Best of Reading Room FANTASY MASTERPIECES "Those Who Change"

During this holiday week, we're doing a couple of Reading Room re-presentations...

...to ease our workload, starting with this Stan Lee/Steve Ditko tale that takes the "if you time travel, don't change anything in the past or you'll screw up history" concept to an extreme!

This story from Amazing Adult (wonder why they left that out of the reprint credit) Fantasy #10 (1962) was actually a reworking of an earlier tale called "The Scientists" from Astonishing #9 (1952) which was longer and had additional plot twists!
You'll be seeing the original (ironically, never-reprinted) version on Thursday.
As for this particular short, since its' 1965 appearance in Fantasy Masterpieces #1, it lay unseen until 2005 when it popped up in Marvel Visionaries: Steve Ditko with additional reprintings in Amazing Fantasy Omnibus (2007) and Marvel 70th Anniversary Collection (2009).
NOTE: This was one part of a week-long re-presentation of the first issue of Marvel's Fantasy Masterpieces reprint anthology on the 50th anniversary of publication in 1965!
The comic was particularly notable for new material by Stan Lee introducing the stories!

Click on the titles to read the posts...

50 Years Ago...FANTASY MASTERPIECES!

"Beware! The Ghosts Surround Me!"

"I Found the Things from Nowhere!"

"I Became a Human Robot!"

"I Saw the Other World!"

Monday Madness AMAZING ADULT FANTASY "Ultimate Weapon"

Who, in 1962, could believe that we'd still be on the brink of nuclear war with the Russkies...in 1970?

Stan Lee and Steve Ditko thought so...and offered a potential solution...

Clever.

Would the solution proposed in Atlas' Amazing Adult Fantasy #13 (1962) work in reality, 60 years later?
Russia and China both have the capability to reach geostationary orbit (22,236 miles)., but would they try to use it?

Think about it...

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Amazing Adult Fantasy Omnibus

CoronaVirus Comics AMAZING ADULT FANTASY "Plague"

As Don da Con's paranoiac nationalism grows...

...lets consider a lesson in what such obsessions can lead to, courtesy of a Cold War parable...

I doubt Spider-Man and Dr Strange co-creators, writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, ever thought that someone with similar tendencies to the star of this tale from Atlas' Amazing Adult Fantasy #12 (1962) would ever sit in the Oval Office...

(Come to think of it, it's doubtful the Cheeto Benito would ever send any country anything simply as a "gesture of good will"!)

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Amazing (Adult) Fantasy Omnibus
...a 2007 book which features the story above in the only reprint of it ever published!

Reading Room AMAZING ADULT FANTASY "Beware of the Giants!"

It's not often you see Stan Lee's signature on cover art...

...perhaps because it was probably meant as the title page for the following story (and, to tell the truth, I think the splash page would've been a better cover)...

Hah!

Bet you thought I had forgotten St Patrick's Day, eh? 

This Stan Lee-scripted/Steve Ditko-illiustrated piece from Atlas' Amazing Adult Fantasy #14 (1962) has one fatal flaw...the clothing and archetecture are more mid-European (Germany/Austria/Switzerland) than Celtic (Irish/Scottish)!

BTW, one of the rarely-noted aspects of the book were the kool individualized contents pages for each issue...

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Amazing Adult Fantasy Omnibus

Reading Room AMAZING ADULT FANTASY "Why Won't They Believe Me?"

Stan (the Man) Lee felt a good story...

...such as this one from Atlas' Amazing Adult Fantasy #7 (1961), was worth repeating...

Scripted by Lee and illustrated by his Spider-Man and Dr Strange co-creator Steve Ditko, the tale was typical of the "gotcha" snap-ending stories made popular in mass culture by Rod Serling on The Twilight Zone, but done, in comics, a decade earlier in the EC Comics horror and sci-fi/fantasy books (though usually with more gore).

Lee re-used (and expanded) the plot almost a decade later when he re-did it with another Silver Age legend, as you'll see tomorrow...

Reading Room FANTASY MASTERPIECES "Those Who Change"

We wind up this issue with a Stan Lee / Steve Ditko piece...

...that takes the old "if you time travel, don't change anything in the past" concept to an extreme!

This story from Amazing Adult (wonder why they left that out of the reprint credit) Fantasy #10 (1962) was actually a reworking of an earlier Stan Lee-written tale called "The Scientists" from Astonishing #9 (1952) which was longer and had additional plot twists!
You'll be seeing the original (ironically, never-reprinted) version sometime in the next two weeks.
As for this particular tale, since its' 1965 appearance in Fantasy Masterpieces #1, it lay unseen until 2005 when it popped up in Marvel Visionaries: Steve Ditko with additional reprintings in Amazing Fantasy Omnibus (2007) and Marvel 70th Anniversary Collection (2009)