At the beginning of the 1980s, after a number of rough years, DC really began to get its act together and to modernize its approach to doing comic books. The primary instigator of this change was new publisher Jenette Kahn and the vehicle through which it became viable was the emerging Direct Sales marketplace of … Continue reading FSC: OMEGA MEN #1
ACTION COMICS was pretty much the first title that I read with any regularity; it and THE FLASH. And that was due to the fact that, as opposed to SUPERMAN or JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA or most of the DC line, ACTION was published monthly. That meant that there were new issues arriving more regularly … Continue reading BHOC: ACTION COMICS #499
ACTION COMICS continued on in the manner that it had been progressing, seldom my favorite comic that I bought in a given week but always reliable for some basic round-the-bases entertainment. But the fact that editor Julie Schwartz was continuing to target his stories at the same audience that he'd courted since he took over … Continue reading BHOC: ACTION COMICS #498
Despite the overwhelming global popularity of SUPERMAN THE MOVIE, DC for years refused to make any but the most cursory moves towards reflecting that iteration of the Man of Steel in the comics. It's really wasn't until Post-CRISIS when John Byrne took over the character that the influence of the film version came to the … Continue reading BHOC: ACTION COMICS #497
This next issue of ACTION COMICS was forgettable, and consequently I've forgotten it. Seriously, I don't remember a single thing about buying this one. I must have done so during my weekly trip to the 7-11 on Thursday, new comic day, as I was buying the book regularly again. But the story contained within really … Continue reading BHOC: ACTION COMICS #496
By this point in time, I was still mostly following SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS, but I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to them. Under editor Julie Schwartz, they both continued to do exactly what they'd been doing since I first started reading comics years earlier--they were utterly dependable to deliver a certain experience, … Continue reading BHOC: ACTION COMICS #495
Pretty much everyone knows the story by now. Having conceived of their adventure strip about an indestructible, super-strong crusader for justice in the early 1930s, creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (and sometimes other, different artists) spent the next five or six years trying to find a buyer for what they felt confident was a … Continue reading The Second Superman Story
So I was back in the habit of buying ACTION COMICS every month after a short hiatus that was motivated by I don't know what. It was always a reliable purchase: never the most exciting comic book in my stack, but always dependable for an enjoyable story. A bit of a disparity had begun to … Continue reading BHOC: ACTION COMICS #494
I really liked Marv Wolfman's run writing ACTION COMICS. He was able to find a way to operate within the strictures of editor Julie Schwartz's likes while still bringing the sort of serialized storytelling and characterization that he'd learned over at Marvel to the stories. It probably didn't hurt that Marv and George Perez's NEW … Continue reading GH: ACTION COMICS #543
I had gotten back into the habit of buying ACTION COMICS after a break of three or four months. I don't remember making any specific determination that I wasn't going to follow the Superman titles any longer, it was just a thing that happened--possibly because my financial resources were being strained by all of the … Continue reading BHOC: ACTION COMICS #493
The Tom Brevoort Experience 