The concept of a Legacy hero, someone who steps into the identity of a predecessor to carry on their heroic legacy, is a relatively new development in the world of comic book super heroes, for all that it's at the same time a widespread phenomenon throughout the field. The earliest prominent Legacy characters were the … Continue reading The First Legacy Hero
As we spoke about a week or two back, VENUS was a strangely schizophrenic title published by Marvel/Timely in the 1940s and early 1950s. It concerned the Roman goddess Venus coming to Earth and falling in love with the publisher of a women's magazine, BEAUTY, and becoming its editor. It was a bizarre mix of … Continue reading The First (Marvel) Thor Story
VENUS was a weird comic book, one that went through a myriad of tone and genre changes across its 19 issue lifespan. It was first launched in 1948 during a time when Marvel (then Timely) was attempting to establish a beachhead of female-led super hero titles. So along with VENUS, also launched at that point … Continue reading The First (Marvel) Loki Story
Not all that long ago, we looked at the first Book-Length story to appear in SUPERMAN, a link to which is posted below. https://tombrevoort.com/2021/12/29/the-first-book-length-superman-adventure/ But working on it got me thinking: what was the first Book Length story to appear in comic books at all? The answer is a little bit complicated, and depends on … Continue reading The First Book Length Comic Book Story
SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS was a foundational title launched during the heyday of the dawning Marvel Age of Comics in 1963. Rather than being a super hero series like most of the other Marvel books then garnering attention, it was instead a war series--war comics continued to be strong performers for DC and … Continue reading The Last Sgt. Fury Story
The original artwork for classic stories is always of interest to me. There's a bunch of information that we can discover from it. And even apart from that, it's often fun just to see how these stories were originally drawn, without the added intermediary step of them having to be reproduced and printed in a … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The First New Captain America Story – From The Original Art
MISS AMERICA MAGAZINE had started out as simply MISS AMERICA COMICS, solo-starring the patriotic character then being featured in Timely's MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS as well. But buying tastes were beginning to change in the marketplace, and so publisher Martin Goodman switched gears, transitioning MISS AMERICA into a hybrid magazine aimed at girls. The super-heroine would … Continue reading The First Patsy Walker Story
The Two-Gun Kid was one of the longest-running characters in the Marvel line. He was created in 1948 in TWO-GUN KID #1 and over the next three decades he'd appear in not only his own magazine but also in stories featured in other western anthologies. This original Two-Gun Kid wasn't a masked cowboy, but rather … Continue reading The Last Two-Gun Kid Story
A short while back, we covered an issue of SUPERMAN that I had purchased in 1988 as a part of my big Windfall Comics buy. That issue featured a single full-length Superman adventure rather than the usual three shorter stories that the title typically ran. (That story was broken up into three discrete chapters so … Continue reading The First Book-Length Superman Adventure
The Blue Beetle is one of the longest running character-concepts in the world of comic books. The character was initially conceived in 1939 as a take-off of the Green Hornet, but the approach swiftly changed to better suit the needs of a burgeoning marketplace. The Beetle got a regulation super hero costume and even a … Continue reading The Last Blue Beetle Story
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