazon princess, and Golden Age-style art, and Kanigher continued the experiment until #165, when the Silver Age artwork returned. Kanigher noted in the letters column of #166: