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
Continuing our look at the first regular issue of MARVELMANIA Magazine, the fan publication put out by the short-lived fan club and merchandising operation of the same name back in 1970. This is a page from the story "Melvin and the Monster" penciled and inked by Tom Palmer and originally intended for publication in SILVER … Continue reading MARVELMANIA Magazine #1, Part Two
MARVELMANIA was the house fanzine of the company of the same name, an outfit which had been licensed the rights to produce Marvel-related merchandise and specialty items to be sold directly to the readership. MARVELMANIA took the place of the earlier MERRY MARVEL MARCHING SOCIETY as the official fan club of Marvel, though it didn't … Continue reading MARVELMANIA Magazine #1
Another week and another trip to the 7-11 brought me another stack of brand new comic books. Among them was this issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA, a title that I was buying regularly despite the fact that it had been listing badly for a while. With the departure of Jack Kirby, who had written and drawn … Continue reading BHOC: CAPTAIN AMERICA #226
Crossovers among characters originating in different comic books have become by this point so commonplace as to not even be worthy of notice, and crossovers between characters from different publishing entities have similarly increased to the point where, while they've still got a bit of built-in excitement to them, they're still relatively commonplace. But the … Continue reading 5BC: Five Times Super Heroes Met Real People
The Tom Brevoort Experience 