As you may or may not know, I turned from being a comics fan to being a comics pro (though I did not leave my faanishness behind) the day I started on staff at Marvel Comics editing its line of British reprint books. That day was June 24, 1974, by the way, so we’re creeping up on the 40th anniversary of my transition.

My two main responsibilities were writing a version of the Bullpen Bulletins pages for those weekly magazines, as well as creating new splash pages when Marvel’s U.S. books were sliced and diced for reprint. To explain—

U.S. comic books at the time generally consisted of a single story stretching through an issue. UK comic books tended to be made up of many shorter stories about different characters, with each adventure continuing in segments from issue to issue. In order for Marvel’s U.S. comics to pass as UK comics, someone had to take a 20-page story, break it into four parts, and create new splash pages, with new titles, for parts two through four.

For a time, that someone was me.

Sometimes I’d find a panel from a previous segment which could be enlarged as the basis for a splash page. Sometimes there’d be no suitable panel to repurpose, and a new splash page would be need to be drawn. Even when I transferred out of that position and into the U.S. Marvel Bullpen, I continued doing some of that function, only then, because it was done as freelance work instead of as part of my day job, I’d get paid $10.00 per splash.

Because I retained every voucher I ever filed to get paid for my work at Marvel—sample vouchers can be seen here—Robin Kirby, who’s writing a history of Marvel’s British books, thought it would be fun to match up some of that information with the actual splash pages. But because many of the vouchers are faded beyond my ability to scan them and Photoshop them into legibility, I simply copied over the info from ten of them at random.

And since I shared that info with him, I thought—why not share it with you? So here they are—

Mighty World of Marvel #273
“Is This the End of Jim Wilson?”
Vouchered 10/4/77

Mighty World of Marvel #219
“The Day the Rainbow Died!”
Vouchered 10/7/76

Spidey #197
“The Comeback of the Crimson Dynamo”
Vouchered 9/15/76

Titans #58
“The Dragon, the Doctor, and the Damsel”
Vouchered 9/14/76

Captain Britain #4
“The Flame and the Fury!”
Vouchered 8/24/76

Spidey #184
“Mayhem is the Man Called Midas!”
Vouchered 6/2/76

Mighty World of Marvel #211
“Mother of Demons, Father of Death!”
Vouchered 8/6/76

Mighty World of Marvel #213
“Rampage in the Ring!”
Vouchered 8/31/76

Captain Britain #2
“Nightmare in the Negative Zone”
Vouchered 8/19/76

Captain Britain #25
“Terror in the 23rd Century”
Vouchered 2/1/77

As you can see, I tried as best I could to have my titles be as Stan Lee-like possible.

There are a lot more where those came from. But since they’d be of interest only to the most obsessive of Marvel historians, I’m returning them all to my file cabinet for now …

Excelsior!