In 1988, Eclipse comics was celebrating its ten-year anniversary as a publisher. Founded by Jan and Dean Mullaney, Eclipse was one of the earliest entrants into the nascent Direct Sales marketplace of Comic Book specialty shops. The company was also a proponent of creator-ownership and offered a better publishing arrangement than the mainstream outfits of … Continue reading Brand Echh: TOTAL ECLIPSE #1
Every once in a while, my mother would go to a more outlying supermarket when she needed something in particular, something that apparently wasn't carried by our local store. In that same shopping mall there was a card store or a candy store that sold comics. And that's where I came across this issue of … Continue reading BHOC: HOWARD THE DUCK #31
In the late 1970s, before he would go on to be hired by Marvel Comics as an assistant editor, Mark Gruenwald published two issues of his fanzine OMNIVERSE. Unlike most other fan publications, OMNIVERSE was dedicated to examining a single principle when it came to comic book fiction: the consistency of continuity across fictional realities, … Continue reading OMNIVERSE #1
This issue of AVENGERS, frankly, baffled me. We were coming off of the climax of the Korvac Saga the previous month, where the entire Avengers line-up had been killed and only resurrected in the final moments. So my expectation is that we'd see these circumstances followed up on in some way. What I wasn't anticipating … Continue reading BHOC: AVENGERS #178
This issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA turned up at the 7-11 the next time I visited there. The series had been somewhat shaky for months, ever since the departure of Jack Kirby. it was plagued with back-ups and fill-ins, and so its running storyline concerning Steve Rogers attempting to learn more about his past prior to … Continue reading BHOC: CAPTAIN AMERICA #227
Another week and another trip to the 7-11 brought me another stack of brand new comic books. Among them was this issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA, a title that I was buying regularly despite the fact that it had been listing badly for a while. With the departure of Jack Kirby, who had written and drawn … Continue reading BHOC: CAPTAIN AMERICA #226
I picked up this issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA on my usual weekly Thursday sweep of the spinner rack at my regular 7-11. But before that, I'd gotten to have a noteworthy though frustrating experience. The weekend before, my father had learned that Stan Lee was going to be making a personal appearance at the Cartoonerville … Continue reading BHOC: CAPTAIN AMERICA #225 and Stan Lee at Cartoonerville
For a hot moment in the mid-1970s, it seemed as though funny animal comics were poised to make a comeback. A lot of this interest stemmed from the huge demand for HOWARD THE DUCK #1, which drove up the back issue prices of that issue. Nobody yet entirely realized how manipulation at the distributor level … Continue reading Brand Echh: Quack #1
I've spoken before about my snobbishness when it came to comic books that didn't feature super heroes. As a young reader, my tastes were extremely narrow. I was in the game for super hero stories--not for westerns, or war stories, or suspense tales, or science fiction, or barbarian adventures or romance comics or monsters of … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL PRESENTS #9
This is a bit of a break from our usual fare here, more in keeping with the Blah Blah Blog segments that I repost from my old Marvel blog that were relevant to my work situation. But I typically refrain from talking about that kind of thing here, as it seems somehow immodest and self-serving … Continue reading 5BC: Five Comics That Almost Got Me Fired
The Tom Brevoort Experience 