While the early days of Marvel Comics were explosive and ultimately game-changing for the field, on a conceptual level they were not always quite as revolutionary as they sometimes seemed. A lot of the appeal of the line came down to the manner in which familiar ideas were executed, rather than the ideas themselves being … Continue reading The First Watcher
Talk about a disparity between title and visual! It would be difficult to come up with an image that less embodied the concept of SCARY TALES that this one, featuring a happy super hero whose body fragments into pieces comically battling a pair of thugs amidst a bright green forest. And that's because, like the … Continue reading Brand Echh: Scary Tales #38
Now this one is a bit of a strange aberration, one that I wasn't even aware of when it first saw print. SCARY TALES had been released intermittently by publisher Charlton filled with weird mystery stories of the sort that DC and other publishers were issuing--that is to say, stories that had twist endings or … Continue reading Brand Echh: Scary Tales #40
Thunderbunny was one of the more successful characters to come out of the world of amateur fan publishing. He was the creation of Martin L. Greim, who was a fan who published a well-regarded fanzine, THE COMIC CRUSADER, for several years beginning in the late 1960s. His final fan publication was a black and white … Continue reading Brand Echh: Charlton Bullseye #6
As we've spoken about in the past, Charlton Comics never really had a motivated interest in getting into the super hero field. They were quite happy most of the time to produce their line of largely-interchangeable war, romance, mystery, hot rod and western comics. But every once in a while, somebody at the organization would … Continue reading Brand Echh: Son of Vulcan #50
Charlton was pretty much the bottom rung of the comic book business. Yes, they published a lot of material, but it was always on the crappiest paper, and always had the worst distribution. What's more, it only rarely seemed as though anybody cared about what the content of these magazines was. One notable exception was … Continue reading Brand Echh: Thunderbolt #54
This issue of HERCULES was another book that I got out of the Modern Comics 3-Bags of comics that I purchased at the local Two Guys discount department store. And like the earlier issue that I spoke about, it wasn't a comic book that appealed to me, but figuring that Hercules was an Avenger over … Continue reading BHOC: HERCULES #10
Now this was another comic book that I welcomed--not so much for the lead Thunderbolt story as for the back-up featuring my new obscure favorites, the Sentinels. As with the other issue I had sampled, this one was reissued by Modern Comics in the 1970s. They had contracted to provide and sell 3-Bags of comic … Continue reading BHOC: THUNDERBOLT #58
Now, who would have ever thought that one day this would be a comic book and a character of note. It simply goes to show: you just never know what some future creator is going to be able to make something out of. PEACEMAKER #1 was one of two issues of the series reissued by … Continue reading BHOC: PEACEMAKER #1
In addition to the issue of THE MANY GHOSTS OF DOCTOR GRAVES that we spoke about yesterday, Modern Comics reissued at least one other issue of the series as a part of their line. This one, however, was entirely devoted to one-off weird tales, and consequently was of scant interest to me as a reader. … Continue reading BHOC: THE MANY GHOSTS OF DOCTOR GRAVES #25
The Tom Brevoort Experience 