One of the more overused concepts in comic books in the 1980s and 1990s was that of "Everything You Know Is Wrong"; which is to say, some new revelation is about to change some or all of the fundamental beliefs about a particular character's backstory or origin. This trope gained popularity after author Alan Moore … Continue reading The First Time Everything You Knew Was Wrong
Another new series that I was given access to for the first time was DC COMICS PRESENTS, the Superman-led team-up title that had been launched during the hoopla of the SUPERMAN THE MOVIE film. I was aware of the book, having seen the many ads for its launch issue, which co-stared my favorite hero, the … Continue reading BHOC: DC COMICS PRESENTS #14
A combination of switching my shopping to the new Stationery Store and having a bit more coin in my pocket (it was during this time that I'd decided to forego school lunches, instead channeling the dollar-a-day I was given by my parents for sustenance into funds for buying more comic books) got me to finally … Continue reading BHOC: BATMAN #316
Among comic book fans, the legend of EC Comics loomed large. Even among readers who'd never experienced the books firsthand, there was an awareness of how the company had set a high benchmark for quality, and how they'd been undone and destroyed by the implementation of the Comics Code. There's been occasional attempts to recapture … Continue reading FSC: TWISTED TALES #1
One of the reasons why I got along so well with my buddy David Steckel is that we tended to like a lot of the same Marvel comics. Like myself, he was a huge fan of the Fantastic Four, and that affection carried over to the golden age Human Torch who was being featured in … Continue reading BC: INVADERS #16
The various assorted issues of SHOGUN WARRIORS have all mostly blurred in my memory after so many years. It was a title that I liked, and which I bought regularly all throughout its 20 issue run. But it wasn't an especially deep series, and its essential structure, which amounted to robots battling giant kaiju-style monsters … Continue reading BHOC: SHOGUN WARRIORS #9
When writers Ralph Macchio and Mark Gruenwald took over the reins of MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE, the series that featured stories of the Thing teaming up with a diverse assortment of other Marvel superstars, they decided to challenge themselves. They didn't really like the contemporaneous FANTASTIC FOUR era, so they set out to make MTIO a better … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #56
In the early 1980s, after having spent a couple of years working outside of the field in animation, Jack Kirby was making a bit of a comeback. Pacific Comics, one of the new independent publishers that had begun releasing titles into the emerging Direct sales market of comic book specialty stories had agreed to publish … Continue reading FSC: SILVER STAR #1
As I've related before, my buddy David Steckel had inherited a bunch of assorted comic books from older cousins who had outgrown them, and so his haphazard collection reached all the way back into the 1960s in a scattershot fashion. Among the books that he had, and which he let me borrow and read at … Continue reading BC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #5
MARVEL SUPER-HEROES continued in reprinting Incredible Hulk stories from a couple short years earlier, but which were old enough that they were still new to me. To be honest, I often enjoyed these older tales more than the new ones appearing in the Jade Giant's current series--that isn't surprising, I had a real connection to … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #84
