I bought this issue at my local 7-11, and some time later, my brother Ken also bought himself a copy for some reason. This was the second new off-the-racks issue of MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS that I purchased, having jumped on board the FANTASTIC FOUR/Marvel train not long before. This issue reprinted FANTASTIC FOUR #95, whereas … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #76
I've seen different bits and pieces of this story told in assorted places, but I cannot recall anyplace where the entire sequence of events was laid out in a single recounting, so I thought that was worth doing. In the spring of 1963, with the super hero titles that his firm had been producing doing … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Ditko & Everett: The linked stories of X-MEN #1, AVENGERS #1 and DAREDEVIL #1
Captain America was not the first patriotically-themed super hero to appear in comic books. That honor is reserved for The Shield, headliner of PEP COMICS for MLJ (eventually ARCHIE) who first appeared in the inaugural issue of that series, the creation of Harry Shorten and Irv Novick. Like most of the early super heroes, the … Continue reading Making The Shield Into Captain America
In an article printed in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #61, a writer by the name of Michael Breen makes the assertion that FANTASTIC FOUR #6 had not only been penciled and largely plotted by Jack Kirby, but the final lettered script was written by Jack as well. This was at a point before the Marvel … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Mystery of FANTASTIC FOUR #6
Continuing to go through the comics I bought during my first trip to my very first comic book store, the Heroes World outlet in Levittown, I also grabbed up these three consecutive issues of MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS. These were the rest of the story begin in issue #66, which I'd previously bought and represented good … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #67, 68 & 69
At this point, you'd be right to detect a pattern here. We're still talking about the comics I purchased during my very first visit to my very first comic book shop, Heroes World in Levittown. I had bought the earliest issues of FANTASTIC FOUR and FLASH that I could manage, and so I turned my … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #24
Another similar thing that I did during my first trip to my very first comic book shop, Heroes World in Levittown, was to buy the oldest issue of THE FLASH that I could. As with FANTASTIC FOUR, there were some older releases on the wall--I seem to recall that SHOWCASE #13 with its pirate torpedo … Continue reading BHOC: FLASH #158
As I mentioned earlier, my first trip to an actual comic book store, a Heroes World outlet in Levittown, was a huge game-changing event for me. On the way there, I had intended to purchase the earliest issue of FANTASTIC FOUR that they had. This plan was foiled when the oldest FF issue they had … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #51
I had thought at first that this was another comic that I got out of a 3-Bag, but looking at my copy closely, I think that rather I must have gotten it from my friend and classmate Donald Sims. Don was the first other kid I knew who regularly read comic books, and while we … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #70
This issue of ETERNALS came out of the same 3-Bag as yesterday's FANTASTIC FOUR, I believe. As I've related earlier, my prior encounters with the series didn't make me a fan--Jack Kirby's work in the 1970s was an acquired taste, and one I hadn't quite acquired yet. There was always something fascinating and powerful about … Continue reading BHOC: ETERNALS #11
The Tom Brevoort Experience 