Month: October 2023

Adventure Comics #431 (January, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

It may be hard to believe, but despite having been a DC Comics reader since August, 1965, I’d never bought a single issue of Adventure Comics — the second comic-book series ever to have been released by the publisher, way back in 1935, and one of its longest running — prior to October, 1973.  What can I say?  I evidently had a huge blind spot in regards to the super-team who’d held the lead feature spot when I first got into comics in the mid-1960s — i.e., the Legion of Super-Heroes (a quirk I wouldn’t really get over until the team’s Paul Levitz-Keith Giffen era kicked off in 1982), and I also wasn’t much of a fan of Supergirl (who took over from the LSH in 1969).  Nor did I give Adventure a nibble when, following Supergirl’s graduation to her own title, editor Joe Orlando briefly switched the venerable series formerly known as New Comics to an anthology format with #425, then introduced a mysterious new superheroine, the Black Orchid, who held the cover spot for three issues (#428 to #430).

But the Spectre?  The Ghostly Guardian had been one of my favorite DC superheroes ever since I picked up his third tryout issue of Showcase, back in 1966, and I’d been missing him ever since his apparent “death” (how do you kill a ghost, anyway?) in Justice League of America #83 (Sep., 1970).  So once I learned that DC was bringing the Astral Avenger back in Adventure Comics, I became a buyer of Adventure Comics… at least for the duration.  Read More

Amazing Spider-Man #129 (February, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

I don’t suppose I need to explain to anyone reading this just why the topic of today’s post is so significant.  After all, even if you didn’t know anything about the 129th issue of Amazing Spider-Man before you arrived here, just a look at the comic’s iconic cover by Gil Kane and John Romita would quickly clue you in to its contents.  And what other comic-book character’s fiftieth anniversary in this month of October, 2023 could possibly compare in importance to the first appearance of… the Jackal?

Nah, just kidding.  I’m talking about the other guy.  (Although I freely acknowledge that the debut of the Jackal is significant in its own way, especially for ’90s-era Spider-Man fans who still have nightmares about the Clone Saga.)  Read More

Savage Tales #3 (February, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As we covered in our discussion of Savage Tales #2 back in June, the promise made on that magazine’s last page — that the following issue would be on “on sale September 25 A.D. 1973 in this the Marvel age of swords and sorcery” — turned out to be off by almost exactly one month.  Savage Tales #3 would in fact not come out until October 23rd — its delay being a result, according to editor Roy Thomas, of business-based concerns over the title’s overall commercial viability.  And even now, the book’s future was far from secure — though we’ll wait and let Mr. Thomas deliver that fifty-year-old bad news himself per his ST #3 editorial, coming up later in this post.

For the moment, however, we’ll move right into the main event of the issue — the reason that my younger self would have continued to wait for ST #3 as long as required back in the day, and still considered the result to have been worth it: the conclusion of Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith’s adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s final story of Conan the Barbarian, “Red Nails”. Read More

Demon #16 (January, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

DC Comics appears to have had high hopes for The Demon when the title was first launched, back in June, 1972.  After just one issue — well before any reliable sales figures could have become available — the publisher increased the book’s frequency from bi-monthly to monthly with Demon #2, which was released in August.  That month happened to be the very same one that DC dropped the ax on artist/writer/editor Jack Kirby’s core “Fourth World” titles, Forever People and New Gods, each with their eleventh issues– two series in which the veteran creator had almost certainly invested more of his passion, imagination, and energy than he ever would The Demon, or, for that matter, any other comic he’d work on for DC in the 1970s.  Yet neither title had ever received the show of faith on DC publisher Carmine Infantino’s part that monthly status would have indicated, nor had (or would) the lone surviving Fourth World title, Mister Miracle — which continued coming out every two months (albeit gutted of virtually everything that had made it a Fourth World book in the first place), while both The Demon and its fellow “new” Kirby creation, Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth, sprinted along at their monthly pace. Read More

Marvel Premiere #13 (January, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in August, we took a look at Marvel Premiere #12, featuring the initial chapter of a multi-part “Doctor Strange” adventure by the creative team of co-plotter/scripter Steve Englehart (joined for that single issue by co-scripter Mike Friedrich) and co-plotter/artist Frank Brunner.  Having begun their run on the feature half a year earlier by taking two issues to wrap up the extended “Shum-Gorath” storyline they’d inherited from their predecessors — and then following that up in Marvel Premiere #11 with a three-page framing sequence for a couple of classic Strange tales by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko — this was the first opportunity for Englehart and Brunner to show what kind of story they could come up with all on their own.

Our topic today is the second chapter of that same story, which begins right where the first installment left off, as the newly-anointed Sorcerer Supreme of Earth pursues his old foe (and former rival for his new role), Baron Mordo, through the time stream…  Read More

Captain Marvel #30 (January, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

By the time Captain Marvel #30 came out in October, 1973, Marvel Comics readers had already had a couple of opportunities to see the newly-enhanced (as of issue #29) “Most Cosmic Superhero of All” in action — namely, in Marvel Team-Up #16 and Daredevil #107.  But the subject of our discussion today was the first time that writer-artist Jim Starlin, the creator who was actually responsible for the big changes to Mar-Vell’s status quo, had himself had a chance to show just what those changes meant for the hero, and for his fans, going forward; and the creator obligingly responded with a story that, if it didn’t quite deliver on its cover blurb’s promise of “pure action — from cover to cover!”, still managed to come pretty damn close to living up to that claim.  Read More

Man-Thing #1 (January, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In October, 1973, Marvel Comics’ muck-encrusted monstrosity, the Man-Thing — who’d first been introduced in the black-and-white Savage Tales #1 back in January, 1971, and had been holding down his own regular feature in Fear since July, 1972 — graduated into his own title at last.

But if anyone picked up this “Fear Fraught First Issue” expecting to get in on the ground floor of anything, they were likely disappointed once they turned past Frank Brunner’s excellent cover to find themselves smack dab in the middle of an ongoing storyline… and not exactly what you’d call a straightforward, uncomplicated storyline, either…  Read More

Justice League of America #109 (Jan.-Feb., 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Nick Cardy’s cover for Justice League of America #109 is interesting in that it completely ignores the conflict that drives roughly 80% of the plot of this issue’s story.  Rather, it seeks to hook the prospective buyer by way of a tantalizing mystery — who is leaving the team?  It’s not a bad strategy, really, since even casual fans of the JLA would likely be curious to learn the answer.

The only real problem with hanging the cover’s whole pitch on this mystery is that the answer is given immediately, on the story’s very first page.  So if our hypothetical prospective buyer was only interested in that bit of information, and they so much as flipped past the cover while still standing at the spinner rack, they might well have opted to put the comic back rather than spend two dimes on it.  But, hey, see for yourself:  Read More