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Don Heck was then the regular artist on The Avengers and he
drew some pretty good covers. But Heck was at heart, a romance and western
artist who drew superhero comics largely because that was the only work
available to him. Stan Lee liked his work but felt it often was not
dynamic and "punchy" enough.
Stan was not a huge fan of Gil Kane
due to some sort of personal incompatibility. But he recognized that Kane
had a style with great force and energy, and whenever Gil was available, they
grabbed him to do covers. Kane pencils and appears to have also inked the
above replacement cover. There's probably no more to the story of this one
than that Stan didn't like the finished Heck cover and thought they could do
better. Later on, there was an extended period when Kane became the main
cover artist for Marvel, sometimes doing well more than half the covers each
month.
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