Like the venerable Millie the Model, Strange Tales had the distinction of having its first 25-cent annual appear on the newsstands that month. This giant about giants spotlighted the mumbo-jumbo monsters that had kept the company afloat in recent years — a one-of-a-kind treasure.
Strange Tales 101, also on sale then, represented the company’s new direction. One of the newly emergent superheroes, the Human Torch, had taken over the cover and the lead feature.
Elsewhere on the newsstands, Fantastic Four 7 featured the fickle public turning violently against the super team, thanks to the alien dictator Kurrgo’s “hostility ray.”
In the third issue of The Incredible Hulk, the military duped the protagonist’s pal, Rick Jones, into betraying the Hulk by luring him into a space capsule for banishment. Not the last time the Hulk would be trapped in an outer space exile.
In his second adventure (Journey into Mystery 84), the Mighty Thor continued the commie-bashing featured during Marvel’s brief superhero revival in 1954. This time, the heavy has a heavy resemblance to Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, who’d only been in power three years. He must have been surprised to find a figure out of Norse mythology smashing his MiGs.
And in his second costumed adventure (Tales to Astonish 36), Ant-Man exposed the deadly communist agent Comrade X, who turned out to be cross-dressing.
The overall count is five superhero titles, two westerns, two humor comics, two science fiction comics, and a romance comic.
One of the sci-fi comics was a real prize, the first Strange Tales Annual. A cornucopia of the giant monster stories the publisher had been putting out for the last few years, it was also a brass band sendoff for that era. Superheroes were clearly the coming thing.
The first issue of The Fantastic Four had appeared on newsstands not quite a year before, in August 1961. The month before, in June 1962, Spider-Man had debuted in the final issue of Amazing Fantasy. During the next month, August 1962, the moribund title The Two-Gun Kid would be revived to feature a masked adventurer. Shortly thereafter, in December 1962, Spider-Man would get his own title, and Iron Man would debut in Tales of Suspense.
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