Both my friend David Steckel and I were fans of THE INVADERS, the World War II-era comic book that writer/editor Roy Thomas had launched a short while earlier. Part of this was simply that the book included the original Human Torch--as we both loved FANTASTIC FOUR, this affection kind of transitioned over. Additionally, though, it … Continue reading BC: MARVEL PREMIERE #30
Both my friend David Steckel and I were huge FANTASTIC FOUR fans--it was our favorite comic book series at the time we met, and one of the things that bonded us together. So in particular, it was issues of FANTASTIC FOUR and its reprint title MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS that we borrowed back and forth, broadening … Continue reading BC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #64
In the late 1970s, there likely wasn't a format for comic books that I loved more than the Pocket Books series of early Marvel reprints. Getting chronological collections of the earliest Marvel stories was a godsend to me, something that I never quite thought I'd get to experience, and so I pursued them avidly. But … Continue reading BC: SPIDER-WOMAN POCKET BOOKS
One of the reasons why I got along so well with my buddy David Steckel is that we tended to like a lot of the same Marvel comics. Like myself, he was a huge fan of the Fantastic Four, and that affection carried over to the golden age Human Torch who was being featured in … Continue reading BC: INVADERS #16
The various assorted issues of SHOGUN WARRIORS have all mostly blurred in my memory after so many years. It was a title that I liked, and which I bought regularly all throughout its 20 issue run. But it wasn't an especially deep series, and its essential structure, which amounted to robots battling giant kaiju-style monsters … Continue reading BHOC: SHOGUN WARRIORS #9
When writers Ralph Macchio and Mark Gruenwald took over the reins of MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE, the series that featured stories of the Thing teaming up with a diverse assortment of other Marvel superstars, they decided to challenge themselves. They didn't really like the contemporaneous FANTASTIC FOUR era, so they set out to make MTIO a better … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #56
As I've related before, my buddy David Steckel had inherited a bunch of assorted comic books from older cousins who had outgrown them, and so his haphazard collection reached all the way back into the 1960s in a scattershot fashion. Among the books that he had, and which he let me borrow and read at … Continue reading BC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #5
MARVEL SUPER-HEROES continued in reprinting Incredible Hulk stories from a couple short years earlier, but which were old enough that they were still new to me. To be honest, I often enjoyed these older tales more than the new ones appearing in the Jade Giant's current series--that isn't surprising, I had a real connection to … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #84
I was very surprised to come across this second volume of Doctor Strange adventures in the Pocket Books line of paperback reprints in a local bookstore. These releases had seemed to have been tied to the appearances of the Marvel characters on television, and while the initial Doctor Strange volume had been released to capitalize … Continue reading BHOC: DOCTOR STRANGE POCKET BOOKS Volume 2
A few years back, I wound up on an X-MEN convention panel along with Louise Simonson, and I was able to express just how impossible a bar she'd set for everybody who came after her as an editor on that particular line. In the space of a very short time, she'd finished up the DARK … Continue reading FSC: MARVEL GRAPHIC NOVEL #5
