Posted By Dan Greenfield on Oct 4, 2025 | 3 comments

SCOTT SHAW! SATURDAYS…

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It’s Halloween season, so for every Saturday this month, I’m going with the theme of spooky(ish) comics! — Scott

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By SCOTT SHAW!

After horror comics were decimated due to the arrival of the Comics Code Authority and before Marvel returned to superheroes, “The House of Ideas” didn’t have many ideas. It was still publishing Westerns and romance comics. However, Stan Lee realized that the same kids who read comics were also into kaiju, although Americans weren’t using that word yet.

The original 1933′ King Kong and the Americanized Godzilla: King of the Monsters (1956) — as well as a long list of giant-monster movies, such as The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, The Giant Behemoth, Mighty Joe Young, The Amazing Colossal Man, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and The Giant Claw —  gave Stan a plan. Those huge monsters weren’t killing people, they were killing cities, therefore, the Comics Code Authority  didn’t have much to complain about. And Stan had the perfect creator to draw them, Jack Kirby, who excelled at just about any genre, but the angriness of his art style was ideal for Stan’s new theme, which lasted for approximately four years, between 1959 to 1962.

Even when Stan, Jack, and Steve Ditko were starting to create new superheroes, they still needed to have a quasi-monster-ish vibe, since Marvel had the same distributor as DC, which had never stopped publishing superheroes and wasn’t keen on having a new competitor. The Thing, Spider-Man, and Ant-Man all seemed to have that quality, while Thor was a mythical god and Iron Man looked like a robot.  Fortunately, things quickly worked out for both comic book publishers.

Although I knew both Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, I regret that I never got around to asking them, “How did you come up with all of these wacky names for your ‘pre-superhero’ monsters? Belching? Farting? Both at once???”

Anyway, here are 13 of the odder Marvel monsters.

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Tales to Astonish #13, November 1960, Marvel. Groot is the pre-superhero monster that everyone knows, thanks to Guardians of the Galaxy.

Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko inks

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Strange Tales Annual #1, September 1962, Marvel. Containing Grottu, Diablo, the Martian, Shadow Thing, Serpent Creature, Shagg and more, this thick, 76-page summertime comic was a good way to pull in new readers for Marvel’s monster line.

Kirby

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Strange Tales #89, October 1961, Marvel. If you collect Marvel’s superhero comics, you’ve probably encountered Fin Fang Foom, a monstrous dragon who’s dealt with the Fantastic Four, Thor, the Hulk, Iron Man, the X-Men, and many other colorful characters.

Kirby pencils, Dick Ayers inks

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Tales of Suspense #37, January 1963, Marvel. If you’re a collector like me, you’d probably be thrilled to get chosen to be the first human in an alien’s collection of space creatures. (No CGC slabbing, please.)

Kirby and Ayers

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Strange Tales #70, August 1959, Marvel. The Sphinx was the first of the Marvel pre-superhero monsters with an Egyptian background. It must have sold well, because three more giant mummies were on their way. This one looks like it’s stepped in something icky.

Kirby and Ayers

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Tales of Suspense #11, September 1960, Marvel. When I was eight years old, I saw my first Jack Kirby cover in my mom’s favorite drugstore. I begged her to buy it for me but she thought it would give me nightmares. Instead, she bought me the first appearance of Walter Lantz’s obscure character Space Mouse. It was OK, but I yearned for Sporr.

Kirby and Ayers

Years later, I was one of the co-creators of San Diego Comic-Con. After my dad passed, my mom would give me $100 to spend at the show, since my birthday is in September, a month or two after the con. In 1991, our son Kirby was born. And as usual, Mom gave me my $100 gift in advance. I spent it on something I’d wanted for decades. After the con was over, I went over to my mom’s house and showed her the comic I bought with it, this copy of Tales of Suspense #11. I explained to her that if she’d let me buy it when I was eight, she would have only spent a dime for the comic, rather than the $100 I spent for it at SDCC. And just to mess with her, I mentioned that the comic’s cover and lead story — “I Created… Sporr! The Thing That Could Not Die!” — was drawn by the man (and my mentor) we named our son after: Jack Kirby!

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Journey Into Mystery #62, November 1960,  Marvel. More than one of the pre-superhero monsters’ names were re-used as characters in the Marvel Universe. This “original Hulk” was renamed “Xemnu the Titan” in 1972’s Marvel Feature #3.

Kirby/Ditko

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Tales of Suspense #15, March 1961, Marvel. A few of Marvel’s pre-superhero monsters appeared twice, but most of them never were seen again. However, only one of them featured a family. When Goom arrived, Tales of Suspense readers had no idea that…

Kirby/Ayers

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Tales of Suspense #17, May 1961, Marvel. … two issues later, his/her baby, Googam, Son of Goom, would take over this cover! Cute little kaiju, huh?

Kirby/Ayers

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Amazing Adventures #11, July 1961, Marvel. Smilin’ Stan always added a lot of 1950s monster-movie-poster promotions to these covers, but here, his arrow-blurb is actually bigger than this huge alien! (And as a kid, I thought the name “Manoo” was pretty funny… y’know, its name sounded a lot like “manure”… nyuk nyuk nyuk!)

Kirby pencils, Sol Brodsky inks

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Journey Into Mystery #68, May 1961, Marvel. On the cover, Spragg seemed like it was the biggest Marvel monster ever. However, the shock ending of the story reveals that Spragg was nothing but a big head!

Kirby/Ayers

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Strange Tales #98, Marvel, July 1962. Thanks to being one of the co-originators of San Diego Comic-Con, with a goal to become a professional cartoonist, I became friends with Jack Kirby when I was 21. During one conversation, I mentioned that I was writing and drawing underground comix and he told me that he liked them. Once I got back to my college-age apartment. I immediately began to come up with an underground cartoon that would make Jack laugh. I had a copy of Strange Tales #98 and frankly, I couldn’t resist a gag based on that alien’s dialogue.

Kirby/Ditko

After I was done, I showed it to one of my friends on the committee for SDCC, whose reaction was to print 11” x 14” prints – a thousand of them! The next time I saw Jack was at his family’s home. I gave him a copy with a grin on my mustachioed face. “Here you are, Jack!” He stammered a bit, more embarrassed than outraged, and said, “Y’know I’ve got a family!” After a few more embarrassments from me, I asked, “But I thought you said that you liked underground comix?!?”

Jack patiently explained that what he liked about them had nothing to do with the sex, drugs, and politics. “First, you guys own your own material. Second, there’s no ‘house style’ so you can draw it your way. Finally, underground comix cost more than mainstream comics, so you’re getting paid better.” Fortunately, my friend with the 1,000 copies of the print became religious and buried them all. I’ve got a few copies but I assure you that you DON’T want to see one.

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Amazing Adult Fantasy #9, February 1962, Marvel. Finally, Smilin’ Stan must have been proud of this Steve Ditko comic that was aimed at adults — note that the logo was designed to look as close as possible to the one for The Twilight Zone – but with a  name like “Tim Boo Bah,” isn’t this a bit too silly for “the magazine that respects your intelligence!”?

Ditko

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Want more ODDBALL COMICS? Come back next week!

And get this: Scott’s involved in a new, unauthorized documentary about San Diego Comic-Con! Click here for the scoop.

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MORE

— ODDBALL COMICS: Dig These 13 Morbid ROMANCE COVERS. Click here.

— ODDBALL COMICS: The Cool, Short Life of FAST WILLIE JACKSON. Click here.

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For over half a century, SCOTT SHAW! has been a pro cartoonist/writer/designer of comic books, animation, advertising and toys. He is also a historian of all forms of cartooning. Scott has worked on many underground comix and mainstream comic books, including Simpsons Comics (Bongo); Weird Tales of the Ramones (Rhino); and his co-creation with Roy Thomas, Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew! (DC). Scott also worked on numerous animated series, including producing/directing John Candy’s Camp Candy (NBC/DIC/Saban) and Martin Short’s The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley. As senior art director for the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency, Scott worked on dozens of commercials for Post Pebbles cereals with the Flintstones. He also designed a line of Hanna-Barbera action figures for McFarlane Toys. Scott was one of the comics fans who organized the first San Diego Comic-Con.

Need funny cartoons for any and all media? Scott does commissions! Email him at shawcartoons@gmail.com.