In 1988, Eclipse comics was celebrating its ten-year anniversary as a publisher. Founded by Jan and Dean Mullaney, Eclipse was one of the earliest entrants into the nascent Direct Sales marketplace of Comic Book specialty shops. The company was also a proponent of creator-ownership and offered a better publishing arrangement than the mainstream outfits of … Continue reading Brand Echh: TOTAL ECLIPSE #1
My year of frustration continued with FANTASTIC FOUR #207, another issue of my favorite title that I first saw out in the world in spinner racks the week that it came out. But having won a free subscription to the series, I had to wait until my copy finally made its way to me through … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #207
MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #49 was another junky, lifeless issue of what had become a largely junky, lifeless series. There was improvement just around the corner, though, and while I didn't know that at the time, my critical standards at the age of twelve were pretty meager. I liked the Thing and the Fantastic Four, and so … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #49
SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES was one of those titles that consistently failed to hook me for the long term. It always felt like a series i should really enjoy, with an awesome variety of futuristic heroes. But I found most of the individual issues no better than okay. Every so often, something would … Continue reading BHOC: SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #247
The next week, a new issue of FANTASTIC FOUR was released, thus reassuring me that my having missed the much-coveted issue #200 was a fluke. This was during the period when a new Fantastic Four cartoon series was running on NBC on Saturday Mornings--this was the version that replaced the Human Torch with HERBIE the … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #202
Boy, it's hard to believe that the scantily-clad woman strung up on the center of this THOR cover will one day wield the hammer herself and become the title character. But such are the ways of time and comic books. And female imperilment was a leaned-upon trope in the 1970s when it came to selling … Continue reading BHOC: THOR #279
Once again, my weekly sojourn to my local 7-11 on Thursday resulted in a small haul of new comic book issues. Among those books I purchased this week was the latest outing of SUPERMAN, a title that I had been following with regularity for a year or two. Unbeknownst to me, this would be the … Continue reading BHOC: SUPERMAN #325
This is the third and final part of our look at the "Spirit Jam" story published by Kitchen Sink Press in THE SPIRIT Magazine #30 and overseen by publisher Denis Kitchen and associate editor Cat Yronwode. This was the first new full-length Spirit story produced since the reprint editions of the 1960s, and the first … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: THE SPIRIT #30, Part Three
Continuing on with our survey of the "Spirit Jam", the all-new story featuring Will Eisner's celebrated golden age character produced Jam-style by a bevy of top cartoonists and comic book artists and writers of the era, under the auspices of publisher Denis Kitchen and associate editor Cat Yronwode. Picking things up where we left off, … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: THE SPIRIT #30, Part Two
Will Eisner's THE SPIRIT is rightly hailed as one of the masterpiece comic series of all time. Between 1940 and 1952, Eisner and his studio of assistants produced a weekly comic book as a newspaper insert, as a hedge for newspapers against the growing readership of comic books. While the lead character of the Spirit … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: THE SPIRIT #30
The Tom Brevoort Experience 