Taking a look here at the back half of FOOM #3, the third issue of Marvel's in-house fan club magazine as packaged and produced by Jim Steranko. In the days before formal indexes and Marvel Masterworks volumes and the internet, these Indexes to the major titles were a bit of a godsend for information freaks, … Continue reading FOOM #3, Part Two
FOOM #3 was the third issue of the fan magazine put out by the Marvel fan club of the same name, edited and composed by Jim Steranko and evidencing his design sensibilities. It's a window into the world of the Marvel-that-was, the Marvel of yesteryear. When the venture was started, nobody involved was quite sure … Continue reading FOOM #3
In 1972, Marvel Comics entered its second phase. Editor Stan Lee had been promoted to Publisher and, momentarily, President, and Roy Thomas had been made his successor. What's more, former owner Martin Goodman was gone, as was the limitation on how many releases the company could put out which had been imposed upon them by … Continue reading THE CLAWS OF THE CAT #5: The Lost Issue
It's maybe hard to believe when viewed from the vantage point of 60 years of additional history, but heading into the Silver Age of Comics, the Atom was at one point a successful and viable character--more viable than, say, Hawkman, whom he beat to having a series to call his own and in gaining membership … Continue reading WC: THE ATOM #16
THE ATOM is one of those Silver Age series that never entirely made a huge impact on be back when I was a young collector. But looking back on these issues today, I can appreciate the skill with which these stories were created. In that early 1960s period, DC's staff was still very concerned about … Continue reading WC: THE ATOM #11
Continuing our look through the first issue of FOOM, aka Friends Of Ol' Marvel, the fan magazine published by the House of Ideas throughout much of the 1970s. The first four issues were put together by artist and graphic designer Jim Steranko, and his visual approach is apparent throughout. Having failed twice under publisher Martin … Continue reading FOOM #1, Part Two
This issue of MYSTERY IN SPACE, another book that I got in my Windfall Comics purchase of 1988, sports another of those great halftone covers that DC production man Jack Adler was experimenting with. The added texture does give the piece a nice painterly quality, as well as far more subtlety than the typical DC … Continue reading WC: MYSTERY IN SPACE #55
This issue of GREEN LANTERN was noteworthy right on the face of it, as it featured one of production maven Jack Adler's washtone cover treatments on Gil Kane's illustration. These washtone pieces were experimented with on assorted DC titles in the late 1950s and early 1960s, most often the war books. But as far as … Continue reading WC: GREEN LANTERN #8
This was the very last issue of TWO-GUN KID that Marvel published. A string of issues that went back to 1948 (with admittedly several gaps) came to a final end here. I wasn't aware of that when I got this comic, nor did I get to enjoy this great Gil Kane cover--Kane was doing new … Continue reading BHOC: TWO-GUN KID #136
I came across another stash of these Mexican issues of LA SORPRENDENTE HOMBRE ARANA that were published in the early 1970s, many of which contained new never-translated stories created exclusively for the Spanish-speaking marketplace by local talent, so popular was Spider-Man in those regions at the time that it had exhausted the supply of American … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: EL SORPRENDENTE HOMBRE ARANA #165
The Tom Brevoort Experience 