One of the calculations that I had to make whenever I found myself in a place like the Batcave, the South Shore Mall-located comic book shop, was how to make the most of my meager funds. The Batcave had a huge selection of back issues, but even though many of them were more well-worn reading … Continue reading BHOC: SPECIAL MARVEL EDITION #3
One of the things that the Batcave comic book shop was notable for during this late 1970s period was in having affordable copies of relatively old and key comics. These were typically more well-read copies, but for my purposes, i didn't care. there was some elusive magic in holding an actual vintage book from a … Continue reading BHOC: AVENGERS #19
The question of who did what on the early Marvel books is going to be something that's debated and argued ad infinitum, so long as the characters remain worldwide icons as they've become in recent years. Speaking for myself, while I enjoy weighing in on certain aspects of these questions, I'm of the broad belief … Continue reading Lee & Ditko: The Storytelling Snafu of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #30
On my unanticipated trip to the Batcave comic book shop that weekend, I needed to make my meager funds stretch to their furthest. There was a cornucopia of back issues laid out before me. But I had only limited money with which to make my purchases. And so one of the books I wound up … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #20
My pal David Steckel had gotten a bunch of his comic books from some older relative who was over them, passed down as such things often were in those days. Consequently, he possessed an assortment of random older issues of various titles, and this was inevitably of interest to me. For example, for no particular … Continue reading BC: DAREDEVIL #68
Larry Lieber, the last surviving member of the original Marvel Bullpen, has been recently divesting himself of some of his possessions, selling off artwork and mementos that he's carried with him for decades. And among what he put up for auction at Heritage Auction House recently is a pair of discarded pages intended for a … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Discarded Pages from INCREDIBLE HULK #4
I had written about this a little bit before, in the context of a broader review of this early issue of FANTASTIC FOUR: https://tombrevoort.com/2022/08/07/wc-fantastic-four-31/ But creator Larry Lieber had held onto a discarded page from this story for all these years. I'd seen a bad photocopy of the page at the time I wrote that … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: An Excised Page From FANTASTIC FOUR #31
AVENGERS #150 was another book that was in the collection of my friend David Steckel, and which I borrowed from him to read at some point or another. It was a noteworthy issue for a couple of reasons, most of them not great. First off, it was one of if not the first comic book … Continue reading BC: AVENGERS #150
This shows you just how in the tank i was for Marvel at this point. The next time I visited the Stationery Store that had become my main outlet for buying new comics, this book was situated among the other stacks on the shelf. Despite the fact that it wasn't a comic book at all … Continue reading BHOC: FUN AND GAMES MAGAZINE #1
At the time when I started getting into Marvel Comics in the late 1970s, WHAT IF was considered something of a special book, at least among my small circle of comic-reading acquaintances. For one thing, it was oversized, meaning that it was both thicker and meatier than the average comic of that period, more like … Continue reading BC: WHAT IF #1
The Tom Brevoort Experience 