Peerless Power of Comics!

Fifty years ago this month - on June 9th, 1966, to be precise -  Marvel Tales # 4 was distributed to candy stores amid a vast array of comic books vying for attention. It got mine. While visiting my Grandparent's in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, my older brother John and I took a walk to the corner ice cream parlor, run by  a Louie Dumbrowski type (the harassed proprietor of the old  Bowery Boys  comedies). Having collected comics for a few years, John  perused the magazine racks, as he often did, searching out a few to purchase. One of those was  Marvel Tales  # 4. The color scheme was striking; a purple logo with red highlights and a bold yellow background, topped off with small cover reproductions of  Amazing Spider-Man  # 7;  Journey into Mystery  # 86;  Strange Tales  # 102 and  Tales to   Astonish  # 39. At six years old the comic was a hypnotic draw to me, and one of the earliest I recall reading (or attempting to read).                                       

Tom Sutton was a comic book artist whose talent was often taken for granted. His style was a blend of the cartoonish and horrific, inspired by past masters of the form, including Simon and Kirby, Will Elder and Wally Wood. Much of his work was under the radar of fans, who focused largely on superheroes and ongoing characters. Sutton, like other superb artists such as Russ Heath and Alex Toth, often preferred to mine their craft in genre material, which allowed them the challenge of new settings and ideas. For Sutton, it was largely horror and mystery oriented fables, although he did respectable work on western, war, science fiction and romance. While Sutton largely steered clear of costumed heroes, he parodied them to great effect in Marvel's Not Brand Echh . Sutton was in his environment illustrating murky, swamp infested bogs, dilapidated mansions and bizarre creatures, almost always with a slight wink of the eye. This post will focus primarily on his first decade in comics, from