5BC: Five Times Super Heroes Met Real People

Crossovers among characters originating in different comic books have become by this point so commonplace as to not even be worthy of notice, and crossovers between characters from different publishing entities have similarly increased to the point where, while they've still got a bit of built-in excitement to them, they're still relatively commonplace. But the … Continue reading 5BC: Five Times Super Heroes Met Real People

HEMBECK 1980: Fred Hembeck Reviews SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE

One of my absolute favorite creators in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s and beyond was Fred Hembeck. I first encountered his work as a single-tier strip on DC's in-house promotional page, the Daily Planet. Eventually, my friend Glenn Hauman showed me one of the collections of Fred's material that were being released by … Continue reading HEMBECK 1980: Fred Hembeck Reviews SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE

BHOC: DEFENDERS #62

Now this issue was the beginning of a three-part epic that is probably my favorite DEFENDERS story of all time. That said, it's a story that, by necessity, turns something like a dozen and a half Marvel characters into little more than action figures that do what the plot requires without any concern about the … Continue reading BHOC: DEFENDERS #62

BHOC: SUPERMAN #310

This issue was another comic that I picked up in a plastic bag of cover-stripped return books sold illicitly through my local drug store outlet. I was happy to get it, as it represented the beginning of Marty Pasko's stint as writer of the series. I had only begun following SUPERMAN regularly again with the … Continue reading BHOC: SUPERMAN #310

Forgotten Masterpiece: THE SPIRIT #30

Will Eisner's THE SPIRIT is rightly hailed as one of the masterpiece comic series of all time. Between 1940 and 1952, Eisner and his studio of assistants produced a weekly comic book as a newspaper insert, as a hedge for newspapers against the growing readership of comic books. While the lead character of the Spirit … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: THE SPIRIT #30

Forgotten Masterpiece: THE MANY GHOSTS OF DOCTOR GRAVES #5

I'm pretty certain that it was Fred Hembeck who turned me on to this super-cool short story buried in this obscure issue of Charlton's mystery anthology series THE MANY GHOSTS OF DOCTOR GRAVES. Series such as this one were plentiful in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, each issue filled to the brim with … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: THE MANY GHOSTS OF DOCTOR GRAVES #5