I picked up another idiosyncratic issue of BRAVE AND THE BOLD when it arrived at my local 7-11 spinner rack. By this point I was buying the series semi-regularly, even though I typically found its contents to be a bit weird and off-putting. There were no other writers in the field at that point like … Continue reading BHOC: BRAVE AND THE BOLD #152
I was only a casual buyer of BRAVE AND THE BOLD, the long-running Batman team-up title. And that's really down to the scripting work of Bob Haney more than anything else. Haney had a different perspective on super hero stories than I did as a young reader, he was interested in different things. And so … Continue reading BHOC: BRAVE AND THE BOLD #151
Continuing on in our survey of CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE #2, the hand-printed collection of material created by DC Comics and left unpublished in the aftermath of the business contraction known as the DC Implosion. A scant number of copies were made and provided to contributors as well as the Library of Congress so as to … Continue reading CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE #2: SHOWCASE #105
In 1978, plans for a massive expansion of DC's publishing line, which were being promoted as the DC Explosion, crashed and burned as an unusually heavy winter took its toll on comic book sales. The DC line was slashed rather than expanded, and a bunch of staff members were laid off. This became known as … Continue reading CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE #2
I was always a sucker for a cover like this one whose background was made up of earlier covers. DC took this approach with some regularity on anniversary issues. Now, one really does have to ask whether a #150 is worth this manner of celebration. At the time, this wasn't really a thing. However, since … Continue reading BHOC: BRAVE AND THE BOLD #150
Just before this issue of BRAVE AND THE BOLD came out, the second of the two prime time specials that are collectively known as LEGENDS OF THE SUPERHEROES premiered. In contrast with the first, which contained an actual adventure story, as hammy and embarrassing and ill-considered as it was, this second one was a full-on … Continue reading BHOC: BRAVE AND THE BOLD #149
Having dedicated themselves to making strides within the new Direct Sales marketplace, an arena in which Marvel had up to this point been overwhelmingly outselling pretty much everybody, DC produced a number of issues of DC SAMPLER, an overview and preview of their line intended to be given out at comic book specialty stores across … Continue reading DC SAMPLER #3
I can very clearly remember buying this issue of BRAVE AND THE BOLD on a regular trip to the 7-11, for no particular reason. B & B wasn't a title that I was all that in tune with, and so my readership of the series would ebb and flow, often based on who the guest-star … Continue reading BHOC: BRAVE AND THE BOLD #148
The first DC SAMPLER must have proven to be a success, because for the next couple of issues, DC did it again--producing a free comic book-sized magazine promoting all of their upcoming series. You can really see that the switch-over to what DC would become was in full swing by this point, and there's a … Continue reading DC SAMPLER #2
By 1983, DC was on a creative upswing. The arrival of new President and Publisher Jenette Kahn had coincided with efforts to expand DC's efforts into the growing Direct Market of comic book specialty shops that had sprung up across the country. At this time, DC's fortunes on the mainstream Newsstand weren't looking all that … Continue reading DC SAMPLER #1
The Tom Brevoort Experience 