This issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was another one that I read courtesy of my grade school friend Donald Sims, who lent me his copy for a day or two. Already by this time, the Green Goblin had become somewhat legendary as Spider-Man's greatest foe, his reputation somehow enhanced due to the fact that he wasn't … Continue reading BC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #136
We were in the twilight days of the Marvel reprint line, even though certain titles, mainly MARVEL TALES, would continue on indefinitely for another decade and a half. But the need to carve out rack space on mainstream Newsstands was diminishing as the number of mainstream outlets carrying comic books in 1979 continued to shrink, … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #82
The history of Marvel's export to the United Kingdom is a complex and somewhat haphazard thing. While occasional copies of Marvel's American comics might reach England shops carried as ballast, the earliest homegrown reprints of Marvel material were carried by a number of different publishers. One of these was Odhams Press, best remembered as the … Continue reading Brand Echh: SMASH! #38 and a seldom-seen Hulk adventure
My younger brother Ken came along with my grandparents and I on that trip to Ed's Coins and Stamps in the Sun-Vet Mall. And accordingly, he wound up buying a couple comic books as well. Ken was never as into the medium and the characters as I was, but like any kid of that era, … Continue reading BHOC: CONAN THE BARBARIAN #42
By this moment in time PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN was past its best days--and even at its highest it had never been a great comic book series. Almost by default, the title was dedicated to providing "more" Spider-Man adventures for readers for whom a single AMAZING SPIDER-MAN release wasn't enough. These stories existed in … Continue reading BHOC: PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #32
We're at the point where IRON MAN started to get really good under the creative team of writer David Michelinie, penciler John Romita Jr. and inker and co-plotter Bob Layton. The transformation sort of snuck up on me as a reader at the time. I found that I was enjoying IRON MAN more and more, … Continue reading BHOC: IRON MAN #124
Eventually, my subscription copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #208 turned up in my mailbox, inevitably a week or two after copies had appeared on the spinner rack, frustrating me. This is about the point where the series started to come off the rails a little bit, in part due to the fact that a space epic … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #208
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN continued to be Marvel's most popular and consistently best-selling title throughout the 1970s, as the character began to have a larger footprint across popular culture. So it wasn't any surprise that my grade school buddy Donald Sims had a number of issues in his comic book collection. Like the couple of Fourth World … Continue reading BC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #134
I know that I say this every time we roll around to another issue, but it's positively baffling to me just how long I continued to buy DEFENDERS despite not really enjoying the title for years. I'm sure that some of this was simply having the available funds--I was never confronted with a need to … Continue reading BHOC: DEFENDERS #73
Here's some more new business building on old business that has just cropped up. It's been a number of years now since I first wrote about the catastrophic journey of getting the Giant-Man story that saw print in TALES TO ASTONISH #61 to print: https://tombrevoort.com/2020/10/31/lee-ditko-orlando-rockwell-the-multiple-car-crash-of-tales-to-astonish-61/ And also a few years since Dick Rockwell's unused splash … Continue reading Lee & Ditko & Orlando & Rockwell: Another New Discovery in the Multiple Car Crash of TALES TO ASTONISH #61
The Tom Brevoort Experience 