It must have been becoming clear to editor Stan Lee that the quirky back-up strip that he'd let artist Steve Ditko introduce was growing in popularity among the readership. So while it would still be several months before Doctor Strange would headline a STRANGE TALES cover all on his own, he had gone from carrying … Continue reading WC: STRANGE TALES #121
In the late 1970s, before he would go on to be hired by Marvel Comics as an assistant editor, Mark Gruenwald published two issues of his fanzine OMNIVERSE. Unlike most other fan publications, OMNIVERSE was dedicated to examining a single principle when it came to comic book fiction: the consistency of continuity across fictional realities, … Continue reading OMNIVERSE #1
It was immediately apparent once the trio of writer David Micheline, penciler John Romita Jr. and inker/co-plotter Bob Layton came on board the series over the course of two months that something good was beginning to happen in IRON MAN. The series had, for a long while, been a bit out of step with the … Continue reading BHOC: IRON MAN #117
Talk about a disparity between title and visual! It would be difficult to come up with an image that less embodied the concept of SCARY TALES that this one, featuring a happy super hero whose body fragments into pieces comically battling a pair of thugs amidst a bright green forest. And that's because, like the … Continue reading Brand Echh: Scary Tales #38
So this next week was the moment it all hit home--when FANTASTIC FOUR #201 turned up on the spinner rack at my local 7-11 and I had to face the fact that I had indeed missed the double-sized anniversary issue of my favorite series, the culmination to a year-long story arc and a book that … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #201
Here's a very nice cover to JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY that features Wally Wood inking Jack Kirby's cover pencils. Kirby and Wood didn't really get to work together much during the Marvel Age--Wood was way too valuable as a penciler in his own right, given that he was capable of plotting as well, a skill set … Continue reading WC: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #122
Continuing on our survey of the fourth and final issue of FOOM, Marvel's fan club magazine, put together by Jim Steranko. As was pointed out in the comments, this cover image was done by Jack Kirby for a Marvelmania poster, not by Steranko at all. It's pretty impressive that, at a time when Kirby was … Continue reading FOOM #4, Part Two
The release of this issue of X-MEN represented something of an existential crisis for me. You see, I had somehow missed the previous issue, #115, which was unthinkable to me. What's more, I had dutifully gone to the 7-11 every single week on Thursday in-between when #114 came out and when #116 dropped. I wasn't … Continue reading BHOC: UNCANNY X-MEN #116
Now this one is a bit of a strange aberration, one that I wasn't even aware of when it first saw print. SCARY TALES had been released intermittently by publisher Charlton filled with weird mystery stories of the sort that DC and other publishers were issuing--that is to say, stories that had twist endings or … Continue reading Brand Echh: Scary Tales #40
The Tom Brevoort Experience 