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
It really is something to look at the development of the Marvel line during the formative years between 1961 and 1965. It's pretty amazing how all of the key strips would take these sudden surges in quality, that the material kept getting better, stronger and more polished, and the ambition got greater and greater as … Continue reading WC: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #120
Every year, the Smith Haven Mall near to where I lived held a week-long crafts fair. For seven days, assorted artists and craftspeople would set up little booths throughout the Mall and hock their wares. And every year, there wound up being two or three guys selling back issue comic books out of cardboard boxes. … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS #1
It must be said that Jack Kirby's time at DC in the early 1970s was not without its difficulties. There are all sorts of theories for this, ranging from editorial fear to jealousy to a simple dislike for the King's work among portions of the staff. What he was doing definitely didn't fit in smoothly … Continue reading (Not So) Great Covers: FOREVER PEOPLE #3 and MISTER MIRACLE #3
I knew what would be coming up ahead of time in each issue of MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS, as I owned the George Olshevsky FANTASTIC FOUR INDEX https://tombrevoort.com/2019/11/24/bhoc-official-marvel-index-4/ So I knew that we were honing in on FANTASTIC FOUR #100, an issue that I was interested in entirely due to its centennial nature. Even then, the … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #80
If there's one thing that's become apparent over the past 80 years of comic book publishing, it's that death sells. The demise of a beloved character can create great interest in a series, as well as potentially delivering an emotional impact that the audience will remember. The whole job of storytelling is to evoke a … Continue reading The First Marvel Fatality
Here is another example of the phenomenon that we looked at last time: a perfectly fine cover image by Jack Kirby that has been deliberately colored in such a way as to render it unattractive and unappealing. As I said last time, going to this sort of monochromatic color scheme was a last ditch move … Continue reading (Not So) Great Covers: FANTASTIC FOUR #81 (and MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #63)
You'd see this happen from time to time in the mid- to late-1960s on the Marvel books. There's be a cover like this one that somebody--either editor Stan Lee or publisher Martin Goodman--didn't like, feeling that it was too cluttered and difficult to read from a distance, and it would get colored in a horrific … Continue reading (Not So) Great Covers: THOR #153
The opening up of the Direct Sales marketplace, comprised of a string of independently-operated comic book specialty shops across the Nation and eventually the globe--offered up new promise in terms of the way in which comic books were sold. Up to this point, Comics were sold like any other periodical publication: a print run was … Continue reading Brand Echh: JCP Features the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1
By the time this issue of JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY was published, he series had crystalized into its final form. The short one-off adventures of the Thunder God Thor now gave way to an impressively long serialized story that ran consistently from issue to issue without a break for several years. In addition, the character's background … Continue reading WC: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #118
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