{"id":524,"date":"2011-02-14T20:38:39","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T01:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/"},"modified":"2011-02-27T09:24:19","modified_gmt":"2011-02-27T14:24:19","slug":"captain-marvel-54-january-1978","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/comic-books\/captain-marvel-54-january-1978\/","title":{"rendered":"Captain Marvel #54 (January 1978)"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, George Tuska was THE Iron Man<\/em> artist, so to have him draw an issue of Captain Marvel<\/em> for me once Al Milgrom moved on was amazing. I was supposed to be a professional, so I tried to avoid fanboy squee. Which was easier than you might think, since squeeing hadn’t yet been invented.<\/p>\n

Though most of the interior of the issue was drawn by George Tuska. the final page was drawn by Dave Cockrum.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As far as I can recall, no one ever wondered at the time why the entire issue hadn’t been drawn by Tuska. Well, actually, Tuska had<\/em> drawn the complete issue, only you never got a chance to see it. Here’s the final page that was originally supposed to be published<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, that’s Wonder Man who’s knocked Captain Marvel to the ground. For some reason I can no longer remember, an editorial decision was made to eliminate that character’s participation from Captain Marvel’s story thread, and so a new page was quickly drawn by Dave Cockrum. As far as I know, the photocopy I own is all that remains of Tuska’s original page.<\/p>\n

Why did Wonder Man attack Captain Marvel here, and what was his role going to be in the following issue? I no longer have any idea. <\/p>\n

Why did Archie Goodwin, the editor at the time, decide that Wonder Man had to be excised from the plot after having originally approved (or so I assume) his appearance? I have no memories of that either.<\/p>\n

So for those of you who ever wondered why the Cockrum page closed a Tuska issue, mystery solved. Unfortunately, since this was more than 30 years ago and I can’t fill in the blanks, another mystery opens …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, George Tuska was THE Iron Man artist, so to have him draw an issue of Captain Marvel for me once Al Milgrom moved on was amazing. I was supposed to be a professional, so I tried to avoid fanboy squee. Which was easier than you might think, since squeeing hadn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525,"parent":30,"menu_order":16,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-524","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/524\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}