How To Make Money Writing For Comic Magazines, Part Two

Continuing our look at editor and writer Robert Kanigher's 1943 volume on writing for the comic books of that era. There's more to come in future weeks as we delve further into this volume.

BHOC: SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #251

This was around the point where I dropped off in my brief dalliance with SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES after following it again for a few issues. Somehow, the future time period and the stakes therein didn't speak to me, and the odd schizophrenic conflict between the futuristic environment and the more dated aspects … Continue reading BHOC: SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #251 →

5BC: Five Attempts to Replicate Spider-Man

It was clear early on that the most important and successful new super hero character introduced during the Silver Age of Comics was Spider-Man. The work that Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and John Romita had put into the series had paid dividends, and the wall-crawler was soon a worldwide icon able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against … Continue reading 5BC: Five Attempts to Replicate Spider-Man →

BHOC: GREEN LANTERN #116

My memory of things is that GREEN LANTERN entered into a bit of a doldrums as a series at about this time, one that held on at least until Green Arrow was given his eviction notice from the series and really up until Marv Wolfman began to write it a couple of years later. It … Continue reading BHOC: GREEN LANTERN #116 →

Forgotten Masterpiece: WINGS COMICS #94

Fiction House was one of the more successful comic book publishers of the Golden Age of Comics. They came into the field from pulp magazines, where they had an active line of titles every month. For the most part, Fiction House's comic book output mirrored their pulp magazines--often using the same title and even on … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: WINGS COMICS #94 →

BHOC: BRAVE AND THE BOLD #150

I was always a sucker for a cover like this one whose background was made up of earlier covers. DC took this approach with some regularity on anniversary issues. Now, one really does have to ask whether a #150 is worth this manner of celebration. At the time, this wasn't really a thing. However, since … Continue reading BHOC: BRAVE AND THE BOLD #150 →

How To Make Money Writing For Comic Magazines, Part One

Even by the year 1943, writer Robert Kanigher considered himself a veteran of the comic book business. He'd been selling stories to various publishers beginning around 1940, and while he considered himself to be a bit too good for the medium he was working in, he was both prolific and always on the lookout for … Continue reading How To Make Money Writing For Comic Magazines, Part One →

BHOC: ACTION COMICS #495

By this point in time, I was still mostly following SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS, but I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to them. Under editor Julie Schwartz, they both continued to do exactly what they'd been doing since I first started reading comics years earlier--they were utterly dependable to deliver a certain experience, … Continue reading BHOC: ACTION COMICS #495 →

Comic Creators in the Wild 12

It's been a while since we dropped one of these on you. So here are more photographs taken over the years depicting practitioners of the medium, both editorial and creators. As usual, there's a lot of Stan Lee. One of the earliest photographs that survives of Jakob Kurtzburg, who would come to be called Jack … Continue reading Comic Creators in the Wild 12 →

BHOC: PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #30

I have a vague memory of running across this issue in a candy store far from my usual haunts in a shopping mall where my parents had gone to get something. I was very much invested in the ongoing storyline featuring Carrion--probably the first such "mystery villain" plotline that I'd ever read--so i was excited … Continue reading BHOC: PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #30 →