I had written about this a little bit before, in the context of a broader review of this early issue of FANTASTIC FOUR: https://tombrevoort.com/2022/08/07/wc-fantastic-four-31/ But creator Larry Lieber had held onto a discarded page from this story for all these years. I'd seen a bad photocopy of the page at the time I wrote that … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: An Excised Page From FANTASTIC FOUR #31
The second release from Jim Shooter's new company DEFIANT was DARK DOMINION, which seemed like it might prove to be something interesting. The series was co-created by Shooter and legendary creator Steve Ditko, and it's clear that Jim was intending to build a title that would allow Ditko to flex the same kind of visual … Continue reading Brand Echh: DARK DOMINION #1
The appearance of this book constituted something of a surprise. I seem to recall that it showed up on the spinner rack of my local 7-11, which I still continued to frequent in addition to the new Stationery Store. INVADERS had been a title that i had followed regularly, but a number of months earlier, … Continue reading BHOC: INVADERS #41
In the early 1980s, Frank Miller had a transformative run on DAREDEVIL. Starting out as only the book's penciler, he began to shift it in tone, moving it away from the ersatz Spider-Man clone it had been towards something with a bit more of a noir sensibility to it. This process accelerated when he took … Continue reading FSC: DAREDEVIL #192
AVENGERS #150 was another book that was in the collection of my friend David Steckel, and which I borrowed from him to read at some point or another. It was a noteworthy issue for a couple of reasons, most of them not great. First off, it was one of if not the first comic book … Continue reading BC: AVENGERS #150
INCREDIBLE HULK had kind of hit its stride for what would remain of the 1970s and the early 1980s. it was a solid and entertaining read, but not anything extraordinary. Well-crafted but forgettable. And much more attuned to the impulse buying audience in terms of not getting too bogged down with ongoing storylines than many … Continue reading BHOC: INCREDIBLE HULK #239
As we've talked about here briefly in our sequence on the assorted early launches from VALIANT, Editor in Chief and primary creative voice Jim Shooter found himself ousted from that company shortly after completing work on that company's UNITY crossover. Different people have given different accounts of exactly what happened and how it all went … Continue reading Brand Echh: WARRIORS OF PLASM #1
I picked up the newest issue of AVENGERS on my now-weekly Thursday trip to the Stationery Store. The book was on something of a roll right at that moment, in the midst of a three-part adventure sorting out the backstories of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (or trying to--later developments would overturn some of the … Continue reading BHOC: AVENGERS #187
By 1982, Marvel had been making inroads into establishing itself as a children's book publisher as much as a periodical comic book publisher. This was apparently Marvel president Jim Galton's plan for where the future of the organization should lie. He had no idea how the emerging Direct Sales marketplace was going to explode, nor … Continue reading FSC: X-MEN MARVEL ILLUSTRATED Paperback
I was still making my way through the complete run of SHAZAM that my grade school friend Donald Sims had loaned to me. I had purchased and read issue #25 when it had first come out, and I'd read the story from this issue when it had been reprinted a short time after publication in … Continue reading BC: SHAZAM #26
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