Every once in a while, my mother would go to a more outlying supermarket when she needed something in particular, something that apparently wasn't carried by our local store. In that same shopping mall there was a card store or a candy store that sold comics. And that's where I came across this issue of … Continue reading BHOC: HOWARD THE DUCK #31
MAGAZINELAND, USA was a giveaway comic book designed for the celebration on June 18, 1977, which had been proclaimed World Color Press Day. World Color were the printers for virtually all of the comic books that were then available on the nation's newsstands, including the output of DC, Marvel, Archie, Harvey and others. Accordingly, those … Continue reading Lost Crossovers: MAGAZINELAND, USA #1
For a hot moment in the mid-1970s, it seemed as though funny animal comics were poised to make a comeback. A lot of this interest stemmed from the huge demand for HOWARD THE DUCK #1, which drove up the back issue prices of that issue. Nobody yet entirely realized how manipulation at the distributor level … Continue reading Brand Echh: Quack #1
This was another comic book that I got rather than bought--another "extra" in one of those plastic-wrapped bundled of coverless comic books that my local drug store had begun to sell. I bought the bundle in question for other books, but this one came along with them, and thus it was mine. And to be … Continue reading BHOC: HOWARD THE DUCK #18
DESTROYER DUCK #1 was a stopping point in a much larger saga, one that I'll recount the broad strokes of momentarily. It was also a benefit book published by Eclipse, work on which was provided free by all of the contributors in support of the underlying cause of the book in the first place. It … Continue reading Brand Echh: Destroyer Duck #1
As assorted readers pointed out, there were a lot more instances of creators at both Marvel and DC including themselves as characters in the stories that they produced than I covered in the prior two pieces about Self-Mythologizing. And so, since this is a concept that seems to have attracted some audience interest, here then … Continue reading 5BC: Five More Times Marvel Self-Mythologized
It's a difficult thing to talk about the work of Dave Sim these days. For a start, he's fallen largely into obscurity since his masterwork, the 300-issue CEREBUS series, wrapped up in 2003. And the back half of that run was tainted by Sim's growing misogyny, his strange and often-deliberately-provocative belief that women had been … Continue reading Perfect Game – CEREBUS #36
Comic books for years were considered a juvenile medium, and that sensibility often extended to the behavior of the practitioners in the field. Like those who work in any other industries, not all comic book creators get along, and on occasion some of them have felt the need to take their aggression out in public, … Continue reading 5BC: Five Mean Caricatures of Comic Book Creators
I bought this issue of DEFENDERS from out of the local drugstore's Big Bin of Slightly Out-Of-Date Comics, one of my usual haunts for picking up books and the closest thing I had to a ready source of back issues in 1977. I can't say what drew me to in in particular, apart from simply … Continue reading BHOC: DEFENDERS #30
It was like a little miracle, a book that couldn't and possibly shouldn't ever happen. But happen it did--and SUPERMAN VS THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was an excellent mixing of the then-contemporary styles of Marvel and DC, very different flavors in that period. The creative team was spot on, anchored by Gerry Conway and Ross Andru, … Continue reading 5BC: Five Best Comics of 1976
The Tom Brevoort Experience 