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jlroberson (jlroberson) wrote in scans_daily,

And named it after the distributor. Back then, Marvel was only starting to move out from under the thumb of the DC/National Periodical Publications-owned distribution system, which had limited them to a certain number of books they could release per month--a reason why you see so much "doubling-up" in characters in Marvel books back then. Once they were free of that was when you saw them start to adopt the "swamping the racks" strategy that you've seen ever since. This was their attempt to compete with Warren and Skywald(amazing how many horror comic magazines you used to see on grocery store racks). And in my view, in some ways outdid them.

One thing that's interesting about Marvel back then is that they were out to compete with EVERYone. There's also their later attempt to compete with CREEM, TEEN BEAT and MAD simultaneously, PIZZAZZ, which, among other things, was the first thing I ever heard about "punk" in, and in fact featured the first national appearance of a number of PUNK Magazine's contributors, like John Holmstrum and Ken Weiner(I loved his cultural maps of the US)

And I really like these covers, particularly the ones involving vampires. Ah, Lilith. You over Vampirella any day. But you did miss two of the very best:


And her Atlas ripoff:


Both covers you'd never see now, and both scorch your eyeballs. It's a lost art, those.