Help identify this comic from an old photo 0

[bronze_rules]

4 hours ago, jools&jim said:

Now we need to know how you did it!!!!

Did you build on Divad's initial (and correct!) Watcher ID, and search through all Watcher appearances published, say, six months to a year before before the photo date given by the OP? Or did you actually recognize the page despite the massive levels of blurriness and distortion?

No matter how you did it, that was amazing detective work.  Bravo!

Thanks for the kudos. This was a very tough one.

I think everyone made some very good observations that influenced my search. At the end of the day, JC was pretty much close to how I approached it.

I started out looking at specific features, and I'm a bit embarrassed by some of the things I looked for (e.g. dog face character from kamandi -- NOT, or JLA splash page arrow bubble -- NOT). I then  slept on it. Like some others, I also was thinking along the lines of weird Kirby layouts (even photo panels like FF 33). Then, this morning I had an epiphany right before I had to leave to catch a flight-- which was Macho Grande initially mentioned the guy standing in a robe like garb on the top left, and then Divad mentioned Watcher, and a few others  accepted it was the Watcher.

Well, to be honest, I could not even see the Bald headed guy in the garbled image (I could very weakly make out the sillhouette, but it could just as easily be a million other things), and figured that MachoGrande must have a better image in front of him to discern the character. Once I temporarily accepted the proposition of it being the Watcher, it was fairly simple to imagine The Watcher opening one of his storylines in What if (Much as say Cain would open House of Mystery tales with an opening dialogue).  I looked at the date Feb , 1978, and lo and behold, there were some What If titles (the date was a huge help also). Even easier was that I only had to look at issues prior to issue 7 (If the date was correct, it couldn't have been much  later). So then I just focused on the main shapes in those first few issues prior to 7 -- Watcher top left corner, missile middle, that arrow bubble shape, crescent right... The funny thing is that even when I hit it, I wasn't even completely 100% convinced it was the same and didn't have time to verify till I got back. One note to future posters is that it is likely best to post the original image, no matter how tiny, and let us do the zooming. I've found that even smaller, sharper images resonate better than zoomed blurry ones. And that was one blurry, noisy image. Not only was it terribly distorted, but the shapes were all stretched around and distorted, I still can't see Cap in the original dog face (iron fist, baron strucker,  whatever, mask).

This one is definitely a team win.

 

Edited May 13, 2017 by bronze_rules

[jools&jim]

23 minutes ago, bronze_rules said:

Thanks for the kudos. This was a very tough one.

I think everyone made some very good observations that influenced my search. At the end of the day, JC was pretty much close to how I approached it.

I started out looking at specific features, and I'm a bit embarrassed by some of the things I looked for (e.g. dog face character from kamandi -- NOT, or JLA splash page arrow bubble -- NOT). I then  slept on it. Like some others, I also was thinking along the lines of weird Kirby layouts (even photo panels like FF 33). Then, this morning I had an epiphany right before I had to leave to catch a flight-- which was Macho Grande initially mentioned the guy standing in a robe like garb on the top left, and then Divad mentioned Watcher, and a few others  accepted it was the Watcher.

Well, to be honest, I could not even see the Bald headed guy in the garbled image (I could very weakly make out the sillhouette, but it could just as easily be a million other things), and figured that MachoGrande must have a better image in front of him to discern the character. Once I temporarily accepted the proposition of it being the Watcher, it was fairly simple to imagine The Watcher opening one of his storylines in What if (Much as say Cain would open House of Mystery Tales with an opening dialogue).  I looked at the date Feb , 1978, and lo and behold, there were some What If titles. Even easier was that I only had to look at issues prior to issue 7 (If the date was correct, it couldn't have been much  later). So then I just focused on the main shapes in those first few issues prior to 7 -- Watcher top left corner, missile middle, that arrow bubble shape, crescent right... The funny thing is that even when I hit it, I wasn't even completely 100% convinced it was the same and didn't have time to verify till I got back. One note to future posters is that it is likely best to post the original image, no matter how tiny, and let us do the zooming. I've found that even smaller, sharper images resonate better than zoomed blurry ones. And that was one blurry, noisy image.

This one is definitely a team win.

 

Brilliant!  Thanks again.

I love threads like this! They have S.F.A. to do with money/grades/investments/speculation/movie BS/etc., and everything to do with shared knowledge and digging through our memories and collections together for no other reason than because the simple, carefree pleasures in life--like solving a fellow fan's mystery for the sake of it--are sometimes the only things that really matter. 

 

[divad]

9 minutes ago, jools&jim said:

Brilliant!  Thanks again.

I love threads like this! They have S.F.A. to do with money/grades/investments/speculation/movie BS/etc., and everything to do with shared knowledge and digging through our memories and collections together for no other reason than because the simple, carefree pleasures in life--like solving a fellow fan's mystery for the sake of it--are sometimes the only things that really matter. 

 

Including some of my favorite Boardies! 

[divad]

And , of course, what it looks like in real life . . . 

[divad]

[Ken Aldred]

I was convinced that the page must've been from an issue of What If?, but I wouldn't have had the patience to figure it out correctly. I thought there was a tattooed-looking face on the second page, which to me resembled one of John Byrne's stock background characters, and so I was focused more on the grand-scale, cosmic issues in the run.

A bit of detailed analysis there about how I got it completely wrong via misleading pareidolia.    

Congrats. 

Edited May 13, 2017 by Ken Aldred

[Semicentennial]

Wow, fantastic job!