Contents
The first issue included Bill Everett's original eight-page Sub-Mariner origin story, which was expanded by four pages when it eventually saw print in Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939) — the first publication of Marvel Comics' Golden Age predecessor, Timely Comics, the contents for which were supplied by Funnies, Inc. The final panel on page 8 contained a box reading "Continued Next Week", as well as a notation indicating an April 1939 date for the art. The box remained, sans words and colored in, when reprinted as part of the 12-page story in Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), and reprinted as the original eight-page story in Marvel's The Invaders #20 (Sept. 1977). As historian Les Daniels writes,
Early in 1939 a bizarre character called The Sub-Mariner ... had been featured in the black-and-white Motion Picture Funnies Weekly, a failed promotional giveaway that Funnies, Inc. had produced. The creator of that story was a struggling young artist from Massachusetts named Bill Everett. ... became the first Marvel hero: he was created by Everett before any other comic book character published by the Goodman group. Everett and his fish-man might have been dead in the water, but happily for all concerned, the story from the theater giveaway was repackaged for the first issue of Goodman's first comic book."
Another Timely character that debuted in Motion Picture Funnies Weekly was writer-artist Paul J. Lauretta's aviator hero the American Ace, whose origin eventually appeared in two six-page stories in Marvel Mystery Comics #2-3 (Dec. 1939 - Jan. 1940), following the renaming of Marvel Comics after issue #1.
Additional features in Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1 were the adventure strip "Spy Ring" by Jay Fletcher; "Kar Toon and his Copy Cat" by Martin Flichok; an activity page, "Fun-o-graphs," by Vernon Miller; and "Jolly the Newsie" by George Peter.
Cartoonists Fred Schwab or Martin Filchock drew the cover (sources differ). Filchock drew the covers of #2 and #4, and Max Neill the cover of #3; those latter three issues each are signd.
Read more about this topic: Motion Picture Funnies Weekly
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Is still to stick to the contents of the mind
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It is to stick to the nicer knowledge of
Belief, that what it believes in is not true.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)