There really wasn't a lousier time to try to start up a new color comic book line than the very early 1970s, but this didn't stop Skywald. Skywald was a joint venture of Israel Waldman, who had previously been behind the I.W./Super comics line of unauthorized golden age reprint titles distributed directly to department stores … Continue reading Brand Echh – The Heap #1
As the Marvel line began to grow in the 1960s, editor Stan Lee decided that he had a problem. He based this supposition on some of the fan mail that he'd been receiving no doubt--mail that would ask questions about how a given Marvel character could be in the midst of life-or-death jeopardy in one … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Simon: Captain America Before and After 1
Hey, we were just talking about this issue while discussing PETER PARKER, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #2 last week. This was another book that came my way from my school friend Don Sims, who no doubt purchased them both at around the same time. Now that i was starting to follow the character, it was I suppose … Continue reading BHOC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #164
Here's another book that came into my hands through parlay with my grade school friend Donald Sims. And boy, you can't imagine a cover on a comic today having such an overt plug for a film not connected in any way with the publisher. But in the 1970s, it was fine, all part of the … Continue reading BHOC: PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #2
Here is yet another comic that I got in trade with my boyhood pal Donald Sims, a reprint of one of the best issues of the period. And the thing that made it one of the best issues was the inking of John Romita. This was John's first assignment back at Marvel--he had told editor … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION #17
From time to time throughout the years, writer/editor Stan Lee would attempt to put a particular focus of quality on a given title, and try to make it stand out from the rest of the many offerings being published by Marvel, then Atlas. These efforts typically didn't last long, and one gets the impression that … Continue reading Forgotten Masterpiece: MENACE #7
Behind this excellent Alex Schomburg cover (rife though it is with unfortunate racial stereotypes) lay not only a pair of adventures of the Young Allies, the kid gang team led by Captain America's young pal Bucky and his rival, Toro the Flaming Kid, but an after-the-fact account of Captain America's experiences after the bombing of … Continue reading Captain America after Pearl Harbor
Continuing on with the review of books that I acquired in trade with my grade school friend Donald Sims, that's how I laid hands on this issue of MARVEL SUPER-HEROES. I've mentioned this fact before, but just to reiterate: Don and I were friends for a few years, from the start of 5th Grade to … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #44
In the mid-1960s, Joe Simon began legal action to try to reclaim the copyright to the Captain America stories he and Jack Kirby had written and drawn twenty years earlier, and by extension the rights to the character. In a move apparently made to help re-establish his ownership of the material, Marvel publisher Martin Goodman … Continue reading Your Comics Code at Work: Fantasy Masterpieces #6
Here's another issue of MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS that I got in trade with the one and only other person I knew at this point who liked and collected comic books, by school friend Donald Sims. As the years went by, it became more and more socially dangerous to be overt about one's interest in such … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #70
The Tom Brevoort Experience 