Splash page from the Hulk story in TALES TO ASTONISH #65 by Steve Ditko and Dick Ayers.
You can see where the word ON was cut out from the board and corrected—often corrections in this era were made by physically cutting up the originals. Also evident are some of Stan’s balloon placements for the letterer, most notably the big arrow-shaped caption.
Finally, at the bottom there’s a portion of a note, presumably from Steve Ditko since it’s not Stan’s handwriting, that reads HULK CONTINUING
Here’s the signed splash page to Steve Ditko’s story from TALES OF SUSPENSE #17, back in the pre-super hero days of Marvel.
Splash page to the first Hulk story in TALES TO ASTONISH, #60, by Steve Ditko and George Roussos (as George Bell.)
Seems like an adjustment was made to the lettering credit for the final book. Also, it’s apparent that the George Bell credit was added later, and by a different hand. This was often the case with Marvel stories of the period—the specific inker wouldn’t have been finalized at the time of lettering, so the letterer would just leave a blank space where the name was supposed to go, and production would fill it in later.
Minimalist Steve Ditko splash page from TALES OF SUSPENSE #29. Ditko is a master at getting maximum effect out of a few well-placed lines.
The last page from SGT FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS #15 by the rare combination of Dick Ayers, penciler, and Steve Ditko, inker. I think this may be the only time that Ditko inked Ayers, rather than vice versa.
Here’s the final page of the very first Spider-Man story, from AMAZING FANTASY #15. My scans of this story come from the Smithsonian, and they’re huge, so details become apparent when I blow them up really big that you probably can’t see on the smaller version I’m embedding here.
For example, there’s a third face roughed in between the two cops in Panel 5 that artist Steve Ditko chose to erase.
Similarly, in Panel 6, there’s a third face that’s half covered up by the bottom strap copy. In the margin is an erased note from Stan to Sol Brodsky that says:
SORRY ABOUT THIS—HAVE STEVE LIFT IT UP
So it seems like the cop on the right in this panel was added after the lettering was done, at the inking stage.
There’s a note by Stan by the last panel that’s partially hard to read, but what I can make out says:
THIS, TOO—LOWER SLIGHTLY.
And, at the bottom, thestrap caption was corrected to change the magazine title from AMAZING ADULT FANTASY to simply AMAZING FANTASY. The story page number, 11, was also whited out of the final panel.
Also, Spidey’s pop-eyes in Panel 4 aren’t dots, they’re actually little circles.
