Don Heck

And the reason that was good is because they just literally took the comic books and cut the pictures out and moved them across the field.

So you're watching these cartoons, you're seeing real artwork by Jack Kirby and Don Heck and Larry Lieber, all these artists who actually drew the comic books.

It's probably as close as you can get to the comic book experience.

So they're fascinating artifacts of their time.

I did notice

an interesting thing about the art credits, however, in that John Romita was just credited with layout, but Don Heck was actually credited for the penciling.

Yeah, yeah.

So John must have just done the barest of blocking in, and then Don Heck finished it off and then handed it over to the anchor.

I don't recall who the

anchor was.

But before our story can continue, we get a two-parter that interrupts it.

In Avengers 145, Jenny Isabella and Scott Edelman step in as writers, with Don Heck on pencils, John Tartag on inks, Don Warfield on colors, Dave Hunt on letters, and Marv Wolfman as the editor.

In 146, Keith Pollard and Petra Goldberg are on the team.

On the cover, a man dressed like an executioner, complete with black tunic, hood over the face, all over chain mail with red gloves and a huge alien-looking gun.

Ditko was as well.

A lot of other guys like Don Heck were doing really beautiful work.

It was a lot of fun.

The energy that ran through the Marvel books, all 11 of them back in those days, was really a delight.

So we had a lead story of that might be 48 pages and we had needed backup stories.

And I requested some of my favorite childhood artists, Don Heck and Steve Ditko came through and do stories.

So I was already in touch with Steve when the Squirrel Girl thing came up.

Now, the interesting story about that is that I was supposed to partner with an artist named Tom Morgan on that particular Iron Man story.

Um, I'm guessing it was mostly Kirby and Ditko.

I mean, there's no way of knowing, um, but, you know, f- for certain, especially in the very early days when Lee, um, seemed to have a little more defined understanding of how he wanted the stories to unfold, whereas, you know, by the mid, by, by, like, '65, he's just basically just telling Don Heck, "Okay, the Hulk gets into," or, you know, "Iron Man gets into a fight and he has a, you know, he has a heart event and has to go and hide."

Mm.

Um, and so, you know, there's your story.

Bruce Banner, the Hulk; Lamar Richardson as Dr. Hank Pym, Giant Man; Joey SoRLus as Steve Rogers, Captain America; Oscar Stavemeyer as Dr. Donald Blake, Thor; Ben Spencer as Jarvis; Lindsay Kronenberger as Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow; Michaela Taylor as Jane Foster; Nathan Timmons as Rick Jones; Damon Noyes as Baron Helmut Zemo; with Arthur Dent as Director Nick Fury, Joey SoRLus as Baron Heinrich Zemo, and Ginny McGinnis as the narrator.

Inspired and adapted from Avengers number nine, 14, and 15 by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Don Heck.

Written and directed by Mitch McFarland and Joey SoRLus.

Art by Thomas Rippert.

The voices used in all Scither Audio Drama Productions are solely the property of Scither Audio Drama and the individual voice actors who worked on these projects.

Neither Scither nor the actors give permission for their voices in this production to be used in the advancement and use of artificial intelligence.

This season is dedicated with love and respect to Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Larry Lieber, and Don Heck.

Excelsior.

Uh, I really like the cover with Black Knight.

Um, in that issue we have Don Heck coming and inking him, and he said that he didn't think that him and Heck really got along that well artistically at the beginning.

Um, but because Heck, he realized that Heck had been, uh, partnered with a lot of younger artists and basically was brought in to kind of fix things, um, and that he felt that he was being fixed, um, that he didn't need fixing.

And so when Sim and Don kind of got on a little bit better, that the inking gets a little bit better afterwards.

And he said, uh, at the time also it was just a, a real tr- you know, pleasure to be inked by someone like Don Heck, who'd been around so long and was like a legendary guy.

Um, so-

Yeah

Um-