Super X [Príncipe Submarino / O Incrível Hulk] #12

History

EBAL (Editora Brasil-América Limitada), founded in 1945 by Adolfo Aizen, was the dominant Brazilian comics publisher of the mid-20th century and the company responsible for bringing Marvel's Silver Age heroes to Brazilian newsstands beginning in 1967. The Super X series — originally launched under the name 'Superxis' — was born from a pioneering marketing partnership between EBAL, the TV Bandeirantes network (which aired the Grantray-Lawrence Marvel animated series), and Shell gas stations, whose customers received the earliest issues as a promotional giveaway. By issue #12, the series had moved to regular newsstand distribution, reprinting American material in black and white at a large format, and EBAL's editorial strategy of selecting only characters with animated-television exposure meant the FF's debut here was tied directly to audience familiarity with those cartoons. The source material drawn from — Tales to Astonish (the Hulk/Namor split-book) and the Fantastic Four series — was itself mid-to-late 1960s Marvel, as Tales to Astonish would become the solo Incredible Hulk title with its 102nd issue in April 1968, virtually simultaneous with this Brazilian publication.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published August 1968 by Editora Brasil-América (EBAL), Adolfo Aizen's publisher, as part of the 5th series of the Super X title pairing Namor (Príncipe Submarino) and the Hulk (O Incrível Hulk).
• According to the Brazilian Wikipedia article on Quarteto Fantástico comics, Super X 5ª Série n° 12 is identified as the first Brazilian publication to feature the Fantastic Four (Quarteto Fantástico) — Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm.
• The issue's character roster spans two distinct Marvel story threads: the Namor/Atlantis storyline (featuring Attuma and Lady Dorma) sourced from the American Tales to Astonish split-book, and a Fantastic Four story featuring Doctor Doom (Doutor Destino).
• The Hulk-side content features the core supporting cast of the mid-1960s Hulk stories: Bruce Banner, Betty Ross, General Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross, Major Glenn Talbot, and Rick Jones — characters established by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
• The series was originally launched in 1967 under the name 'Superxis' as a Shell gas-station promotional giveaway, then transitioned to regular newsstand sale; by issue #12 it was a standard monthly anthology.
• Namor (the Sub-Mariner) is one of Marvel's oldest characters, created in 1939 by Bill Everett, and his pairing with the Hulk in the American Tales to Astonish reflected Marvel's 1960s distribution constraints, which required sharing titles; EBAL preserved that pairing in the Brazilian edition.
• The inclusion of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson in the character index reflects the real-world political cameos Stan Lee regularly inserted into Hulk stories of this era, grounding Banner's military-pursued narrative in contemporary American politics.
• All content was reprinted in black and white at a large (approximately 18 × 26 cm) format, consistent with EBAL's standard presentation for its Marvel titles of this period.

Cast · 22 characters

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