Today's Good Comic I Had A Hand In had something of a strange genesis. It's AVENGERS #1 1/2 by Roger Stern and Bruce Timm. Here's how it all started out:
When we were working on AVENGERS FOREVER, at some point it was decided that, rather than doing the standard "two-for-two" dual covers for the second issue, we'd instead do four covers for issue #4--"Four-for-Forever." In addition to Carlos Pacheco, we got pieces from John Buscema, Frank Quitely and Jeff Smith. But to insure that we had a safety net, I actually commissioned five pieces, the last one being by Bruce Timm, a shot of the original Avengers team.
Well, everybody else came through on their pieces, so there wasn't a need to use Timm's shot on AVENGERS FOREVER. But having it in hand, and wanting to do something with it, we hit on the idea of doing a special--I don't remember at this late date whether it was Gregg Schigiel or myself or Bruce who came up with the notion of doing AVENGERS #1 1/2, an issue that fit between the bimonthly 1963 issues #1 and #2. But it was a good call.
Bruce really wanted to capture the flavor of that early Jack Kirby work in this special, and from what he's said in interviews since, he feels that he failed. But whether he reached what he was striving for artistically or not--and I think he did an excellent job--this is still a crackerjack comic book, steeped in the era. We went so far as to produce a fake letters page true to the times, with letters from folks like Mark Waid, Kurt Busiek and Ty Templeton about AVENGERS #1, as well as appropriate announcements about the rest of the Marvel line of the period. And we produced fake house ads by Paul Smith and Dick Ayers for 1/2 issues of the other Marvel books that were bimonthly in 1963 and skipped the month of October--KID COLT, OUTLAW #113 1/2 and SGT FURY #3 1/2.
In fact, we tried in every way to mimic the look and feel of a Marvel comic of 1963. And then, due to a printer snafu, the book was bound with an insert that wasn't supposed to go in this particular comic--and insert, ironically enough, drawn by asistant editor Gregg Schigiel.
Other stuff I remember: after Roger did the script, I heard that Bruce had a few problems with the dialogue. I called him up to work this out, and whiel there was maybe one actual line of dialogue he had a question about, most of his actual concerns were with the specific sound effects used. (In the end, we went with his.) And the funniest thing in the issue is a strange stream-of-consciousness fake ad that Gregg Schigiel wrote on the fly, replacing the copy on a vintage 1960s ad for a course on automotive repair.
And I've kept copies of Bruce's uninked pencils and layouts to this day.
More later.
Tom B
that's so cool, i'd only just heard of the '1/2' issues on a messageboard yesterday.
very cool.
Posted by dp_lombardo on 2006-08-17 12:04:16
a favorite i've actually read this comic more times than any other comic i own (it sits on my desk next to my monitor and i thumb through it pretty much every day). i actually own the first two volumes of Essential Avengers, but when i want a classic Avengers fix i always grab this comic.
(and i ripped out the "don't smoke pot" insert, actually. don't worry...no damage to the comic itself.)
Posted by juanloya on 2006-08-17 12:08:08
avengers the world's greatest superhero team u know it's gonna be friggin awesome
Posted by tarhaun on 2006-08-17 17:05:14
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About this blog: Ramblings and musings from the mind of Tom Brevoort. "It won’t be clean. It won’t be fun. It mostly won’t be coherent."
About the author: Tom Brevoort is Executive Editor for Marvel Comics, and oversees such titles as New Avengers, Civil War, and Fantastic Four.
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