BARRY PEARL'S GUEST POST - DOCTOR STRANGE MEETS 'GOD'...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

Oh, you lucky peeps.  Bashful BARRY PEARL's latest guest post awaits your reading pleasure.  That's it below, so don't delay - read right away.  Take it away, BP.

For the most part when I wrote my book, which contains descriptions and notes for all 5,000 Marvel comics from 1961-1977, I did it in real time.  That is, I wrote descriptions from the original comics, at the time the books were published.  I could not look ahead and see what was coming.

But as time went on I was able to collect a great deal of information that was added to the stories by talking to creators and reading publications.

Marvel Premiere #14 (1974) featured Dr. Strange.  Basically the story has Strange witness the birth of the Universe, side by side with "God."

Well, Stan Lee wasn't too happy about Strange meeting God.  Lee, reading the  issue after publication and concerned that this might have offended some readers, asked Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner to print a disclaimer saying this was not God but a god.  Brunner was to say in Comic Book Resources (2008) "We cooked up this plot - we wrote a letter from a Reverend Billingsley in Texas, a fictional person, saying that one of the children in his parish brought him the comic book, and he was astounded and thrilled by it, and he said, 'Wow, this is the best comic book I've ever read.'  And we signed it 'Reverend so-and-so, Austin Texas' - and when Steve was in Texas, he mailed the letter so it had the proper postmark.  Then, we got a phone call from Roy, and he said, 'Hey, about that retraction, I'm going to send you a letter, and instead of the retraction, I want you to print this letter.'  And it was our letter!  We printed our letter!"

Here is the actual letter printed in Dr Strange #3.

And my thanks to Barry for supplying something for all you Crivs to read.  If it weren't for him, this blog would be a lot more sporadic.  Kindly convey your appreciation to him in the comments section.

Posted in: Cartoons