Blah Blah Blog – Comic Tutorial, Part 1

A post from my Marvel blog of the last decade, the first part of a sequence breaking down how a comic book is produced. Comic Tutorial pt. 1 April 28, 2007 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General We've got an all-day editorial meeting scheduled for the middle of this week (so there'll … Continue reading Blah Blah Blog – Comic Tutorial, Part 1

BHOC: DEFENDERS #50

This was another issue that I got in a 3-Bag--possibly even the same 3-Bag as yesterday's issue of AVENGERS. I had sampled DEFENDERS a little bit before this but still wasn't picking it up regularly. In part this was because DEFENDERS was weird. The best analogy I can give you is that to me it … Continue reading BHOC: DEFENDERS #50

BHOC: AVENGERS #162

Another month led me to another 3-Bag and another classic issue of AVENGERS. This period has to be considered one of the high points in the series' run, with writer Jim Shooter being backed up on artwork by George Perez (and John Byrne for a storyline.) Coming into the book at this point, it definitely … Continue reading BHOC: AVENGERS #162

Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies: Inside Marvel Comics

Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies was a documentary comic strip that ran in the pages of the Village Voice for just over twenty years starting in 1974. Its creator and author, Stan Mack, created the strip by overhearing and transcribing conversations between real people and then dramatizing them on the page. And in this particular … Continue reading Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies: Inside Marvel Comics

TBTV: Five Mean Caricatures of Comic Book Creators

https://youtu.be/6uuJUHSsBOw A video version of one of the most popular pieces I ran on this page, a countdown of five instances where comic book creators depicted savage caricatures of one another in the pages of the stories they were creating.

Forgotten Masterpiece: EL SORPRENDENTE HOMBRE ARANA #153 and DAREDEVIL #9

People certainly seemed to be interested in my earlier story about the assorted Spider-Man stories that were crafted for the voracious marketplace in Mexico in the early 1970s and which have not been translated or reprinted in English. So let's take a look at another one, since I happen to have a stack of these … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: EL SORPRENDENTE HOMBRE ARANA #153 and DAREDEVIL #9

BHOC: IRON MAN #100

Here's another issue that I got out of one of those 3-Bags that toy stores and department stores carried in the 1970s. The books therein were always about nine months old once those bags hit the racks, which was a godsend for me, as they provided a way in which I could get my hands … Continue reading BHOC: IRON MAN #100

BHOC: AVENGERS #161

Now this was a great issue, a classic entry in the history of AVENGERS. I picked it up in a 3-Bag, having only started to follow the title a number of months after this. But I was excited about it just from this cover--you see, I recognized Ant-Man from his appearance in the first AVENGERS … Continue reading BHOC: AVENGERS #161

BHOC: SON OF SATAN #1

This was another book that I pulled up out of my local drugstore's Big Bin of Slightly Older Comics, and just like the issue of SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP we talked about last week, this issue was definitely purchased to round out a stack, to get me to that magic number of 5 where each book would … Continue reading BHOC: SON OF SATAN #1

BHOC: SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP #3

This was another issue that I pulled out of my drugstore's Big Bin of Slightly Older Comics, which was filled with books that had been reported destroyed to the distributor but had instead been sold off to the drugstore chain at a cut-rate price. This manner of double-dipping, the "affidavit returns" system, is one of … Continue reading BHOC: SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP #3