The Origins of Marvel Comics Cover by John Romita

In the 1970s, both DC and Marvel released comic book collections into the mainstream book market. Marvel released a number of trade paperback volumes through Fireside Books beginning with The Origins of Marvel Comics in 1974, and their form factor was very close to the trade paperbacks we read today.

The first published version.

This is the current, updated version with a cover by Alex Ross after Romita’s original.

Marvel continues to run with the Stan Lee brand front and centre. While the new cover adds artists’ hands painting the figures and editor Chris Ryall has included new supporting material to acknowledge Lee’s collaborators, the fact is Lee used his position to great advantage, taking more credit and money than he should have, leaving out the other people who created comics for Marvel during his time.

Original art scan from somewhere on the web.

Art made production ready.

For the originalists, here’s the published layout re-created.

A more-accurate credits structure.

If it mattered to Marvel to move into the future crediting the people who created the IP they exploit, they’d do something like this.