As comic book conventions began to grow and become a thing in the 1970s, Marvel decided to try their hand at organizing shows specifically dedicated to that one single company. The first Mighty Marvel Comic Convention was held on March 22-24 of 1975 at New York's Hotel Commodore. The event did well enough that a … Continue reading MIGHTY MARVEL COMIC CONVENTION Program Book
The next issue of AMAZING SPIDER_MAN that came out introduced a character who would prove to possess remarkable staying power over the years, though it didn't really seem that way the first couple of years. This was the Black Cat, a sexy sneak thief who would go on to become a recurring love interest for … Continue reading BHOC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #194
Flo Steinberg came to the notice of comic book fandom during the early 1960s, during the initial flowering of what became the Marvel Age of Comics. As Marvel's corresponding secretary, she was, among other things, charged with answering the volumes of fan mail that came in for editor Stan Lee, and so the various active … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: BIG APPLE COMIX #1
As a kid, I didn't really have any way to get information about what new comic books and related publications would be coming out when. I was dimly aware of fanzines, but I never tried to purchase any on the regular--my meager funds were needed to buy actual comics, after all. So I had no … Continue reading BHOC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN POCKET BOOKS Volume 3
It was clear early on that the most important and successful new super hero character introduced during the Silver Age of Comics was Spider-Man. The work that Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and John Romita had put into the series had paid dividends, and the wall-crawler was soon a worldwide icon able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against … Continue reading 5BC: Five Attempts to Replicate Spider-Man
It's been a while since we dropped one of these on you. So here are more photographs taken over the years depicting practitioners of the medium, both editorial and creators. As usual, there's a lot of Stan Lee. One of the earliest photographs that survives of Jakob Kurtzburg, who would come to be called Jack … Continue reading Comic Creators in the Wild 12
It's no great secret that the relationship between editor and scripter Stan Lee and artist and plotter Jack Kirby had grown fraught by 1969. Having at least co-invented the characters who ad saved the company and done the lion's share of the story work that continued to make the Marvel books he worked on shine, … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: THE TROUBLED BIRTH OF THOR #169
It was an exciting day when this Fantastic Four-themed MARVEL TREASURY EDITION showed up at my local 7-11. Because of their size, the Treasury Editions were racked with the general magazines rather than by the comic book spinner rack, meaning that you needed to know to go and look for them. As FANTASTIC FOUR was … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #21
I come from a family of readers, and so every time we'd go out to the mall or to another shopping center on the weekends, as typically happened most Saturdays, we almost always stopped into any bookstores that happened to be around. Our main destination, the Smith Haven Mall, had three if you can believe … Continue reading BHOC: INCREDIBLE HULK POCKET BOOKS Volume 2
Continuing our look at the obscure 1966 strip Blooperman, which incorporated a number of parody ideas from comics fandom, many of which had been originated by Marvel writer/editor Roy Thomas years earlier. Once again here, the character's designed Jon D'Agostino draws the small vignette of Blooperman on this cover for GO-GO #5. Writer Gary Friedrich … Continue reading Brand Echh: The Fannish Adventures of Blooperman, Part Three
The Tom Brevoort Experience 