Posted: 06 August 2020 at 6:44am | IP Logged | 1
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What to do with the power out?Well, this morning I decided to plunge into the Past by grabbing at random one of my hardbound FF volumes. As it turned out, the one containing issues 10 thru 21, plus the first Annual. What a treasure trove! First Impossible Man appearance, first dust-up with the Hulk, first Red Ghost, first Mad Thinker, the Super-Skrull, Rama-Tut, the Molecule Man, and finally the Hate-Monger (featuring the first “present day” appearance of Nick Fury, minus his eye patch.) The art, in general, is incredibly rough. Kirby was doing what today would be called breakdowns, and depending on the inkers to refine the images. Big a fan as I am of Dick Ayers, some pages look like he was using a brush more suited to house painting! And what a lurch when “George Bell” takes over the interiors with 21. Speaking of George (actually Roussos), it was he whose hard, angular inks gave us our first glimpse of the “rocky” Thing. Stan’s scripts are rough around the edges, too. “Purple” hardly begins to cover it! Still, I was 13, and mesmerized. (A point of special interest is a house ad for the first issue of X-MEN, running the month after it came out!)
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