Month: February 2022

Tarzan #207 (April, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

I’m not sure if it would have been possible for an American kid of my generation to grow up not knowing who Tarzan was.  Even if you never once heard the name “Edgar Rice Burroughs”, you’d inevitably learn to recognize that author’s most famous hero by sight, as his loincloth-clad form swung by on a vine — or by sound, per his distinctive, (literally) trademarked yell.

Your humble blogger was no exception in this regard.  Still, I may have been in a minority among my peers in at least one Tarzan-related area: I never saw a single Tarzan movie in my formative years, despite their showing up regularly on television.  How come?  I’m not 100% sure, but I figure it was probably because of my dad.  Read More

Conan the Barbarian #15 (May, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When we last left Conan back in December, he and his two companions — Zephra (daughter of Conan’s old foe, the wizard Zukala), and Elric (ruler of an otherworldly realm called Melniboné) had just fended off an attack by Prince Gaynor the Damned and his Chaos Pack of beast-men.  We now pick up the tale where Conan the Barbarian #14 left off, as presented by the same storytellers — plotters Michael Moorcock (creator of Elric) and James Cawthorn, scripter Roy Thomas, artist Barry Windsor-Smith, and co-inker (with Windsor-Smith) Sal Buscema:  Read More

Green Lantern #89 (April, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, we haven’t featured an issue of DC Comics’ Green Lantern title here since #86, way back last August.  If you happen to be one of those readers, you might well wonder what’s been up with that, considering that I’ve written about every other issue in the Denny O’Neil-Neal Adams “Green Lantern/Green Arrow” run from the first one I bought (#80) onwards.

The reason’s a pretty simple one; on this blog, I only write about comic books I got new off the stands fifty years ago… and I didn’t get either GL #87 or #88 upon their initial release (in October and December, 1971, respectively).  My decision not to purchase #88 is, I think, still essentially supportable; it was an all-“vintage” issue (though not all-reprint, as I’ll explain presently), and technically not part of the O’Neil-Adams “GL/GA” canon at all.  (For what it’s worth, at age fourteen I had yet to develop the collector’s mentality that would have me pick up an otherwise undesirable comic book so as not to “break the run”.)  But Green Lantern #87?  My opting not to pick that one up out of the spinner rack (or, having already picked it up, to put it back without buying it) is one I ruefully kick myself for to this very day.  Read More

New Gods #8 (April, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Following two episodes set either on the ocean waves or on the god-worlds of New Genesis and Apokolips (the latter also being set many years in the past), in the eighth issue of New Gods writer-artist-editor Jack Kirby brought the action back to the city of Metropolis for the first time since issue #5.  In doing so, he was required to pick up plot threads that had been left dangling ever since that issue, published six months earlier, as well as to re-introduce a significant new supporting character not seen since then.  Of course, Kirby being the master storyteller he was, he could throw you right into the middle of the action — as he does on the very first page of #8 — and you’d find yourself acclimated almost immediately, even if you’d never read any previous issue of New Gods, let alone remembered the details of issue #5:  Read More

Avengers #99 (May, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Like its immediate predecessor, the second installment of writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith’s three-part follow-up to the Kree-Skrull War leads off with a cover inked by Windsor-Smith, but pencilled by John Buscema.  If you happen to have read our post about part one, aka Avengers #98, then you may recall that your humble blogger was obliged to confess therein that he’d gone close to five decades not realizing that Buscema had anything to do with that book’s cover, never having recognized any hand at work on it save for that of Windsor-Smith.  Something similar holds true for the cover of our present subject, Avengers #99 — only this time, it’s Buscema whose style I’ve always recognized, and Windsor-Smith whose contribution failed to register with your humble blogger until quite recently, when I checked the Grand Comics Database as part of my research for this post.  (This fact probably has no significance beyond highlighting what a poor eye I have for picking out artists’ styles, but it’s still kind of amusing, at least to me.)

Behind the cover, on the other hand, Windsor-Smith’s work was unmistakable — and would have been even had the opening splash page carried no credits at all…  Read More

Thor #199 (May, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in October of last year, this blog took a look at Thor #195 — the initial chapter of incoming writer Gerry Conway’s first full story arc for the series, following two issues devoted to wrapping up a multi-parter begun by his predecessor, Stan Lee.  If you’ve been wondering if we were ever going to get back to the God of Thunder’s quest for the Twilight Well at the World’s End, well, thou need’st worry no longer.  Though, since it’s been a few months, we obviously have some catching up to do on the three issues that fall between #195 and the main topic of today’s post, Thor #199.

But before we jump into a recap of issues #196-198, it would probably be useful to briefly refresh our collective memory about what went down in #195.  We have discussed a lot of other comic books in the last four months, after all.  Read More