Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Tag: Astonishing Tales

Wally Wood — Astonishing, As Always

Original Art and The Artists

Astonishing Tales #4, February 1971

Wally Wood Marvel Comics Doctor Doom Original Art From The Collection Of Greg Goldstein

Wally Wood drew four short Doctor Doom stories in Astonishing Tales. This page, from the fourth and final story is, like all of them, a Wood classic.

And yes, that’s the Red Skull lurking in the last panel. After all, what use is a super-villain story without another, even more twisted super-villain as the antagonist?

This would turn out to be Wood’s final output for Marvel Comics.

Took me a long time to pull the trigger on the “right” deal for one of these, and I’m glad to have finally acquired one.

John Buscema — Ka-Zar, Man-Thing, Oh My!

Original Art and The Artists

Astonishing Tales #12, June 1972

Man-Thing (Seriously, what kind of drugs to you take to come up with a name like that?) makes his first color comic book appearance in this terrific Ka-Zar story illustrated primarily by John Buscema. 

Part of the story was slated to appear in the B&W Savage Tales #2 which did not see the light of day, so it was cleverly re-worked here. Because of the re-mixing, credits on this issue read like an all-star line-up, and include Buscema, Neal Adams, John Romita and Dan Adkins.

Writer Roy Thomas somehow made sense of it all, creating the framing story around Len Wein’s original tale.

Bonus: Man -Thing’s first overall appearance in Savage Tales #1 includes this glorious splash (below) by Gray Morrow.