BHOC: BRING ON THE BAD GUYS

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

BHOC: MARVEL TALES #99

I'd been waiting for this one, the second half of the Death of Gwen Stacy storyline, a saga that was already legendary by 1978 when I first got to read it. With Stan Lee having retired from scripting AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, incoming writer Gerry Conway and plotter and artist John Romita were looking to do something … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #99

BHOC: MARVEL TALES #98

Now this was a comic book that I had been eagerly anticipating for several months once I had realized that its reprinting was approaching in the sequence. By 1978, the demise of Gwen Stacy was established canon--even the original Clone storyline was finished by then--but the story of her death was still referenced and talked … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #98

WC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #17

This is a weirdly awkward cover, but one that works nonetheless. And I think it was new to me when I got this book, although I had read the story in this issue both in the third AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Pocket Books collection of classic issues, and MARVEL TALES (where a new cover had been commissioned.) … Continue reading WC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #17

Forgotten Masterpiece: EL SORPRENDENTE HOMBRE ARAÑA #128

This is a story that picked up a lot of chatter over the past few years, and there's a ton of misinformation out there about it--largely because the story has never been reprinted, nor published in English, so people would see fragments of it, hear part of the story behind it, and then jump to … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: EL SORPRENDENTE HOMBRE ARAÑA #128

BHOC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #179

I almost did it the previous month. That issue had a 1960s DC-style cover that promised an impossible situation for the wall-crawler to get out of, and it piqued my interest seeing it on the racks--though not quite enough to pick it up. Which is good, as it turns out, because as would happen again … Continue reading BHOC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #179