This is the first time I’ve featured an unpublished Marvel story on the blog. There are a couple of reasons for that. The first is that Marvel, at least in the 1980s and 1990s, actually had ongoing series that they would occasionally use as dumping grounds for unpublished stories. At least ten issues of Marvel Fanfare Vol. 1 were repurposed inventory stories or stories originally intended for another book, and the irregularly published Marvel Super-Heroes Vol. 2 was–I believe–entirely old inventory or unpublished stories.
But there’s a second reason: I don’t much care for Marvel. As a kid, I felt like Marvel was trying way too hard to be my friend. That might have had something to do with how omnipresent the letter X was in all of their books, because I have a longstanding distrust of that letter. It always seems to appear whenever a brand is trying to appear cool and edgy and youthful. Every time I see the letter X in any kind of branding, I feel like someone is trying to sell me squagels.
And Marvel was everywhere. As a child in the early 1990s, you couldn’t escape Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four and the Avengers. All of it seemed like it had been specially designed to appeal to kids, which of course it had been. I resented it from the moment I first laid eyes on it.
Plenty of other stuff that had also been designed to appeal to kids worked on me! I think all kids are that way. Some of the things cooked up in a diabolical lab to get you addicted to a product work, and some of them don’t, and it all depends on the kid. Superman worked for me because he died. Batman really worked on me because he was Batman. At Dark Horse they were publishing comics I should never have been allowed to read at that age like Fax From Sarajevo and The Mask and God knows what else, plus they had Star Wars. And, come to think of it, one of the first comics I ever read was Maus. What, in the face of such towering works, could Marvel possibly offer me?
Later in life, I developed an additional, different set of aversions to Marvel. I’ll probably always blame Stan Lee for introducing the concept of “superheroes with problems” in such a hamfisted way that it basically gave us six decades of stories in which no one can ever just be happy and have a nice life anymore. The Big Two have this creepy obsession with not letting their characters be happily married, and that’s if they let them be married at all. That can be traced back, at least in part, to Stan Lee’s indefatigable desire to give his heroes feet of clay. And this all leaves aside that the entire history of Marvel can be boiled down to superheroes fighting each other and distrusting each other instead of doing anything to actually help anyone.
But even later, inevitably, I came to recognize that–while I recant none of what I just wrote–it’s a bit much to write off the entire output of a comic book publisher. It would be stupid to rob myself of Grant Morrison’s X-Men, Garth Ennis’s Punisher, or Judd Winick’s Exiles. And for the purposes of this blog, there are unpublished stories to be found in the graveyard of Marvel Comics. The first one we’ll look at together will be this inventory Daredevil story drawn by Frank Springer.
Not all the pages of this story have surfaced, and those that have aren’t lettered. But this does give us a chance to take a look, without interference, at how the “Marvel method” of making comics functions. As pioneered by Lee and Kirby and Ditko et. al. in the 1960s, the Marvel method gives the entire design of the pages over to the artist. Instead of a writer breaking down a script page by page and panel by panel, the writer just gives the artist a general plot, and the artist then structures the pages and panels in such a way as to tell that story.
To some, this was a revelatory innovation that made comics more collaborative. To others–including me–it’s frequently a recipe for a frustrating and awkwardly designed product. Julian Darius, writing at Sequart nearly 20 years ago, referred to the memorable example of Namor rolling Mr. Fantastic into a tube to snuff out the Human Torch, a seemingly complex maneuver that happened between panels because Jack Kirby was a revolutionary artist and a visionary plotter and a hopelessly abysmal scripter.
In those first two pages I’ve already shown you (actually pages 2 and 3), we see a pretty interesting contrast in terms of how well the Marvel method works. I would argue that too much happens in that first page, at least if a comic is intended to have words. If this were intended to be a silent story, told only in images, page 2 is masterful. But letters were eventually going to be written here, and there’s not enough space for them to tell their part of the story. Contrast that with page 3, which would be pretty boring in a silent story, but is definitely leaving enough space for captions and speech bubbles to do their part. Springer is essentially fighting his instincts as a visual storyteller, trying to make sure he leaves room for a verbal storyteller to participate as well.
We’re going to have a jump after this, to page 7. Springer’s doing exemplary work here, keeping the pace slow enough for the scripter to do their job, but still doing everything in his power to tell his part of the story visually. Which actually gets at another frustration I have with the Marvel method. If, on the one hand, the artists often didn’t slow down enough for writers to do their jobs, on the other hand writers also often didn’t seem to have any faith in the artists to do their jobs.
The artists would frequently stick the writers with the unenviable task of explaining that some complex action had taken place between panels, which conditioned the writers to think they had to do more work than they did. So even though Springer is telling me everything I need to know about Roundhead Largenose, there’s a good chance that the final lettered pages would have been polluted with unnecessary exposition about how evil he is.
Wait now who’s this guy? How did Negative Man from the Doom Patrol get into a Daredevil comic? Should I know who this guy is? Anyway, these pages are again veering into the same territory as page 2: they work really well at telling a story visually, not sure if they leave the scripter much room to tell one verbally.
The thing about the 1970s is that all sorts of crazy adventures happened at the airport back then.
Still got no idea who this villain is, but clearly we were right to suspect Roundhead Largenose of being nefarious. Daredevil’s exasperated face is awesome.
We skipped a couple of pages again, and I can’t tell exactly where we’ve ended up. Daredevil has arrested Negative Man and Roundhead Largenose, maybe with the help of Roundhead’s own attorney/lady friend? But she’s also back in court. Matt Murdoch is smiling in the last panel which in a 1970s comic probably means that’s the end of the story.
As near as I can tell, Frank Springer only drew one published Daredevil story, inking over controversial penciler Frank Robbins in Daredevil #155. Robbins retired from comics altogether after that issue. With the next issue, Klaus Janson took over inks, and two issues after that, Frank Miller took over pencils. Roger McKenzie remained the writer; McKenzie would ultimately end up writing #151–161 and co-writing #163-166 with Miller. It seems probable that this story was also written by McKenzie, and just never saw publication because there was never a need for an inventory story. Seems like it would probably have been better than this oddball that was published between McKenzie’s solo writing run and his co-writing run, but I guess when you can publish a story drawn by Steve Ditko, you do it.
Do you have material from an unpublished comic? Have you heard of an unpublished comic you think I should cover? Did I get something wrong in this post? Please reach out and let me know with an email to neverwerecomics (at) gmail.com, or on Twitter @neverwerecomics. Thanks for reading!
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