Predating Captain America and a horde of other lesser lights, The Shield was the first patriotic-themed super hero of the Golden Age of Comics, debuting in PEP COMICS #1 in 1939. He was billed as a "G-Man Extraordinary", and over the next eight years, he'd carry on the fight against evil, losing his Superman-inspired super-powers … Continue reading The Last Shield Story
MAGAZINELAND, USA was a giveaway comic book designed for the celebration on June 18, 1977, which had been proclaimed World Color Press Day. World Color were the printers for virtually all of the comic books that were then available on the nation's newsstands, including the output of DC, Marvel, Archie, Harvey and others. Accordingly, those … Continue reading Lost Crossovers: MAGAZINELAND, USA #1
And so, we come at last to the end of the road for MIGHTY COMICS, Archie's attempt to replicate and cash in on the popularity of the Marvel titles of the day. By late 1967, the super hero fad that had driven sales to enormous numbers across the past few years had cooled off considerably, … Continue reading Brand Echh: Mighty Comics #50 and the Last Web Story
As the Silver Age kicked off in the late 1950s, DC/National Comics wasn't the only publisher testing out the genre once again,. All throughout the decade, different publishers had attempted to find success with new costumed heroes with names like Captain Flash, the Avenger and Strong Man. And Archie Comics was no exception. Getting a … Continue reading Brand Echh: The Double Life of Private Strong #1
Time once again to check in on the exploits of the greatest of the mid-1960s Mighty Comics super heroes, the hen-pecked Web. As you'll recall from previous installments, Mighty Comics was Archie's attempt to get into teh super hero game at the height of Batmania by reviving all of their long underwear characters from the … Continue reading Brand Echh: Mighty Comics #46
Archie Comics' attempt to get back into the super hero marketplace in 1983 under their Red Circle imprint was, by all accounts, a bit of a mess. It was an experiment that played itself out over around two years, and which produced some interesting experiments as well as a bunch of just out-and-out junk. The … Continue reading Brand Echh: The Comet #1
A week ago, I posted a feature in which writer Jerry Siegel and artist Paul Reinman revealed the secret origin of the Web, that 1960s-era costumed crusader who was "hen-pecked" by his wife Rosie and her mother to give up the super hero business and settle down to a regular life. https://tombrevoort.com/2022/12/17/brand-echh-mighty-comics-45/ I mentioned that … Continue reading ZIP COMICS #28 and the Origin of the Web
It's time once again for another dive into MIGHTY COMICS, Archie's attempt to reverse-engineer the appeal of the Marvel books of the era without understanding them a whit. As before, we're going to be focusing on my favorite of the Mighty creations, the Web. The Web wasn't cast as a Spider-Man knock-off as you might … Continue reading Brand Echh: Mighty Comics #45
The crossover story has become an ubiquitous part of the lore of comic books, so much so that it's entirely unremarkable in these days when every publisher speaks about their "universe" or "multiverse" or "omniverse" of characters. But there was a point where such encounters between heroes was rare, even unheard of. So what was … Continue reading Lost Crossovers: The First Comic Book Crossover
You've waited long enough for another dose of my favorite Silver Age camp super hero strip, Archie's The Web. As we've gone over before, in an attempt to hop onto the super hero fad of the mid-60s, archie resurrected a number of their 1940s characters and presented them in what was almost a parody of … Continue reading Brand Ecch: Mighty Comics #43
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