Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Black and White Wednesday: "In the Beginning--" by Lee, Lieber, and Everett

Happy Birthday, Stan (The Man) Lee! 94 today? Wow! He's still going strong (I was able to snap a blurry shot of him at the Cincinnati Comics Expo back in the fall--blurry because a security dude was grabbing at my phone! I was half a football field away, dude! The closest I'll ever get to Stan, gimme a break! But, was he ever an autographing machine!)

Anyhow, my admiration for Stan Lee never wavers, his importance to comics in general and Marvel in particular can never be overstated, imho. Regardless of where you stand on the "Marvel Method" of writing, t'was Stan's personality, both on the comicbook page and off, that made the world stand up and take notice of Marvel. In April 1968, Stan gave his greatest co-creation (Spider-Man, natch) a shot at "the big time" by having him headline Marvel's first b&w, magazine-sized superhero mag, Spectacular Spider-Man #1. The idea was ahead of its time, but man, what a cool mag it was! In honor of Stan's birthday, let's look at an awesome re-telling of Web-Head's origin from that self-same mag, illustrated by The Man's brother, Larry Lieber, and a man who worked for Marvel before it was even Marvel, Sub-Mariner creator Bill Everett! Face Front!











Excelsior!

4 comments:

  1. Wonderful tribute to Stan "The Man" Lee on his 94th. I can say I got a "Your Welcome" at the Alamo City Comic Con in 2015 from Stan even though they said don't say anything but just wanted to say thank you to him for an autograph. I think I have a blurry pic of him on my phone at the show too.

    I would hate to think if he would have of never of gotten into comics that we would not have of had all those great characters and stories he created.

    Shane G.

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  3. As a kid during the Groovy Age who among us didn't fantasize about being Spider-Man? For me it was a toss up between being him and Batman. Happy birthday Stan!

    Excelsior!

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  4. Agree with your assessment of Stan, who I was lucky enough to meet when he was a mere 69 years of age, 25 years ago. (Got my photo taken with him too.) Did you see the replica edition of this mag, published a few years ago? They ruined it by re-lettering most of it with computer fonts.

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