FSC: DAREDEVIL #181

Going into 1982, there was no comic book series that was of greater interest to me and my small collection of comic book reading friends as DAREDEVIL. The title had been gaining momentum ever since newcomer artist Frank Miller had been brought on to pencil it a year or two earlier. Miller's storytelling chops were … Continue reading FSC: DAREDEVIL #181

BHOC: DAREDEVIL #159

I had no way of knowing it at the time, but we were heading into what is largely considered the best, most significant run on DAREDEVIL of all time. I had been enjoying the series just fine since I first started reading it several months previously, and I didn't really sense a shift in the … Continue reading BHOC: DAREDEVIL #159

BHOC: DAREDEVIL #158

Well, I'd known this day was coming for several months now, but it was somehow always a surprise when it happened--typically because I was used to budgeting against a particular amount, and now all of those calculations were in the wind again. This issue of DAREDEVIL was the first book I bought where the cover … Continue reading BHOC: DAREDEVIL #158

5BC: Five Middling Marvel/DC Crossover Books

With a big Omnibus collecting all of them coming out any time, my mind has been drawn to the assorted authorized crossovers undertaken by rival companies Marvel and DC over the years. Some of those stories were triumphs, sagas that compared and contrasted the characters involved skillfully, and which were just crackerjack entertaining in their … Continue reading 5BC: Five Middling Marvel/DC Crossover Books

5BC: Five Times Two Heroes Were Better Than One

Over the course of comic book history, the fortunes of super heroes as a genre waxed and waned as tastes changed and the marketplace shifted. This led to moments where a series that was once popular had fallen upon hard times or was seen as being out of step with the era, and needed to … Continue reading 5BC: Five Times Two Heroes Were Better Than One

GH: WHAT IF #38

For the first couple of years of its existence, WHAT IF was a really good comic book. Creators seemed to come up with premises that allowed them to tell stories that took familiar characters in wild new directions, and the outcomes of those stories were all over the map. So it was a fascinating series … Continue reading GH: WHAT IF #38

GH: DAREDEVIL #193

For the past couple of years, DAREDEVIL had been one of the best and strongest titles in the industry, mainly under the guiding hand of writer/penciler Frank Miller. Miller completely shifted the emphasis and the tone of the series, making it into much more a crime noir book, and being inventive with his storytelling and … Continue reading GH: DAREDEVIL #193

BHOC: PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #28

This was the second of two issues of PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN that were illustrated by a young Frank Miller, before that name really meant anything. Even more meaningfully, Daredevil, the character he would go on to reinvent, was a guest star in these two issues as well. It almost feels like fate. At … Continue reading BHOC: PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #28

BHOC: DAREDEVIL #157

In 1979, DAREDVIL was a series that had been limping along for years. Perhaps its only saving grace, the thing that kept it from being cancelled, was the fact that it was one of the original Marvel titles that had been launched at the start of the 1960s at the dawn of the Marvel Age. … Continue reading BHOC: DAREDEVIL #157

BHOC: DAREDEVIL #156

This next issue of DAREDEVIL featured the return of a hallmark of the series. Not DD's original yellow costume--something that I was excited to see, having read the first DAREDEVIL issue in SON OF ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS--but rather artist Gene Colan returning to the book that he'd labored on for many years throughout the … Continue reading BHOC: DAREDEVIL #156