Strange Colors!

One of the earliest rules I learned from blogging is: be careful when you're presenting material from a reprint as opposed to the original publication.

Sometimes art has been re-drawn; sometimes words have been altered to eliminate mistakes or conform with more recent continuity. That's why I try to note when a story I present panels from is a reprint, because it just may different than the original.

Trivial but profound example: a Google image search for something else led me to this panel...or rather, 4 different versions of this panel, from 4 different websites:

Now, none of these websites identified where they scanned/clipped the panel from. But the story, originally from Strange Tales #138 (1965) has been reprinted a jillion times, many of those times with a different colorist credited for the reprint (GCD lists "Stan Goldberg (?)" as the original colorist). And aside from the Doctor Strange figure, there is nothing in the panel that's the same color in all four versions, save a few black areas.

Now, I'm not going to tell you that one of these panels is preferable to the other, that one is superior. Indeed, such re-coloring might be necessary due to time and/or unavailability of the original materials.

But think about this: if one relatively inconsequential panel can differ so much from printing to reprinting to re-reprinting to re-re-reprinting...what about everything else in the story?

So remember--when you're reading a reprint, or even a presentation of the original one on of these new-fangled digital platforms, you may not be seeing same thing the contemporary readers saw when they grabbed it off the rack. Even in a particularly important comic from an artistic legend.

Confession Is Good For The Soul!

Do you want to see something remarkable? Something unlikely to be repeated ever again?

In 1973, Marvel relaunched Strange Tales (without renumbering!!) as a horror tryout title, sort of a Marvel Premiere for supernatural/monster characters, which were a big part of Marvel's output at the time.

So after 5 issues of Brother Voodoo, it came time for the debut of...

Now, the Golem had a bit of a troubled run.

This first issue was by Len Wein and John Buscema, a pretty good pedigree to launch a "sensational" new hero.

But for the second issue, there were deadline problems, and they had to go with reprints of old horror stories. When you can't meet the deadline for the second issue of a bi-monthly series, well, you're in Superman Unchained territory!

The Golem returned for #176 & 177, but now the creators were Mike Friedrich and Tony deZuniga.

And the very last panel of the story in #177?

Uh-oh...that's never a good sign!

And the "dramatic announcement" on the letters page?

Remarkable.

A comic book company admitting that deadline problems and shifting creative teams hurt the book? That such problems could demoralize the creative team?

A confession that they had no idea on the book's direction? An implicit admission that editorial was at fault? That at some point it was better to punt than keep faking it?

A simple statement, "we goofed"?!?

They were right--"it may be the only time we're gonna be so shamefacedly candid" about such issues. Try to picture one of the big two giving an honest confession like this in 2014 (particularly DC, who doesn't even bother with letters pages, let alone communicating with fans: "We had no idea what we wanted with Green Team...").

And the strip that replaced The Golem in Strange Tales? Starlin's Warlock. So that worked out pretty well...