By 1936, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had begun to contribute stories and features to the small line of comic books published by Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, a firm that eventually would grow into becoming DC Comics. While they'd had no success in getting anybody to bite on their sensational brainchild Superman, the pair paid the … Continue reading The Predecessors of Superman: Federal Men
Pretty much everyone knows the story by now. Having conceived of their adventure strip about an indestructible, super-strong crusader for justice in the early 1930s, creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (and sometimes other, different artists) spent the next five or six years trying to find a buyer for what they felt confident was a … Continue reading The Second Superman Story
The marketing build-up to the premiere of SUPERMAN THE MOVIE was gathering speed, and one of the benefits of it was this, the final FAMOUS 1st EDITION that DC produced during the 1970s (though they'd bring the format back to a limited degree in recent years.) These were Treasury Edition sized reproductions of the most … Continue reading BHOC: FAMOUS 1st EDITION #C-61
I've been doing a deep dive of late into the early days of Superman, researching everything that is known or can be established about the development, purchase and evolution of the Man of Steel across his first decade, when he became virtually immediately a Pop Culture Phenomenon that conquered all forms of mass media simultaneously. … Continue reading The Selling of Superman: Correspondence between Jack Liebowitz and Jerry Siegel
Sheldon Mayer is one of the most important figures in the Golden Age of Comics, though he's one that relatively few people have heard about. An obsessive cartoonist, Mayer broke into the business at a young age, in the era in which comic books were just starting out. For a time, he worked at the … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: Scribbly Returns!
I only became aware of this story recently, and it has an aspect to it that may have been overlooked to some. So I'm going to feature it here. In the postwar era, the public's taste in comic books shifted away from super heroes towards other genres. Notably, humor comics became quite popular, and like … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: ALL FUNNY COMICS #16
Another batch of vintage photographs of comic book creators taken in years past. As usual, there are a number of these that revolve around Stan Lee, probably the most photographed creator of the era. Roy Thomas wearing the first Spider-Man personal appearance costume at a comic convention in 1966 A sleepy Herb Trimpe in the … Continue reading Comics Creators in the Wild 5
For most of the Golden Age of Comics, the partnership of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had been a sales juggernaut. While they had their occasional flops, more often than not the combo was responsible for hit after hit--enough so that their names would sometimes be called on in the advertising, something that typically was … Continue reading Brand Echh: The Double Life of Private Strong #1
The Tom Brevoort Experience 