The series was only nine issue old, and already somebody--presumably editor/scripter Stan Lee--felt it necessary to raise the stakes even further. This SGT FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS cover promises something unbelievable--and without even reading the story, you can likely intuit the outcome. SGT FURY was a weird title. It was created in response to … Continue reading WC: SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS #9
So as I've related before, it came out at some point that the branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank that my father worked out of was situated in the Levittown Mall--the same Mall that contained the first comic book shop that I ever went to, Heroes' World. What this amounted to in practice is that, … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #107
One of the myths about the Marvel Age of Comics is that it pretty much happened all at once--that as soon as FANTASTIC FOUR #1 hit newsstands coast-to-coast, the paradigm of comic books changed completely. And that's clearly not the case. In fact, it took a few years for the Marvel approach to storytelling to … Continue reading WC: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #91
This is a weird bit of serendipity, but sometimes that's the way the ball bounces. I only just got done writing about the reprint of this story in MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS #22 a few moments ago, and the source for that reprint is the next book up in my survey of the books I … Continue reading WC: FANTASTIC FOUR #30
This was the second of the pair of issues of MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS that I bought on my trip to Heroes World with my grandparents. It was the last issue of the magazine--the following issue, its title changed to the moch zippier MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS, though its contents remained the same: a Fantastic Four … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS #22
There were a bunch of different moments during Jack Kirby's final year at Marvel any one of which might have been the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of his continuing employment with the firm. By this point, Kirby had already failed to come to an agreement with Marvel's new owners concerning what … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Desecration of CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #4
In addition to buying a handful of new comics that hadn't yet reached my area during my trip to the Heroes World outlet in the Levittown Mall, I also stocked up on a few classic back issues. As I was working with a very limited budget, a real boon to me was reprint titles such … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS #20
DAREDEVIL was something of a lesser title for Marvel during the 1960s and particularly the 1970s. It had started out as a book nobody wanted to do: Marvel owner Martin Goodman had discovered that the name was available for trademarking, having previously been the name of one of the longest-running series of the Golden Age, … Continue reading WC: DAREDEVIL #14
This issue of THOR was another book that I got coverless in one of those plastic-wrapped bundles of supposedly-destroyed comics that my drugstore was selling. That's a Jack Kirby cover on this issue, but one that's a little bit difficult to recognize as the King's work given all of the changes and corrections that were … Continue reading BHOC: THOR #258
It's more of the same, additional vintage photographs of the people who worked on the comic books of yesteryear during those earlier halcyon days! As usual, there's an awful lot of Stan Lee. Stan Lee promotional photo, circa 1980 Assorted Marvel and DC creators, including Joe Orlando, Paul Levitz, Don McGregor, , Jenette Kahn, Stan … Continue reading Comics Creators in the Wild 10
The Tom Brevoort Experience 