CE -- A lifetime of collecting comic related material :: My Origin Story Illustrated

Original Color Guide for the 1969 Marvelmania International Poster of Spider-Man, No Longer in My Collection

0 Comments - 927 Views - 2 Likes

Additional Images:

Oiginal Color Guide for Toys for Tots Poster, c. 1969

Previous Item:
Brave & the Bold No. 61 (1965) and Adventure Comics No. 61 (1941)

Next Item:
My Lists of Comics Bought at First San Diego Comic Book Convention, Aug 1970, on U.S. Grant Hotel Stationary

Artwork Details

Title:	Original Color Guide for the 1969 Marvelmania International Poster of Spider-Man, No Longer in My Collection
Artist:	None Specified
Media Type:	Paint - Watercolor
Art Type:	Other
For Sale Status:	Sold
Views:	927
Likes on CAF:	2 3
Comments:	0
Added to Site:	6/21/2021
Comic Art Archive:

Description

I finally began to collect Marvel Comics when Marvel obtained the right to distribute a greater number of titles than the 8 (?) which the nationwide distributor of comics, which was owned by D.C., had limited them to. It was due to the inability to get a 9th title distributed which had caused the cancellation of the first Hulk series, and the greater ability to have more titles distributed that led to the splitting of Tales to Astonish into separate series for Hulk and Sub-Mariner and new series for Captain America and Ironman in place of Tales of Suspense. I just happened to begin my Marvel collecting by buying Captain America No. 101 and Hulk No. 102 at a Thrifty Drug Store in Santa Ana, CA. Not long after, I bought like-new copies of Iron Man/Sub-Mariner No. 1, Iron Man No. 1, Sub-Mariner No. 1, and Captain Marvel No. 1 from Robert Bell's mail order catalogue -- I had bought Marvel Super-Heroes No. 12 new, but missed No. 13, which I bought from a local collector at a later date. Whatever, I was very familiar with the Marvel characters by the time Marvelmania International advertised their initial membership kit in all Marvel comics in 1969. My mother sent off a check, and the kit arrived in fairly short order -- although not soon enough, considering that the company was in Culver City, less than 50 miles from where we lived.

The full-color catalogue on heavy, glossy paper and fully illustrated with new art by Jack Kirby, was great. I particularly like the 8 posters which were available to order at $1.25 each. The membership kit came with a poster of Captain America which was taken from the Kirby art for the cover of Cap. No. 107 (which means I had only been collecting Marvel Comics for about 6 months at the time). But the Captain America poster from the set of 8 was much better, in my opinion, since it had a fabulous image of the character by Jim Steranko at his best. Kirby did the posters of the Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom, Thor, and, my other favorite, Silver Surfer and Galactus. Romita did the Spider-Man, Trimpe the Hulk, and Howard Purcell the Black Knight. The first 100 purchasers of each poster were supposed to get one that was personally autographed by the artist, so my mother sent off her check for $10 plus postage to Culver City the same day that the catalogue of merchandise had arrived. When the autographed posters hadn't arrived in about a month, she called the company and was told that they were running late in shipping the posters due to very high demand -- so much for those autographs! But they finally arrived, and I thought they were all great, with better printing than I had expected. I guess I was lucky, since I have read that only 4 were ever produced and that they had bad printing -- so much for the accuracy of things one sees in print.

I really liked the first membership card, which was had color images of many Marvel characters and had a gloss that was slightly sparkly -- the second membership card was only black ink on yellow stock (a sign of the company's declining financial stability, I suppose). In fact, I liked everything Marvelmania International produced, and I bought on or more of everything they ever sold -- even the plastic figures in light gray, which were reissues of the Marx Toys figures made with the same molds but with gaudy colors. I bought the 8 pin back button set, both inflatable plastic pillows (Thor and Spider-Man), all four of the large sticker sheets ... I mean everything. I also received every issue of the Marvelmania Magazine (the second issue had a cover showing the BWS pencil art for Conan No. 1, which didn't come out until a couple of months later. I even had all the Marvelmania stationary and the set of Marvel Artist self-portraits. But the merchandise didn't last long, since the company cheated all creditors and headed for the hills.

Many years later, in about 2004, I dug all the Marvelmania stuff that had been sitting in a dresser drawer and put it all on eBay. It did extremely well, to say the least. Everything went for at least a few hundred times what it had cost, and the set of pin-back buttons fetched exactly 1,000 times the original price.

At about the time that Marvelmania was cheating everyone, they had a table at the 1971 Disneyland Con, where they sold original color guides that Marvel had provided for use in manufacturing the "Club's" products. Guides for regular panel pages were $1.00 each, but color guides for newly produced Marvelmania art, such as that for the Spider-Man and Toys for Tots promotional poster, were $5.00. I bought both of the latter and quite a few of the guides which had originally been used for comics. I really liked, and still like, the guide for the Romita poster. One of my biggest regrets from collecting is that I sold that guide, not because it is necessarily that valuable, but because the coloring was so well done.

Social/Sharing

About the Owner

	C E
Joined:	April 2006
Last Login:	August 2025
Country:	UNITED STATES
On CAF:	C's Want List Artworks Commented On Liked Art Site Activity on CAF

Contact the Owner

Use can use a contact form to send an email to this gallery owner,
but, you must be logged in to use this feature.

Comments on this Artwork

You must be logged in to make comments.

All
	* HoxtonArcade 9/7/2025 6:48:00 AM
	R Berman 9/7/2025 6:32:00 AM
	Barnaba J. 9/7/2025 5:39:00 AM
	Rene Dorenbos 9/7/2025 5:28:00 AM
	sly design 9/7/2025 5:12:00 AM
View All


	Jeffrey Wedding 9/7/2025 4:16:00 AM
	Jason Borelli 9/7/2025 2:11:00 AM
	R S 9/7/2025 1:59:00 AM
	Comics Gallery 9/7/2025 1:08:00 AM
	Tony Isaza 9/7/2025 12:42:00 AM