I bought this issue of FANTASTIC FOUR on the Tuesday it came out from my local 7-11. Unfortunately, it represents a bit of a nadir in terms of the quality of the title during this period. Regular penciler George Perez was going through some personal crises at the time, and had blown his deadline on … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #190
There is an often-told anecdote about the early days of Marvel and what inspired that era of creativity. I believe it was first widely shared publicly in the pages of ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS, though Stan Lee may have shared it during his college lecture circuit tours earlier. And it goes like this. By the … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Ditko: A Clue in the Saga of Joan Lee
During this period of time, my brother Ken developed a fascination with the Incredible Hulk and so began buying comic books featuring the green goliath. Like his other forays into the world of four colors, this one also proved fleeting, and these books all eventually wound up with me. For myself, I found it difficult … Continue reading BHOC: INCREDIBLE HULK #219
It seems appropriate, though a fluke, to be talking about this issue of MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION on this weekend, when the AVENGERS: ENDGAME film is shattering box office records worldwide. Having edited AVENGERS for far longer than anyone else, it's all pretty relevant to me--back in the day, when Stan Lee would facetiously talk about … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION #39
I think it's fair to say that, as a series, the original run of INCREDIBLE HULK was troubled. It wrapped up after a mere six issues, and had Stan Lee and Jack Kirby not had a creator's affection for the character and started using him in the pages of AVENGERS and other titles, it's doubtful … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Unused INCREDIBLE HULK #4 Pages
The early Marvel titles are filled with all manner of mysteries, large and small. The greatest of these concern who among the various contributors were they key creative minds behind the success of the imprint--and that's a conversation that I don't think is ever going to abate, given that every faction has their own favorites … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Ditko: The Minor Mystery of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #8
Okay, this is going to be another somewhat-strange piece, but I can't help it if I'm fascinated by odd and inconsequential bits of comic book trivia and speculation. And this one cuts to the center of the often-disconnect that existed between Jack Kirby, who was largely plotting and drawing the early Marvel stories, and Stan … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: THE INCREDIBLE HULK: He can fly!
I was regularly haunting the section of the Sachem Public Library that contained books on or about comics, not just for that elusive copy of ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS (which I never did find there) but also for anything else of interest. I took out and read a bunch of books from that section, many … Continue reading BHOC: ALL IN COLOR FOR A DIME
I've mentioned before that, since beginning to follow the adventures of the Fantastic Four, I was very interested in reading the first issue of the series, such was my desire to know more about the history of comics. I had been on the lookout for a copy of ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS for a few … Continue reading BHOC: Power Records: The Fantastic Four
It caused quite a stir a couple of years ago when the entirety of the original artwork to AMAZING FANTASY #15, containing the very first Spider-Man story, was anonymously donated to the Library of Congress. The art was among the earliest to go missing from Marvel's warehouse back in the late 1970s/early 1980s and nobody … Continue reading Lee & Ditko: AMAZING FANTASY #15
The Tom Brevoort Experience 