As we spoke about a week or two back, VENUS was a strangely schizophrenic title published by Marvel/Timely in the 1940s and early 1950s. It concerned the Roman goddess Venus coming to Earth and falling in love with the publisher of a women's magazine, BEAUTY, and becoming its editor. It was a bizarre mix of … Continue reading The First (Marvel) Thor Story
VENUS was a weird comic book, one that went through a myriad of tone and genre changes across its 19 issue lifespan. It was first launched in 1948 during a time when Marvel (then Timely) was attempting to establish a beachhead of female-led super hero titles. So along with VENUS, also launched at that point … Continue reading The First (Marvel) Loki Story
MISS AMERICA MAGAZINE had started out as simply MISS AMERICA COMICS, solo-starring the patriotic character then being featured in Timely's MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS as well. But buying tastes were beginning to change in the marketplace, and so publisher Martin Goodman switched gears, transitioning MISS AMERICA into a hybrid magazine aimed at girls. The super-heroine would … Continue reading The First Patsy Walker Story
Given the wide and bizarre assortment of super heroes and adventure characters tossed off during the Golden Age of Comics, it's small wonder that there are antecedents of a kind for all manner of characters who, in a later incarnation, went on to prominence. So it was with the Black Panther, who made his first … Continue reading The First Black Panther Story
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
Continuing on in our review of this 1947 behind-the-scenes pamphlet published by Timely editor Stan Lee Here, Stan brings back Mario Acquaviva to talk about the skills involved in lettering comics, and he shows off some pages from a recent Sub-Mariner story. I have no idea where this story actually ran, so I can't pull … Continue reading Secrets Behind The Comics 4
Here's the second portion of SECRETS BEHIND THE COMICS, editor Stan Lee's self-published pamphlet which purported to give the inside story on how comic books were made. Even in 1947--and this applied to virtually all of the publishing house of the period, not just Timely--the Editor was the Key Man. This section does give us … Continue reading Secrets Behind the Comics 2
In 1947, still more than a decade before the Marvel revolution that would forever change the comic book industry and make his name a household word, Stan Lee toiled in obscurity at the editor of Martin Goodman's Timely Comics. It was a safe postwar job to go back to, but not one with a lot … Continue reading Secrets Behind the Comics 1
As the Marvel line began to grow in the 1960s, editor Stan Lee decided that he had a problem. He based this supposition on some of the fan mail that he'd been receiving no doubt--mail that would ask questions about how a given Marvel character could be in the midst of life-or-death jeopardy in one … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Simon: Captain America Before and After 1
Captain America was not the first patriotically-themed super hero to appear in comic books. That honor is reserved for The Shield, headliner of PEP COMICS for MLJ (eventually ARCHIE) who first appeared in the inaugural issue of that series, the creation of Harry Shorten and Irv Novick. Like most of the early super heroes, the … Continue reading Making The Shield Into Captain America
The Tom Brevoort Experience 