I owned at least two copies of this first volume of THE X-MEN COMPANION, possibly three. And I got them for the stupidest of reasons. At the time, having relocated to a new development in Delaware, I was forced to get my comic books monthly via mail order from Geppi's Comic World. This meant filling … Continue reading FSC: THE X-MEN COMPANION I
I don't know that I ever borrowed this first MARVEL TREASURY EDITION from my grade school friend Donald Sims, but I definitely read it over at his house during one visit or another. And I can recall seeking him out a year or two later, when I was in Junior High, to offer to buy … Continue reading BC: MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #1
I had started to pick up the quarterly MARVEL TREASURY EDITIONS as a part of my comic book buying pattern. By this time, they had shifted from something that felt pretty special at the outset to just another regular publication, but they gave me a way in which to catch up on stories that I'd … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #22
As we recounted in passing last time, the arrival of creator Joe Simon and Jack Kirby to the Sandman strip that had been running in the back pages of ADVENTURE COMICS swiftly turned it into a popular feature once again. The stories were much improved, with a thematic thread of dreams running through them all, … Continue reading The Last Sandman Story
Continuing on with our survey of this long-lost volume that uses examples from comic books to illustrate points of filmmaking theory. A Don Heck panel there on the lower right. Some Gene Colan here. More Gene Colan. A Steve Ditko panel on the right. A Gil Kane Spider-Man panel. More Gene Colan and a Dick … Continue reading MOVIEMAKING ILLUSTRATED: THE COMICBOOK FILMBOOK, Part Three
Continuing back with our look at this 1973 release that explained elements of filmmaking storytelling and composition by using visual examples selected from contemporaneous Marvel comic books. This was a volume that could be found in many an artist's drawing space during the 1970s. A sequence illustrated by Larry Lieber. Here are two sequences by … Continue reading MOVIEMAKING ILLUSTRATED: THE COMICBOOK FILMBOOK, Part Two
I come from a family of readers, and so every time we'd go out to the mall or to another shopping center on the weekends, as typically happened most Saturdays, we almost always stopped into any bookstores that happened to be around. Our main destination, the Smith Haven Mall, had three if you can believe … Continue reading BHOC: INCREDIBLE HULK POCKET BOOKS Volume 2
Wildcat was one of the great second banana super heroes of the Golden Age of Comics--one who has become ostensibly more popular in more recent years than he was when his series was running in the back pages of SENSATION COMICS. Wildcat was champion prize-fighter Ted Grant who was inspired by the example of Green … Continue reading The Last Wildcat Story
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
By 1971, Stan Lee's career scripting comic books was winding down. While he'd remain in place as Marvel's Publisher for the remainder of the decade, he ceased scripting pretty much everything he had been working on, except for an occasional and far-between assignment. AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #96 is the first part of the last truly great … Continue reading 5BC: The Five Best Comic Books of 1971
The Tom Brevoort Experience 