The Golden Age of Marvel Comics

The other day, as I mentioned on my twitter account, I was at a yard sale that promised a bevvy of comics. Once I found the stash, I began thumbing through some magazine-sized comics. About the third time through the pile, it suddenly dawned on me that the “torn cover” I was skipping over wasn’t a cover at all.
Nope … it was something I had speculated about for years.
See, back in the 1980s when I was a young lad, I would often spot a strange black-and-white advertisement. It promised a poster — a full-color poster — for just 50 cents plus shipping and handling.
The poster, even shown in black and white, looked fantastic. An entire parade of Marvel characters streaming along a blank background (and you can see it to the right there thanks to the wonders of the Internet — Click on it for a bigger version).
Even back then, I had a problem: I was reading two-year-old ads. The offer had long-ago expired. I was out of luck. I figured I would never see what it looked like.
But now, almost 30 years later, there I was staring at this amazing poster.
Admittedly, I was surprised how small it was. I think of posters as being something that dominates a wall. But this little thing seemed barely bigger than a legal-sized piece of paper.
Still, it’s a pretty awesome piece of work by 1980s-era superstar Michael Golden.
It has an impressive collection of heroes, and its a precursor to one of my favorite Marvel “posters” ever, John Byrne’s cover work for the Deluxe Edition of the Handbook of the Marvel Universe, which joins together into a massive single panel.
Sure, my particular version of the Michael Golden poster has tape stains on the corners. There’s a rip in it.
But that didn’t matter. For 50 cents, it was mine. Decades later and a little mystery of my life is solved.
And the previous owner doesn’t need to worry about this little relic. I’ll save it for another 30 years. He took care of it for the first 30, so I’ll stand guard over it for the next.