Tomb of Dracula #52 (January, 1977)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

It’s been two months since we last took a look at Tomb of Dracula — and since issues #51 and #52 both feature significant developments in the ongoing “Church of Dracula” saga that writer Marv Wolfman, penciller Gene Colan, and inker Tom Palmer were chronicling half a century ago, we’re going to be spending just about as much time today talking about the former as we are the latter, regardless what the big post title up there might lead one to believe.  If you’re a regular (or even a semi-regular) reader of this blog, you already know how this goes… so, let’s get to it.

As indicated by the Colan-Palmer cover for #51, a major plot thread that’s been running in the background of this series for a while now — namely, the quest of Blade and Hannibal King to track down their mutual arch-enemy, the vampire called Deacon Frost — is about to return to the foreground.  First, though, our storytellers will have to resolve another situation that feels like it’s been in stasis for three issues running (maybe because, by and large, it has)…  Read More

Howard the Duck #7 (December, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The fifty-year-old comic book we’re discussing today is something of a strange duck (sorry), in that while the bulk of it is devoted to the beginning of a new storyline concerning the titular character’s campaign for President of the United States, the first five of its seventeen pages — as well as the Gene Colan-Tom Palmer cover shown above — are given over to the wrap-up of a story mostly told, but not quite finished, in the previous issue.  So we’re going to need to take a look at Howard the Duck #6 before we look at #7.  And since the last issue we covered before this was #4, back in April… and since #5 sets up #6 pretty directly… we’re going to need to at least quickly summarize the events of the former issue’s “I Want Mo-o-oney!” before we even do that.  All clear?  Great!  So let’s begin.  Read More

X-Men #102 (December, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

With this post, we’ll be resuming our coverage of writer Chris Claremont and artist Dave Cockrum’s half-century old “Cassidy Keep” storyline in X-Men right where we left off in July — so, if you didn’t read our post about issue #101 at that time (or just need to refresh your memory), you might want to check it out before proceeding.  Also along the lines of housekeeping notes, we’ll be discussing the story’s conclusion in #103 in this post as well, so please plan accordingly.  Read More

Metal Men #49 (Dec., 1976 – Jan., 1977)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Today’s post features the first issue of Metal Men produced by the creative team of writer Martin Pasko and artist Walt Simonson without any input from the title’s prior writer/editor, Gerry Conway.  Alas, it’s also the last such issue, since Simonson would only be contributing cover art going forward.

We’ll have more to say about the series’ pending changing of the guard towards the end of the post; for now, however, let’s focus on the comic at hand, starting with its cover — a typically dynamic and high-impact effort from Simonson, though the blurb above the title logo might have given some regular readers pause.  “You are cordially invited to witness the destruction of the… Metal Men”?  So what else is new?  The Metal Men get destroyed every issue… or at least that’s how it seems sometimes.  Read More

Marvel Spotlight #31 (December, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Assuming your humble blogger hasn’t missed something in his research, the comic we’re going to be looking at today was, fifty years ago, the first to feature Nick Fury, agent of SHIELD — as opposed to Sgt. Nick Fury, leader of World War II’s Howling Commandos — in a headlining role since the cancellation of, um, Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, back in 1969.  Not that the eye-patched director of the Marvel Universe’s foremost spy agency had been at all out of sight through the first half of the 1970s; indeed, for a while he seemed to be popping up in one book or another almost every single month.  Read More

Eternals #6 (December, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

It’s been a while since we last discussed artist/writer/editor Jack Kirby’s Eternals in this space — so, as will come as no surprise to regular readers of the blog, prior to jumping in to the issue referred to both by this post’s title and by its featured cover image (the work of Kirby and Frank Giacoia, by the way), we’re going to spend some time catching up with the episodes of the ongoing saga which had appeared in the intervening months between the release of issues #2 and #6, way back in 1976… beginning, naturally enough, with issue #3, whose cover (also by Kirby and Giacoia) is shown at left.

Eternals #3’s “The Devil in New York!” (featuring the inks of John Verpoorten, who’d also done those honors for the title’s first two issues) picks up right where the previous installment had left off — which, in case you need a reminder, was with the full-page reveal of the awesome Arishem, leader of the Fourth Host of the space gods known as the Celestials.  The present chapter opens as “Ike Harris” — originally introduced in issue #1 as a mere guide to archaeologist Daniel Damian and his daughter Margo, but who’d quickly outed himself as Ikaris, a member of an immortal, super-powered sibling race to Homo sapiens who call themselves Eternals — poses the question to his fellow Eternal, Ajak: “Does this Arishem herald the coming of disastrous times, such as befell man in the distant past?”  Read More

Marvel Premiere #33 (December, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in September, 1976, the artist of the comic book story we’ll be discussing today — Howard Chaykin, that is — wouldn’t have ranked among the most prolific of the generation of talented young illustrators who’d entered the American comic book industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Unlike other such “Young Turks” of the era as Barry Windsor-Smith, Bernie Wrightson, Frank Brunner, and Jim Starlin, Chaykin still hadn’t had a run on a series lasting more than four issues — and that personal record had been set back in 1973.  Nor had his one- (or two-) off jobs over the past few years been all that plentiful, or frequent.  Read More

Justice League of America #137 (December, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

With this post, we come to the third and final chapter of 1976’s Justice League of America/Justice Society of America crossover, featuring the formal induction of “Earth-S” — home to the characters formerly published by Fawcett Comics — into the greater DC Comics multiverse.  Following the lead of this saga’s own writers, we’re not going to be offering recaps of the previous episodes — so if you aren’t already familiar with what happened in them, or simply need to refresh your memory, you might want to check out our posts on JLA #135 and #136 before proceeding.  Read More

Fantastic Four #176 (November, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Regular readers of this blog will recall how, three months ago, we celebrated “Marvel Milestone Month” in honor of four long-running Marvel series all having hit significant numerical markers in May, 1976.  Today, we’ll be looking at yet another comic that signified a notable Marvel milestone of that year, coming out as it did on the fifteenth anniversary of the launch of the Fantastic Four title back in August, 1961 — although, as best as I’ve been able to determine, no one took much notice of that fact at the time.  Read More

Conan the Barbarian #68 (November, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

With this post, we’ve reached the final chapter of Marvel Comics’ five-part crossover between Conan the Barbarian and Marvel Feature (starring Red Sonja) — and as this installment’s cover by Gil Kane, Pablo Marcos, and John Romita makes clear, Conan and Sonja — not to mention Bêlit, Queen of the Black Coast — are going to be joined for the occasion by the third sword-and-sorcery star derived from the works of Robert E. Howard who was currently headlining their own Marvel color comic:  Kull the Destroyer!  Read More