Gone but not forgotten – Marvel Value Stamps

In March 1974 Marvel began printing value stamps on the letters pages of all their titles. Series A of the value stamps consisted of 100 pieces of art taken from old comics and old unused pieces of artwork which were cropped to appear in the form of a postage stamp. Marvel also sold a stamp book (image above ) for 50 cents where collectors could put their stamps. At the time I had no idea what these stamps were for, but seemingly a full book of stamps entitled the owner to discounts on admission to various comic book conventions and merchandise while leaving their comic book collection “mutilated”. Collectors beware when picking up any back issues from the 1974/76 period as you may find (like myself) that the letters page and sometimes a corresponding story page has been snipped to remove the value stamp.

As noted above a total of 100 stamps were produced in series A. Stamp 1 shown above from the letters page of Captain Marvel issue 35, featured Spider-Man. Just before they printed the 100th stamp they printed a mystery stamp to tease readers as to who would actually appear in the last stamp – it was Galactus (below) although personally I would have though Stan Lee would have been a better choice.

Following the success of series A Marvel introduced a new series B in December 1975 which consisted of a set of 100 “puzzle pieces” of artwork again taken from older comics/art. When these were collected and put together they created 10 separate images of Marvel characters; Thor (below) Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Dracula, Silver Surfer, Conan , Dr Strange, Captain America, and Stan (the Man) Lee.

Marvel Stamp "Puzzle piece" from Series B - part of the Thor image below.

As with Series A Marvel also provided a book (above) where these could be collected and traded etc.

Below are some other Marvel Valuse Stamps for Series A:

image from Marvel Wiki

Image form Marvel Wiki

Favourite comics: Howard the Duck issue 1

Howard the Duck first appeared in “Adventures Into Fear” issue 19 in a “Man-Thing” story written by his creator Steve Gerber and illustrated by Val Mayerik in December 1973. After that appearance Howard graduated to a backup series in “Giant size Man-Thing” issues 4 and 5 in 1975 written by Steve Gerber where he faced the terror of “Garko the Man-Frog” and “Bessie the Hellcow”. As fun as these stories were it was the introduction of artist Frank Brunner that took the character to new hights and was instrumental in getting Howard his own comic in 1976. Sadly Brunner left the strip after issue 2 to be replaced by the equally excellent Gene Colan from issue 4 (after an excellent one- off tale in issue 3 by John Buscema). The history of the Howard the Duck character has had its fair share of issues including the production of one of Hollywood’s most maligned movies, an enforced redesign of the character by Disney, a short lived newspaper strip, and a bitter copyright infringement lawsuit made against Marvel by Steve Gerber for sole rights to the character. Despite all this Howard the Duck was a fun comic and those early issues by Gerber and Brunner have remained some of my favourite comics.

Above: The first appearance of Howard the Duck from "Adventures Into Fear” issue 19

Page turners: Nestor Redondo

Nestor Redondo was a superstar in his native Philippines before moving to the US in the early 1970’s where he began working on various DC mystery comics including “House of Mystery”, “Ghosts” and “The Unexpected” . However, it was in the pages of “Swamp Thing” issue 13 where I first became aware of his work on a story called “The Leviathan Conspiracy” (splash page above - December 1974). Redondo worked on Swamp Thing from issue 11 until issue 23 taking over the art chores from the characters co-creator and artist, the legendary Bernie Wrightson. After “Swamp Thing” ceased publication Redondo began work on “Rima, The Jungle Girl” an enchanting and a very underrated comic which contained some of his most lavish art in US comics. Redondo’s final major work for DC was illustrating the comic book adaption of the “Bible” scripted by Sheldon Mayer and edited by Joe Kubert who also provide pencil lay-outs for Redondo. The finished tabloid sized comic was artistically spectacular. After leaving DC Redondo undertook other comic book assignments working for Warren, Marvel , Eclipse and Continuity comics. Sadly Nestor Redondo passed away in 1995 at the age of 67. Below are some of my favourite Nestor Redondo pages:

Swamp Thing issue 14 -February 1975.

Internal story page from Swamp Thing issue 15 "The Soul-spell of Father Bliss art by Nestor Redondo - April 1975

Rima The Jungle Girl issue 2 (page 4) July 1974.

Rima The Jungle Girl issue 5 (page 4) January 1975.

The Bible

The Bible

Phantom Stranger issue 32 (Black Orchid by Redondo in issues 32, 35 and 36)

Phantom Stranger issue 35, page 6 (Black Orchid )

The Rook issue 12 (Story: The Bat) - Scan taken from the Grand Comics Database.

Savage Sword of Conan issue 90 (inking John Buscema's pencils)

My Famous Firsts: Incredible Hulk issue 137

Although I had been aware of the Hulk through the pages of the UK weekly comic “Smash” where his stories had been reprinted since 1966, it wasn’t until 1971 when I saw and purchased my first US Hulk comic, the above issue 137 (cover by Trimpe and Marie Severin). At the time of his appearances in Smash! I wasn’t a fan of the character mostly because his strips seemed poorly produced with pages looking crammed (Smash would print 4 US Hulk pages into 3 UK pages etc) and of course I was only about 6 years old at this time and superhero stories weren’t of that much interest to me then. However, by mid-1971 my fascination with the superhero genre was starting to emerge and those elusive US Marvel comics (DC’s weren’t that hard to find) were starting to be a priority purchase for me.

My first memory of seeing the Hulk was on the cover of my brothers copy of Smash! Issue 17 which featured Jack Kirby’s cover for Incredible Hulk issue 1. Sadly the Hulk was printed in flesh tones as Marvel only supplied Odhams with black and white artwork forgetting to tell them that the Hulk was green (or even grey as he appeared on Kirby’s US cover). Cover from the Grand Comic Database.

It was on a trip to my local newsagent around July 1971 where I spied Incredible Hulk issue 137 which I immediately purchased. I held onto this copy of the Hulk (and issue 136 which I purhased a few weeks later) for decades until I I left a large box of comics containing these issues sometime in the early 1980's, when I moved house. It wasn’t until a holiday visit to Liverpool around 6 years ago that I saw a nice copy of issue 137 (and 136) for sale at the very reasonable price of £3 each.. As soon as I saw the cover of issue 137 my memory went back to the day I first purchased it and remembered (before I opened my copy) the above strange character from that story which must have made a strong impression on my then young mind.

Issue 137 was the final part of a two issue tale called “The Stars, Mine Enemy” that began in issue 136. The story lends heavily from Herman Melville’s novel “ Moby Dick” where the Hulk is forced aboard a ship of aliens who are hunting the alien creature Klaatu. There he meets the Abomination who is First Mate aboard the vessel where as expected the Hulk and Abomination begin fighting. The captain of the space ship Cybor, hires Xeron the Starslayer to help him hunt down and destroy Klaatu who was responsible for destroying half his body. As the hunt progresses Cybor harpoons Klaatu, but gets pulled into the sun killing him and seemingly destroying the monster as well (50 plus year spoiler : Klaatu returns) . As the Hulk and the Abomination continued their fight, their blows bring them closer to Earth's atmosphere where they are pulled in by the planet's gravity sending them into a free fall to the planet's surface. Some of my favourite pages from this issue are noted below:

The above cover (by Herb Trimpe and Sal Buscema) to issue 136 was the first part of this tale called “Klatuu! The Behemoth from Beyond Space!” I first purchased this comic a couple of weeks after buying issue 137 in the same newsagents and found it "fun" that I found this and issue 137 together in a market stall in Liverpool some 50 years after I first bought them in Glasgow.