How To Make Money Writing For Comic Magazines, Part Five

Here's the fifth and final part of our overview of this short hardcover how-to pamphlet authored in 1943 by writer/editor Robert Kanigher. It's a wealth of interesting information about just how comic books were put together back during the Golden Age and what publishers were looking for. The story that Kanigher breaks down here was … Continue reading How To Make Money Writing For Comic Magazines, Part Five

ZIP COMICS #28 and the Origin of the Web

A week ago, I posted a feature in which writer Jerry Siegel and artist Paul Reinman revealed the secret origin of the Web, that 1960s-era costumed crusader who was "hen-pecked" by his wife Rosie and her mother to give up the super hero business and settle down to a regular life. https://tombrevoort.com/2022/12/17/brand-echh-mighty-comics-45/ I mentioned that … Continue reading ZIP COMICS #28 and the Origin of the Web

Lost Crossovers: The First Comic Book Crossover

The crossover story has become an ubiquitous part of the lore of comic books, so much so that it's entirely unremarkable in these days when every publisher speaks about their "universe" or "multiverse" or "omniverse" of characters. But there was a point where such encounters between heroes was rare, even unheard of. So what was … Continue reading Lost Crossovers: The First Comic Book Crossover

Brand Echh: Adventures of the Jaguar #1

As we've spoken about a few times in this feature, the early 1960s saw a bit of a renaissance in the fortunes of the costumed super hero in comic books. With the relatively newly-instituted Comics Code Authority putting an end to the crime and horror comics that had flourished in the early half of the … Continue reading Brand Echh: Adventures of the Jaguar #1

Making The Shield Into Captain America

Captain America was not the first patriotically-themed super hero to appear in comic books. That honor is reserved for The Shield, headliner of PEP COMICS for MLJ (eventually ARCHIE) who first appeared in the inaugural issue of that series, the creation of Harry Shorten and Irv Novick. Like most of the early super heroes, the … Continue reading Making The Shield Into Captain America

The Last Comet Story

For the first thirty to forty years of super hero comics, it was a rarity for a super hero to meet his maker. While the death and resurrection of super hero characters has now become de rigeur, for much of the publishing history of such characters, stories of this nature were few and far between. … Continue reading The Last Comet Story