After my brief moment of having let an issue of SUPERMAN FAMILY go by and then turning back and picking it up later, I seemed to be back on the train of purchasing the series regularly. And I'm not entirely certain why. Some of it, I'm sure, is that I just liked Superman. And while … Continue reading BHOC: SUPERMAN FAMILY #194
Despite the fact that it was a reprint title, MARVEL TALES didn't miss the opportunity to go oversized for its 100th issue, a trend that had started with the centennial issues that Marvel and DC were putting out. It's kind of a mixed bag, in that one of the secondary features doesn't have any relation … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #100
I suspect that the middle-late 1960s was a tough time for longtime Superman line editor Mort Weisinger. For the first time in recorded history, Batman was routinely outselling his cash cow from Krypton as a result of the faddish success of the 1966 BATMAN television series. This state of affairs wouldn't last--the Man of Steel … Continue reading WC: ACTION COMICS #344
I had skipped buying SUPERMAN FAMILY #192 the previous month, for reasons that I'm not quite certain of apart from just a general dissatisfaction with the title. That was the problem with DC's Dollar Comics anthologies, they were wildly inconsistent. While any given issue probably had something in it that you thought was pretty great, … Continue reading BHOC: SUPERMAN FAMILY #193
Another installment of our popular feature where we showcase vintage photographs of popular comic book creators from days gone by. This is sometimes known as "Stan Lee and friends" given how often Lee was photographed over the years. Mark Gruenwald and Nel Yomtov at a convention in the late 1980s Renee Witterstaetter at a party … Continue reading Comics Creators in the Wild 11
Wrapping up our look at the first SUPERHERO MERCHANDISE catalog that was put together by Ivan Snyder for his mail order operation that eventually transformed into HEROES WORLD. This is the section that transitioned more into published work, books on comics and back issues and the like. And it's worth pointing out that, in 1976, … Continue reading SUPERHERO MERCHANDISE Catalog, Part Three
Here's the second part of our look at the first SUPERHERO MERCHANDISE catalog, put together for entrepreneur Ivan Snyder by several moonlighting freelancers from Marvel and available through the mail. SUPERHERO MERCHANDISE eventually transformed into being HEROES WORLD, an outlet of which was the very first comic book store that I ever encountered, so I … Continue reading SUPERHERO MERCHANDISE Catalog #1, Part Two
SUPERHERO MERCHANDISE was a mail order business run by Ivan Snyder that featured, as the name implies, super hero merchandise of all kinds. Snyder operated out of a storefront in New Jersey, which eventually transformed into the first of a series of HEROES WORLD comic book and merchandise stores in the late 1970s. Snyder had … Continue reading SUPERHERO MERCHANDISE Catalog #1
I'm fairly certain that I came across these documents at Scott Edelman's blog. In any case, Scott was one of those who found these documents preserved in the back of a drawer in the Marvel offices and hung onto them. Around 1966, as Marvel was beginning to make its first faltering in-roads into other media, … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: THE CHARACTER WRITE-UPS OF STAN LEE
I'm pretty certain that I scavenged this from over at Scott Edelman's blog from a number of years ago. Both Scott and his wife Irene had been on staff at Marvel in the 1970s and had saved an assortment of various memos and bits of paraphernalia. Every so often, Scott would come across one of … Continue reading GIANT-SIZE MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION #1 and the Cover Notes of Stan Lee
The Tom Brevoort Experience 