As I mentioned last week, on my trip to Ed's Coins and Stamps in the Sun-Vet Mall after graduating from 6th Grade, I bought not only the first part of the Doom patrol's crossover with CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, but also the concluding part in DOOM PATROL #102 as well. Ed's had a broad range … Continue reading BHOC: DOOM PATROL #102
Occasionally, a comic book story will appear that, while it's telling an engaging and emotionally-compelling tale, will have as its main focus some manner of experimentation with the very format of communicating comic book stories to the audience. These bits of formal experimentation were typically very memorable for the way in which the story was … Continue reading 5BC: Five Mainstream Stories That Played With The Format of Comics
This issue of LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES was the culmination of the Great Darkness Saga, a storyline that had been building in the tile over the preceding couple of months. It was the storyline that really put the Legion on the map in terms of becoming an enormously popular fan favorite series. Prior to this, the … Continue reading FSC: LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #294
Every time that I'd gone to Ed's Coins and Stamps in the Sun-Vet Mall, I had availed myself of their back issues of DOOM PATROL. They had an extensive run of issues, and I had started out by buying #100 and continuing forward chronologically. But the next issue of DOOM PATROL that I was to … Continue reading BHOC: CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN #48
Ed's Coins and Stamps, the collectibles dealer whose shop was in the Sun-Vet Mall where I had gone to spend a bunch of my sixth grade graduation money was more of the DC shop than a Marvel one in terms of the back issues they had in stock. They weren't entirely bereft of Marvel material--I … Continue reading BHOC: THE FLASH #139
In 1982, there was no comic book that I thought more highly of than NEW TEEN TITANS. It was a perfect synthesis of all of the elements that I liked in both the Marvel and DC titles of the day, a time when the two had very different flavors. But NEW TEEN TITANS bridged that … Continue reading FSC: NEW TEEN TITANS ANNUAL #1
In the fall of 1975, SHAZAM continued to limp along. The once-promising launch of one of the greatest and best-remembered comic book characters of the Golden Age had been reduced to being a quarterly reprint title, kept alive only due to the success of the similarly-named Saturday Morning live action television program. This was something … Continue reading BC: SHAZAM #22
It was at this point that I graduated from sixth grade and from grade school entirely. This was considered a bit of a momentous occasion, and so I wound up getting gifts from many of my relatives--gifts that mostly amounted to cash. I wound up with over $100.00 in my pocket, more money than I … Continue reading BHOC: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #8
Another benefit to my new comic-buying locale, the Stationery Store in the new supermarket mall, was that it also carried all of the limited series that started to appear at this time. Inspired by the television success of projects such as ROOTS, which aired for a limited span of time and was promoted as a … Continue reading BHOC: WORLD OF KRYPTON #3
A year or two ago, I was on a convention panel where I was able to tell former X-MEN editor Louise Simonson just how much she'd screwed all of those X-MEN editors who came after her with her performance in that role in 1982. An incredible number of high-quality releases came out of the X-Men … Continue reading FSC: MARVEL AND DC PRESENT THE UNCANNY X-MEN AND THE NEW TEEN TITANS #1
