Before the super heros

Back in 1962 (1961-1963) I own all the marvel super hero comics. Wish I had them now. I had the original Spider Man, Dare Devil, Hulk, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, but what about before them? I remember how sadden I was when all the super hero's came out, because I loved all those short stories and still remember some of them. Does anyone remember all those Marvel short stories before the super hero's?

Sure... Tales of Suspense, Tales To Astonish, Strange Tales, Journey Into Mystery all were anthology books before the heroes came along. I used to buy them back then as well (and still have many of them). They eventually started reprinting them in the 70's in Fantasy Masterpieces, Where Mosters Dwell, Where Creatures Roam, Beware! and others. Do you remember your favorites.... Mine was about this monster (Titan I think,,,but I could be wrong) who was growing at an alarming rate and planned on taking over the universe. He was finally met with this huge tidal wave, which drowned him. The final panel showed us that the monster was living on a glass slide and the lab assistant had run it under the sink. When the scientist asked the assistant if he looked at the slide before he washed it, he answered that he did not, but it couldn't be anything important.

Thanks Paul for the reply

I was a hard core Marvel comic book collector in the 60's, then they started getting expensive. They went from 10,12,15,20,25,......$1.00, so I couldn't afford them anymore. So I quite reading them in the 70's, but I sure have good memories of them.

Richard

Fart! In your face!

I'm pretty sure they were $.60 when I started collecting in the early eighties.

Yikes! I remember that story. It was from around 1961 and had absolutely gorgeous Steve Ditko artwork. I think it was a five pager, with no dialogue until the last panel. Tim Boo Bah was a quasiThing looking dictator of some world, complete with horned helmet. For four pages we saw how tyrannical and overbearing he was, and then abruptly giant water drops started pelting him. Stan Lee's captions preached a bit about how thus are even the mightiest dictators swept away, and then we saw a final panel of someone in the real world spilling a glass of water on a model globe.

Those short morality tales usually had a beautiful punch line in the last panel. 'The Man In the Ant Hill' in TALES TO ASTONISH featured a scientist who invented a shrinking serum, had unpleasant adventures among ants and (with the help of a friendly ant) eventually regained his normal size. The final panel showed him thoughtfully gazing down at an ant hill and remarking that after that, Henry Pym was careful to never step on an ant again.