This was another comic that came from the drug store's Big Bin of Slightly Older Comics, this one selected by my younger brother Ken. He never got into comics quite in the same way that I did, but he dabbled with them throughout his youth in a way that was common for kids of that … Continue reading BHOC: TWO-GUN KID #126
The Golden Age craze for super heroes only truly lasted a couple of years, immediately following the debut of Superman and the entry of the United States into World War II. That said, it was a genre that was virtually unique to comic books, and so fortune-minded publishers would continue to toy with it for … Continue reading Brand Echh – Captain Flash #1
This is another comic that I'm pretty sure I got from my grade school friend Donald Sims in some long-forgotten trade. We would often swap comics, and I got a number of books from his collection that I really wanted that way. He was pretty much the only other person I knew during this time … Continue reading BHOC: THOR #253
In response to yesterday's post concerning DAREDEVIL #1, I received an e-mail from my friend Mark Evanier. Mark is one of the most knowledgeable people I know about classic comics and in particular the people who worked on them. He had a number of insights that he wanted to bring up, not just about yesterday's … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Ditko & Everett & Brodsky: A Guest Post on DAREDEVIL #1 and Related Matters
This was the second of the two issues of MARVEL SPECTACULAR I picked up from my drugstore's Big Bin of Slightly Older Comics when I went looking for more Thor adventures, and it was the Thor story that I enjoyed the most up to this point--largely, I expect, because the antagonist wasn't some Asgardian god … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SPECTACULAR #19
Some recent comments by reader and historian Ferran Delgado prompted me to go back and to take a closer look at DAREDEVIL #1, the last of what we would consider the formative Marvel titles to be launched and one that was plagued in its delivery by a variety of delays. I've written about those delays … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Ditko & Everett & Brodsky: The Long Road to DAREDEVIL #1
Now that I had begun to buy THOR regularly, the next time I was in our local drugstore I took the opportunity to go digging around in their Big Bin of Slightly-Older Comics for any THOR releases. I didn't come up with any issues of the eponymous title, but I did find what turned out … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SPECTACULAR #18
Just the same as the last three times: here's a collection of the covers to more international editions of Marvel material that I've gathered over the years. These are often fascinating for how they're colored or the manner in which the publishers used localized talent to do their own interpretations of the Marvel characters. So … Continue reading Great Covers: Marvel Around The World 4
Continuing on with comics I bought during my first trip to Bush's Hobbies in Ronkonkoma. I was a huge fan of the Golden Age of Comics and the histories of the assorted characters that I was following--I wanted to know everything, to read everything. In particular, it had been the original Human Torch who provided … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASY MASTERPIECES #7
There's a long-storied tradition among comics of having the writers and artists of those stories themselves be depicted within the very pages they are producing--creating an idealized heightened version of reality. While this was common across all companies, nobody did it as often or as brazenly as the creators working for Marvel. They truly went … Continue reading 5BC: Five Times Marvel Self-Mythologized
The Tom Brevoort Experience 