Creepy Worlds #34
Creepy Worlds #34 holds a place in comics history as one of the earliest UK reprints to bring the character who would eventually be known as Doctor Druid — originally called Dr. Anthony Droom — to a British audience. Dr. Droom's debut in Amazing Adventures #1 (June 1961) predated Fantastic Four #1 by several months, making him widely regarded as the first recurring superhero of Marvel's Silver Age, and his origin story served as a direct narrative template for Doctor Strange. By packaging such material in an affordable, newsagent-distributed black-and-white format, Alan Class issues like this one were, for many British readers of the 1960s, the primary gateway into early Marvel mythology at a time when direct importation of American periodicals remained commercially impractical in the UK.
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Alan Class launched Creepy Worlds in August 1962 as the flagship title of his London-based reprint operation, which he had established in 1958 to circumvent post-war UK restrictions on importing American periodicals. The company licensed reprint rights from a US syndication company and reproduced stories in black-and-white interiors with colour covers, selling 68-page issues for one shilling at newsagents. Issue #34 falls within the run of Creepy Worlds #32–38, which sources note reprinted nearly the first several Fantastic Four stories in sequence — an unusual moment of continuity in a line otherwise known for publishing material in completely random order. The Dr. Droom origin material being reprinted was itself the work of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (with inks by Steve Ditko) from Amazing Adventures #1 (1961).
Trivia · 7 facts
- Creepy Worlds #34 was published in 1964 by Alan Class & Co. Ltd., a British reprint publisher active from 1959 to 1989.
- The issue is documented as reprinting Fantastic Four #4 (1962), the story titled 'The Coming of the Sub-Mariner,' which reintroduced Namor to the Marvel universe.
- The issue also contains (per catalog indexing) the Dr. Droom / Anthony Druid character, whose origin story first appeared in Amazing Adventures #1 (June 1961), written by Stan Lee and penciled by Jack Kirby with inks by Steve Ditko.
- Dr. Anthony Droom is widely considered Marvel's first Silver Age superhero, debuting approximately five months before Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961).
- The character was later renamed Doctor Anthony Druid — a name devised by Len Wein — when his origin was reprinted in Weird Wonder Tales #19 (December 1976), primarily to avoid confusion with the villain Doctor Doom.
- The Droom-to-Druid retcon also removed racially problematic elements of the original origin, in which the character's physical appearance was altered to resemble a Tibetan mystic upon gaining powers.
- Alan Class Comics lost its rights to reprint Marvel characters in 1966 when Odhams Press acquired a competing Marvel license for its Power Comics line, making the mid-1960s run of Creepy Worlds the primary period of Marvel superhero content in the title.