At the time when I started getting into Marvel Comics in the late 1970s, WHAT IF was considered something of a special book, at least among my small circle of comic-reading acquaintances. For one thing, it was oversized, meaning that it was both thicker and meatier than the average comic of that period, more like … Continue reading BC: WHAT IF #1
I continued to read through the stack of the complete run of SHAZAM that my grade school buddy Donald Sims had lent to me--it took a lot less time than these assorted issue reviews have been taking. The next issue was the final reprint issue in the run. As you'll recall, with its sales flagging … Continue reading BC: SHAZAM #24
As I've spoken about numerous times on this page, I was relatively limited in what I was looking for in my comic books. I was a super hero guy, and so none of the other genres which were then still readily available when I started reading the books in the 1970s were of any real … Continue reading BC: GIANT-SIZE SPIDER-MAN #1
I was continuing to work my way through the complete run of SHAZAM that had been lent to me by my grade school friend Donald Sims, and I was up to issue #23. As the cover indicates, by this point the character was the star of a popular Saturday morning live action series, which is … Continue reading BC: SHAZAM #23
My buddy David Steckel and I were both enormous fans of the Fantastic Four, which was one of the things that brought us together in the first place. So we'd regularly let one another borrow and read the assorted issues that we had that he other did not. Which is how I wound up taking … Continue reading BC: GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #3
In the fall of 1975, SHAZAM continued to limp along. The once-promising launch of one of the greatest and best-remembered comic book characters of the Golden Age had been reduced to being a quarterly reprint title, kept alive only due to the success of the similarly-named Saturday Morning live action television program. This was something … Continue reading BC: SHAZAM #22
As I've mentioned before, my friend David Steckel, whom I'd met through the Sachem School District's gifted student program, was a much a fan of the Fantastic Four as I was. What's more, he had inherited a bunch of comics from an older relative who had outgrown them, so he had an assortment of older … Continue reading BC: FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #10
And finally we arrive at the nadir of the SHAZAM run that I was experiencing all at once thanks to it having been loaned to me by my grade school buddy Donald Sims. Sales on the series had clearly been poor, and yet the character was starring in a successful Saturday morning live action series. … Continue reading BC: SHAZAM #21
As I've mentioned before, I first really met my friend David Steckel when the both of us attended the once-a-week gifted student education program in our school district. It was designed to give the top students in the community more creative and hands-on learning opportunities, and was a terrific program that did a lot for … Continue reading BC: FANTASTIC FOUR #56
I was still making my way through the complete run of SHAZAM that had been lent to me by my grade school friend Donald Sims. I didn't need to read issue #19, as I'd bought that one when it first came out--and went through it here: https://tombrevoort.com/2016/11/05/i-feel-like-this-issue-of-shazam-was-probably/ So it was on to issue #20 for … Continue reading BC: SHAZAM #20
The Tom Brevoort Experience 