scans_daily

A week or so back, I posted the cover to the issue of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD which introduced the Justice League (you know, where they're messing around with a giant starfish). Alongside it for comparison was a cover to Roy Thomas' fanzine ALTER-EGO which showed a version which featured Timely characters in the same predicament. There was also the cover to FANTASTIC FOUR# 1, next to an ALTER EGOed version with the Justice League in the same situation.Well, there were more. So here for your entertainment is the cover of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA# 1. Not the most action-packed of scenes, eh? This is the original Despero before he contracted acromegaly and/or toxic level steroid abuse. Next to it from the March 2002 issue of ALTER EGO is Murphy Anderson's interpretation of the same scene with the Marvel characters. It's odd to see Kirby characters so passive, especially the Hulk sitting like a kid in Sunday School.

There weren't really many super-heroes to throw into the Avengers membership. The X-Men debuted the same month and really wouldn't have been considered. Daredevil was months from his debut and Captain America at this point was taking an ice nap. But Spider-Man and Dr Strange... Well, Strange was off on his own bizarre missions in black magic and conceptual menaces and Spider-Man's gig was being a loner (later, he would team up with every single character that Marvel owned or leased over the years, though). There was also the fact that Kirby and Ditko had trouble with each other characters. They never looked right when drawn by the other artist, and Kirby in particular just didn't seem to "get" Dr Strange. So it was for the best the two Ditko heroes were left out. Cap would be chipped out of his icecube soon enough, anyway.