It's one of the big, fundamental questions that lies at the heart of the origin-myth of perhaps Marvel Comics' most popular single character, and its one that has been discussed and debated at length by those with some degree of insider information: how much did Jack Kirby have to do with the development of Spider-Man, … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Simon & Ditko & Oleck: The Spider and the Fly
This unassuming issue of BETTY AND VERONICA from 1962 contains within its pages the greatest Betty and Veronica story ever produced! You literally do not need to read a single additional story after this one--it sums up the extremes of the relationships perfectly. A true lost classic! The Grand Comics Database credits this story to … Continue reading The Greatest Betty and Veronica Story Ever Told!
In the early 1980s, as the comic book Direct Market began to become a real sales force in the industry, the way was opened up for all sorts of new, smaller companies (and individuals) to publish their own comic books and potentially strike it rich. There was now a ready-made distribution network of specialty stores … Continue reading Brand Echh – The Crusaders #1
Captain America was not the first patriotically-themed super hero to appear in comic books. That honor is reserved for The Shield, headliner of PEP COMICS for MLJ (eventually ARCHIE) who first appeared in the inaugural issue of that series, the creation of Harry Shorten and Irv Novick. Like most of the early super heroes, the … Continue reading Making The Shield Into Captain America
For the first thirty to forty years of super hero comics, it was a rarity for a super hero to meet his maker. While the death and resurrection of super hero characters has now become de rigeur, for much of the publishing history of such characters, stories of this nature were few and far between. … Continue reading The Last Comet Story
Hey, it's been a while since we last dropped in on my favorite of the Archie/Mighty Comics heroes, the hen-pecked Web. So let's see what he's been up to. As with the previous installments--and, really, all of the various Mighty Comics releases--the story is a painful rip-off attempting to channel the Marvel style of the … Continue reading Brand Echh – Fly Man #38
In their masterful two-issue summation of the WORLD'S WORST COMICS, James Schumeister and Rich Larson gave a particular adroit description of the books put out under the Mighty Comics banner. They said that it was as though Russian spies had smuggled out a copy of a Marvel book and had tried to reverse-engineer it. That … Continue reading Brand Echh – Fly Man #35
Pretty sure this ARCHIE’S MADHOUSE cover is by Harry Lucey, and it’s a bit more surreal than is typical of the Archie fare of its day–MADHOUSE being the title in which Archie went for surrealism. It’s a very simple idea, almost so simple that you wonder why it never happened before. The only misstep to … Continue reading Great Covers – ARCHIE’S MADHOUSE #2
Great use of color on this JOSIE cover by Dan DeCarlo. Everything pops, and the typography combined with the color treatment conveys the mood of the era well.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 