Another title that I got a few issues of in my Windfall Comics purchase of 1988 was MYSTERY IN SPACE. It was one of a pair of titles edited by Julie Schwartz (the other was STRANGE ADVENTURES) devoted to science fiction adventures, a big genre in the late 1950s. This was the earliest one in … Continue reading WC: MYSTERY IN SPACE #54
This issue of SUPERMAN'S PAL JIMMY OLSEN was I believe the oldest book that I got in my Windfall Comics purchase of about 150 prime Silver Age comic books for $50.00 in 1988. It's really a pre-Silver Age 1950s issue in tone and spirit, and a good example of the kinds of stories the Superman … Continue reading WC: SUPERMAN’S PAL JIMMY OLSEN #23
The backstory here is something that we've covered in the past, but just to summarize events again: in the mid-1960s, the comic book field was seeing a bit of a resurgence. A fad for costumed super heroes had sprung up, exploding to massive life in the wake of the premiere of the live action BATMAN … Continue reading Brand Echh: Double-Dare Adventures #1
A post from my long-ago Marvel blog in which I react to the first Avengers novel and plus some issues that are about to see print. A Hot Pick and a Review April 28, 2007 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General On a lighter note, after revisiting the 1968 novel CAPTAIN AMERICA: … Continue reading Blah Blah Blog – A Hot Pick and a Review
If there's ever an award given for the most tone-deaf comic book of the 1960s, then TOD HOLTON, SUPER GREEN BERET stands a pretty good chance of winning. It was published in the opening days of 1967 and attempted to introduce a new wartime super hero soldier character. Unfortunately for its creators, the war was … Continue reading Brand Echh – Tod Holton, Super Green Beret #1
In any long-running series, there's going to be a magnetic pull among a certain type of writer to want to change things, to make adjustments to details, to eliminate contradictions in the stories that have been told and to introduce new information about foundational events. These ideas can sometimes be additive and sometime be destructive, … Continue reading 5BC: Five Best Forgotten DC Retcons
Over the course of eighty years, DC Comics has introduced any number of great super heroic characters, many of whom have gone on to have long and lasting careers in comics. But alas, some others were struck down before their prime, managing only a few, or even a single solitary appearance before retreating back to … Continue reading 5BC: Five Best Forgotten DC Super Heroes
As we talked about last time, Captain Marvel was just about the biggest and most popular super-heroic character during the Golden Age of Comics. So it was perhaps almost inevitable that, with a new super hero boom striking the industry in the mid-1960s, the creators behind the Captain's good works would try to strike gold … Continue reading Brand Echh – Fatman, The Human Flying Saucer #1
Today, there are thousands of books on vintage comics, both collections of material from decades ago or literary tomes discussing those works, how they were created, what impact they had and what they meant. But in the 1970s, the landscape for such volumes was exceedingly scarce. So it was positively an event when a new … Continue reading BHOC: SHAZAM! FROM THE ’40s TO THE ’70s
My father brought this SHAZAM Treasury Edition home for me during a frequent cigarette run. I’d be wiling to bet that he thought it was a Flash book–red costume with a lightning bolt, how hard is it? Either way, I enjoyed my first encounter with the World’s Mightiest Mortal. It was a pretty huge deal … Continue reading BHOC: LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION #C-27
The Tom Brevoort Experience 