HUMAN TORCH & HULK: FROM THE MARVEL VAULT #1

Written by JACK C. HARRIS & KARL KESEL
Penciled by STEVE DITKO
Cover by MARK BAGLEY

From the depths of the Marvel Vault comes a long-lost issue from Mighty Marvel mainstay Steve Ditko!

"Face front, fans! This is Johnny Storm–the high-flying HUMAN TORCH–with a tale so taut with tension and terror it couldn’t be told until today! When that twisted genius, the Wizard, gains the power of the moon’s magnetism, he becomes more dangerous than Magneto! Add in that bull-headed behemoth, the irrational HULK, and it’s up to Yours Truly to save the day! Again! Don’t miss this page-turning epic of betrayal, brute force, and blazing heroics as only mighty Marvel (and me!) can tell it!"

32 PGS./One-Shot/Rated A …$3.99

On Sale June 29th

How's this possible? They had a unused Ditko Hulk story lying around this long?

Yeah, what's the story behind this?

Given the writers listed, my guess is that this dates from the early 90's. Probably an unused fill-in story.

Okay, that cover makes me want to see a Bagley run on The Incredible Hulk.

Isn't there an entire completed Barry Windsor-Smith Storm story that he adapted into one of his own works?

I'd like to find a list of drawer stories that were finished long ago but never made it to print...

If it's the story I think it is, it was commissioned for MARVEL TEAM-UP in the early 1980s ... during one of those "Let's see if we can star someone other than Spider-Man in Team-Up" periods ... and it wasn't finished before TEAM-UP went the way of All-Flash.



-- Uncle Rog

I wonder if it was plotted by Harris back then and scripted by Kesel now. (Weren't some of the other drawer stories plotted and drawn but never dialogued / lettered?)

That would be my guess.

I may be misremembering, but didn't Harris die? (Google is no help.)

Jack C. Harris was still around last year to do this interview (http://www.wtv-zone.com/silverager/inte ... rris.shtml). He shouldn't be that old... I think he's around Roger's age.

Interesting. Ditko's 90s' work certainly wasn't my favorite, but I'm all in for this one.

Hmm, I'm thinking of a different writer, probably!

Oooo, this is cool!

Yeah. I've been in touch with Karl, and he's inking it, as well ... so it should look great and read well.

-- Uncle Rog

Kesel is inking? That should be a nice combination.

According to Kesel's intro, the dialogue was actually finished back in the day, but he rewrote it at Brevoort's request to make it read like a modern story. The inking works a lot better, it preserves Ditko's style rather than obliterates it as other inkers did to his later Marvel work. The writing isn't bad by any means, but it and the colouring ruins the archival/vintage aspect that this was supposedly about -- by the time Kesel got to the obligatory Internet reference, it didn't just take me out of the story, it picked me up bodily and THREW me out.

It would have been better if they had at least included the original pages (pencils, script, notes) for purity's sake as they did in the "Last Kirby FF" comic they put out a couple of years ago. What Marvel published here is a strange hybrid that's neither new nor archival, and doesn't really satisfy on either level. Bagley's cover also makes little sense if the selling point is Ditko. Maybe Brevoort thinks that the selling point is just a "new" Hulk/Torch story.

For Ditko completists, nice to have but it's far too meddled with to truly qualify as "From The Marvel Vault".

Did he get rid of the thought balloons?

Yep. No thought balloons, and the story is narrated by The Human Torch in captions.

Screw that. No single convention of modern comics annoys me more than the silly ban on thought balloons.

Great stuff. That cover is incredible, from layout to inks to color. Very impactful.