Some ideas in the Marvel Bullpen found expression on more than one cover simultaneously.
For example, Journey Into Mystery 98 and Rawhide Kid 37 were both out on the newsstand the same month, September 1963. Both Jack Kirby covers featured a “snake man” super villain crawling down a wall — the Human Cobra for Southeast Asia and the Rattler for the desert Southwest.
I imagine editor Stan Lee thought the crossover between Marvel’s superhero and western audiences wasn’t overwhelming, so they were safe reusing the same basic idea at the same time. It happened more than once.
For example, the Two-Gun Kid, a masked crime-fighting lawyer named Matt, appeared in November 1962, a little more than a year before the debut of Daredevil, another masked crime-fighting lawyer named Matt.
And, as Max Talley observed, “Not only that, but Rawhide Kid and Spider-Man’s origins are very similar, even with a dead Uncle Ben. So they reused ideas, especially if they worked.”
Marvel’s snake men were each adapted to the environment. The Cobra was a super-powered comic-book menace with an origin similar to Spider-Man’s. But the Rattler, secretly a circus performer, followed the pulp tradition of having only highly specialized human abilities. Comic books embraced the impossible, pulps the improbable.
Funny, too, that snakes don’t crawl up walls. But really, they SHOULD, as the Marvel audience knew.
In April 1962, Fantastic Four 5 appeared on the newsstand,s spotlighting the debut of Dr. Doom. It was right alongside Tales of Suspense 31, which cover-featured The Monster in the Iron Mask! — a mask identical to Dr. Doom’s distinctive disguise.
Marvel’s Incredible Hulk, Kid Colt, and even the 1940s Captain America all ran across Circuses of Crime.
As George Daniels said, “It could’ve been worse. In the ’50s and early ’60s, DC recycled entire stories. A Batman story would become a Green Arrow story six months later.”
The Rattler story, written by Lee and drawn by Dick Ayers, featured an ambidextrous, acrobatic antagonist who could dodge bullets while shooting the guns out of the Rawhide Kid’s hand. He gave the Kid a rough time until the western hero deduced that the Rattler had to be a circus aerialist and ran him to ground.
The Cobra became a familiar recurring super villain, but the Rattler had only one outing.
However, Jim Salicrup pointed out that Lee later revamped the character for the Spider-Man newspaper strip.
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