As I spoke about last week, the early Marvel Comics was relatively consistent with the manner in which it dealt with death. As a general rule, when a character was genuinely killed (as opposed to suffering a "super villain death" at the climax of a story where they fell into the river or some such) … Continue reading The First Marvel Resurrection
I knew what would be coming up ahead of time in each issue of MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS, as I owned the George Olshevsky FANTASTIC FOUR INDEX https://tombrevoort.com/2019/11/24/bhoc-official-marvel-index-4/ So I knew that we were honing in on FANTASTIC FOUR #100, an issue that I was interested in entirely due to its centennial nature. Even then, the … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #80
If there's one thing that's become apparent over the past 80 years of comic book publishing, it's that death sells. The demise of a beloved character can create great interest in a series, as well as potentially delivering an emotional impact that the audience will remember. The whole job of storytelling is to evoke a … Continue reading The First Marvel Fatality
Here is another example of the phenomenon that we looked at last time: a perfectly fine cover image by Jack Kirby that has been deliberately colored in such a way as to render it unattractive and unappealing. As I said last time, going to this sort of monochromatic color scheme was a last ditch move … Continue reading (Not So) Great Covers: FANTASTIC FOUR #81 (and MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #63)
You'd see this happen from time to time in the mid- to late-1960s on the Marvel books. There's be a cover like this one that somebody--either editor Stan Lee or publisher Martin Goodman--didn't like, feeling that it was too cluttered and difficult to read from a distance, and it would get colored in a horrific … Continue reading (Not So) Great Covers: THOR #153
STRANGE TALES #118 was another book that I got in my Windfall Comics haul of 1988. By this point, it was a decidedly secondary title in the expanding Marvel line, not really possessing the spark of any of the other series of the era. This was really down to the lead Human Torch feature. While … Continue reading WC: STRANGE TALES #118
This issue of SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS was the final one I got in my box of Windfall Comics, purchased for $50.00 back in 1988, and it was an interesting issue for reasons that I'll expound upon later. SGT FURY was a bit of an odd duck in the Marvel line, in that … Continue reading WC: SGT FURY #25
By the time this issue of JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY was published, he series had crystalized into its final form. The short one-off adventures of the Thunder God Thor now gave way to an impressively long serialized story that ran consistently from issue to issue without a break for several years. In addition, the character's background … Continue reading WC: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #118
Somehow, somewhere along the way, I skipped over this issue of MARVEL SUPER-HEROES in recounting the different comic books I read growing up. And while it's not something that anybody but myself is going to be aware of, it bugs me enough that I'm going to go ahead and go over this issue with you … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #63
As we've spoken about in the past, Charlton Comics never really had a motivated interest in getting into the super hero field. They were quite happy most of the time to produce their line of largely-interchangeable war, romance, mystery, hot rod and western comics. But every once in a while, somebody at the organization would … Continue reading Brand Echh: Son of Vulcan #50
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