A page from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #61 by John Romita, Don Heck and Mike Esposito
A page from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #55 by John Romita and Mike Esposito.
You can see that Stan rewrote Spidey’s balloon in the last panel late in the game.
A page from the Hulk story from TALES TO ASTONISH #76 penciled by Gil Kane over layouts by Jack Kirby, and inked by Mike Esposito. Kane used the pseudonym “Scott Edward” on this particular job so that his DC editors wouldn’t know that he was moonlighting at Marvel. For the same reason, Esposito was credited as “Mickey Demeo.”
Another before-and-after comparison, here’s Gene Colan and Mike Esposito’s cover to IRON MAN #1 as it was originally drawn, and then as it finally saw print. As you can see, a number of the smaller vignettes were rearranged in order to get the central Iron Man figure positioned higher on the cover. In an era when most comics were racked in such a way that only a portion of the top of the cover was visible, it was critical to get something visually interesting going on in that space to attract the attention of prospective buyers.
