My younger brother Ken came along with my grandparents and I on that trip to Ed's Coins and Stamps in the Sun-Vet Mall. And accordingly, he wound up buying a couple comic books as well. Ken was never as into the medium and the characters as I was, but like any kid of that era, … Continue reading BHOC: CONAN THE BARBARIAN #42
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
This is the third and final part of our survey of the first issue of future Marvel Executive Editor Mark Gruenwald's classic fanzine OMNIVERSE, which dealt with the question of consistent reality in comic book stories. Or continuity, as it is more typically thought of. While it didn't quite reach the heights of a scientific … Continue reading OMNIVERSE #1, Part Three
Continuing in our look at Mark Gruenwald's pre-Marvel fanzine OMNIVERSE, dedicated to examining consistency in the depiction of fictional realities in comic books. After a write-up of several recent science fiction stories, Gruenwald takes it upon himself to review several recently-released comic books to see if they measure up to his own beliefs and standards … Continue reading OMNIVERSE #1, Part Two
In the late 1970s, before he would go on to be hired by Marvel Comics as an assistant editor, Mark Gruenwald published two issues of his fanzine OMNIVERSE. Unlike most other fan publications, OMNIVERSE was dedicated to examining a single principle when it came to comic book fiction: the consistency of continuity across fictional realities, … Continue reading OMNIVERSE #1
As the Direct Market opened up at the beginning of the 1980s, a deluge of new publishers rushed in to ply their wares before this new dedicated comics-dedicated audience. One of the earliest companies in this period was Eclipse, founded by brothers Jan and Dean Mullaney. They had started out as publishers by printing Don … Continue reading Brand Echh: Eclipse Magazine #7
This was another issue of AVENGERS that I dug out of my drug store's Big Bin of Slightly Older Comics one day, the oldest issue I had yet had an opportunity to read. I had only just taken the plunge into reading AVENGERS--never would I have thought that someday I would not only edit the … Continue reading BHOC: AVENGERS #139
Now that I had begun to pick up AMAZING SPIDER-MAN as a new series, I also did the typical thing and began being open to buying somewhat older issues of the title out of my local drugstore's Big Bin of Slightly Older Comics made up of affidavit returns that were intended to have been destroyed. … Continue reading BHOC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #160
Finally, we come to the last comic that I bought on that fateful first trip to a comic book store--the Heroes World in Levittown. I had only just begun reading X-MEN, but this was both an issue #100 (which I already understood to be a milestone issue regardless of the title) and also had the … Continue reading BHOC: X-MEN #100
The Tom Brevoort Experience 