Len Wein (1948-2017)

Most remember Len Wein for co-creating Swamp Thing, Wolverine, and the All-New, All-Different X-Men...

FOOM Magazine #10 Cover Original Art by Dave Cockrum

(...particularly, Storm, Colossus, and NightCrawler.)

But I prefer to remember his earlier, quirky projects like...

Hot Wheels #6 Cover Art by Neal Adams & Dick Giordano

Hot Wheels

(based on the cartoon series based on the toy line)

Wild West Action #1 Cover Art by Syd Shores and Mike Esposito

The Bravados

(An ethnically-diverse assortment of Western heroes)
and his (believe it or not)...

Secret Hearts #148 Contents Page Art by Gray Morrow

...romance comics work!

Len was not a one-trick pony!

He had an interest in almost everything imaginable...and it showed in his work.

BTW, all the links are to material that hasn't been reprinted since publication in the early 1970s!

Check them out!

BONUS: Here's the printed version of the X-Men-themed cover for Marvel's FOOM #10...

...and that's why I wanted to run the original art!

The two-color (as compared to comics' usual four-color) printing really muddied up the art!

Reading Room INCREDIBLE HULK ANNUAL "It is GROOT, the Monster from Planet X!!"

In 1976, an evil alien scientist recreated a number of long-forgotten monsters...

...to battle his old foe, the Incredible Hulk...

...including...awww, you guessed...

The never-reprinted story from Incredible Hulk Annual #5 (1976), written by Len Wein and illustrated by Sal Buscema and Jack Abel was a tribute to the 1950s pre-superhero monster stories Stan Lee and Jack Kirby produced in astounding amounts for Marvel's predecessor Atlas Comics.

Besides Groot, five other classic monsters with silly names appeared...

...including the alien scientist (and monster), Xemnu, who re-created the other aliens!

BTW, Xemnu was originally-known as "the Living Hulk", so when his pre-Marvel stories (he appeared twice!) were reprinted in the late 1960s (after the introduction of the green-skinned Hulk), he was re-named "the Living Titan".

Technically, this was not the "real" Groot, but, it's still considered the character's first appearance in the Marvel Universe...as well as confirmation that some (if not all) of the pre-superhero stories are part of the history of the fictional universe.

Catch Groot in the new movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, this weekend...