Arctic Ink Comics Review

By the fall of 1963, Tales of Suspense had, for all intents and purposes, become the official Iron Man magazine with a brief bonus anthology story packed in the back. There was no meaningful difference in story composition between Iron Man and feature titles like Fantastic Four or Spider-Man , and the expanded page allocation hints at a popularity steadily grown since the character’s debut in Tales of Suspense #39 . The series was far from nailing it though. Even after fixing the most pressing problems with the character and the premise, and improving his design to be more visually appealing and creatively expressive, Iron Man still needed good stories. The next two issues would indicate just how much the story still mattered, and how little the protagonist and his supporting cast can do about it if the narrative isn't working. The X-over! Tales of Suspense #49: "The New Iron Man Meets the Angel!" Writers: Stan Lee Artists: Steve Ditko & Paul Reinman Ed...

While not necessarily the best issue of The Amazing Spider-Man so far, issue #8 experiments with some new angles to approach the character from, and in this early era it’s both charming and commendable to not just repeat the story formats that have been tried before. In fact, it’s somewhat surprising how boldly Stan Lee and Steve Ditko broke new ground in most new issues, and only occasionally settled for a comfortable story of thwarting a villain and calling it a day. The Amazing Spider-Man #8: "The Terrible Threat of the Living Brain!" Writers: Stan Lee Artists: Steve Ditko Editor: Stan Lee Publication Date: October 8, 1963 Cover Date: January 1964 Art by Steve Ditko, Stan Goldberg and Artie Simek. © Marvel Comics. We spend a lot of time establishing the premise of the issue, and we don’t see Spider-Man in costume until a third of the way through the book. The setup has a lot going on, much more than you usually would: Flash and Peter have an a...

Following the success of Fantastic Four , Marvel was primed for a second feature title to reinforce their presence at the newsstands. Marvel mostly dealt in anthology books such as Journey into Mystery and Tales of Suspense due to a restrictive publishing deal that only allowed a handful of separate titles to be published each month, and anthologies allowed for some flexibility of story content. Selecting a character or team to lead their own feature was therefore a big commitment, one that many characters – famously including Spider-Man – didn’t qualify for without a trial run in one of the anthologies. The Hulk , however, had enough faith from the powers that be for a dedicated title right off the bat. We now know that the series was canceled after six issues, which corresponds to about one year. Something about the character and the story that was expected to be worth the publication slot didn’t resonate like it needed to. We know this wasn’t a symptom of the industry at large ju...

It's always interesting to personally reach the point where a series starts to get good, and without a doubt issue #3 is that for the X-Men : the plot is tighter, the villain is more compelling, and characters get some actual depth in small increments. Whether or not the following issues will stay as good remains to be seen, but this issue is undoubtedly better than the first two . So much so, in fact, that the series could just start here and be a lot more promising. There's still an odd lack of acknowledgement lingering around the questionable ethics of the X-Men institution and Professor X himself, but the rest of the story is solid enough that it's much less of a problem now than it was before. Getting deeper! X-Men #3: "Beware of the Blob!" Writers: Stan Lee Artists: Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman Editor: Stan Lee Publication Date: November 5, 1963 Cover Date: Januart 1964 Art by Jack Kirby, Sol Brodsky and Sam Rosen. © Marvel Comics. ...