The original artwork for classic stories is always of interest to me. There's a bunch of information that we can discover from it. And even apart from that, it's often fun just to see how these stories were originally drawn, without the added intermediary step of them having to be reproduced and printed in a … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The First New Captain America Story – From The Original Art
Now here was a beauty! This issue of TALES OF SUSPENSE features only the 4th appearance of Iron Man, the super hero who took over the title, ushering it into the Marvel Age of Comics. Like every book covered in this feature, I acquired this issue as part of my Windfall Comics purchase, where through … Continue reading WC: TALES OF SUSPENSE #42
Dr. Jerry Bails was truly the forefather of organized comic book fandom in the early 1960s. As a full-grown adult, his interest in comic books and comics history brought some respectability to the medium, and his status as a grown-up allowed him to interact with the creators and editors of the comics as a peer … Continue reading The 1964 Alley Award Winners
This is one of those comics where I'm not 100% certain where I got it from, or when. But I think it turned up in a 3-Bag at around the same period as IRON MAN #100 and AVENGERS #161--it's of the same relative vintage anyway. So let's go with that. During the 1970s, as a … Continue reading BHOC: MARVEL SUPER ACTION #2
Here's another issue that I got out of one of those 3-Bags that toy stores and department stores carried in the 1970s. The books therein were always about nine months old once those bags hit the racks, which was a godsend for me, as they provided a way in which I could get my hands … Continue reading BHOC: IRON MAN #100
As tended to be my custom, as soon as I started buying a new Marvel series I'd be driven to dig around in my local drugstore's Big Bin of Slightly Older Comics to see if any earlier issues could be found and purchased, five for a dollar. And so it was that I came into … Continue reading BHOC: IRON MAN #92
The early days of the Marvel Age of Comics, it must be said, were a pretty ramshackle and fly-by-night period. For all that these comics in general have come to be regarded as timeless masterpieces in certain circles today, at the time they were being produced, they were still largely no more than a way … Continue reading Lee & Heck & Hartley: The Misguided Mix-Up of TALES OF SUSPENSE #67 & #68
I picked up this issue of TALES OF SUSPENSE during that selfsame first visit to The Batcave, the comic book specialty shop located just off of the South Shore Mall, the first ever genuine comic book shop that I had been to. And I bought it for a singular reason: its age. I could tell … Continue reading BHOC: TALES OF SUSPENSE #30
And so we come to the third and final story that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby adapted in the 1960s from one that Kirby with his then-partner Joe Simon had first produced for the inaugural issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS in late 1940. It should probably be stated right up front that according to the … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Simon: Captain America Before and After 3
Continuing on in our compare-and-contrast between a story originally produced by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for the inaugural issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS, cover-dated March 1941, and it's Marvel Age remake, this one in the pages of TALES OF SUSPENSE #64. The prior issue had featured Cap's origin, and so as to cut down … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Simon: Captain America Before and After 2
The Tom Brevoort Experience 