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
As I talked about yesterday, for Christmas 1978 I was given the four existing volumes in the Marvel Origins trade paperback collection that up to that point existed. I had read SON OF ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS at my local library, but I was happy to have my own copy to go back to and … Continue reading BHOC: BRING ON THE BAD GUYS
By 1983, SUPERMAN was feeling a bit like a product of a different age. While some effort was being made to modernize the Man of Steel, including having Gil Kane provide covers as he does here, the actual contents of the magazine were still very much of a piece with the kinds of stories that … Continue reading GH: SUPERMAN #382
By 1983, DC was on a creative upswing. The arrival of new President and Publisher Jenette Kahn had coincided with efforts to expand DC's efforts into the growing Direct Market of comic book specialty shops that had sprung up across the country. At this time, DC's fortunes on the mainstream Newsstand weren't looking all that … Continue reading DC SAMPLER #1
The Tom Brevoort Experience 