It really is something to look at the development of the Marvel line during the formative years between 1961 and 1965. It's pretty amazing how all of the key strips would take these sudden surges in quality, that the material kept getting better, stronger and more polished, and the ambition got greater and greater as … Continue reading WC: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #120
In 1972, Marvel Comics entered its second phase. Editor Stan Lee had been promoted to Publisher and, momentarily, President, and Roy Thomas had been made his successor. What's more, former owner Martin Goodman was gone, as was the limitation on how many releases the company could put out which had been imposed upon them by … Continue reading THE CLAWS OF THE CAT #5: The Lost Issue
Every year, the Smith Haven Mall near to where I lived held a week-long crafts fair. For seven days, assorted artists and craftspeople would set up little booths throughout the Mall and hock their wares. And every year, there wound up being two or three guys selling back issue comic books out of cardboard boxes. … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS #1
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
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