After a few false starts and doglegs, Dave Sim found his footing as his long-running Church and State storyline began to build up steam. Now paired with Gerhard, whose elaborate and expressive environments made the Earth-Pig's world more fully realized than ever, Sim was more free to focus on plot, character, world-building and even the … Continue reading 5BC: Five Best Comics of 1985
There was another 7-11 in my local area, one that was further away than my regular haunt and which was in a more secluded out-of-the-way area. So it was a place that I didn't go to regularly, but every once-in-a-while I might find myself there. It was definitely a place that I would check if … Continue reading BHOC: DAREDEVIL #149
I continued, as opportunity and funds allowed, to explore the Marvel characters whose exploits I had enjoyed in the SON OF ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS volume I had read at my local library. The next of these that I picked up was DAREDEVIL, here celebrating his landmark 150th issue. This was a pretty decent place … Continue reading BHOC: DAREDEVIL #150
I was regularly haunting the section of the Sachem Public Library that contained books on or about comics, not just for that elusive copy of ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS (which I never did find there) but also for anything else of interest. I took out and read a bunch of books from that section, many … Continue reading BHOC: ALL IN COLOR FOR A DIME
1981 was a year of many anniversaries, and many anniversary issues as a result. This 25th anniversary issue of FLASH was built around a premise that was even then a bit old: Barry Allen wakes up in a hospital room, his body paralyzed and horribly scarred from the accident when lightning struck his police laboratory. … Continue reading 5BC: Five Best Comics of 1981
It's perhaps difficult to see from the vantage point of so many years later, but this issue of X-MEN was a game-changer when it came out, and cemented the popularity of the series at the top of the Direct Market sales charts for a decade and a half. Powerful, unexpected, emotional, this comic generated both … Continue reading 5BC: Five Best Comics of 1980
This issue of MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE featured John Byrne's first outing with the team as both writer and artist, a time travel adventure that had Ben Grimm coming face-to-face with the earliest version of himself as seen and characterized in FANTASTIC FOUR #1 and #2. Byrne does a great job of capturing the period of the … Continue reading 5BC: Five Best Comics of 1979
