Because December 21st is the shortest day of the year, Balladeer’s Blog always runs articles about short films, short presidential administrations (Yes, William Henry Harrison) and similar topics. This year I’m pandering to the insatiable superhero audience with this look at a Marvel Comics title that was INTENTIONALLY published as a one-shot item, making it the shortest series run imaginable.
Previous articles here have dealt with the way that, for part of the 1960s, Marvel was limiting how many titles it had hitting newsstands. That meant publishing some of their heroes in one monthly publication, with each character getting a story covering half the issue. Iron Man and Captain America shared Tales of Suspense, Sub-Mariner and the Hulk shared Tales to Astonish.
Tales of Suspense underwent a title change to Captain America beginning with the 100th issue, while Iron Man was going to move to his own title. Tales to Astonish changed to The Incredible Hulk with its 102nd issue while Sub-Mariner moved to his own namesake monthly.
The trouble was, both Iron Man and Sub-Mariner had one more half-issue length story left and ready to be printed, but there were no more split comic book titles to accommodate them. So, Marvel Comics published one lone issue of a comic book titled Iron Man and Sub-Mariner.
Here is my review of the two stories in that “special once-in-a-lifetime issue” – Continue reading
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