It was only shortly after Pacific Comics launched writer/editor Bruce Jones' attempt to bring back the horror flavor of the classic EC Comics in the series TWISTED TALES that Jones' other tribute to that well-remembered long-ago line saw the light of day: ALIEN WORLDS. If TWISTED TALES was attempting to be a contemporary modernization of … Continue reading FSC: ALIEN WORLDS #1
Both my friend David Steckel and I were huge FANTASTIC FOUR fans--it was our favorite comic book series at the time we met, and one of the things that bonded us together. So in particular, it was issues of FANTASTIC FOUR and its reprint title MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS that we borrowed back and forth, broadening … Continue reading BC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #64
Now this was a comic book that I truly enjoyed. As always, I was very much excited to get the year's regular team-up between the Justice League and their antecedent counterparts, the Justice Society. It had become a regular yearly event. But the truth is, most of those stories had become disappointing. In particular, throughout … Continue reading BHOC: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #171
By the time that he launched BROADWAY COMICS in 1995, one gets the sense that EIC and Chief Creative Officer Jim Shooter was getting a little bit tired. After being ousted from Marvel Comics in 1987, he's launched an unsuccessful bid to buy Marvel, pivoted into founding VALIANT when that proved unsuccessful, then was forced … Continue reading Brand Echh: POWERS THAT BE #1
So after a bit of a bumpy road as a reader over the preceding year, where I wasn't able to consistently get copies of the issues, my new Stationery Store outlet made it possible for me to once more become a regular reader of THE FLASH. The character had been my absolute favorite as a … Continue reading BHOC: THE FLASH #278
As I've talked about in the past, I was completely invested in the new comic book companies that started to appear once the Direct Sales marketplace had developed enough to make such entities a potentially-profitable concern. In particular, I was a stalwart supporter of Pacific Comics, the firm that had started putting out new series … Continue reading FSC: GROO THE WANDERER #2
In the late 1970s, there likely wasn't a format for comic books that I loved more than the Pocket Books series of early Marvel reprints. Getting chronological collections of the earliest Marvel stories was a godsend to me, something that I never quite thought I'd get to experience, and so I pursued them avidly. But … Continue reading BC: SPIDER-WOMAN POCKET BOOKS
My new Stationery Store source for new comic books proved itself to be valuable even beyond the typical swath of new releases. It also wound up carrying the relatively few remaining Treasury Editions that came out after this point, as well as the new format that DC was expanding into and testing out: digests. The … Continue reading BHOC: DC SPECIAL SERIES #19
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
