I'm fairly certain that I came across these documents at Scott Edelman's blog. In any case, Scott was one of those who found these documents preserved in the back of a drawer in the Marvel offices and hung onto them. Around 1966, as Marvel was beginning to make its first faltering in-roads into other media, … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: THE CHARACTER WRITE-UPS OF STAN LEE
This was yet another back issue that I picked up during my first trip to the Batcave, the very first full-on comic book specialty store that I had ever been in. I was drawn to this issue for a single, specific reason: somewhere in my travels, I had learned that this issue reprinted the 1950s … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #20
This issue of SUB-MARINER was yet another comic that I got in trade with my friend Don Sims in grade school. It was right at the end of the run, at the point where Namor was about to go from a mainstay of the line to a frequent guest-star and antagonist, no longer quite able … Continue reading BHOC: SUB-MARINER #71
Continuing on with the review of books that I acquired in trade with my grade school friend Donald Sims, that's how I laid hands on this issue of MARVEL SUPER-HEROES. I've mentioned this fact before, but just to reiterate: Don and I were friends for a few years, from the start of 5th Grade to … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #44
Even with the limited output allowed to them under the terms of their distribution deal with Independent News (which only permitted the Marvel of the 1960s to release a certain number of titles every month), Marvel often ran into situations where the talent they had on hand in order to complete everything wasn't enough. During … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Everett & Grandinetti & Friends – The Messy Story of Tales to Astonish #84
Here's a weird little throwback adventure, one that some have theorized might have represented an earlier unpublished Sub-Mariner adventure being burned off, but that I think simply amounts to something of an inside joke. In this 1956 premiere issue of ADVENTURE INTO MYSTERY, there's a short 4-page story drawn by Tony Mortellaro about an undersea … Continue reading The Last Gasp of the Sub-Mariner
Continuing on with more comics that I bought as back issues on my first trip to Bush's Hobbies in Ronkonkoma. I don't believe that I had any idea that INVADERS had debuted in a Giant-Size issue first, but when I came across this beauty in the bins, I had to have it. As I've said … Continue reading BHOC: GIANT-SIZE INVADERS #1
Continuing on with comics I bought during my first trip to Bush's Hobbies in Ronkonkoma. I was a huge fan of the Golden Age of Comics and the histories of the assorted characters that I was following--I wanted to know everything, to read everything. In particular, it had been the original Human Torch who provided … Continue reading BHOC: FANTASY MASTERPIECES #7
We've been talking a lot about the unofficial crossovers between characters and the homages that were done. But beyond that, there's a whole other category of instances in which one company either appropriated or parodied or referenced the characters of another. These instances tended to take many different forms--there was one memorable instance, for example, … Continue reading 5BC: Five Times DC Referenced Marvel Characters in Interesting Ways
This was another book that came out of the drugstore's Big Bin of Affidavit Return Comics and the first point when I learned that before it had featured the Hulk exclusively, MARVEL SUPER-HEROES had been split between the Green Goliath and the Sub-Mariner just as TALES TO ASTONISH had been years before. More than anything, … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #55
The Tom Brevoort Experience 