Well, not really Jim Shooter's directly, not in the same was as the Irwin Donenfeld sales charts we looked at last week. But I'm reasonably certain that I cribbed these newsstand tracking sheets from Jim Shooter's old web page a decade or so back, and he would have been there when they came in--so we'll … Continue reading The Sales Figures of Marvel’s Jim Shooter
The fannish desire for a unified field theory of fictional comic book universes is strong, and a fun game to play--especially when considering meetings between characters at rival publishing houses, characters who in all likelihood will never get to interact on the page (or at least not in the way the fans might desire.) Some … Continue reading 5BC: Five More Times Marvel Referenced DC Characters In Interesting Ways
Most long-running comic book companies, if they're in business for long enough and have a wide enough diversity of creators working on their releases, reach a point at which those creators begin to pull inspiration for their stories and characters from other media. Comics in general have a long history of reflecting the trends of … Continue reading 5BC: Five Times Marvel Misappropriated Characters
I'm pretty sure that I got this issue of LUKE CAGE, POWER MAN from my school buddy Donald Sims, who also collected comics, a fact that bound us together as friends until the switch to Junior High. It's probably worth giving a little bit of context as to my own experiences with African-American culture. As … Continue reading BHOC: LUKE CAGE, POWER MAN #38
Just as with DC, Marvel also had a history of introducing new super heroic characters in the pages of their stories. Some of these went on to long and storied careers. Others faded after only a few, or even one, appearances. Here are the five best forgotten Marvel heroes. RAZORBACK: The creation of writer Bill … Continue reading 5BC: Five Best Forgotten Marvel Heroes
This issue of POWER MAN, my first, would have been another comic that I got from by grade school friend Don Sims, likely in a trade involving multiple books. I say that because I wasn't especially interested in Luke Cage at this point. I knew who he was, based on his appearance in FANTASTIC FOUR … Continue reading BHOC: POWER MAN #38
Another older issue of FANTASTIC FOUR that showed up one day in the drug store's big bin of slightly-older comics. This was the oldest issue I had found to date. Reading these stories, particularly in this sequence, was a little bit like putting a puzzle together. There'd be some bit of information presented in one … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #170
The Tom Brevoort Experience 