The remnants of my original 600+ comix collection of Silver-Age Marvels exist safely under glass, framed on the wall of the home office. I picked these to hang on to as representative of the joy of the early 1960s Marvels, when Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, and Dick Ayers were revolutionizing the comix industry. Lee and Kirby, obviously, are legitimate icons of the whole business. Ditko was something of a cult figure, an acquired taste, and a master of almost baroque mood (I tend to think about him, somehow, in the same category with Gil Kane, except that Kane never quite had Ditko's class). Heck and Ayers were second-stringers--journeymen artists who did most of the heavy lifting on the back-up heroes like Giant Man and Iron Man. (Ayers' true love and place to shine was obviously NIck Fury and the Howlin' Commandoes; Heck did a number of early Avengers--after Kirby left and prior to issue 40--that deserve more attention than they usually get.) Ayers and...