On that same trip to that Ronkonkoma Stationary store, I also picked up he next issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, the first post-implosion issue. This was an issue that had been built up to in the background for a while now. You see, on the letters page, editor Julie Schwartz had been running a … Continue reading BHOC: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #161
There's a lot to unpack about this issue of THE FLASH for me. For starters, I bought it not at any of my regular comic book haunts but rather in a far-off stationary store in distant Ronkonkoma where my family had gone for some reason. That store was a supply chain for the Cub Scouts … Continue reading BHOC: THE FLASH #268
The next big thing to come along for me wasn't a comic book at all, though it was a super hero adventure. This was the debut of BATTLE OF THE PLANETS on the afternoon of Monday, September 11, 1978. Like everyone my age, I watched a certain number of cartoons every day as available, but … Continue reading BHOC: BATTLE OF THE PLANETS
It's a fact of comic book publishing that many of the key names of characters have, over the years, been recycled from earlier sources. So while the Marvel Comics Doctor Strange doesn't really have anything to do with his earlier namesake, and while Steve Ditko and Stan Lee were in no way influenced by this … Continue reading The First Dr. Strange Story
By 1953, the furor about the content of comic books was reaching an absolute peak. For a decade, pretty well ever since the medium had displayed mass appeal, there had been articles expressing concern for the books' assumed young audience. And as time had gone on and the content of most comics had become more … Continue reading What Parents Don’t Know About Comic Books
This issue of THOR featured the wrap-up to the long-running Ragnarok sequence begun by writer/editor Roy Thomas, a saga that felt like a saga to me even as it was coming out. Looking back, the story is more of a mixed bag than I had considered at the time, when I was very much into … Continue reading BHOC: THOR #278
Tis was a slightly more noteworthy issue of STRANGE TALES than many of the other ones that were in the box of comics that I bought as my Windfall. For the most part, any issues that could have been considered "keys" for one reason or another had been extracted. But this one was close, and … Continue reading WC: STRANGE TALES #120
Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Marvel Comics carried with it a certain amount of counter-culture cache. This was due in part to the new faces coming into the business sharing some of those sensibilities naturally, as they were then the same relative age as most members of that youth group. But also, in … Continue reading CREEM v4 #11: And Now, Spider-Man and The Marvel Comics Group
One of the benefits to the Doctor Strange television movie airing was that there was suddenly an interesting in doing a bunch of Doctor Strange-themed ancillary publishing. I hadn't really connected with the character before this. Especially in the 1970s, his stories tended to be heady and metaphysical in the manner of the time, and … Continue reading BHOC: DOCTOR STRANGE POCKET BOOKS #1
I've heard it said that this issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA shows a bit of the influence that the growth of the new Marvel comics was having upon DC. I don't know that I really believe that, though. Certainly, for as long as there had been team-up comics, there had been stories in which … Continue reading WC: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #20
The Tom Brevoort Experience 