So as I've related before, it came out at some point that the branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank that my father worked out of was situated in the Levittown Mall--the same Mall that contained the first comic book shop that I ever went to, Heroes' World. What this amounted to in practice is that, … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #107
I bought this issue of MARVEL TALES from my usual spinner rack at the local 7-11. It reprinted, as usual, a story from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN published about six years before. At that time, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was in the midst of one of its more seismic changes: Stan Lee, having been promoted to publisher of the … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TALES #94
One of the myths about the Marvel Age of Comics is that it pretty much happened all at once--that as soon as FANTASTIC FOUR #1 hit newsstands coast-to-coast, the paradigm of comic books changed completely. And that's clearly not the case. In fact, it took a few years for the Marvel approach to storytelling to … Continue reading WC: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #91
A post from my long-ago Marvel blog written during the period when I was trading with fans to eventually get to a copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #1. I know I said that I wouldn't subject you to all of these posts, and I meant it--but this one is worth preserving due to Stan Lee's involvement. … Continue reading Blah Blah Blog – Trading Update #9
This is a weird bit of serendipity, but sometimes that's the way the ball bounces. I only just got done writing about the reprint of this story in MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS #22 a few moments ago, and the source for that reprint is the next book up in my survey of the books I … Continue reading WC: FANTASTIC FOUR #30
An entry from my old Marvel blog about Stan Lee friending me on Facebook back in the day. I believe the collection of Stan's Soapbox columns is still available through the Hero Initiative and can be ordered here: https://www.heroinitiative.org/shop/books/stans-soapbox-the-collection/ My Friend Stan November 21, 2008 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General A … Continue reading Blah Blah Blog – My Friend Stan
This was the second of the pair of issues of MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS that I bought on my trip to Heroes World with my grandparents. It was the last issue of the magazine--the following issue, its title changed to the moch zippier MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS, though its contents remained the same: a Fantastic Four … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS #22
Now, this is a fun little Easter Egg, although I'm not quite certain who it was intended for. It may simply have been editor Stan Lee amusing himself, as he sometimes did in the girl humor titles. In any event, those books operated in a loose quasi-relationship with one another that was almost a precursor … Continue reading Lost Crossovers: When Kathy Met Patsy Walker
There were a bunch of different moments during Jack Kirby's final year at Marvel any one of which might have been the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of his continuing employment with the firm. By this point, Kirby had already failed to come to an agreement with Marvel's new owners concerning what … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Desecration of CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #4
In addition to buying a handful of new comics that hadn't yet reached my area during my trip to the Heroes World outlet in the Levittown Mall, I also stocked up on a few classic back issues. As I was working with a very limited budget, a real boon to me was reprint titles such … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS #20
The Tom Brevoort Experience 