MARVEL MONSTERS!
The Marvel Monsters from the pre-hero era are a favorite among fans and many collectors are now seeing the value of these comic book appearances, many of them sharing the same name but no relation to characters that Marvel would later introduce.
We have to start before Marvel was Marvel, when it was known as Atlas Comics. Making a name for themselves with the published adventures of characters like Captain America, The Human Torch and Sub-Mariner who fought the Axis powers during World War II with sales of various titles they appeared in reaching into the millions before tastes changed and superheroes fell out of favor when our soldiers started returning home. The comic industry soon found itself a new genre which sold in great numbers; HORROR!
Adults liked them because of their lurid tales and outlandish plots and kids liked them because anything Mom thought was terrible had to have some value! Of all the comic publishers none had greater success than Bill Gaine’s EC COMICS which produced now classic horror titles like HAUNT OF FEAR and TALES FROM THE CRYPT– in an ironic twist to the story when Congress reacted to Mom complaints about the mind altering content of these comics and how they certainly lead to a life of perversion the comics publishers tried to stay ahead of coming legislation and crafted The Comics Code which outlawed out-right horror, gore, and anything that made the books sell in the first place.
EC Comics went under, rebranding itself as a magazine publisher and successfully producing MAD MAGAZINE for decades while the remaining comic publishers, such as Atlas, tried their hand at a new breed of tamer, gentler horror comics.
One of the best, and most famous, was The Monster at the Window from Tales to Astonish #34– this un-named creature, hailing from the sixth dimension has been nicknamed the Tootsie Roll Monster due to his likeness to that beloved candy.
Other notables from the same era, Fin Fang Foom who would make the successful jump to stories when Marvel started publishing superhero comics again, often going head to head with The Fantastic Four, The Avengers and The Incredible Hulk.
Torr, from Amazing Adventures #1, was representative of a lot of these early monsters, coming from other dimensions, outer space, underwater or from laboratories they were essentially “toothless” thanks to the code that wouldn’t allow any real horror elements to exist, but they were fun.
Monsters like Magneto and Groot pre-dated the appearances of the more well known Marvel Characters that would appear. There would be several “Things” before Ben Grimm took the title and long before Bruce Banner got zapped with Gamma Rays a “Hulk” menaced the countryside of the land of Marvel Monsters.
A personal favorite around the Superworld Offices is RRO which is Orr spelled backwards, and Bobby Orr is a hockey legend in these parts.
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