Marvel Premiere #12 (November, 1973)
In the summer of 1973, Marvel Comics decided to bring out an extra issue or two of a couple of their titles that normally came out only every two months. I’m sure the thinking was that by doing so, they could capitalize on the fact of their mostly youthful audience having more time (and maybe more money) to spend on comic books while out of school, and you can’t really blame them. But while the increase in frequency made all the sense in the world for a book like Defenders — which was then in the middle of a multi-issue, back-and-forth crossover with the always-monthly Avengers — it made somewhat less sense for the “Doctor Strange” solo vehicle, Marvel Premiere… if only because the publisher evidently got the idea for the “extra” issue too late to prepare a new story for it.
That would seem to be the simplest explanation for how, in the month of July, we got Marvel Premiere #11 — which, beneath a new cover by Frank Brunner, reprinted a couple of eight-page classics by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko that had originally appeared way back in Strange Tales #115 (Dec., 1963) and #117 (Feb., 1964), with the only new interior content being a three-page framing sequence by Brunner and writer Steve Englehart. Hey, d’you think maybe Marvel was just trying to pry every dime they could out of faithful fans like your humble blogger? Read More