I wasn't used to Marvel titles wrapping up their runs cleanly. In my experience, when a Marvel book would come to an end--such as CHAMPIONS or NOVA--the series would be left in a cliffhanger state with outstanding business left to be wrapped up. That business would generally get tied off in some other Marvel book … Continue reading BHOC: GODZILLA #24
My grade school friend Donald Sims had inherited a bunch of comic books from some older relative who had tired of them and passed them along. He mostly had a smattering of stuff, but there was one complete run among his possessions. And that was SHAZAM, DC's 1970s revival of the original Captain Marvel, a … Continue reading BC: SHAZAM #1
Flo Steinberg came to the notice of comic book fandom during the early 1960s, during the initial flowering of what became the Marvel Age of Comics. As Marvel's corresponding secretary, she was, among other things, charged with answering the volumes of fan mail that came in for editor Stan Lee, and so the various active … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: BIG APPLE COMIX #1
We talked about this last time, I believe, but GREEN LANTERN (co-staring GREEN ARROW) was in something of a malaise at this time. It was still a book I bought faithfully, but I was finding myself less and less enamored of its content. Quite often, it felt like the logo was backwards, and that it … Continue reading BHOC: GREEN LANTERN #117
My memory of things is that GREEN LANTERN entered into a bit of a doldrums as a series at about this time, one that held on at least until Green Arrow was given his eviction notice from the series and really up until Marv Wolfman began to write it a couple of years later. It … Continue reading BHOC: GREEN LANTERN #116
I was still regularly following GREEN LANTERN (co-starring GREEN ARROW) but to be honest I was enjoying it less and less. I'd first encountered the character as a back-up strip in THE FLASH where his adventures were galactic in nature. But in this book, it was clear that the writers and editors weren't entirely comfortable … Continue reading BHOC: GREEN LANTERN #115
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
For almost the entirety of its run, I had been a regular reader of BATMAN FAMILY. But during the famous DC Implosion, in which DC's publishing line was significantly pruned back, BATMAN FAMILY had been merged with DETECTIVE COMICS in an effort to keep the series that the company had been named after alive. Clearly, … Continue reading BHOC: DETECTIVE COMICS #483
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
Super heroes as a genre were on their way out as the 1960s turned into the 1970s and the super hero fad that had driven success throughout the silver age fell away. But this meant that publishers were more encouraged to experiment than they had been previously in an attempt to stave off cancellation--and every … Continue reading 5BC: The Five Best Comic Books of 1970
The Tom Brevoort Experience 