Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and seventy-eighth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.

As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.

NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!

COMIC LEGEND:

Marvel Masterworks had stories redrawn by modern artists

STATUS:

Apparently Not True

The amazing comic book colorist, José Villarrubia, recently wrote about this on his Facebook page and I thought it was interesting enough to spotlight here, because I don't know how much people really know about it (although my buddy Daniel Best has been raging against this thing for over a decade now).

It boils down to this. Marvel, when putting together their Marvel Masterworks reprint series in the 2000s, often did not have the original files for them to reprint. They did have a goodly amount of them (since Marvel obviously reprinted a number of these books over the years), but not all of them.

So Marvel would "reconstruct" these pages, using an artist like Michael Kelleher.

Here is Michael Kelleher, the artist who did the reconstructions, on the process:

The FACT is that when Marvel makes the decision to reconstruct a page it is because film/photostats no longer exist and other avenues (original art) haven't brought any results. There will be people who say "Marvel should spare no expense!", but I feel that a reasonably intelligent person will realize that is not possible. Original art for most issues now have the pages spread across a dozen or more collectors, most of whom remain anonymous in their ownership of the artwork. Also, there are original art collectors who have declined to help Marvel with scans of the artwork they have, so knowing were artwork is doesn't always help.

He followed:

Aside from Golden Age Masterworks, no volume of Masterworks contains all reconstructed material. In fact, the vast majority of volumes have no pages reconstructed from printed comics, and majority of those that do are a single-digit percentage of the total pages in the collection

And he also noted that, "My job is to try and give the Marvel reproductions of artwork that would not be easily indistinguishable from the original printings and that is what I and my fellow recon artists do." And in response to someone who posited that this was a cheaper thing for Marvel to do, Kelleher replied, "This is 100% not true. First, it is more expensive to redraw a page than it is to scan photostats or film. I'd think that common sense would make that obvious. Second, in every case that a high quality stat exists (or even if low quality stats exists) Marvel uses those. Period."

Here is Gene Colan and Bill Everett's cover for Iron Man/Sub-Mariner #1...

And here is Kelleher's "reconstruction" of that cover...

Here is a Gene Colan and Dan Adkins page from Tales of Suspense #94...

And here is Kelleher's "reconstruction" of that page...

Here is a Gene Colan and Frank Giacoia page from Tales of Suspense #96...

And here is Kelleher's "reconstruction" of that cover..

Here is a Gene Colan and Frank Giacoia page from Tales of Suspense #98...

And here is Kelleher's "reconstruction" of that cover..

Here is that Iron Man Marvel Masterworks that credits Kelleher for his art reconstruction...

The amazing Marvel Masterworks fan site (now at CollectedEditions) had an interview with longtime Marvel Masterworks freelance editor Cory Sedlmeier, who discussed the process a little, as well:

#5: What percentage of art restoration in the Masterworks needs to be redrawn by hand by folks like Mike Kelleher? (Amazing job he's doing, by the by.) Is it on the order of a page or two per volume? More?

CORY: I couldn't give a direct percentage across the Masterworks. It's something that varies widely. The Golden Age books are all fully reconstructed from copies of the original books because none of that material exists in Marvel's archives any longer. Back in the '40s no one could have guessed that almost 70 years later people would be pining for these stories!

That said, any of you Golden Age collectors out there that have original Timely issues, we're always, always, always on the hunt for materials. If you might be willing to lend a hand, please contact me at cmsedlmeier@marvel.com.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the Atlas Era has proven to be either completely hit, or completely miss so far. These issues have either been intact in the film library and in great shape, or completely missing. For instance, Marvel Boy #1 and #2 were found and in sparkling condition (the earliest finds from our film warehouse yet, which is not to say there isn't earlier material, we just haven't gotten around to reprinting it yet); however, Astonishing #3 and #4 were completely missing.

For the Marvel Age, it varies. Some volumes require no full reconstruction. Others require two or three pages, and others, say where a complete story is missing, 20 plus pages. Earlier material tends to be in poorer condition. Most likely because it was duplicated over and over again throughout the '60s, '70s, and '80s for various reprint comics. I've heard word that the first generation photostats were sent out West for use in the 1960s Marvel Super Heroes cartoons.

Conversely, the version of Amazing Fantasy #15 the film warehouse located for the ASM Omnibus is bar-none the absolute best version ever. I put my word on that—you can see the pencil line from where the captions were sketched out on these proofs! Jean, Ryan, and their crew at Jerron deserve huge kudos for their hard work searching the tens of thousands of photostat reams. The reproduction quality of every Masterworks starts with these guys and girls.

Before I close this out one thing I'd like to clarify here is that the folks that do this work are reconstructing the artwork from an original printed copy with utter faithfulness to the originals. There have been hullaboos about how reconstruction is a disservice to the original talents, and I hate to say it, but I take offense to that.

Folks like Mike Kelleher, Wil Glass, Dale Crain, Matt Moring, All Thumbs Creative, Pacific Rim Graphics, and Secret Agent Pond Scum put an intense effort and an enormous amount of time into every page, and its all to honor the original artists. There are no bigger fans than these people. They've made this their life's work, and for the record, they rock. I'm spinning plates, and figuring out plans, and chasing schedules, but these are the people that really deserve your thanks and respect. They make it happen.

I really appreciate the kind words that the person who asked this question had for Mike and his work. Thank you!

For the Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus in 2007, Kelleher did reconstructions of Amazing Spider-Man #29 in its entirety!

However, recently, Sedlmeier cleared up any confusion with regards to the idea of these being "redrawn" pages. He explained, "There are no pages redrawn by Michael Kelleher in Marvel’s reprints. The small number of pages Mike did as part of a full reconstruction experiment in 2006 were never used for print. Even then they would have only been an initial process stage that would have later incorporated traditional restoration. (Think of them as the restoration equivalent of spotting blacks when inking.)"

So Sedlmeier is saying that whatever Kelleher produced, it was part of a larger process to restore the pages and not Kelleher redrawing the pages for the reprints.

You don't get much more definitive than a guy saying, "There are no pages redrawn by Michael Kelleher in Marvel's reprints." I had it as true before, but Sedlmeier says it isn't true, so I'm more than happy to go with his position. My apologies for the original true.

The processes have changed a lot since then, by the way, so Marvel doesn't do their reprints like they did them in the mid-aughts.

Thanks to Jose for bringing this up and thanks to Daniel for writing about this a lot over the years and thank to Cory for going so in depth on the concept in both quotes. And thanks to reader Dustyn S. for sending me Sedlmeier's clarification quote (along with the information about Marvel doing new restoration/reprint processes now anyways).

Check out some other entertainment legends from Legends Revealed:

1. Did TV’s Greg Brady Really Date His TV Mom in Real Life?

2. Was Where’s Waldo? Removed From a School Because it Contained an Exposed Female Breast? Was Beverly Hills Cop Really Originally Written for Sylvester Stallone?

4. Did Universal Studios Used to Offer an Incentive Based on a Joke From Animal House?

Check back later for part 2 of this installment's legends!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com