BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #72

By this point, my brother Ken's interest in the Incredible Hulk had waned, as it typically did with his passing fancies for one comic book or another. But having read the most recent bunch of issues from his copies, and getting further and further into the Marvel books, I was hooked enough on things to … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #72

Forgotten Masterpiece: THE SPIRIT #30

Will Eisner's THE SPIRIT is rightly hailed as one of the masterpiece comic series of all time. Between 1940 and 1952, Eisner and his studio of assistants produced a weekly comic book as a newspaper insert, as a hedge for newspapers against the growing readership of comic books. While the lead character of the Spirit … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: THE SPIRIT #30

Lee & Kirby: The Two Origins of the Rawhide Kid

Now this is an interesting one to look at, and just a little bit mysterious. Marvel (well, pre-Marvel, they were still operating without a particular company identity at this point for the most part) had launched a revival of their earlier character, the Rawhide Kid, in 1960, a response in part to the popularity of … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Two Origins of the Rawhide Kid

Blah Blah Blog -Today’s No-Prize

An entry from my Marvel blog of times past, this one a bit of a goof concerning a note that writer Daniel Way had sent me. The gag, of course, is that he wrote the issue of WOLVERINE: ORIGINS in question. Today's No-Prize April 28, 2007 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General … Continue reading Blah Blah Blog -Today’s No-Prize

BHOC: DOCTOR STRANGE #22

As I mentioned yesterday, I bought two consecutive issues of DOCTOR STRANGE from my drugstore's Big Bin of Slightly Older Comics, and this was the second one. It had one thing in common with the previous issue: like it, the cover illustrated not the contents of this story, but the one in the following issue. … Continue reading BHOC: DOCTOR STRANGE #22

Spider-Man Takes On The Candidates

1972 was an election year, and as the various campaigns got underway during this tumultuous period in American history, the Sunday magazine of the NEW YORK TIMES reached out to a bevy of top cartoonists to provide single page strips featuring their characters and commenting on the battles being waged in the political arena. For … Continue reading Spider-Man Takes On The Candidates

Brand Echh: Vanguard Illustrated #7

One of the areas in which the nascent Pacific Comics publishing firm made some unexpected inroads was with a series of comics devoted primarily to horror and science fiction themes--titles in keeping with the well-regarded EC books of the past. Nobody else was quite doing this material in this fashion, and certainly nobody else was … Continue reading Brand Echh: Vanguard Illustrated #7

Blah Blah Blog – My Unknown Greats, Part 2

Another post from my long-gone Marvel blog, part of a sequence detailing comics I worked on that I liked but which flew under the radar a bit. My Unknown Greats pt. 2 April 28, 2007 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General For some strange reason, the system ate the last paragraph or … Continue reading Blah Blah Blog – My Unknown Greats, Part 2

BHOC: DOCTOR STRANGE #21

This was another book that I bought out of my drugstore's Big Bin of Somewhat Older Comic Books, all issues that had been reported as destroyed but instead which had been sold on the secondary market for a cut-rate price. This was one of a pair of DOCTOR STRANGE issues that I picked up at … Continue reading BHOC: DOCTOR STRANGE #21

MY LOVE #3 and the Penciling of John Buscema

As the 1960s wound down, the super hero fad that had driven much of the decade was beginning to cool. It's maybe hard to realize today, when many of these characters have been in continuous publication for 60-80 years, but at the time, super heroes were seen as just another cyclical fad. And now that … Continue reading MY LOVE #3 and the Penciling of John Buscema