MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY
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"A WILD-RIDE ACCOUNT" —The Hollywood Reporter
"EPIC" —The New York Times
"INDISPENSABLE" —Los Angeles Times
"DEFINITIVE" —The Wall Street Journal
"SCINTILLATING" —Publishers Weekly
“FASCINATING” —GQ
"AUTHORITATIVE" —Kirkus Reviews
"GRIPPING" —Rolling Stone
"PRICELESS" —Booklist
"A MUST FOR ANY SUPERHERO OR POP-CULTURE FAN" —NY Post
"ESSENTIAL" —The Daily Beast
"A SUPERPOWERED MUST-READ" —USA Today
"REVELATORY" —The Miami Herald
"AS FULL OF COLORFUL CHARACTERS, TRAGIC REVERSALS AND UNLIKELY PLOT TWISTS AS ANY BOOK IN THE MARVEL CANON" —Newsday
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‘KRAKEN’ AWAKES: SCIENTISTS CAPTURE FIRST IMAGES OF GIANT SQUID FILMED IN DEEP OCEAN OFF JAPAN
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/images-giant-squid-filmed-deep-ocean-article-1.1235493
(Image: Sub-Mariner #27, 1970. Art by Sal Buscema and Mike Esposito. Words by Roy Thomas. Lettering by Sam Rosen.)
Doctor Strange #180. Art by Gene Colan. Words by Roy Thomas.
Happy New Year!
Smilin’ Stan, your host in the Chamber of Darkness.
The Thing meets John Romita…in 1942. Marvel Two-in-One Annual #1, 1976. Art by Sal Buscema. Words by Roy Thomas.
What do Archie Bunker and H.P. Lovecraft have in common?
They’re both covered in this memo from Roy Thomas to Stan Lee, from 1972. There’s a note in Stan Lee’s writing: “I’ll ask M.G.”—since Stan Lee replaced Martin Goodman as publisher by May, this must have been written only weeks before Goodman’s departure.
In the fall of 1965, Roy Thomas recruited fellow Missourian Dennis O’Neil to work as Marvel’s second editorial assistant; within a matter of weeks, one of the Magazine Management editors tried to enlist O’Neil in a scheme to dose Stan Lee with LSD.
“He was going to supply a sugar cube of acid,” said O’Neil. “My mission, should I have chosen to accept it, would have been to drop it into his coffee.” O’Neil, a self-described “hippie liberal rebel” who had been lectured by Lee for wearing a T-shirt depicting a cannabis plant to the office, nonetheless declined.
Text from Marvel Comics: The Untold Story
MARVEL COMICS, IN A CTHULHU MOOD.
Here’s another glimpse at what might have been: A 1972 Roy Thomas memo proposes, among a handful of launches and title changes, a series “hosted” (a la EC’s Crypt Keeper) by the Doctor Strange villain Nightmare.
And what’s this? An anthology comic called THE MACABRE WORLD OF H.P. LOVECRAFT?!? A few months later, an issue of Journey into Mystery would feature an adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark,” but no series ever materialized.
“College-style satire,” coming right up!
From 1974.
“Sexist Hulk Must Go!” From Hulk #142, August 1971. Art by Herb Trimpe and John Severin. Words by Roy Thomas. Lettering by Artie Simek.
Letter from Stan Lee’s secretary to a young Oliver Stone.
And so Sgt. Fury and His Howling Platoon never got off the ground…
