Review- MARVEL MASTERWORKS: ATLAS ERA STRANGE TALES VOL. 5

MARVEL MASTERWORKS: ATLAS ERA STRANGE TALES VOL. 5 (Marvel, 2011; Hardcover)

Collects Strange Tales Nos. 40-48 (cover dates November, 1955- July, 1956)

Writers: Carl Wessler, Paul S. Newman, and other unidentified writers

Artists: Bill Benulis, Bill Everett, John Forte, Paul Reinman, Fred Kida, Robert Q. Sale, Dick Ayers, Joe Orlando, Joe Maneely, Bernie Krigstein, Doug Wildey, Bob Powell, Tony DiPreta, Bob Brown, Larry Woromay, Bob Forgione, Ed Winiarski, Joe Sinnott, Bernard Baily, John Severin, Steve Ditko, Bob McCarty, Vic Carrabotta, Jim McLaughlin, Jack Abel, Manny Stallman, Bill Walton, Mort Meskin, and covers by Russ Heath, Carl Burgos, and Sol Brodsky

Wow! There is a marked improvement across the board from the previous volume. The writers have figured out how to write clever stories within the confines of the Comic Code Authority, and the editors brought in a higher caliber of artists. Bill Everett and Steve Ditko absolutely shine here, especially in glorious “high definition”. While there is only one Ditko penciled story in this book, we get three Bill Everett stories along with a cover. Everett is truly one of the greats, as demonstrated by the page below. 

Issue 42's The Faceless One! is another Everett penciled work of art. Carl Wessler's script is extremely clever if familiar and predictable here in 2013. Everett is a genius, and I am really looking forward to reading my copy of the Bill Everett Archives Vol. 1 someday.

More brilliance from Bill Everett. No photoshop artwork back then, kids.

John Forte is another exceptional artist who isn't given much recognition these days. This statement is true of many of these artists. Just replace John Forte with the name of any of these forgotten greats. It is also worth noting that these cats toiled in anonymity and near poverty to create this stuff. Art for the sake of art, and if you could eat and pay the rent, all the better. 

The whole UFOs as a metaphor for the fear of Communist infiltration during Cold War-era America is a recurring theme throughout the book. Many of the values held near and dear to the denizens of mid-20^th century America are comical to read in the here and now. The Vanishing Brain! is a prime example of this. In it, Professor Hayden is a smug intellectual elitist who frowns upon jocks and those who are physically active, just like the sissies who dominate the world today. He ends up walking through a break in the time flow and wound up in the Paleolithic Age, where he gets captured by Neanderthals and turned into a slave. This physical labor makes him become a musclebound, virile specimen. Once he makes a break for it and returns to our century, he finds that the girl he loves has found a “puny specimen like that” and “doesn't deserve the love of a real man”...while having his arm around his former rival for her affections. I hope that Phil and Hank wound up being happy together. 

The genius of Steve Ditko.

Issue 48's I've Got To Hide! is brilliant. At only 4 pages long it crams in tons of story, and it seems to get ready to go nuts and then is reeled in in the last two panels. If you removed them and continued the story in a different direction this could be one sick tale. 

Look kids, it's the future! This guy has a phone WITHOUT a cord that he can carry with him. Wow!

Some of these stories are corny, others dated, and all are lovable relics of their era. This stuff bleeds charm and is worth owning for historical value. Collecting the original issues would be expensive and time consuming.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 4.25 out of 5.

The OCD zone- I heart the Marvel Masterworks line of hardcovers.

Linework restoration rating: 5 out of 5. Consider these the Masterworks the BluRays of comic books, painstakingly restored in “high definition”.

Color restoration rating: 5 out of 5. Dots or solids? Color values? These are questions better posed as a philosophical argument rather than a technical one, since it boils down to preference. I love it all as long as it is faithful to the original color palette. Are the colors on the screen when you watch BluRays of a '60s TV series garish when compared to the original television broadcast, or is the more modern format merely taking advantage of what was originally there that you couldn't see given the technology restraints of the day? Discuss.

Paper rating: 5 out of 5. Super thick, smooth coated stock. The paper has a slight sheen which I like a lot.

Binding rating: 5 out of 5. Whew! The stiffer binding found in Volume 4 was nothing more than a hiccup. This has the same superb sewn binding that I have come to know and love, laying perfectly flat from the first page to the last.

Review- MARVEL MASTERWORKS: ATLAS ERA STRANGE TALES VOL. 4

MARVEL MASTERWORKS: ATLAS ERA STRANGE TALES VOL. 4 (Marvel, 2011; Hardcover)

Collects Strange Tales Nos. 31-39 (cover dates August, 1954- October, 1955)

Writers: Paul S. Newman, Carl Wessler, and other unidentified writers

Artists: Sid Greene, Bill Benulis, Bill Savage, Art Peddy, Paul Reinman, Al Eadeh, Bob McCarty, Jim McLaughlin, Joe Maneely, Carl Burgos, Paul Tumlinson, Ed Winiarski, Chuck Winter, Werner Roth, Mort Lawrence, Joe Sinnott, John Romita, Sr., Dick Ayers, Ernie Bache, Vic Carrabotta, Bob Powell, John Forte, Jack Katz, Bob Forgione, Jack Abel, John Forte, Kurt Schaffenberger, and Norman Maurer

Marvel might have done better to juggle the contents of the first three volumes so that the Pre-Code stuff ended with Volume 3 and Volume 4 started with the post-code material. The quality takes a nosedive with issue 35, when the Comics Code Authority kicks in. The writing was B-level before the Code, and sunk down to abysmal levels once the Code was implemented. 

The artwork is good and sometimes even great. I really appreciate the ink and brush artists here in this modern photoshop era of comic book artwork. These guys were good because they had to be. Making a mistake was costly to a comic book artist back then.

All of the stories in issue 31 are great, but it's The Strange Ones! that really takes the cake. We find a group of scientists who, as mutants, help humanity and search out for others of their kind to help keep the world safe. This is, in a nutshell, the premise of the X-Men nearly a decade prior to their debut. They even use the word mutant for chrissakes! Paul S. Newman should have sued Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Marvel for stealing his idea. 

Issue 32's Harley's Friends is a tale of an old miser who buys an old abandoned lodge in the woods...the better to hide his money! In an attempt to find a safe place to hide his loot, he pries up some floor boards, and that's when he finds them. Three corpses. Rather than, I don't know, scream or call the cops, he instead chuckles how they won't steal his money. As he further descends into madness, he begins sitting them at the table, at the fireplace, even putting them in his car as he drives into town. The man who murdered them goes to check on the bodies. He has a heart attack due to the shock of them having gone missing and falls into the hole in the floor where the bodies were stored. When Harvey returns to the cabin he puts his friends back in the floor he is delighted to find another “friend” waiting for him. The killer comes to, banging on the floor, but Harvey assumes it's his imagination playing tricks on him and allows him to suffocate. 

While issue 34 is the final pre-Code issue collected in this book, it is the first watered down one as well. Gone are all macabre elements, gone are all shock endings, and gone was my enjoyment until issue 38. While there are some okay stories in 34-37, they pale by comparison to the issues that came before and after. Issue 38's No Escape! plays like an episode of The Twilight Zone. In it, a disenchanted married couple come to an agreement that they should have never been married. Then there is a show on television showing them all of the different outcomes that could have come if they didn't meet. As it turns out, all of them end up with them being married, so they decide that they were meant to be. Awwww. I won't give away the twist ending.

Issue 39 is better still, as we get stellar Bill Everett artwork in Karnoff's Plan! Also in this issue, Blind Spot!, with artwork by the incredible Sid Greene, is a riff on the age old beauty is in eye of the beholder cliché, but done with a space alien bent. UFOs and the fear of Communist infiltration factor high in these stories, just like they did in most entertainment of the day.

This is a decent, albeit incredibly uneven read. It's worth owning for the artwork and historical significance alone.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 3.5 out of 5.

The OCD zone- I love the Marvel Masterworks line. I haven't been giving them enough love lately, letting my backlog languish in favor of other things.

Linework restoration rating: 5 out of 5. Think of these Masterworks as Blu-Ray releases of comic books. Painstakingly restored and presented in “high definition”. These books are expensive but they are the gold standard in terms of presentation.

Color restoration rating: 5 out of 5. Some folks like the high resolution restoration found here. Others enjoy the warts and all approach of the high resolution scans found in books by publishers like PS Artbooks and Fantagraphics. Which approach do I prefer? I prefer properly restored material like this but love well done scans too. I'll put it to you this way, though: I'd rather have a well done scan than a poorly restored book. My love of well done scans and properly restored material is nearly equal, and for entirely different reasons. Both ways have their pluses and minuses. Maybe I'll write a blog entry about this sometime. Would anyone be interested in such a dry technical read?

Paper rating: 5 out of 5. Ahhh, the pleasant aroma of Chinese made books. The toxic ink on the thick coated stock paper sourced from virgin Amazon rainforest trees. The sweet aroma of broken asbestos tiles, mercury from recalled thermometers, lead paint chips, and Godzilla knows what other industrial and toxic Chinese waste, mixed with the tears of the children working the sweatshop printing presses makes huffing these books a joy.

Binding rating: 4.5 out of 5. This binding is somewhat stiffer than Masterworks of similar vintage. It lays flat for 90% of the book, but modern Masterworks tend to lay flat for the entire book. For Marvel this is a disappointment. This binding is on par with a mid-2000s DC Archive. Solid but stiff and durable. I can live with it...this time.

Reviews: Marvel Masterworks Atlas Era Strange Tales Vol. 3; Nosferatu- Plague of Terror

MARVEL MASTERWORKS: ATLAS ERA STRANGE TALES VOL. 3 (Marvel, 2010; Hardcover)

Collects Strange Tales Nos. 31-30 (cover dates August, 1953- July, 1954)

I adore '50s Pre-code Horror! These are not as good as my beloved EC Comics but are still a blast to read. There is some considerable talent that contributes to this title. Artists such as Joe Maneely, John Forte and Joe Sinnott are all regular contributors to this series. Stan Lee, Bill Everett, John Buscema, Gene Colan and Dick Ayers also contribute at least one story. That's quite an impressive ensemble of creators. Some of the lesser known artists, forgotten to the mists of time, whose work that I enjoyed are Ed Goldfarb, Myron Fass, Chick Winter, Harry Anderson, Robert Q. Sale and Mort Lawrence. Any serious students of the artform should take a peek at the work that these cats did, as it is impressive and deserves to be remembered in the history of the medium.

My favorite story in this book is White On Black by Louis Ravielli (on artwork, writer unknown) from Strange Tales #23. It features a truly unique photographic negative look to it (white lines, black solids) and is just stunning to look at. I also love how it tells of a terrible future event that was set to occur on May 3, 1975. Awesome.

As per usual with this line of hardcovers, everything is perfect and of the highest quality. Superb restoration, paper, and sewn binding. I lay in my bed at night and am comforted by the knowledge that this treasured family heirloom will be enjoyed by my great-grandchildren.

NOSFERATU: PLAGUE OF TERROR (Millennial, 2009; Softcover)

Collects Nosferatu Nos. 1-4 (cover dates May- November, 1991)

This is a decent read, but nothing to really write home (or on my blog) about. This is about average for a black and white independent comic book for the era. It doesn't offend the senses or make you want to shout how great it is from the rooftops. It's just there. Some of the production values in this book are subpar. The blacks are a tad too dark, and some of the pages look pixelated due to poor scanning. I am a frickin' snob when it comes to this type of stuff, demanding the best. Your average comic book fan will likely not notice these things, but I suffer from acute OCD with this sort of thing. Your mileage may vary. I would recommend this to the diehard vampire of Horror fan.