I continued to make MARVEL TALES a regular purchase, it being one of the few remaining reprint titles at this point. My circle of comic book reading friends looked down our noses at reprint books, the understood belief was that they were "worthless" because they wouldn't accrue in value as back issues, something that we … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #105
MARVEL TALES continued to carry on, reprinting stories from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN that had originally been published only a relatively few years prior. But as I was still in the process of filling in the gaps in my Marvel knowledge, these reprints were invaluable to me, and I followed them as avidly as any new comic … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #104
Marvel had begun to phase out its line of reprint titles, with only MARVEL TALES (starring the ultra-popular Spider-Man) and MARVEL SUPER-HEROES (featuring Marvel's TV Sensation, the Incredible Hulk) making the eventual cut. I can understand why this was done--the marketplace was changing and there wasn't the same need to both establish a large beachhead … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #103
This issue of MARVEL TALES reprinted the story where the series concluded its transition from the Silver Age into the Bronze Age. The book had been there for several months already at this point, with writer Gerry Conway taking over for Stan Lee. But this was the first issue in forever not illustrated by John … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #102
This issue of MARVEL TALES presented me with a slightly more manageable conundrum. I didn't own a copy of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #124, the issue that was reprinted here, but I had read it. I believe my school buddy Don Sims had a copy, and I'd read it at his place at some point. Consequently, this … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #101
As I've spoken about in the past, it proved to be relatively easy to get me to start buying a given series every month. A book just needed to make me picking it up a habit for an issue or two, and away I would go. In the case of MARVEL TALES, the long-running reprint … Continue reading GH: MARVEL TALES #151
Despite the fact that it was a reprint title, MARVEL TALES didn't miss the opportunity to go oversized for its 100th issue, a trend that had started with the centennial issues that Marvel and DC were putting out. It's kind of a mixed bag, in that one of the secondary features doesn't have any relation … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #100
I'd been waiting for this one, the second half of the Death of Gwen Stacy storyline, a saga that was already legendary by 1978 when I first got to read it. With Stan Lee having retired from scripting AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, incoming writer Gerry Conway and plotter and artist John Romita were looking to do something … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #99
Now this was a comic book that I had been eagerly anticipating for several months once I had realized that its reprinting was approaching in the sequence. By 1978, the demise of Gwen Stacy was established canon--even the original Clone storyline was finished by then--but the story of her death was still referenced and talked … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #98
This latest issue of MARVEL TALES that showed up at the 7-11 was the wrap-up to the three issue reprinting of a trio of issues of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN in which new writer Gerry Conway had repurposed the story originally produced for SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN magazine several years earlier and transformed it into a new story. In … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #97
The Tom Brevoort Experience 