AVENGERS #150 was another book that was in the collection of my friend David Steckel, and which I borrowed from him to read at some point or another. It was a noteworthy issue for a couple of reasons, most of them not great. First off, it was one of if not the first comic book … Continue reading BC: AVENGERS #150
At the time when I started getting into Marvel Comics in the late 1970s, WHAT IF was considered something of a special book, at least among my small circle of comic-reading acquaintances. For one thing, it was oversized, meaning that it was both thicker and meatier than the average comic of that period, more like … Continue reading BC: WHAT IF #1
Here's another book that I picked up on my post-grade school graduation trip to Bush's Hobbies in Ronkonkoma. I had been slowly filling in a complete run of MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS, the title that eventually changed its name to MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS and in which the earliest FANTASTIC FOUR stories were reprinted. I wanted … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS #19
On that selfsame trip to Bush's Hobbies following my graduation from grade school, I indulged in my interest in golden age comics by picking up this issue of FANTASY MASTERPIECES, which reprinted the first battle between the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, a story I had read about previously in Jim Steranko's HISTORY OF COMICS. … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASY MASTERPIECES #8
As I've spoken about numerous times on this page, I was relatively limited in what I was looking for in my comic books. I was a super hero guy, and so none of the other genres which were then still readily available when I started reading the books in the 1970s were of any real … Continue reading BC: GIANT-SIZE SPIDER-MAN #1
I always preferred buying original books to reprints, in part because many of the reprints of the times were cut down to fit shorter page counts. But this didn't really become a major issue for me for another year or so yet. At the time that I made this post-grade-school-graduation trip to Bush's Hobbies, I … Continue reading BHOC: GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #5
This issue of LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES was the culmination of the Great Darkness Saga, a storyline that had been building in the tile over the preceding couple of months. It was the storyline that really put the Legion on the map in terms of becoming an enormously popular fan favorite series. Prior to this, the … Continue reading FSC: LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #294
My buddy David Steckel and I were both enormous fans of the Fantastic Four, which was one of the things that brought us together in the first place. So we'd regularly let one another borrow and read the assorted issues that we had that he other did not. Which is how I wound up taking … Continue reading BC: GIANT-SIZE FANTASTIC FOUR #3
Every time that I'd gone to Ed's Coins and Stamps in the Sun-Vet Mall, I had availed myself of their back issues of DOOM PATROL. They had an extensive run of issues, and I had started out by buying #100 and continuing forward chronologically. But the next issue of DOOM PATROL that I was to … Continue reading BHOC: CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN #48
As I've mentioned before, my friend David Steckel, whom I'd met through the Sachem School District's gifted student program, was a much a fan of the Fantastic Four as I was. What's more, he had inherited a bunch of comics from an older relative who had outgrown them, so he had an assortment of older … Continue reading BC: FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #10
The Tom Brevoort Experience 