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
Here's another book that I picked up on my post-grade school graduation trip to Bush's Hobbies in Ronkonkoma. I had been slowly filling in a complete run of MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS, the title that eventually changed its name to MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS and in which the earliest FANTASTIC FOUR stories were reprinted. I wanted … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS #19
On that selfsame trip to Bush's Hobbies following my graduation from grade school, I indulged in my interest in golden age comics by picking up this issue of FANTASY MASTERPIECES, which reprinted the first battle between the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner, a story I had read about previously in Jim Steranko's HISTORY OF COMICS. … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASY MASTERPIECES #8
