There's a long-storied tradition among comics of having the writers and artists of those stories themselves be depicted within the very pages they are producing--creating an idealized heightened version of reality. While this was common across all companies, nobody did it as often or as brazenly as the creators working for Marvel. They truly went … Continue reading 5BC: Five Times Marvel Self-Mythologized
What goes around comes around, and when it comes to the often-fannishly-induced game of dropping in references benign or malicious to a competitor's characters, there isn't any company who is entirely blameless in this endeavor. Here then are five times Marvel referenced DC characters in interesting fashion. ADVENTURE INTO FEAR #17 - Steve Gerber was … Continue reading 5BC: Five Times Marvel Referenced DC Characters In Interesting Ways
If there's one thing that DC has loved to do over the years, it's to explore strange story avenues and then abandon them. In some ways, that's become their history ever since CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS--it feels that you can't go but a few years anymore until everything you've read is thrown out and they … Continue reading 5BC: Would You Believe Five More Forgotten DC Retcons
True to form, once I had made the leap to reading AVENGERS on a regular basis, I made may way back to the drug store, to dig through their Big Bin of Slightly Older Comics to see if I could find any other recent issues. I came away with two, this one and issue #152 … Continue reading BHOC: AVENGERS #141
Picking things up where we left off last week, above is the cover of FANTASTIC FOUR #186, the second of two issues that I bought on an unexpected trip to Heroes World in 1979. With the acquisition of this and the previous issue, my run of FF now stretched unbroken back to #181. #180 had … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #186
in the final years of the 1970s, the major comic book companies realized that centennial issues and other similar anniversary issues could be upsized and uppriced and bring in a heck of a lot more money for their respective companies. And so, this was the age where the centennial mega-special was really hatched. And it … Continue reading Perfect Game – JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #200
While I was at Heroes World, I took advantage of the rare opportunity to fill in a couple of the holes in my FANTASTIC FOUR collection, including this issue and the next. This finally bridged the gap between the new off-the-racks issues I had been buying and the older ones that had been showing up … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #185
As we left off yesterday, this was the second of the two AVENGERS issues that I purchased simultaneously on a Saturday in 1979 and which made me a regular reader of the title going forward. If I had to guess so many years later, I would suppose that it was the artwork which made me … Continue reading BHOC: AVENGERS #171
It was a weekend, I remember that much. I had a little bit of cash in my pocket (no idea where I would have gotten it from) and so I made an extra trek down to my regular 7-11 haunt to look at the spinner rack and see if there might be anything worth picking … Continue reading BHOC: AVENGERS #170
Another book that came to me out of a 3-Bag, this issue of FANTASTIC FOUR would have been the reason I bought the 3-Bag in question, regardless of what other titles might have been inside it. FF was, by this point, my favorite comic book series, and so an opportunity to fill in another missing … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #184
