A page from the Giant-Man story from TALES TO ASTONISH #51 by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers.

Stan’s written a few notes in the margin of the final panel:

YOU CAUGHT TOP BEFORE & HE SPUN AWAY—WHY NOT NOW?

FOR THE SAME REASON YOU CAN’T GET AWAY, WASP—GLUE ON MY HANDS!

SO WHO’S COMPLAINING?

There’s also a note from either the letterer or Sol Brodsky to Stan about overwriting, which is pretty funny:

STAN—BE CAREFUL OF TOO MUCH LETTERING IN PANEL—YOUR ALLOTMENT OF SPACE IN YOUR OUTLINE PENCIL BALLOONS IS NOT ENOUGH FOR YOUR (words cut off.)

It also looks like there’s part of a word in yet another handwriting that says CUT, perhaps indicating that Stan’s script for that sign-off caption was edited down to fill the available space.

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

A page from the Giant-Man story in TALES TO ASTONISH #53 by Dick Ayers.

A lovely Don Heck page from the Ant-Man story in TALES TO ASTONISH #46.

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.

Splash page from TALES TO ASTONISH #23 by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers.

Splash page to the Hulk story in TALES TO ASTONISH #77, layouts by Jack Kirby, pencils and inks by John Romita.

Final page of the short 5-page suspense story by Steve Ditko from TALES TO ASTONISH #35.

Splash page from the Hulk story in TALES TO ASTONISH #65, penciled by Steve Ditko and inked by Dick Ayers.

A lovely Steve Ditko splash page from a suspense back-up story in TALES TO ASTONISH #42.