Spider-Man Takes On The Candidates

1972 was an election year, and as the various campaigns got underway during this tumultuous period in American history, the Sunday magazine of the NEW YORK TIMES reached out to a bevy of top cartoonists to provide single page strips featuring their characters and commenting on the battles being waged in the political arena. For … Continue reading Spider-Man Takes On The Candidates

Blah Blah Blog – My Unknown Greats, Part 2

Another post from my long-gone Marvel blog, part of a sequence detailing comics I worked on that I liked but which flew under the radar a bit. My Unknown Greats pt. 2 April 28, 2007 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General For some strange reason, the system ate the last paragraph or … Continue reading Blah Blah Blog – My Unknown Greats, Part 2

BHOC: DOCTOR STRANGE #21

This was another book that I bought out of my drugstore's Big Bin of Somewhat Older Comic Books, all issues that had been reported as destroyed but instead which had been sold on the secondary market for a cut-rate price. This was one of a pair of DOCTOR STRANGE issues that I picked up at … Continue reading BHOC: DOCTOR STRANGE #21

MY LOVE #3 and the Penciling of John Buscema

As the 1960s wound down, the super hero fad that had driven much of the decade was beginning to cool. It's maybe hard to realize today, when many of these characters have been in continuous publication for 60-80 years, but at the time, super heroes were seen as just another cyclical fad. And now that … Continue reading MY LOVE #3 and the Penciling of John Buscema

BHOC: SON OF SATAN #8

This was another comic book that I purchased out of the drugstore's Big Bin of Slightly Older Comics, books that had been reported destroyed but which had actually been sold "off the back of the truck" to my drugstore at a cut-rate price. I almost certainly picked up this issue to fill out a grouping … Continue reading BHOC: SON OF SATAN #8

BHOC: IRON MAN #81

It was a sad reality of the 1970s that for most of that decade, IRON MAN was a book that just wasn't very good. Today he's at the forefront of worldwide consciousness about Marvel thanks to Robert Downey Jr's performance as Tony Stark in the films--but in the 1970s, his series trundled along, a lower-middle … Continue reading BHOC: IRON MAN #81

A Marvel-ous Evening with Stan Lee

It was one of the great, mythic misfires of the Marvel Age of Comics. Looking for ways in which he could spread his wings and move from being just a comic book editor and writer, Marvel's Stan Lee presided over a one-night-only event at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan on Wednesday, January 5th 1972. Reportedly, the … Continue reading A Marvel-ous Evening with Stan Lee

BHOC: DAREDEVIL #153

Another week at my local 7-11 meant another flight of new release comics for me to buy and read. I was a regular purchaser of DAREDEVIL by this time, so I was right there when the next issue showed up. This issue represented the return of long-time series artist Gene Colan to its pages--a return … Continue reading BHOC: DAREDEVIL #153

Lee & Kirby: The Pencils of FANTASTIC FOUR #49

An awful lot of the production work materials from the comic books created in the formative years of the industry are long gone, discarded as unimportant "work product" on the way to producing finished comic book issues, which were the goal point all along. Fortunately, a lot of the original artwork has survived (though far … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Pencils of FANTASTIC FOUR #49

BHOC: MS MARVEL #4

MS MARVEL was another title that I sampled out of the Big Bin of Somewhat Older Comic Books at my local drug store, and for the same reason: the need to hit a total of 5 purchases so as to be able to get them for a dollar, as opposed to risking the whims of … Continue reading BHOC: MS MARVEL #4