Wednesday, July 27, 2011

"Wait until I've told you this marvelous Tale of mine...."

I don't know why, but I've seemed to gravitate to Spider-Man. I like the costume, the women he's had in his life, and of course his powers. I also liked the fact that Spider-man, despite his "loner" image, was always teaming up with some hero or heroine in the MU. In fact he even had his own comic called Marvel Team-Up to capitalize on that fact.
I also seem to really like Reprinted comics. I guess it's because you feel like you're somehow cheating the publisher by buying what could be and sometimes is a an expensive issue for cheap. In any case, back in my youth I collected Marvel Tales feat. Spider-Man. I guess it was the combination of an old story I'd never read before and the new artwork that made up the cover. Even though I sometimes wondered how come the artwork on the cover usually never matched the artwork on the inside, it wasn't enough of a deterrent to keep me from buying the comic anyway. I guess in my young mind, the new cover was a bit of a bonus. Kind of the same principal applied to Classic X-Men/X-Men Classic also. And let me tell you, Marvel Tales used to have some kick-ass covers! Remember the covers that Todd McFarlene used to draw for MT? I do. Here's a sample of a few he did:























Some of favorites and the issues I actually had are the following:















And that's just a few from the covers section of my Google search. There were many more, but you get the idea. I just loved the marvel team-up issues, and honestly, the stories weren't all that bad considering the time period.



I think after blogging about the Marvel Tales issues, the next time I go to my not-so LCS, I'm gonna' grab a few of these just to reminisce a little.




2 comments:

IADW said...

Wow - suddenly I'm wishing Todd had done more with Beast - those covers are brilliant!

Marvel tales was where I got hooked on John Romita - he'd finished by the time I got into buying Spidey but in Marvel Tales he was still going strong. His reprints easily went toe to toe with what else was on the stands.

I always went for the humourous characters, so Spidey stuck out and moved in cool mays but my favourite Marvel Team-Up book was The thing in Marvel Two In One.

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

Yeah, at the time I couldn't get over why thew art inside didn't match those cool covers, but what did I know, I was just a kid.

I too enjoyed John Romita's work, although I really like Gil Kane and Ross Andru's Spidey as well.

Speaking of covers, how beautiful were marshal Rogers' covers huh?
They should've been made into posters.

As for Marvel 2-in-1, I didn't really get into that series much, although I did have one issue where The Thing's in the hospital recovering from his fight with the Champion. The Sandman sneaks into his room, and instead of beating him up like you'd expect, he just sits and offers Ben a stoogie. Great story. It was #96 I believe.

"Closing time. You don't have to go home but you can't stay here."

Well..... I kinda always knew this day would come, and it sure has. It's been a hell of a ride, but it's time to for it end. Ti...