There was a little smokes shop or candy store two or three doors down from the barber where I’d be sent to get my hair cut (”Tell him you want it styled”, my father would say to me, handing me a few bills to pay for everything.) that carried a tiny selection of comics. I’m … Continue reading BHOC: DETECTIVE COMICS #465
It had been a while since I’d picked up a copy of ACTION COMICS. I can’t be sure this many years after the fact, but I’m guessing that the fact that the Flash guest-starred in this one was the tipping point needed to get me (or really my parents) to plunk down thirty cents. I … Continue reading BHOC: ACTION COMICS #465
My Uncle Jerry Blazer was a house-painted by trade. He and his wife, my Aunt Clementine, lived with my grandparents in a big house that they’d all moved into simultaneously around 1955. So he was a constant fixture in my life, though not seen quite so often as my Grandparents were. He was also the … Continue reading BHOC: WORLD’S FINEST COMICS #226
There was a little candy store a door or two down from the barber shop where I’d go to get my hair cut. They carried a small selection of comic books–not many, as I recall, and also not that current. It was there after one such head-shearing that I purchased this issue of BRAVE AND … Continue reading BHOC: BRAVE AND THE BOLD #130
This is another comic book that was bought for my brother Ken, an event that was happening with greater and greater frequency. It was an interesting experiment, doing a book like THE JOKER, especially under the constraints of the Comics Code. Given that, it’s not hard to see why it failed–the very premise of the … Continue reading BHOC: THE JOKER #9
SUPER-TEAM FAMILY was becoming a regular purchase, a cool grab-bag of classic reprints every issue with no particular rhyme or reason save for a loose adherence to the concept of team-ups. I say loose because a World’s Finest story with Superman, Batman and Robin wasn’t difficult to come by, nor was a Marvel Family tale … Continue reading BHOC: SUPER-TEAM FAMILY #6
Direct from the 7-11 came this next issue of SUPER-TEAM FAMILY, a giant-sized reprint series that was very much my meat during my early collecting days. Every issue featured team-up stories between different heroes, so here we get Batman and Eclipso and Superman and Superboy, all wrapped up in a fairly uninspired cover by Ernie … Continue reading BHOC: SUPER-TEAM FAMILY #5
Another book that I think was bought for my brother. There are a couple of these right around this time all at once, so the only thing I can figure is that maybe one of them was actually intended for my second brother, Joe. Either way, I ended up with all of these books in the … Continue reading BHOC: WORLD’S FINEST COMICS #238
My youngest brother Mike was born at around the time I got this Treasury Edition, which might even explain why I got both this one and the previous SUPER-VILLAINS one, either as an affirmation of parental love in the face of a new arrival, or simply as a way of keeping me entertained as bigger, … Continue reading BHOC: LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-44
The first SECRET ORIGINS OF SUPER-VILLAINS treasury edition must have done some business, because before you knew it, this follow-up was on the stands and in my hands. The cover, while very nicely executed, is a little bit confusing, as of the three villains placed most prominently on the piece, two of them (Bizarro and Captain … Continue reading BHOC: LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-45
The Tom Brevoort Experience 