The "Marvel Celebrates Stan Lee" memorial comic

It's kind of weird that I remember where I was when I learned that Stan Lee had died. I was in downtown Pittsburgh on a cold night, working as an extra on a Seth Rogan movie. I opened a news app on my phone and saw the headline. I thought to myself, "should I tell Seth Rogan?" He was right next to me and I figured that he would probably want to know, but I kept it to myself, which was probably the smart thing to do (I've never spoken to Seth Rogan).

Anyway, after Lee passed, Marvel hosted a memorial of sorts at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York in early October of 2019, almost a year later. This invite-only event was attended by folks from the comics industry, and of course by different celebrities and other people who worked for Disney in some fashion. It was quite the who's who.

Among the items that attendees received at this celebration was a "Marvel Celebrates Stan Lee" comic book, which I suppose was very fitting. This book was never reprinted and soon became a very sought-after item on the secondary market. In 2019 and '20, it was going for so much that I wrote it off as something that I would never get my hands on, even though, ugh, the Thing was on the cover, standing right on top of the Hulk, no less, along with the rest of the Fantastic Four and many other popular Marvel characters.

I've kept an eye out for the book ever since, though, and a copy appeared on eBay recently for a price that was good enough for that I couldn't pass up. The comic arrived recently, and I thought I'd share a look with all of the many, many people who read this very important comic book blog. Let's take a peek.

Here's the aforementioned cover, with art by Adam Kubert. I don't know if this was repurposed art from something else, but I've never seen it used before. Many of Lee's most famous co-creations join him on the cover. I'm glad that the entire FF made the cut, as they should have.

The inside front cover has the date and location of the event. The cover logo is, of course, a repurposed Spider-Man logo.

The book starts out with an introduction by then-Chief Creative Office Joe Quesada. The book is packed with remembrances from both Marvel and Disney luminaries. 

There are two comic reprints in this issue. The first is the first chapter from 1961's Fantastic Four #1. This was just after Marvel had lifted their self-imposed FF embargo. There's a not-insignificant gap in Marvel's publishing history around this time that lacks most mentions of the team, so including this, the most important book in Marvel's publishing history, in this book was a relief to me.

The cover is reprinted, also, but not the entire first issue.

The book also has a number of images from when Stan was depicted in different comics. Here's one reprinting the cover from What If...? #11. On the other page, we see some pictures of Stan and a message from Marvel Studio's Kevin Feige.

This was an interesting spread. This highlighted some of Stan's career and personal achievements. The 2018 entry remarks, "our hallowed hero embarks on his final adventure."

The other comic reprint is the first chapter from 1962's Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of Spider-Man. I thought that they could've also made room for Stan's first published work, a short text piece from an early Captain America Comics.

The book is a nice, thoughtful tribute to Stan Lee that maybe lacks some of the bombast that I might have expected. There certainly was an emphasis on the television and movie side of things that I suppose was inevitable, but those who put this book together thankfully didn't forget the comic book roots of the media empire that Marvel has since become.

The book ends with a 1967 Stan's Soapbox that looks like it was scanned from an original issue.

Here's the inside back cover, with art by Terry Dodson.

This back cover portrait by Phil Noto was used in all of Marvel's tribute books that came out directly after Lee's death, usually with the colors inverted, for some reason.

I'm really glad to get a chance to actually flip through this book. It's a nice memorial for someone who helped make Marvel what it is today - and it doesn't forget the comics. I hope you enjoyed seeing inside, too!

Original Art from Startling Stories: The Thing!

I got a new page of artwork in the mail recently, and wanted to show it off.  This page features, of course, The Thing, with line art by Don Kramer and Scott Hanna.

There's a lot to like about this page, and one of the big things that drew me to it was the fact that the Thing isn't punching stuff or having a building dropped on his head or anything like that.  Don't get me wrong, I love seeing the Thing punch stuff, but it's nice to see something different every now and then, right?  This is what I like to think that the Thing does when he's not out on some adventure.  He's riding in a car or looking for his keys or something, just like you or me.

(Sure, the last panel has his getting ready to square off against the Wrecker, but you'll have that.)

This particular story was written by Ron Zimmerman, who had a run on a few Marvel titles about ten years back and is supposedly friends with EIC Joe Quesada.  Rumor has it that he took comic book criticisms too personally and backed out from many of his writing duties.  He also has ties to Howard Stern and his show, and we can see on this page that the program gets a mention in the background.

The book that this page comes from is a "Startling Stories" one shot, at least unofficially subtitled "Last Line of Defense".  Back in the earlier part of the century, Marvel gave the Thing a number of miniseries that eventually led to his brief second ongoing series in 2006.  This issue was part of the Startling Stories line, which featured stories that weren't necessarily in continuity (and were at least solicited as being for a more mature audience).  There's nothing about this issue that should keep it from being a part of the Thing's history, though, and honestly, it comes off as kind of an average Thing story, but I enjoyed it if nothing else than for the Thing/Hulk standoff that ended the oversized issue.

Pencilled lightly at the top of the page is "Startling Stories".

On the back, we find inker Scott Hanna's autograph.  This is actually the second page I own with Scott's original inks, the other being a page where he inks over the blue line printout of another artist's pencils. This page contains Kramer's original pencils as well.

I'm happy to add this to the collection!  I found a few other pages from this issue online as well.  Who knows, maybe one day I'll add one or two more.

New York, New York! (Comic Con) What a wonderful town! And...Comic Con.

That silence you've been hearing permeate this blog (permeate, I tell you!  It's a metaphor!) over the past week has been the auditory representation of my exhaustion from the recent New York Comic Con.  If that last sentence didn't make much sense, it's because I'm still pretty beat up from the three terrific days I spent at a booth at the show...and what a show it was.  I met a lot of great people, sold a whole bunch of books and other items, and ended up with some cool swag.  It was an eventful time and something I'm really glad I did.

Saturday was by far the busiest day of the weekend - people were literally shoulder-to-shoulder throughout most of the convention (and by "literally", I mean they actually were, as opposed to when people actually mean "figuratively").  It was a bit frustrating to move around on this day, but there was a lot of traffic around the Wagon Wheel Comics booth if for no other reason than there was a lot of traffic everywhere.  I'm happy to say that Teddy and the Yeti  (and Fubar, and Franks and Beans...) got a lot of exposure and got into a lot of hands.  I also managed to hand out a good number of copies to professionals like Todd Nauck, Peter David, David Lloyd, Mark Waid, Joe Quesada, and other people in the industry.

Danny Cruz did a lot of sketches at the Wagon Wheel Booth and made the show even more enjoyable.  He did a few Teddy and the Yeti pieces (and drew a great addition to my Thing sketchbook) that I'll try to post scans of here in the future.  Larry dressed up as Lion-O from the Thundercats and had his picture taken a few thousand times.  People snatched up the crochet Yeti dolls as I knew they would.  I met the creators of the Venture Bros!

It was a great weekend.  It was a crazy weekend, but it was great.  Really, it was, from almost every angle.

This post is quickly spiraling out of control into an experiment in stream of consciousness writing, so I'll wrap it up with the intention of writing more soon.  I'll post pictures from the show starting tomorrow, so look for that as it arrives.  My thanks go out to everyone who stopped by the Wagon Wheel booth to flip through a book, pick up a card, or just chat.  What a fun time.