This is the third installment of Italian creator Leonardo Ortolani's fan-created wrap-up of the FANTASTIC FOUR mythos created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This chapter was published in the fanzine MADE IN USA #9 in 1993. We're getting to the meat of Leo's Alan Moore-style reinterpretation of the events of the series here. As … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Ortolani: The Last Fantastic Four Story, Part Three
It's been a little while, but who could ever forget our old friend Ego-Man, the ridiculously inside baseball strip parodying Stan Lee in the pages of SICK Magazine in the late 1970s. Exactly who these stories were meant for (apart from creators Arnold Drake and Jack Sparling) is anybody's guess, but they didn't run for … Continue reading Brand Echh – Sick #124 – The Death of Ego-Man
This is the second installment of Italian creator Leonardo Ortolani's four-part fan-drawn final adventure of the Lee and Kirby Fantastic Four. It was originally published in the fanzine MADE IN USA #8 in Italy in 1993, and hasn't ever been made available in English as it was an unlicensed production. While the first episode was … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Ortolani: The Last Fantastic Four Story, Part Two
This is a bit of a forgotten masterpiece, both because it saw limited distribution, and because it was published in a non-English speaking country. Between 1992 and 1994, in the pages of the Italian fanzine MADE IN USA, devoted to American comics, cartoonist Leonardo Ortolani (often better known by his simple signature, Leo) was such … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Ortolani: The Last Fantastic Four Story, Part One
Reader Steven Thompson asked me a question about this recently, so this piece exists entirely due to his interest--you can thank him if you find anything here of value. There was a time-honored tradition of writers and artists inserting themselves into their stories, and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were no different. In general, the … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Goldberg & Hartley: The Unlikely Cameos of Jack Kirby
Thanks to an observation by reader Ben Herman we can take a bit of a closer look at the question of the lead story in STRANGE TALES #119, which appeared to have been retooled from being a Hate-Monger adventure into one pitting the Human Torch against the new-but-similar villainy of the Rabble Rouser. After yesterday's … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Ayers: More on the Strange Case of STRANGE TALES #119
This is a sort of an odd situation, as I haven't even completely worked out an operating theory on just what was behind the decisions I'm about to lay out for you all. So this is still a bit of a puzzler. But it concerns a significant change that was made to the lead story … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Ayers: The Strange Case of STRANGE TALES #119
A lot of time has been spent on analyzing the Marvel output of the early 1960s, trying to determine who did what and who really deserved the credit for the success of the line and the many characters and ideas presented therein. To reiterate my essential position on this, I feel as though at this … Continue reading The Greatest DAREDEVIL Story Ever Told
A post from my decade-old Marvel blog, one of a series in whic I discussed early Marvel purchases that didn't make me a regular reader. Bad Comics I Bought pt. 5 April 28, 2007 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General Concluding this week's reflections on Marvel issues of the past that I … Continue reading Blah Blah Blog – Bad Comics I Bought Part Five
I can distinctly remember looking at the cover to this issue of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN when it first came out, through the window of a candy store near to where my Grandmother lived. At that time, I hadn't yet taken the plunge into buying Marvel books--but this cover, very much in the DC style of the … Continue reading BHOC: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #169
The Tom Brevoort Experience 