Marvel Two-in-One 19 color guide, plus some cartoon artwork!

It's been a while since I picked up a new color guide, and this one is pretty special - here's a page of color work from 1976's Marvel Two-in-One #19

Color guides are photocopies of line work that a colorist would use to quickly decide on how the final product would look. These are very much production pieces and were used as a consultation piece for the printed page.

Marvel Two-in-One #19 was the title's attempt at a scary Halloween-type story, with the Thing traveling to a spooky hotel and running into a few things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. It also has this incredible Jack Kirby cover!

This is one of the middle pages in the issue, and Ben's cigar plays almost as big a role as he does as he attempts to check in.

Colors for this issue were from Petra Goldberg, over Sal Buscema pencils and Don Heck inks.

Lots of great Thing shots on this page. He's in every panel!

The story itself is a bit predictable - the main villain actually dies at the end of the story - but I've always liked Tigra because my first introduction to the Fantastic Four were issues where she and Thundra were hanging around the team for a bit. This is the first issue of Two-in-One I ever read, too, so it's a real treat to get a color guide from this very issue.

I also got some new FF animation artwork!

These new pieces all come from the 2006 Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes cartoon. Someone listed a bunch at once on eBay and I managed to grab a handful.

For whatever reason, Sue and Doom seem to be the toughest team members to get when it comes to animation art, and it worked out that way this time, too. I got some featuring Ben, Reed and Johnny. I hate how Johnny's hair is drawn in this show, though it looks okay in this one.

There's Reed, doing what he does...which is stretching.

Yep, still...uh...still stretching.

Okay, that's it!

"Peril in Pittsburgh!"

It's a well-known comic book fact that most superheroes live either in New York City or in a fictional NYC placeholder like Metropolis or Gotham. But every once in a while, there are a few comics that break out of that mold and visit other real-life locations. Pittsburgh, I'd say, has been a bit underrepresented in comics in general, though there are exceptions. Firestorm is probably the most well known mainstream character to call the Steel City his home, and fellow Western PA creator DJ Coffman set his "Hero By Night" Platinum Comics series in Pittsburgh.

I recently picked up the two-part Avengers storyline that brought Iron Man and Wonder Man (and eventually the full Avengers lineup) to Pittsburgh, and I thought I'd give it a look here on the ol' blog. The storyline runs through Avengers 192 and 193. The A+ team of George Perez and Joe Sinnott drew the cover to issue 192, and it seems that Perez had read up on all of the latest Pittsburgh cliches for the non-superhero stuff: men in hardhats (with literal blue collars), smokestacks, industry. Checks all of the boxes.

If you look closely at the guy in the middle, I think his hardhat says "Weiner". Cool.

If you've ever seen a Monday Night Football Steelers broadcast, you've seen this shot. And you've heard them talk about the city's confluence of three rivers. So we're hitting the ground running, right from page one. This issue had a cover date of February, 1980, meaning it came out right a the end of the decade, and when this image still probably fit for Pittsburgh. Fun fact: they do still make steel in Pittsburgh forty years later, but it's actually not the only thing that happens, or has ever happened, in the city.

The plot of the story revolves around this: steelworker Joseph Conroy, who in Journey into Mystery #120 grabbed a sliver of Thor's broken hammer (gotta find that issue now, too), is thrown into a cauldron of molten steel. Simon Williams (Wonder Man) and Tony Stark (Iron Man) are in town, as Stark is considering purchasing the plant.

I have to believe that the second balloon was added at the last minute.

Conroy's co-workers give him a gruesome burial, and then get right back to work, and no one seems too bothered by the fact that someone just got incinerated right before their eyes. What can you do, I guess?

But then, as a result of holding onto the Mjolnir sliver, Conroy is transformed into the Pittsburgh Steeler! No, wait, I guess he chose another name. Okay.

There's a fight, which Iron Man politely narrates...

Oh! And there's a Mr. Fantastic ad for Hostess Fruit Pies! Wait, it's for Twinkies? No, I refuse to believe that Hostess made comics for any product other than their fruit pies. If I'm not mistaken, I'd say this ad has art from Sal Buscema.

I feel like Captain America is being overly dismissive of Pittsburgh here. Has he seen the air quality ratings for the last 50 years?

"Battleground: Pittsburgh!" is a great title. I like it.

Issue 192 was pretty light on any Pittsburgh-specific details. Yes, it takes place at a steel mill, and I guess a lot of folks (still) associate that with Pittsburgh, but this story really could have taken place anywhere. After reading this, my hopes weren't very high for the second chapter:

"Inferno Unleashed!" The other title was better. This issue has a cover by none other than Frank Miller and Bob McLeod! And is that supposed to be an incline car??

On the first page, one thing stood out to me: the plot credit for the Pittsburgh Comix Club. I've gotta believe that the writer or editorial team knew that they had to add a little more specific information in this issue, so they sought out a local fan club to help out.

The Pittsburgh Comix Club is an interesting group worth reading about; you can find more info on them here and here.

The issue opens up with a quick recap of the previous one. Joseph Conroy is now Joe, and the colorist seems to have gotten a note from editorial, as well.

The Avengers come to Pittsburgh, and its citizens make, okay, a pretty good joke.

Everyone decides on "Inferno" for the misunderstood villain's name, as he hunts down those responsible for his untimely demise. One guy narrates his own death, as he is rather unceremoniously crushed by a barge.

Oh, hey! And then the Pittsburgh references start to flow. The Pittsburgh Comix Club is coming through in the clutch, just like Bill Mazeroski in the 1960 World Series! Inferno is apparently near the Liberty Bridge, which is moving away from downtown, and is near Duquesne University, the Civic Arena (since torn down) and the Liberty Tunnels!

This would have been a good time to use "jagoff" instead of "jerk", but okay. You can't win 'em all.

Pretty soon, there's another reference, this time to the famous Duquesne Incline! To make it from the Liberty Bridge to this particular incline station in five minutes would be possible, I guess, if there were no traffic.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE A STEELERS REFERENCE

And here, on page 18, we can only assume that the artists found a Pittsburgh reference guide, because that is undeniably the Duquesne Incline station depicted.

Yep - it checks out.

Casual misogyny...check...

And wait...there's even a reference to Mt. Washington, at the top of the incline, and maybe even a shot of the fountain at Point State Park (even though this isn't the view you'd see from the observation trail)? Better yet, the story's real villain, the steel mill owner who, through a rather convoluted scheme, had Joe Conroy killed, lives on Mt. Washington, a wealthy part of the city.

The Avengers apprehend him by breaking through the world's largest window!

And then they let Inferno simply walk into the river, I guess never to return? The Avengers sure do like to have loose ends tied up, no matter how it has to happen!

Oh, and there's an ad for Star Trek: The Motion Picture on the back cover!

So, this wasn't a great story overall, but it's obvious that the Pittsburgh Comix Club had a big hand in adding a lot of references to the second half, and that, at least, was enjoyable. Both of the issues felt quite a lot like filler to me, and the story ends with a mystically-powered force of nature walking off unchecked toward a populated city, but I guess we'll have to take what we can get with these issues. It was still fun to see Pittsburgh so prominently featured in two Bronze Age issues of the Avengers.

Fantastic Four #302 original art by John & Sal Buscema (plus color guides!)

I recently had some comic money come in, and what do I do with it?  Spend it on comic-related merchandise.  I'm a hopeless consumer.  Perhaps such consumerism can be forgiven, though, when I'm spending some cash on original Fantastic Four art - and not just any, but a page from the great John Buscema...inked by his younger brother, Sal!  After Jack Kirby left the book, John Buscema took over and put his own stamp on the characters.  John is probably, in fact, the most classic FF artist after Kirby, so I'm of course ecstatic to add some of his original work to my collection.

This art is some of Buscema's later FF work, this page coming from Fantastic Four #302, which had a cover date of May, 1987.  The cover to that issue features the Human Torch and no other FF member, but the page I got features every member BUT the Torch.  (For those who might be curious about the cover, if I remember correctly, Johnny managed to flame on again by trying REALLY hard.)

The Thing only appears in one panel on this page, and he's reading a book titled "How to Pick Up Girls".  The book is circled in blue pencil with a note about the title written in the margins.  I'd have to dig out this issue to be sure, but I'm assuming that they changed the title for publication.

Mr. Fantastic and Franklin Richards are the most prominently featured characters on the page...Franklin going through his "Tattletale" stage with the Power Pack around this time.  Franklin is a tough character to write, as he's often too powerful and thus no one can figure out what to do with him.  But it's nice when the creators try to work him in somehow.

The back of the page holds two markings, the first of which reads "hold for John Leight".  A quick Google search doesn't bring up any information on Mr. Leight, so I can't confirm that he had anything to do with Marvel or the book.  It might be the name of the original owner of the page.  It might be the name of someone in production.  Perhaps we'll never know.

Also written on back are the names of the two contributing artists - John and Sal Buscema.  If I'm not mistaken, it looks like the Buscema handwriting, so perhaps this is as close as I'll get to an autograph from John, who passed away several years ago.

I recently purchased an art book to hold all of my original art.  This page, by virtue of being the oldest and most valuable (and perhaps coolest) page in the collection, obviously gets page one.

And not to relegate this to a footnote, because it's very cool in its own right, but since we're talking about original art, here's some new production art that I purchased a little while ago.  These two pages are color guides from Fantastic Four #194.  Color guides are reproductions of the original line work that are sent to the colorist, in this case George Roussos.  He uses them as a preliminary guide to figure out what colors to use on the real thing...that's why they have markings and writing all over 'em.

I think they're a swell look into how comics were made before the proliferation of computers.  And this one has some great shots of the Thing and Alicia.