Fantastic Four 118 & 119 2 x fn+ 1972 J Buscema early bronze age Marvel Comics

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118 Original Cover Price: 6p

Condition is fn+

Covers

The comic is flat and its covers are fully attached by its two original rust free staples with minimal strain and no roll. The front shows very minor spine, corner and edge wear.  Front cover colour remains bright clear and reflective, undimmed by its 40+ years.  It has a minor 5cm x 0.5cm tan strip in the white area on the right hand edge, which prevents a vfn grading.  Back cover has a little of the muddying in its white areas typical of silver age comics, although it has very minor tanning in its margins.  Inside covers carry black & and white advertisements and the sheets are off white, clean with only a hint of tanning in its margins.

Internal

All pages fully intact and attached to rust free staples without strain.  Pages off white with minor tanning in the margins, no brittleness.   Typical “pin holes” on bottom margin endemic in silver age Marvels.

Nice for a 40+ year old comic.

"Thunder in the Ruins!" Part 2 of 2. Script by Archie Goodwin. Pencils by John Buscema. Inks by Joe Mooney. Cover by John Buscema, John Romita (touch-ups), and John Verpoorten. With Crystal by his side, the Master of Alchemy has taken over a banana republic in Central America! When the Human Torch arrives in country, he finds himself fighting not only the national air force, but a brain-washed Crystal too! Can Johnny Storm wrest Crystal from Diablo's clutches? Fortunately, Reed, Sue, and Ben will help! Back up story: "What Mad World?" Script by Archie Goodwin. Pencils by John Buscema. Inks by Jim Mooney. To save Ben during the battle against Diablo, Lockjaw temporarily teleports the Thing to another world. But it's a strange world indeed as Reed Richards is the one that was transformed into the Thing; while Ben Grimm married Susan Storm. Perhaps Ben should get back to his own reality posthaste, before he sees too much! First appearance of the Reed Richards of Alternate Earth (Earth-A). (Notes: Diablo returns in Fantastic Four 193. Crystal appears next in Fantastic Four 130, but plays a prominent role behind the scenes in Avengers 104. The Thing (aka Reed Richards) of Earth-A returns in Fantastic Four 160. Alternate Earth would later be renamed Earth-721.) 32 pages

119 Original Cover Price: 6p

Condition is fn+ 

Covers

The cover is fully attached by its two original rust free staples without strain or roll. The front shows minor spine, corner and edge wear and offset print.  Front cover colour remains bright clear and reflective, only slightly dimmed by its 45 years.  Back cover colour is bright and clean with minor tanning in its margins.  Inside covers carry black & and white advertisements with off white, clean sheets with tanning in the margins.

Internal

All pages fully intact and attached to rust free staples with minimal strain.  Pages off white with tanning in the margins, no brittleness.  Typical “pin holes” on bottom margin endemic in silver age Marvels.

Very nice for a near 45 year old comic.

"Three Stood Together!" Guest-starring the Black Panther. Script by Roy Thomas. Pencils by John Buscema. Inks by Joe Sinnott. Cover by John Buscema and Joe Sinnott. An autumn afternoon at the Baxter Building is interrupted by a call for help from the country of Wakanda!  The Black Panther's chief advisor discloses that T'challa is missing somewhere in the racist republic of Rudyarda! (Roy Thomas's heavy handed reference to a great Englishman Rudyard Kipling). To rescue T'challa and recover the stolen vibranium, the Thing and the Human Torch travel to Rudyarda. But a certain sonically-altered super-villain is waiting to attack! It's a great battle on the African continent...Ben, Johnny, and T'challa vs. Klaw!  The Black Panther briefly changed his name to the Black Leopard in order to avoid association with a political group in the United States. The new Fantastic Four cover logo debuts with this issue. 32 pages 

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 The Fantastic Four is a fictional superhero team appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The group debuted in The Fantastic Four #1 (cover-dated Nov. 1961), which helped to usher in a new level of realism in the medium. The Fantastic Four was the first superhero team created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist and co-plotter Jack Kirby, who developed a collaborative approach to creating comics with this title that they would use from then on. As the first superhero team title produced by Marvel Comics, it formed a cornerstone of the company's 1960s rise from a small division of a publishing company to a pop-culture conglomerate. The title would go on to showcase the talents of comics creators such as Roy Thomas, John Byrne, Steve Englehart, Walt Simonson, John Buscema, George Pérez and Tom DeFalco, and is one of several Marvel titles originating in the Silver Age of Comic Books that is still in publication in the 2010s.

The four individuals traditionally associated with the Fantastic Four, who gained superpowers after exposure to cosmic rays during a scientific mission to outer space, are: Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards), a scientific genius and the leader of the group, who can stretch his body into incredible lengths and shapes; the Invisible Woman (Susan "Sue" Storm), who eventually married Reed, who can render herself invisible and later project powerful force fields; the Human Torch (Johnny Storm), Sue's younger brother, who can generate flames, surround himself with them and fly; and the monstrous Thing (Ben Grimm), their grumpy but benevolent friend, a former college football star and Reed's college roommate as well as a good pilot, who possesses superhuman strength and endurance due to the nature of his stone-like flesh.

Ever since their original 1961 introduction, the Fantastic Four have been portrayed as a somewhat dysfunctional, yet loving, family. Breaking convention with other comic-book archetypes of the time, they would squabble and hold grudges both deep and petty, and eschewed anonymity or secret identities in favor of celebrity status. The team is also well known for its recurring encounters with characters such as the villainous monarch Doctor Doom, the planet-devouring Galactus, the sea-dwelling prince Namor, the spacefaring Silver Surfer, and the shape-changing alien Skrulls.

The Fantastic Four have been adapted into other media, including four animated television series, an aborted 1990s low-budget film, and the studio motion pictures Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007).

Publication history

Origins

Apocryphal legend has it that in 1961, longtime magazine and comic book publisher Martin Goodman was playing golf with either Jack Liebowitz or Irwin Donenfeld of rival company DC Comics, then known as National Periodical Publications, and that the top executive bragged about DC's success with the new superhero team the Justice League of America. While film producer and comics historian Michael Uslan has debunked the particulars of that story, Goodman, a publishing trend-follower, aware of the JLA's strong sales, did direct his comics editor, Stan Lee, to create a comic-book series about a team of superheroes. According to Lee, writing in 1974, "Martin mentioned that he had noticed one of the titles published by National Comics seemed to be selling better than most. It was a book called The Justice League of America and it was composed of a team of superheroes. ... 'If the Justice League is selling', spoke he, 'why don't we put out a comic book that features a team of superheroes?'"

Lee, who had served as editor-in-chief and art director of Marvel Comics and its predecessor companies, Timely Comics and Atlas Comics, for two decades, found that the medium had become creatively restrictive. Determined "to carve a real career for myself in the nowhere world of comic books, Lee concluded that, "For just this once, I would do the type of story I myself would enjoy reading.... And the characters would be the kind of characters I could personally relate to: they'd be flesh and blood, they'd have their faults and foibles, they'd be fallible and feisty, and — most important of all — inside their colourful, costumed booties they'd still have feet of clay."

Lee said he created a synopsis for the first Fantastic Four story that he gave to penciller Jack Kirby, who then drew the entire story. Kirby turned in his penciled art pages to Lee, who added dialogue and captions. This approach to creating comics, which became known as the "Marvel Method", worked so well for Lee and Kirby that they used it from then on; the Marvel Method became standard for the company within a year.

Kirby recalled events somewhat differently. Challenged with Lee's version of events in a 1990 interview, Kirby responded: "I would say that's an outright lie", although the interviewer, Gary Groth notes that this statement needs to be viewed with caution. Kirby claims he came up with the idea for the Fantastic Four in Marvel's offices, and that Lee had merely added the dialogue after the story had been pencilled. Kirby has also sought to establish, more credibly and on numerous occasions, that the visual elements of the strip were his conceptions. He regularly pointed to a team he had created for rival publisher DC Comics in the 1950s, Challengers of the Unknown. "[I]f you notice the uniforms, they're the same... I always give them a skintight uniform with a belt... the Challengers and the FF have a minimum of decoration. And of course, the Thing's skin is a kind of decoration, breaking up the monotony of the blue uniform."  The characters wear no uniforms in the first two issues.

Given the conflicting statements, outside commentators have found it hard to identify with precise detail who created the Fantastic Four. Although Stan Lee's typed synopsis for the Fantastic Four exists, Earl Wells, writing in The Comics Journal, points out that its existence doesn't assert its place in the creation; "[W]e have no way of knowing of whether Lee wrote the synopsis after a discussion with Kirby in which Kirby supplied most of the ideas". Comics historian R.C. Harvey believes that the Fantastic Four was a furtherance of the work Kirby had been doing previously, and so "more likely Kirby's creations than Lee's". But Harvey notes that the Marvel Method of collaboration allowed each man to claim credit, and that Lee's dialogue added to the direction the team took.  Wells argues that it was Lee's contributions which set the framework within which Kirby worked, and this made Lee "more responsible". Comics historian Mark Evanier, a studio assistant to Jack Kirby in the 1970s, says that the considered opinion of Lee and Kirby's contemporaries was "that Fantastic Four was created by Stan and Jack. No further division of credit seemed appropriate".

1961–1970s

The release of The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961) was an unexpected success. Lee had felt ready to leave the comics field at the time, but the positive response to Fantastic Four persuaded him to stay on.  The title began to receive fan mail, and Lee started printing the letters in a letter column with Issue #3. Also with the third issue, Lee created the hyperbolic slogan "The Greatest Comic Magazine in the World!!" With the following issue, the slogan was changed to "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine!", and became a fixture on the issue covers into the 1990s, and on numerous covers in the 2000s.

Issue #4 (May 1962) reintroduced Namor the Sub-Mariner, an aquatic antihero who was a star character of Marvel's earliest iteration, Timely Comics, during the late 1930s and 1940s period that historians and fans call the Golden Age of Comics. Issue #5 (July 1962) introduced the team's most frequent nemesis, Doctor Doom. These earliest issues were published bimonthly. With issue #16 (July 1963), the cover title dropped its The and became simply Fantastic Four.

While the early stories were complete narratives, the frequent appearances of these two antagonists, Doom and Namor, in subsequent issues indicated the creation of a long narrative by Lee and Kirby that extended over months. Ultimately, according to comics historian Les Daniels, "only narratives that ran to several issues would be able to contain their increasingly complex ideas". During its creators' lengthy run, the series produced many acclaimed storylines and characters that have become central to Marvel, including the hidden race of alien-human genetic experiments, the Inhumans; the Black Panther, an African king who would be mainstream comics' first black superhero; the rival alien races the Kree and the shapeshifting Skrulls; Him, who would become Adam Warlock; the Negative Zone; and unstable molecules. The story frequently cited as Lee and Kirby's finest achievement is the three-part "Galactus Trilogy" that began in Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966), chronicling the arrival of Galactus, a cosmic giant who wanted to devour the planet, and his herald, the Silver Surfer. Daniels noted that "[t]he mystical and metaphysical elements that took over the saga were perfectly suited to the tastes of young readers in the 1960s", and Lee soon discovered that the story was a favorite on college campuses.

Kirby left Marvel in mid 1970, having drawn the first 102 issues plus an unfinished issue later completed and published as Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure (April 2008), Fantastic Four continued with Lee, Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and Marv Wolfman as its consecutive regular writers, working with artists such as John Romita, Sr., John Buscema, Rich Buckler and George Pérez, with longtime inker Joe Sinnott adding some visual continuity. Jim Steranko also contributed several covers during this time.

Characters

The Fantastic Four is formed when during an outer space test flight in an experimental rocket ship, the four protagonists are bombarded by a storm of cosmic rays. Upon crash landing back on Earth, the four astronauts find themselves transformed with bizarre new abilities. The four then decide to use their powers for good as superheroes. In a significant departure from preceding superhero conventions, the Fantastic Four make no effort to maintain secret identities, instead maintaining a high public profile and enjoying celebrity status for scientific and heroic contributions to society. At the same time they are often prone to arguing and even fighting with one another. Despite their bickering, the Fantastic Four consistently prove themselves to be "a cohesive and formidable team in times of crisis."

While there have been a number of lineup changes to the group, the four characters who debuted in Fantastic Four #1 remain the core and most frequent lineup.

Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards), a scientific genius, can stretch, twist and re-shape his body to inhuman proportions. Mr. Fantastic serves as the father figure of the group, and is "appropriately pragmatic, authoritative, and dull". Richards blames himself for the failed space mission, particularly because of how the event transformed pilot Ben Grimm.

Invisible Girl/Invisible Woman (Susan Storm), Reed Richards' girlfriend (and eventual wife) has the ability to bend and manipulate light to render herself and others invisible. She later develops the ability to generate force fields, which she uses for a variety of defensive and offensive effects.

The Human Torch (Johnny Storm), Sue Storm's younger brother, possesses the ability to control fire, allowing him to project fire from his body, as well as the power to fly. This character was loosely based on a Human Torch character published by Marvel's predecessor Timely Comics in the 1940s, an android that could ignite itself. Lee said that when he conceptualized the character, "I thought it was a shame that we didn't have The Human Torch anymore, and this was a good chance to bring him back". Unlike the teen sidekicks that preceded him, the Human Torch in the early stories was "a typical adolescent — brash, rebellious, and affectionately obnoxious." Johnny Storm was killed in the 2011 storyline "Three", before being brought back and rejoining the reformed Fantastic Four.

The Thing (Ben Grimm), Reed Richards' college roommate and best friend, has been transformed into a monstrous, craggy humanoid with orange, rock-like skin and super-strength. The Thing is often filled with anger, self-loathing and self-pity over his new existence. He serves as "an uncle figure, a long-term friend of the family with a gruff Brooklyn manner, short temper, and caustic sense of humor". In the original synopsis Lee gave to Kirby, The Thing was intended as "the heavy", but over the years, the character has become "the most lovable group member: honest, direct and free of pretension".

The Fantastic Four has had several different headquarters, most notably the Baxter Building, located at 42nd Street and Madison Avenue[citation needed] in New York City. The Baxter Building was replaced by Four Freedoms Plaza at the same location after the Baxter Building's destruction at the hands of Kristoff Vernard, adopted son of the team's seminal foe Doctor Doom (Prior to the completion of Four Freedoms Plaza, the team took up temporary residence at Avengers Mansion. Pier 4, a waterfront warehouse, served as a temporary headquarters after Four Freedoms Plaza was destroyed by the ostensible superhero team the Thunderbolts shortly after the revelation that they were actually the supervillain team the Masters of Evil in disguise. Pier 4 was eventually destroyed during a battle with the longtime Fantastic Four supervillain Diablo, after which the team received a new Baxter Building, courtesy of one of team leader Reed Richards' former professors, Noah Baxter. This second Baxter Building was constructed in Earth's orbit and teleported into the vacant lot formerly occupied by the original.

Allies and supporting characters

A number of characters are closely affiliated with the team, share complex personal histories with one or more of its members but have never actually held an official membership. Some of these characters include, but are not limited to: Namor the Sub-Mariner (previously an antagonist), Alicia Masters, Lyja the Lazerfist, H.E.R.B.I.E., Kristoff Vernard (Doctor Doom's former protégé), Wyatt Wingfoot, governess Agatha Harkness, and Reed and Sue's children Franklin Richards and Valeria Richards.

Several allies of the Fantastic Four have served as temporary members of the team, including Crystal, Medusa, Power Man (Luke Cage), Frankie Raye (as the Human Torch), She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel (Sharon Ventura), Ant-Man (Scott Lang), Namorita, Storm, and the Black Panther. A temporary lineup from Fantastic Four #347-349 (December 1990-February 1991) consisted of the Hulk (in his "Joe Fixit" persona), Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Ghost Rider (Daniel Ketch).

Other notable characters who have been involved with the Fantastic Four include Alyssa Moy, Caledonia (Alysande Stuart of Earth-9809), Fantastic Force, the Inhumans (particularly royal family members Black Bolt, Crystal, Medusa, Gorgon, Karnak, Triton, and Lockjaw), Reed's father Nathaniel Richards, Silver Surfer (previously an antagonist), Thundra, postal worker Willie Lumpkin, and Uatu the Watcher.

Author Christopher Knowles states that Kirby's work on creations such as the Inhumans and the Black Panther served as "a showcase of some of the most radical concepts in the history of the medium".

Antagonists

Writers and artists over many years have created a variety of characters to challenge the Fantastic Four. Knowles states that Kirby helped to create "an army of villains whose rage and destructive power had never been seen before," and "whose primary impulse is to smash the world." Some of the team's oldest and most frequent enmities have involved such foes as the Mole Man, the Skrulls, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Doctor Doom, Puppet Master, Kang the Conqueror/Rama-Tut/Immortus, Blastaar, the Frightful Four, Annihilus, Galactus, and Klaw. Other prominent antagonists of the Fantastic Four have included the Wizard, Impossible Man, Red Ghost, Mad Thinker, Super-Skrull, Molecule Man, Diablo, Dragon Man, Psycho-Man, Ronan the Accuser, Salem's Seven, Terrax, Terminus, Hyperstorm, and Lucia von Bardas.

Cultural impact

The Fantastic Four's characterization was initially different from all other superheroes at the time. One major difference is that they do not conceal their identities, leading the public to be both suspicious and in awe of them. Also, they frequently argued and disagreed with each other, hindering their work as a team. Described as "heroes with hangups" by Stan Lee, the Thing has a temper, and the Human Torch resents being a child among adults. Mr. Fantastic blames himself for the Thing's transformation. Social scientist Bradford W. Wright describes the team as a "volatile mix of human emotions and personalities". In spite of their disagreements, they ultimately function well as a team.

The first issue of The Fantastic Four proved a success, igniting a new direction for superhero comics and soon influencing many other superhero comics. Readers grew fond of Ben's grumpiness, Johnny's tendency to annoy others, and Reed and Sue's spats. Stan Lee was surprised at the reaction to the first issue, leading him to stay in the comics field despite previous plans to leave. Comics historian Stephen Krensky said that "Lee's natural dialogue and flawed characters appealed to 1960s kids looking to 'get real'".

As of 2005, 150 million comics featuring the Fantastic Four had been sold.[39] A Fantastic Four film was released in 2005, and a sequel in 2007.

 Archie Goodwin

Archie Goodwin (September 8, 1937 – March 1, 1998) was an American comic book writer, editor, and artist. He worked on a number of comic strips in addition to comic books, and is best known for his Warren and Marvel Comics work. For Warren he was chief writer and editor of landmark horror anthology titles Creepy and Eerie, and for Marvel he set up the creator-owned Epic Comics as well as adapting Star Wars into both comics and newspaper strips. He is regularly cited as the "best-loved comic book editor, ever."

Early life and career

Archie Goodwin was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and lived in many small towns along the Kansas-Missouri border including Coffeyville. But he considered Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he spent his teen years at Will Rogers High School and in used magazine stores searching for EC Comics as his home town. Goodwin moved to New York City to attend classes at what became the School of Visual Arts.Goodwin began as an artist drawing cartoons for magazines and as a freelance "writer and occasional art assistant" to Leonard Starr's newspaper comic strip Mary Perkins, On Stage.  His first editorial work was for Redbook magazine, on which he worked both before and after his Army service as a draftee.  Archie Goodwin's first prose story was published by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine which warned him he could not use Archie Goodwin as a pen name because it was a Rex Stout character in the Nero Wolfe books. According to Goodwin's wife, the magazine "then were so delighted when he wrote back to say that it was his real name that they used the ancedote as the introduction to the story, which ran in the July 1962 issue."

Warren

In 1962, he joined Harvey Comics, and two years later became the main script writer for Warren's Creepy magazine. Much of his work there, according to Batman editor Mark Chiarello, was a "homage to the favorite comics of his youth, the E.C. line." By the second issue he was co-credited (alongside Russ Jones) as editor, and soon became editor of the entire Warren line: Creepy, Eerie and Blazing Combat.  He worked for Warren between 1964 and 1967, as head writer and Editor-in-Chief, in which roles he is credited with providing a mythology for Warren's classic Vampirella character, as well as penning her most compelling stories.  After his departure from Warren in 1967, Goodwin would occasionally contribute stories over the next 15 years and even returned for a short stint as editor in 1974.

Comic strips and DC Comics

From 1967 to 1980, Goodwin also wrote scripts for King Features Syndicate, including the daily strip Secret Agent X-9, drawn by Al Williamson, as well as working on other strips including Captain Kate. His experience ghost writing Dan Flagg inspired "The Success Story" (drawn by Williamson, who also ghosted on Flagg) for Creepy #1 (1964), famed among comic strip fans for its EC style dark humor in depicting a creator whose only contribution to the strip that made him rich was his signature.  Not limited to newspaper strips, he found work at the major comics companies as both writer and editor, working for Marvel Comics on titles including Fantastic Four and Iron Man. Goodwin worked briefly for DC Comics during the 1970s, where he edited the war comics G.I. Combat, Our Fighting Forces, and Star Spangled War Stories, and replaced Julius Schwartz as editor of Detective Comics for one year. Goodwin's collaboration with Walt Simonson on the Manhunter back-up feature in Detective Comics won several awards.

Marvel Comics

In 1976, Goodwin replaced Gerry Conway to become the eighth Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, with the understanding that it would only be temporary until a permanent replacement could be found. He ultimately resigned at the end of 1977 and was replaced by Jim Shooter. While Editor-in-Chief, Marvel secured the rights to publish the Star Wars adaptation and tie-in series, which then sold phenomenally well (helped by a dearth of other Star Wars merchandise at the time) at a point when the comics industry was in severe decline. Goodwin recalled about the Star Wars comic book, "That really worked ... but I can't take any credit for it. Roy Thomas is the one who brought it to Marvel, and he had to push a little bit to get them to do it." He followed Thomas in adapting the Star Wars characters into an ongoing comic book, as well as continuing the story (pre-Return of the Jedi) in a daily comic strip. Goodwin wrote the strips under the pseudonyms R.S. Helm and Russ Helm. He wrote comic book adaptations for Marvel of the two Star Wars sequels as well as other science-fiction films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Blade Runner. In 1979, Goodwin wrote an adaptation of the first Alien movie which was drawn by Walt Simonson and published by Heavy Metal.

Epic

After Marvel Comics passed on publishing the American incarnation of Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal), Editor-in-chief Jim Shooter was charged with producing an alternate title, which became Epic Illustrated. It was initially edited by Rick Marschall, but Shooter in 2000 recalled approaching publisher Stan Lee to urge a replacement. "I told Stan, 'There's one guy who could do this. I don't know if we can get him.' He said, 'Who's that?' 'Archie Goodwin.' The reason I didn't think we could get him is because he used to be my boss and I didn't know how he'd feel about coming back and me being his boss."  Goodwin was at the time still working for Marvel as a writer, and Shooter recalls concocting a plan whereby the company "pretended that Archie reported to Stan. In fact, I was doing all the paperwork and all the employee reviews and the budgets" so that Goodwin could have the illusion of not working for his successor.  In the autumn of 1979, Marschall was fired and Goodwin hired as Epic's editor.  In addition to Marvel's first creator-owned imprint Epic Illustrated, Goodwin set up the Marvel Graphic Novel series, giving a number of artists and writers their first break as well as allowing established Marvel staff to work with material too difficult or 'adult' for the monthly titles.  As Shooter recalls events, he approached Goodwin after the moderate success of the Epic magazine and creator-owned graphic novels to produce a full-fledged line of creator-owned comics, Epic Comics. Goodwin initially balked at the additional workload, and Shooter turned the line over to Al Milgrom before Goodwin ultimately accepted editorship.  Goodwin also introduced the first English translation of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira and published English translations of the work of Jean Giraud aka Moebius.

Return to DC

Goodwin returned to DC Comics as an editor and writer in 1989.  He wrote the graphic novel Batman: Night Cries painted by Scott Hampton and published in 1992. Throughout the 1990s, Goodwin edited a number of Batman projects, including the Elseworlds miniseries Batman: Thrillkiller, and the Alan Grant-written/Kevin O'Neill-illustrated parody one-shot Batman: Mitefall, a take-off of the Knightfall saga, filtered through the character of Bat-Mite. Armageddon 2001 was a 1991 crossover event storyline. It ran through a self titled, two issue limited series and most of the annuals DC published that year from May through October. Each participating annual explored potential possible futures for its main characters. The series was written by Goodwin and Dennis O'Neil and drawn by Dan Jurgens.  Among Goodwin's most notable last editorial projects were Starman, written by James Robinson and first published by DC in 1994 and DC's Batman: The Long Halloween by Tim Sale and Jeph Loeb. Loeb and Sale's first work on Batman appeared in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special #1 (Dec. 1993) edited by Goodwin.  It is a testament to Goodwin that Loeb has said that Goodwin inspired their portrayal of Gotham police chief Jim Gordon in The Long Halloween and its sequel Batman: Dark Victory, while Robinson (who considered Goodwin both a mentor and close personal friend), continued to list Goodwin as a "Guiding Light" on later issues of Starman. Goodwin also edited Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, and Azrael. Goodwin's Creepy work is cited by editor Mark Chiarello as informing the creation of the Batman: Black & White series.

Death

Goodwin died of cancer in 1998.  Goodwin was honoured in a tribute issue of the magazine Comic Book Profiles.

Awards

Goodwin's work won him a good deal of recognition in the industry, including both the 1973 Shazam Award for Best Writer (Dramatic Division), and the 1974 Shazam Award for Best Writer (Dramatic Division) for the Manhunter series running in Detective Comics #437 - 443, in addition to winning Shazam Awards for Best Individual Short Story for "The Himalayan Incident" in Detective Comics #437, "Cathedral Perilous" in Detective Comics #441 and "Götterdämmerung" in Detective Comics #443 (all with Walt Simonson; all for Manhunter episodes). Goodwin's work on Manhunter, in which he both updated an obscure Golden Age hero, and, in the series' last episode, took the daring approach of killing him off (one of the few comic book deaths that has actually "taken" and not been reversed or retconned away in the decades since it occurred) is very well regarded by both fans and other comics professionals.  Goodwin stated in his final interview, "I think that Manhunter is one of just several projects that I've worked on that I consider a highlight in my career. It is something that I may never be able to top in a lot of ways. To have done that and for DC to have given me the opportunity to do that was great."  He won the 1992 "Bob Clampett Humanitarian" Eisner Award, and was named Best Editor by the Eisners in 1993. In 1998 he was entered into the Eisner Hall of Fame.  In 2007, Goodwin was inducted into the Oklahoma Cartoonists Hall of Fame in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, located in the Toy and Action Figure Museum.

Roy Thomas

Roy William Thomas, Jr born November 22, 1940, is an American comic book writer and editor, and Stan Lee's first successor as editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. He is possibly best known for introducing the pulp magazine hero Conan the Barbarian to American comics, with a series that added to the storyline of Robert E. Howard's character and helped launch a sword and sorcery trend in comics. Thomas is also known for his championing of Golden Age comic-book heroes — particularly the 1940s superhero team the Justice Society of America — and for lengthy writing stints on Marvel's X-Men and Avengers, and DC Comics' All-Star Squadron, among other titles.

Thomas was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2011.

Early life

Thomas was born in Missouri, United States. As a child, Thomas was a devoted comic book fan, and in grade school he wrote and drew his own comics for distribution to friends and family. The first of these was All-Giant Comics, which he recalls as having featured such characters as Elephant Giant He graduated from Southeast Missouri State University in 1961 with a B.S. in Educationhaving majored in history and social science.

Thomas became an early and active member of Silver Age comic book fandom when it organized in the early 1960s — primarily around Jerry Bails, whose enthusiasm for the rebirth of superhero comics during that period led Bails to found the fanzine Alter Ego, an early focal point of fandom. Thomas, then a high school Englishteacher, took over as editor in 1964 when Bails moved on to other pursuits. Letters from him appeared regularly in the letters pages of both DC and Marvel Comics, including The Flash #116 (November 1960), Fantastic Four #5 (July 1962), and Fantastic Four #22 (January 1964) (in which a letter by Dave Cockrum also appears).

Career

Marvel Comics

In 1965, Thomas moved to New York City to take a job at DC Comics as assistant to Mort Weisinger, then the editor of the Superman titles. Thomas said he had just accepted a fellowship to study foreign relations at George Washington University when he received a letter from Weisinger, "with whom I had exchanged one or two letters, tops", asking Thomas to become "his assistant editor on a several-week trial basis."Thomas had already written a Jimmy Olsen script "a few months before, while still living and teaching in the St. Louis area," he said in 2005. "I worked at DC for eight days in late June and very early July of 1965"before accepting a job at Marvel Comics.

This came after his chafing under the notoriously difficult Weisinger, to a point, Thomas said in 1981, that he would go "home to my dingy little room at, coincidentally, the George Washington Hotel in Manhattan, during that second week, and actually feeling tears well into my eyes, at the ripe old age of 24." Familiar with editor and chief writer Stan Lee's Marvel work, and feeling them "the most vital comics around,Thomas "just sat down one night at the hotel and — I wrote him a letter! Not applying for a job or anything so mundane as that — I just said that I admired his work, and would like to buy him a drink some time. I figured he just might remember me from Alter Ego." Lee did, and phoned Thomas to offer him a Marvel writing test.

I was hired after taking [the] ' writer's test', and my first official job title at Marvel was 'staff writer'. I wasn't hired as an editor or assistant editor. I was supposed to come in 40 hours a week and write scripts on staff. ... I sat at this corrugated metal desk with a typewriter in a small office with production manager Sol Brodsky and corresponding secretary Flo Steinberg. Everybody who came up to Marvel wound up there, and the phone was constantly ringing, with conversations going on all around me. ... Almost at once, even though Stan proofed all the finished stories, he and Sol started having me check the corrections before they went out, and that would break up my concentration still further. ... [and] they kept asking me to do this or that, or questions like in which issue something happened, or Stan would come in to check something, because I knew a lot about Marvel continuity up to that time. ... It quickly became apparent to them, too, that the staff writer thing wasn't working, and Stan segued me over to being an editorial assistant, which immediately worked out better for all concerned

The Avengers #57 (Oct. 1968), debut of the Silver Age Vision, created by Thomas as a homage to the Golden Age original. Cover art by John Buscema.

The writer's test, Thomas said in 1998, "was four Jack Kirby pages from Fantastic Four Annual #2 ... [Stan Lee] had Sol [Brodsky] or someone take out the dialogue. It was just black-and-white. Other people like Denny O'Neil and Gary Friedrich took it. But soon afterwards we stopped using it."[7] The day after taking the test, Thomas was at DC, proofreading a Supergirl story, when Steinberg called asking Thomas meet with Lee during lunch, where Thomas agreed to work for Marvel. He returned to DC to give "indefinite notice" to Weisinger, but Weisinger ordered him to leave immediately and "I was back at Marvel less than an hour after I first left, and had aModeling with Millie assignment to do over the weekend. It was a Friday."

To that point, editor-in-chief Lee had been the main scripter of Marvel publications, with his brother, Larry Lieber, picking up the slack as a sometime-scripter of Lee-plotted stories. Thomas soon became the first new Marvel writer to sustain a presence, at a time when comics veterans such as Robert Bernstein, Ernie Hart, Leon Lazarus, and Don Rico, and fellow newcomers Steve Skeates (hired a couple of weeks earlier) and O'Neil (brought in at Thomas' recommendation a few months later) did not.

His Marvel debut was the romantic-adventure story "Whom Can I Turn To?" in the Millie the Model spin-off Modeling with Millie #44 (Dec. 1965) — for which the credits and the logo were inadvertently left off due to a production glitch, resulting in this being left off most credit lists.Thomas' first Marvel superhero scripting was "My Life for Yours", the "Iron Man" feature in Tales of Suspense #73 (Jan. 1966), working from a Lee plot as well as a plot assist from secretary Steinberg. Thomas estimates that Lee rewrote approximately half of that fledgling attempt.

Thomas' earliest Marvel work also included the teen-romance title Patsy and Hedy #104-105 (Feb.-April 1966), and two "Doctor Strange" stories, plotted by Lee andSteve Ditko, in Strange Tales #143-144 (April–May 1966). Two previously written freelance stories for Charlton Comics also saw print: "The Second Trojan War" in Son of Vulcan #50 (Jan. 1966) and "The Eye of Horus" in Blue Beetle #54 (March 1966).[10] "When Stan saw the couple of Charlton stories I'd written earlier in more of aGardner Fox style, he wasn't too impressed," Thomas recalled. "It's probably a good thing I already had my job at Marvel at that point! I think I was the right person in the right place at the right time, but there are other people who, had they been there, might have been just as right."

Thomas took on what would be his first long-term Marvel title, the World War II series Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, starting with #29 (April 1966) and continuing through #41 (April 1967) and the series' 1966 annual, Sgt. Fury Special #2. He also began writing the mutant-superteam title [Uncanny] X-Men from #20-43 (May 1966 - April 1968), and, finally, took over The Avengers, starting with #35 (Dec. 1966), and continuing until 1972. That notable run was marked by a strong sense of continuity, and stories that ranged from the personal to the cosmic — the latter most prominently with the Kree-Skrull War in issues #89-97 (June 1971 - March 1972). Additional work included an occasional "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D" and "Doctor Strange" story in Strange Tales. When that title became the solo comic Doctor Strange, he wrote the entire run of new stories, from #169-183 (June 1968 - Nov. 1969), mostly with the art team of penciler Gene Colan and inker Tom Palmer.[10]

As Thomas self-evaluated in a 1981 interview, shortly after leaving Marvel for rival DC Comics, "One of the reasons Stan liked my writing ... was that after a few issues he felt he could trust me enough that he virtually never again read anything I wrote — well, at least not more than a page or two in a row, just to keep me honest."

Thomas eloped in July 1968 to marry his first wife, Jean Maxey, returning to work a day late from a weekend comic-book convention in St. Louis, Missouri. Thomas said in 2000 that Brodsky, in the interim, had assigned Doctor Strange to the writer Archie Goodwin, newly ensconced at Marvel and writing Iron Man, but Thomas convinced Brodsky to return it to him. "I got very possessive about Doctor Strange," Thomas recalled. "It wasn't a huge seller, but [by the time it was canceled], we were selling in the low 40 percent range of more than 400,000 print run, so it was actually selling a couple hundred thousand copies [but] at the time you needed to sell even more ."He eventually did have a Caribbean honeymoon, where he scripted the wedding of Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne in The Avengers #60 (Jan.1969).

Thomas, who had turned over X-Men to other writers, returned with issue #55 (April 1969) when the series was on the verge of cancellation. While efforts to save it failed — the title ended its initial run with #66 — Thomas' collaboration with artist Neal Adams through #63 (Dec. 1969) is regarded as a Silver Age creative highlight.Thomas won the 1969 Alley Award that year for Best Writer, while Adams and inker Tom Palmer, netted 1969 Alley Awards for Best Pencil Artist and Best Inking Artist, respectively.

In 1971, with Stan Lee and Gerry Conway, Thomas created Man-Thing and wrote the first Man-Thing story in color comics, after Conway and Len Wein had introduced the character in the black-and-white comics magazine Savage Tales. Among the many other characters Thomas co-created with Marvel artists were Yellowjacket and Adam Warlock, based on existing characters; Morbius, Doc Samson, Ms. Marvel, Valkyrie, Killraven and Ultron. He also devised the fictional metal adamantium, used in countless stories.

Editor-in-chief

The following year, when Lee became Marvel's publisher, Thomas succeeded him as editor-in-chief. Thomas by this time had already launched Conan the Barbarian, based on Robert E. Howard's 1930s pulp-fiction sword-and-sorcery character. Thomas, who stepped down from his editorship in August 1974, wrote hundreds of Conan stories in a host of Marvel comics and black-and-white magazines. During that time, he and Smith also brought to comics Howard's little-known, sword-wielding woman-warrior Red Sonja, initially as a Conan supporting character.

Thomas also continued to script mainstream titles, including Marvel's flagships, The Fantastic Four and The Amazing Spider-Man. He launched such new titles as the unusual "non-team" series The Defenders, as well as What If, a title that explored alternate histories. In addition, he indulged his love of Golden Age comic-book heroes in the World War II-set superhero series The Invaders.  Thomas also helped create such new characters as the superpowered martial artist Iron Fist, the supernatural Brother Voodoo, and the demonic, motorcycle-driving Ghost Rider. He was instrumental in engineering Marvel's comic-book adaptation of the movie Star Wars, without which, 1980s editor Jim Shooter believed, "[W]e would have gone out of business"  In 1975, Thomas wrote the first joint publishing venture between Marvel and DC Comics - a 72-page Wizard of Oz movie adaptation in an oversized "Treasury Edition" format with art by John Buscema.

John Buscema

John Buscema, born Giovanni Natale Buscema (December 11, 1927–January 10, 2002), was an American comic-book artist and one of the mainstays of Marvel Comics during its 1960s and 1970s ascendancy into an industry leader and its subsequent expansion to a major pop culture conglomerate.

Buscema is best known for his run on the series The Avengers and The Silver Surfer, and for over 200 stories featuring the sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. In addition, he pencilled at least one issue of nearly every major Marvel title, including long runs on two of the company's top magazines Fantastic Four and Thor.

He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2002. Biography

Early life and career

Born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, John Buscema showed an interest in drawing at an early age, copying comic strips such as Popeye. In his teens, he developed an interest in both superhero comic books and such classic adventure comic strips as Hal Foster's Tarzan and Prince Valiant, Burne Hogarth's Tarzan, Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon, and Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates.  He also showed an interest in commercial illustrators of the period, such as N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, Dean Cornwell, Coby Whitmore, Albert Dorne, and Robert Fawcett.  

Buscema graduated from Manhattan's High School of Music and Art. He also took night lessons at Pratt Institute as well as life drawing classes at the Brooklyn Museum. While training as a boxer, he began painting portraits of boxers and sold some cartoons to The Hobo News. ] Seeking work as a commercial illustrator while doing various odd jobs, Buscema found himself instead entering the comic-book field in 1948, landing a staff job under editor-in-chief and art director Stan Lee at Timely Comics, the forerunner of Marvel Comics. The Timely "bullpen", as the staff was called, included such fellow staffers as established veterans Syd Shores, Carl Burgos, Mike Sekowsky, George Klein, and Marty Nodell and hired, roughly two months earlier, newcomer Gene Colan. 

His first recorded credit is penciling the four-page story "Till Crime Do You Part" in Timely's Lawbreakers Always Lose #3 (Aug. 1948).[9] He also contributed to the "real-life" dramatic series True Adventures and Man Comics (the premiere issue of which sported one of Buscema's earliest recorded comic-book covers), as well as to Cowboy Romances, Two-Gun Western (for which he drew at least one story of the continuing character the Apache Kid), Lorna the Jungle Queen, and Strange Tales. ] Until the bullpen was dissolved a year-and-a-half later, as comic books in general and superhero comics in particular continued their post-war fade in popularity, Buscema penciled and inked in a variety of genres, including crime fiction and romance fiction.

1950s

Buscema married in 1953.[10] He continued to freelance for Timely, by now known as Atlas Comics, as well as for the publishers Ace Comics, Hillman Periodicals, Our Publications/Orbit, Quality Comics, St. John Publications, and Ziff-Davis.

Buscema's mid-1950s work also includes Dell Comics' Roy Rogers Comics #74-91 (Feb. 1954 - July 1955) and subsequent Roy Rogers and Trigger #92-97 & #104-108 (Aug. 1955 - Jan. 1956 & Aug.-Dec. 1956); and the Charlton Comics series Ramar of the Jungle and Nature Boy — the latter, Buscema's first superhero work, created by himself and Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel.   Buscema next produced a series of Western war, and sword and sandal film adaptations for Dell's Four Color series. Buscema recalled, "I did a bunch of their movie books ... that was a lot of fun. I worked from stills on those, except for The Vikings. ...I think one of the best books I ever did was Sinbad the Sailor."   He drew at least one issue of the radio, film, and TV character the Cisco Kid for Dell in 1957, as well as one- to eight-page biographies of every U.S. president through Dwight Eisenhower for that company's one-shot Life Stories of American Presidents.

During a late 1950s downturn in the comics industry, Buscema drew occasional mystery, fantasy, and science-fiction stories for Atlas Comics' Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, and Strange Worlds, and American Comics Group's Adventures into the Unknown, and Forbidden Worlds  before leaving comics to do freelance commercial art.  He began a freelance position for the New York City advertising firm the Chaite Agency, which employed such commercial artists as Bob Peak and Frank McCarthy. 

1960s

Buscema spent approximately eight years in the commercial-art field, freelancing for the Chaite Agency  and the studio Triad, doing a variety of assignments: layouts, storyboards, illustrations, paperback book covers, etc. in a variety of media. Buscema called this time "quite a learning period for me in my own development of techniques".

He returned to comic books in 1966 as a regular freelance penciller for Marvel Comics, debuting over Jack Kirby layouts on the "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." story in Strange Tales #150 (Nov. 1966), followed by three "The Incredible Hulk" stories in Tales to Astonish #85-87 (Nov. 1966 - Jan. 1967). He then settled in as regular penciller of the The Avengers, which would become one of his signature series, with #41 (June 1967). Avengers #49-50, featuring Hercules and inked by Buscema, are two of his "best-looking [issues] of that period", said comics historian and one-time Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, who wrote those issues.

In order to adapt to the Marvel Comics style of superhero adventure, Buscema "synthesized the essence of [Jack] Kirby's supercharged action figures, harrowing perspectives, monolithic structures, mega-force explosions, and mythological planetscapes into a formula that he instantly integrated into his own superbly crafted vision," wrote comics artist and historian Jim Steranko. "The process brought Buscema's art to life in a way that it had never been before. Anatomically balanced figures of Herculean proportions stalked, stormed, sprawled, and savaged their way across Marvel's universe like none had previously".

Buscema would pencil an average of two comics a month in collaboration with such inkers as George Klein, Frank Giacoia, Dan Adkins, Joe Sinnott, his younger brother Sal Buscema, Tom Palmer, and, occasionally, Marvel production manager and sometime inker-cartoonist John Verpoorten.

The Silver Surfer #4 (July 1969). Cover art by Buscema and inker Sal Buscema. One of Buscema's most famous covers.  Among Buscema's works during this period fans and historians call the Silver Age of comic books are The Avengers #41-62 (June 1967 - March 1969), which includes the introduction of the modern-day Vision in #57 (Oct. 1968), and The Avengers Annual #2 (Sept. 1968); the first eight issues of The Sub-Mariner (May-Dec. 1968); The Amazing Spider-Man #72-73, 76-81, 84-85 (ranging from June 1969 - June 1970); and a new title, The Silver Surfer.  ] That series about a philosophical alien roaming the world trying to understand both the divinity and the savagery of humanity was a personal favorite of Marvel editor-in-chief Stan Lee, who scripted. Buscema penciled 17 of its 18 issues — the first seven as a 25¢ "giant-size" title at a time when comics typically cost 12¢. Former Historian Thomas said Buscema considered Silver Surfer #4 (Feb. 1969), featuring a battle between the Silver Surfer and Thor, "as the highpoint of his Marvel work" .

Toward the end of the decade, Buscema drew some fill-in issues of superhero series and also returned to familiar 1950s genres with a spate of supernatural mystery stories (in Chamber of Darkness and Tower of Shadows), and romance tales (in My Love and Our Love). He then returned to his signature series The Avengers for 11 issues inked by Tom Palmer.

1970s

With Jack Kirby's departure from Marvel in 1970, Buscema succeeded him on both of Kirby's titles: Fantastic Four (penciling issues #107-141, following John Romita Sr.) and Thor  (#182-259). He additionally launched the feature "Black Widow" in Amazing Adventures in 1970,

Marvel editor-in-chief Stan Lee, who collaborated with Buscema on many stories up to this time, wrote,  One thing I loved about Big John is the fact that I didn't have to spend time writing synopses for him. . . . He'd always growl over the phone, 'Don't bother sending me any outlines, Stan. I hate to waste time reading them. Just tell what you've got in mind over the phone. I'll remember it.' So I'd tell him the story I wanted, and I have a hunch he didn't even write any notes while I spoke — because I spoke too fast — but it didn't matter. He remembered every last detail and the stories always came out perfect — at least as far as I was concerned. ).  

Buscema began penciling Conan the Barbarian with #25 (April 1973) following Barry Smith's celebrated run, and debuted as the Conan artist of the black-and-white comics-magazine omnibus Savage Sword of Conan with issue #1 (Aug. 1974). He would eventually contribute to more than 100 issues of each title, giving him one of the most prolific runs for an artist on a single character. He additionally drew the Conan Sunday and daily syndicated newspaper comic strip upon its premiere in 1978, and even contributed some storyboard illustrations for the 1982 Conan movie, as well as painting four covers for the Conan magazines.

For about ten years, he would produce an average three to four books' worth of pencils a month, such as Nova (1976) and Ms. Marvel (1977). In additional to his regular assignments he would pencil covers and fill-in issues of titles including Captain America, Captain Britain (Marvel UK), Daredevil, The Frankenstein Monster, Howard the Duck, Master of Kung Fu, Red Sonja and Warlock. He also drew a story for the science-fiction anthology Worlds Unknown.

Buscema contributed as well to Marvel's black-and-white comics magazines, including the features "Ka-Zar" in Savage Tales #1 (May 1971) and "Bloodstone" in Rampaging Hulk #1 (Jan. 1977), and Doc Savage #1 & 3 (Aug. 1975, Jan. 1976). Other magazine work ran the gamut from horror (Dracula Lives!, Monsters Unleashed, Tales of the Zombie) to humor (Crazy, Pizzaz

Buscema left the Thor title for a time to launch the Marvel version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs character Tarzan in 1977. Other licensed projects include a 72-page The Wizard of Oz movie adaptation in an oversized "Treasury Edition" format with DeZuniga inking.  For Power Records, which produced children's book-and-record sets, Buscema drew Star Trek and Conan the Barbarian comics. He also contributed some superhero drawings for Pro, the NFL official magazine (1970), and pencilled some chapters of the first issue of Marvel Comics Super Special Magazine featuring the rock group Kiss (1977).

In 1978, small-press publisher Sal Quartuccio released The Art of John Buscemaa retrospective that included an interview, previously unpublished sketches and drawings, and a cover that was also sold as a poster.  Buscema capped off the decade penciling writer Doug Moench's three-issue Weirdworld epic-fantasy tale "Warriors of the Shadow Realm" in Marvel Comics Super Special #11-13 (June-Oct. 1979). ] Pacific Comics released an accompanying portfolio of six signed, coloured plates from the story.

Teaching

In the mid-1970s, Buscema ran the John Buscema Art School, which advertised for students in the pages of many Marvel titles. Stan Lee made appearances as a guest lecturer at Buscema's school, and some of the school's graduates (including Bob Hall and Bruce Patterson) went on to become professional cartoonists. Buscema then collaborated with Lee on the book How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way (Marvel Fireside Books, 1978), a primer on comic-book art and storytelling based on the comic art classes Buscema had given a few years prior,and has remained in print for over 25 years, in its 33rd printing as of 2007.

Joe Sinnott

Joe Sinnott (born October 16, 1926) is an American comic book artist. Working primarily as an inker, Sinnott is best known for his long stint on Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, from 1965 to 1981 (and briefly in the late 1980s), initially over the pencils of Jack Kirby. During his 60 years as a Marvel freelancer and then salaried artist working from home, Sinnott inked virtually every major title, with notable runs on The Avengers, The Defenders and Thor.

Marvel impresario Stan Lee in the mid-2000s cited Sinnott as the company's most in-demand inker, saying jocularly, "Pencilers used to hurl all sorts of dire threats at me if I didn't make certain that Joe, and only Joe, inked their pages. I knew I couldn't satisfy everyone and I had to save the very most important strips for [him]. To most pencilers, having Joe Sinnott ink their artwork was tantamount to grabbing the brass ring." Sinnott, who as of 2012 continues to ink the The Amazing Spider-Man Sunday comic strip, had his art appear on two US Postal Service commemorative stamps in 2007.

Early life and career

Born in Saugerties, New York, Joe Sinnott was one of seven children to Edward and Catherine McGraw Sinnott; his siblings were Frank, Anne, Edward, and three who predeceased him, Jack, Richard and Leonard). He grew up in a boarding house that catered primarily to schoolteachers, some of whom inspired in the young Sinnott a love of drawing.His childhood comics influences include the comic strip Terry and the Pirates and the comic book characters Batman, Congo Bill, Hawkman and Zatara.

Following the death in action of his brother Jack, a member of the United States Army's Third Division, in 1944, Sinnott acceded to his mother's wishes not to be drafted into the Army himself, and he enlisted in the Navy in the autumn of that year. After serving with the Seabees in Okinawa during World War II, driving a munitions truck, he was discharged in May 1946. After working three years in his father's cement-manufacturing plant, he was accepted into the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (later the School of Visual Arts) in New York City in March 1949, attending on the GI Bill.

Sinnott's first solo professional art job was the backup feature "Trudi" in the St. John Publications humor comic Mopsy #12 (Sept. 1950). Later, during a two-week school vacation in August 1950,[9] he married his fiancée Betty Kirlauski (March 7, 1932 - November 1, 2006), to whom he remained married for 56 years until her death.

Cartoonists and Illustrators School instructor Tom Gill asked Sinnott to be his assistant on Gill's freelance comics work. With classmate Norman Steinberg, Sinnott spent nine months drawing backgrounds and incidentals on, initially, Gill's Western-movie tie-in comics for Dell Comics.  Sinnott recalled in 2003, "Tom was paying us very well. I was still attending school and worked for Tom at nights and [on] weekends. ... He was mainly drawing Westerns, like Red Warrior and Apache Kid for Stan Lee", editor-in-chief of the two successive companies, Timely Comics and Atlas Comics, that became Marvel Comics.  "I have to give all the credit to Tom for giving me my start in comics," Sinnott added.

Timely/Atlas

Branching out professionally, Sinnott in 1951 met with editor Stan Lee at the company that would evolve into Marvel Comics, which at the time was transitioning between being known as Timely Comics and Atlas Comics. Sinnott was ghost artist on Tom Gill-credited stories for the company's Kent Blake of the Secret Service comic, and reasoned, he later recalled, "'Gee, Stan can't turn me down because he's accepting all the work we bring in'. So I went over to see Stan and he gave me a script right away...." Due to creator credits not generally being given at the time, sources differ on Sinnott's first non-Gill Atlas assignment. One standard source gives two stories published the same month: the four-page Western filler "The Man Who Wouldn't Die" in Apache Kid #8 (Sept. 1951), and the two-page "Under the Red Flag" in Kent Blake of the Secret Service #3 (Sept. 1951).

Regardless, Sinnott would go on to draw a multitude of stories in many genres for the company throughout the decade: horror, science-fiction and supernatural-fantasy stories for Adventures into Terror, Astonishing, Marvel Tales, Menace, Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales, Uncanny Tales and others; war-comics stories for Battle, Battle Action, Battlefield, Battlefront, Combat, Navy Combat and others, including historical war stories in Man Comics; biblical stories in Bible Tales for Young Folk; Westerns in Frontier Western, Gunsmoke Western, Two Gun Western, Western Outlaws, Wild Western and others, co-creating with unknown writers the titular heroes of The Kid from Texas and Arrowhead, the latter starring a Native American warrior; and the occasional crime story (Caught ) and romance tale (Secret Story Romances).

He said in 2003, "I used to go up [to the office, at the Empire State Building] and sit in a little reading room with four or five other artists. It got so that every week I went up, the same guys would be in the room. Bob Powell, Gene Colan, people like that. I got to talking to them. Syd Shores was [freelancing] there, too."   The pattern, Sinnott recalled, was for assistant art director Bob Brown to call each in turn to meet with Lee for "maybe ten or fifteen minutes.... There'd be a stack of scripts on the left side of his desk, typed on legal yellow paper. He'd take one off the top and didn't know what he'd be handing you. It could be a war story or a Western or anything. You took it home and were expected to do a professional job on it".

Sinnott lived in New York City for three years while attending art school, living near Broadway and West 74th Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side, and then returned to his hometown of Saugerties, New York, where he spent his life.

During a 1957 economic retrenchment when Atlas let go of most of its staff and freelancers, Sinnott found other work in the six months before the company called him back. Like other freelancers there, he had taken sporadic cuts in his page-rate even before the company implosion. "I was up to $46 a page for pencils and inks. and that was a good rate in 1956, when the decline started. I was down to $21 a page when Atlas stopped hiring me. ... Stan called me and said, 'Joe, Martin Goodman told me to suspend operations because I have all this artwork in-house and have to use it up before I can hire you again.' It turned out to be six months, in my case. He may have called back some of the other artists later, but that's what happened with me".

He began doing such commercial art as billboards and record covers, ghosting for some DC Comics artists, and a job for Classics Illustrated comics.  Former EC Comics artist Jack Kamen, now the art director of Harwyn Publishing's 12-volume, 1958 Harwyn Picture Encyclopedia for children, had Sinnott join a roster of contributors that included such celebrated EC artists as Reed Crandall, Bill Elder, George Evans, Angelo Torres and Wally Wood.   Sinnot also began a long association with publisher George Pflaum's Treasure Chest, a Catholic-oriented comic book distributed in parochial schools. With Bob Wischmeyer, a Treasure Chest writer-editor, Sinnott collaborated on an unsold college-athlete comic strip Johnny Hawk, All American.

Silver Age of Comic Books

During the late 1950s and 1960s period historians and collectors call the Silver Age of Comic Books, Sinnott continued doing occasional pencil-and-ink stories for Atlas Comics as it transitioned into the nascent Marvel Comics, contributing to such "pre-superhero Marvel" titles as Strange Tales, Strange Worlds, Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense and World of Fantasy. He also began a stint with the low-budget Charlton Comics, teamed as penciler with inker Vince Colletta on several romance-comics stories in series including First Kiss, Just Married, Romantic Secrets, Sweethearts and Teen-Age Love that he would do through 1963.

Sinnott's first collaboration with Jack Kirby, one of comics' most historically groundbreaking and influential creators and the penciler with whom he is most often identified, came with the war-comics story "Doom Under the Deep" in Atlas' Battle #69 (April 1960).  After a supernatural Kirby story in Journey into Mystery, #58 (May 1960), he inked Kirby's twice-reprinted giant-monster story "I Was Trapped By Titano the Monster That Time Forgot" in Tales to Astonish #10 (July 1960), although not the cover featuring that lead story.

Sinnott did one additional Kirby pre-superhero Marvel story, "I Was a Decoy for Pildorr: The Plunderer from Outer Space", in Strange Tales #94 (March 1962), before inking his first Marvel superhero story: writer-editor Stan Lee and penciler/co-plotter Kirby's The Fantastic Four #5 (July 1962), the issue introducing the long-running supervillain Dr. Doom.

As Sinnott explained his not remaining on The Fantastic Four after his single early issue,  “Before Stan called me to ink Jack on Fantastic Four #5, I never knew the Fantastic Four existed. I lived up here in ... the Catskill Mountains, and I never went down to the city at that time. ... Everything was done by mail and I didn't know what books were coming out, even. ... Stan called me up and said, 'Joe, I've got a book here by Jack Kirby and I'd like you to ink it, if you could. I can't find anybody to ink it. ... [When the pencil art arrived,] I was dumbfounded by the great art and the characters. ... I had a ball inking it. I remember when I mailed it back, Stan called me. He said, 'Joe, we liked it so much, I'm going to send you #6.' So he [did], but I had committed myself [to] another account at [publisher George A. Pflaum's Catholic comic book] Treasure Chest ... and this was a 65-page story I was going to have to do on one of the Popes ["The Story Of Pope John XXIII, Who Won Our Hearts", in vol. 18, #1-9 (Sept. 13, 1962 - Jan. 3, 1963)]. I had committed myself to it, so when I had started #6, I think I just did a panel or two.  I had to send it back to Stan.”

Sinnott had by then inked the introduction of the Norse god superhero Thor, in Journey into Mystery #83 (Aug. 1962). He also inked the following issue's Kirby cover, and, following his papal project, he both penciled and inked five subsequent Thor stories, in issues #91-92, 94-96 (April-Sept. 1963).

Aside from these sporadic works, however, Sinnott was primarily inking for Charlton during this period, with occasional jobs for American Comics Group, Treasure Chest, and Dell Comics, for which he variously penciled and fully drew film and TV adaptations, and penciled the one-shot biographical comic The Beatles #! (Nov. 1964).  But then, in 1965, he returned to Marvel to work virtually exclusively, beginning with his inking the cover and the story, "Where Walks the Juggernaut", of The X-Men #13 (Sept. 1965).

After this, Sinnot began his long and celebrated stint on a Marvel flagship title, Fantastic Four, inking Kirby on "The Gentleman's Name Is Gorgon! or What a Way to Spend a Honeymoon!" in issue #44 (Nov. 1965). He remained on the series through Kirby's departure after issue #102 (Sept. 1970) — contributing visually to the introductions of Lee/Kirby's Galactus, the Silver Surfer, the Black Panther, the Inhumans, Adam Warlock and other characters — and continued on through 1981, missing an issue here and there or simply inking the cover. He made a brief return in the late 1980s. His post-Kirby pencilers included John Romita, John Buscema, Bill Sienkiewicz, Rich Buckler, and George Pérez.

As one comics historian assessed of the mid-1960s Kirby-Sinnott art collaboration,

“In an uncanny stroke of luck and perfect timing, just when Kirby gained the time to improve his artwork, Joe Sinnott became the FF's regular inker. Sinnott was a master craftsman, fiercely proud of the effort and meticulous detail he put into his work. ... That slick, stylized layer of India ink that Sinnott painted over Kirby's pencils finished Jack's work in a way that no other inker ever would. Comic fans had never witnessed art this strange and powerful in its scope and strength.”

During the 1960s Silver Age, Sinnott also inked several Kirby Captain America stories and his "The Inhumans" backup feature in Thor; two Jim Steranko stories each of superspy Nick Fury and superhero Captain America; and Buscema's 38-page origin story in The Silver Surfer #1 (Aug. 1968), among other Marvel work.

Sinnott recalled in 2006,  “Down through the years, all through the '60s, [rival] DC [Comics] always called me and ask me if I'd come over and work for them, and I'd tell them that Stan Lee would give me all the work I wanted. Stan had always told me, “Joe, whatever DC offer you, we'll continue to pay you more," no matter what the rates were. In those days all the artists didn't get the same pay, we all got different rates. And I enjoyed the characters that we were working on.”

Later Marvel career

During his years as a Marvel freelancer and then salaried artist working from home, Sinnott inked virtually every major title, with notable runs on The Avengers, The Defenders and Thor.

Sinnott retired from comic books in 1992 to concentrate on inking The Amazing Spider-Man Sunday strip, and to do recreations of comics covers and commissioned artwork.  He has continued to contribute sporadically to Marvel comics, and as late as Captain America vol. 6, #1 (cover-dated Sept. 2011), he inked John Romita Sr. on one of six variant covers done for this premiere issue.[17]

Awards and Recognition

1995 Inkpot Award

2008 Inkwell Hall of Fame Award

2008 Inkwell Award for Favorite Inker (Retro; Tied with Terry Austin)

2013 Will Eisner Hall of Fame Award.

Legacy

Two Jack Kirby-Joe Sinnott images are among those on the "Marvel Super Heroes" set of commemorative stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service on July 27, 2007: the Thing and the Silver Surfer.

Sinnott is named the #1 inker of American comics by historians at the Chicago, Illinois, retailer Atlas.