As Marvel began to become more of a force within the industry at the height of the super hero fad of the 1960s, the firm began to get some formidable press. This well-remembered article ran in Esquire Magazine in the issue dated September 1st, 1966. It included original artwork created for this purpose by Jack … Continue reading ESQUIRE Magazine, September 1st, 1966
My pandemic-era deep dive into worldwide shows available to stream in the United States has yielded some occasional standout entries, and none of them has quite had the same stick-to-your-ribs quality as GIRL FROM NOWHERE, a Thai production presently available on Netflix. Before I say another word, I ought to mention right up front that … Continue reading Girl From Nowhere
I promised Jerry Ordway that I would do a piece on this particular story, and given that Batman Day was this weekend, it seems like a fitting moment to revisit this story. REAL FACT COMICS was a post-war innovation on the part of DC Comics. It was part of a small but widely-spoken-of effort to … Continue reading REAL FACT COMICS #5 and the True Story of Batman and Robin
One of the casualties of the haphazard manner in which I've grabbed and kept things over the years is that on a more-than-occasional basis, I'm not sure precisely where I culled it from originally. That's the case with this cool four-page 1940s vintage behind-the-scenes article on the making of Captain Marvel comics during the Golden … Continue reading How The Comics Are Made
Here's another classic old newspaper story related to comic books, this one from the Burlington Free Press edition released on November 2, 1965 and concerning the famous (in the world of comic books) Rutland, Vermont annual Halloween parade which was every year filled with marchers in super hero costumes. The parade (and subsequent Halloween party) … Continue reading Halloween Encounter With Dr. Strange and Plastic Man
When the syndicated Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon debuted in the fall of 1966, it was fashioned in such a way that each individual station could run it in whatever manner they pleased. As every story had been broken up into three 7-minute chapters, there was the freedom to mix and match segments, or to run an … Continue reading Television’s First Captain America
Here's another vintage newspaper article on the burgeoning comic book fandom of the 1960s, this one a profile on a young pre-Marvel Roy Thomas. As most know, Roy went on to become one of the most popular and influential writers and editors of the 1960s and beyond--but at the time this piece saw print in … Continue reading A Serious Student of the Comic Books
People seem to have really enjoyed that first column written by Pete Hamill about a comic book collector whose life goes wrong, so I also wanted to share this earlier piece by Hamill, which was dug up by Ken Quattro. This piece saw print a decade earlier, at a time when the Silver Age of … Continue reading Batman Got Busted In Brooklyn
It's relatively commonly known that rock newspaper Rolling Stone did a big cover story on the Marvel Comics phenomenon in 1972, emblazoning a Herb Trimpe Hulk on the cover of the magazine. What is less known (and I didn't realize this myself until just recently) is that the United Kingdom version of Rolling Stone ran … Continue reading Marvel Comix: Rolling Stone (UK edition) October 18, 1969
I first read this Pete Hamill column when it was first published in the New York Daily News on June 5, 1978. In those days, I read and collected any mainstream articles about comic books that I came across, keeping them all in a three-ring binder, scrapbook-style. This piece in particular always stuck with me … Continue reading A Sad Life That Was Dedicated Entirely To Comics
