See 7 classic Marvel covers before the editors made them perfect
We've been following longtime Marvel Comics editor Tom Breevort's excellent Tumblr page, The Marvel Age of Comics, for a while now. In addition to sharing images of original art from classic Marvel superhero adventures, Breevort's recently taken to showing us classic Marvel covers, before they were retouched by editors.
"In the the Marvel Age of Comics, covers were continually tweaked and adjusted right up till the moment they were sent off to the printer," Breevort wrote. "Both editor Stan Lee and publisher Martin Goodman had strong opinions as to what constituted a successful cover—which was considered the most important part of the magazine, the thing that would sell it to prospective buyers. Additionally, the Comics Code Authority would occasionally request changes to covers they considered too violent or salacious."
Check out the side-by-side comparisons below, along with notes from Breevort about what was changed and why.
(Via The Marvel Age of Comics)
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X-Men #1: The grass line in the deep background, the beam coming from Marvel Girl's head and the circle around the Fantastic Four blurb were removed. Breevort also notes that "Marvel Girl herself was enlarged and repositioned higher on the cover."
Journey Into Mystery #83: For the first appearance of Thor, Breevort notes that "all of the Stone Men positioned directly behind and around Thor were removed from the final cover so as to silhouette the character cleanly."
The Amazing Spider-Man #51: For this John Romita Spider-Man cover, Breevort notes that "the entirety of the background was blacked in so as to simplify the visual confusion behind the lead figures."
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #5: Breevort's thoughts on this Jim Steranko cover: "As can be seen from this cover rough, apparently Jim initially did a very different take on this image, one that was completely redone (though along similar design lines) before the cover was completed and sent off to press. No idea what motivated such a drastic overhaulâespecially given that the final piece isnât all that different from what was started with."
The Invincible Iron Man #1: "As you can see, a number of the smaller vignettes were rearranged in order to get the central Iron Man figure positioned higher on the cover," Breevort said. "In an era when most comics were racked in such a way that only a portion of the top of the cover was visible, it was critical to get something visually interesting going on in that space to attract the attention of prospective buyers."
The Incredible Hulk #102: Breevort notes that a "bevy of changes" were made to this Marie Severin cover. They're a bit subtler than some of the others we've seen, but if you take a moment to study both images, you'll see that many of the figures were completely repositioned for the final cover.
Fantastic Four #2: "On this one, all sorts of copy was removed, flames were added around the Torch, and even the issue number was moved to conceal the huge dead space that used to contain blurbs," Breevort wrote. "Even the window drapes were shortened so as to better silhouette the invisible Sue."
