The United States Library of Congress has issued a press release acknowledging that they've received, from an anonymous donor, the donation of the entire original artwork – 24 pages – to the Ditko-drawn issue of Amazing Fantasy #15 (cover-dated Aug ’62) that featured the origin of first appearance of the Lee/Ditko creation, the Amazing Spider-Man.

Perhaps only three other books in superhero comic-book history (Action Comics #1, Detective Comics #27 and Marvel Comics #1) would generate as much interest in being able to look at the original art, and we're now able to look at examples of a book on that par.

Here’s a link to page one of Amazing Fantasy #15, one of the most influential pages in superhero comic-book history. Everything revolutionary about the Silver Age of Marvel Comics is there in Ditko's drawing.

Look at the re-work done on the “Spider-Man” logo. It's a paste-up and no one's ever seen a picture of what lurks beneath...until now!

(Click on the above picture
to see a full-sized version)

Underneath the paste up you can now get a better sense of the original attempt at the logo. Observe the webbing drawn right into the letters and, most importantly, no hyphen in the Spider-Man name! This means that both Lee and Ditko started producing at least a page of artwork with the book's titular characters still named "Spiderman" (no hyphen) as it had been when Lee and Kirby conceived of their version that was discarded by Lee when the strip was then handed over to Ditko.

Did Lee make the request to scrap the first attempt at the logo (adding the paste-up that saw print in the published version) because he thought the "webbing logo" looked too busy? It seems safe to say that Ditko designed the original logo, because (as the white out shows) the webbing extends and connects to the drawing of Spider-Man on the far right, so did Ditko change the logo to incorporate the hyphen, and then decided to scrap the webbing logo himself, or did Lee have a production person change the logo and white out Ditko's webbing lines?

Look also at the top left lead captions on both pages of the Spider-Man story. The original art to both has "Spiderman" without the hyphen and is italicized. Now I'm looking at the Mar '82 Marvel Tales version of AF #15 and the Apr '02 Essential Spider-Man version, and it has "our Spider-Man" with the hyphen and is not italicized in page 1, but is italicized on the second page shown (Part 2 of the story).

Yet, the 1977 Pocket Books version is the same as the original art, as is the version in the Amazing Fantasy Omnibus and Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus. And it's not just that caption. Take a look at the bottom right corner panel: the "Okay, Spiderman -- Cut!" is also different in both sets above. So we have two different sets of stats/film being used at different times (switching back and forth) by Marvel to reprint this story.

To the same point, here’s Page 6, and yes, it's the same with the Spiderman/Spider-Man wording on this page as below.

Not surprisingly, of course, but when one looks at the Mar '82 Marvel Tales version versus the original art, one sees how much truly clearer the line work is, for example, on the Spider-Man figure in the bottom right corner panel.

And look at the re-work on Liz Allen's face on page 1. A correction not by Ditko? Care to take a guess who, if not Ditko? Al Hartley (as guessed by original art collector David Schwartz)?

Look at the month at the top of page 1: “Apr '62” for a book cover-dated Aug '62, which gives us a specific idea when the artwork was handed in. Fascinating to have this kind of data out there!

As history tells us, the previous title of “Amazing Fantasy” was “Amazing Adult Fantasy” (from issues 7 to 14) before Lee changed it for issue #15 (driven by slumping sales and fears that the word “Adult” was scaring off retailers). Now look at the top of the "Man In The Mummy Case" page of which we only see the corner. It appears to have, in big black pen, "Amazing Adult," as if to suggest the change in title to "Amazing Fantasy" from "Amazing Adult Fantasy" was done not before they had artwork for the issue, but during. And this is even though the job number for "Man In..." is two numbers after the Spider-Man story. Clearly the "Amazing 15..." with the page numbers for the issue seem written in well after the book's artwork was completed.

COVER : Ditko-inks, Kirby-pencils
"Spider-Man!" (11 pg)
"The Bell-Ringer" (3 pg)
"Man In The Mummy Case" (5 pg)
"There Are Martians Among Us" (5 pg)

The historical implications are obvious: that the artwork to the book itself still exists is an amazing revelation; that the Library of Congress allows visitors to see the artwork, thus enabling historians to examine the work for any details about the pages themselves (i.e. any notes made by Ditko or scripter/editor Stan Lee, any corrections, paste-ups, etc.); that Ditko and the world won't have to watch someone profit, likely to the tune of over a million dollars, by selling the artwork that was very likely never the donors to have in the first place.

Interested parties can book an appointment at the LOC to view at the artwork. I'll be attending this year's Small Press Expo on Oct 4/5th in nearby Bethesda, and you can bet I'll be booking an appointment to take a look myself

Marvel should really work together with the LOC to produce a B&W version of Amazing Fantasy #15, shot from this artwork, with footnotes like these that discuss the history of these historic pages. This is too stunning a find for Marvel to allow an opportunity to slip through the cracks for its fans, general public, and historians to see this work captured in book form, up close for all to examine and enjoy as Ditko originally produced it.

Let's all pelt the Marvel web site with our desire to see this come to life!

Blake Bell
April 30, 2008