A post from my Marvel blog of a different decade, this one talking about a month in which Marvel's market share rose to be 50%. Fifty October 27, 2008 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General FiftyA lot of noise has been made of the fact that, in the just-reported sales figures for … Continue reading Blah Blah Blog – Fifty
The All-New, All-Different X-Men hit like a lightning bolt out of the blue when the new iteration of the team debuted in GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1. The title had been a reprint book for several years, and so the quantities of the early new issues that made it to the stands were much smaller than most … Continue reading BHOC: X-MEN #103
With the fact that Maus was banned from circulation in some school districts making national news this past week, the time seemed to be good to discuss COMIX BOOK, the short-lived Marvel magazine that published work by underground cartoonists--including the prototype short story for Art Spiegelman's Maus. COMIX BOOK was an outgrowth of Marvel's concerns … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: COMIX BOOK #2 and the first Maus
I hadn't really thought about it this way before, but as things turned out, I wound up getting both the beginning and the end of the initial Masters of Evil cycle in my Windfall Comics purchase of 1988. For, like AVENGERS #6, this issue also features Zemo and the Masters, and begins to bring their … Continue reading WC: AVENGERS #15
A post from my old-time Marvel blog discussing the oft-invoked fan belief that good sales are hardly a mark of quality material. Sales versus Quality October 28, 2008 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General Bouncing off of yesterday’s topic, let’s talk about that perennial conflict: sales versus quality.It’s a typical argument that … Continue reading Blah Blah Blog – Sales vs Quality
Marvel's decision to launch a licensed comic dedicated to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in 1976 is a bit of a mysterious choice. Clearly, the outfit was trying to move into licensed properties--in addition to 2001, they did STAR WARS and LOGAN'S RUN at about this time, and had great success with expanding on the mythology … Continue reading BHOC: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY #5
While it's perhaps lost its uniqueness a little bit given the sheer number of latter day crossovers between characters originating at different companies (and in some cases, in different forms of media) it would he difficult to understate the significance of SUPERMAN VS THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. For those who were there when it came out, … Continue reading The Outline for SUPERMAN VS THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
It strikes me that it's been a while since we checked in on the doings of my favorite of the Archie/Mighty Comics campy super heroes of the mid-1960s, the Web! As you already know if you've read our earlier features on this line of comics, at teh height of Batmania in America and the huge … Continue reading Brand Echh: Mighty Comics #40 Part 2
A series of three posts from my long-ago Marvel blog that quizzed the audience about comics they had read and their feelings about them. Challenge! October 29, 2008 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General Just a quick update tonight, since I'm in a rush--but I wanted to throw a question out to … Continue reading Blah Blah Blog – Three Challenges
This was the very last issue of TWO-GUN KID that Marvel published. A string of issues that went back to 1948 (with admittedly several gaps) came to a final end here. I wasn't aware of that when I got this comic, nor did I get to enjoy this great Gil Kane cover--Kane was doing new … Continue reading BHOC: TWO-GUN KID #136
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