Captain America #186 (June, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Art by Gil Kane and Joe Sinnott.

The last issue of Captain America we discussed in this space, was, as I’m sure you’ll remember, a highly significant one for the series, featuring as it did not only the tragic death of Roscoe, the young man who’d attempted to replace Steve Rogers in the titular role, but also Steve’s inevitable response to that tragedy: the abandonment of his briefly-held “Nomad” identity to once again take up the shield of Captain America, as he prepared to deal with the return of his greatest arch-enemy (and the man who’d brutally murdered Roscoe) — the Red Skull.

Interestingly, however, issue #183’s letters column devoted at least as much attention to the hero who shared the series’ title logo with Cap (even if the book’s “official” title, per the indicia, had been, and would remain, simply Captain America) — namely, the Falcon.  In response to a missive from reader Bob Stenson that included a brief, vaguely critical remark about the Falcon’s decision not to come to the aid of his erstwhile partner Steve Rogers against the Golden Archer back in CA #179, the book’s anonymous letters-page answerer (identified by the Grand Comics Database as series scribe Steve Englehart) took the opportunity to preview some upcoming — and ominous-sounding — developments in regards to Marvel Comics’ first Black American superhero:  Read More

Limited Collectors’ Edition #C-36 (Jun.-Jul., 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

By March, 1975, DC Comics had been utilizing its innovative 10″ x 14″ tabloid format for over two years.  Thus far, most of the content for the company’s publications in this format had been reprinted from its extensive archives, although some new material had appeared here and there.  Still, it seemed inevitable that we readers of the time would eventually see DC bring out a tabloid with exclusively new content — though I doubt many of us were expecting that the very first to do so would be an adaptation of the first nineteen chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Read More

Giant-Size Avengers #4 (Jun., 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in August, 1974, after laying the necessary narrative groundwork for many months, Avengers writer Steve Englehart had inaugurated his “Celestial Madonna” story arc with a pair of issues that came out within a couple of weeks of each other: Avengers #129 and Giant-Size Avengers #2.  Half a year later, in February, 1975, the saga would reach its conclusion in a parallel fashion, with the final chapters appearing in that month’s issues of both the regular monthly Avengers title and its giant-sized quarterly companion.  Read More

Defenders #23 (May, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The fifty-year-old comic book referred to in the title line of this blog post presents the second chapter of a four-part storyline.  And, seeing how we didn’t feature a post about Defenders #22 here in this space last month, regular readers of the blog know what that means: we’ll be covering that issue before moving on to our ostensible main topic, i.e., Defenders #23.  But wait, there’s more!  Because, although the story chronicled in another half-century-old comic, Giant-Size Defenders #4, isn’t technically part of the same arc, its events do preface those of the main Defenders title’s “Sons of the Serpent” saga in some significant ways.  For that reason, we’ll be spending a little quality time with it before proceeding even as far as Defenders #22.  It’s a three-fer today, folks.  Read More

Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 (May, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

If aging memory serves, it wasn’t long after the subject of today’s post first went on sale that it started to rapidly climb in value on the collector’s market — a phenomenon that was surely almost wholly attributable to the comic’s nine-page backup story, which presented the long-awaited first solo adventure of Howard the Duck.  But as epochal as Howard’s ascent to feature-starring status undoubtedly was half a century ago, the story which occupied the issue’s first thirty pages — “The Kid’s Night Out!”, starring the title’s muck-encrusted headliner, the Man-Thing — could hardly be called an inconsequential piece of work.  Rather, it’s one of the most memorable episodes of the lead feature’s entire original run… and it’s where we’ll begin our coverage of this seminal fifty-year-old comic book today.  Read More

Strange Tales #179 (April, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last November, we took a look at Strange Tales #178, featuring the premiere installment of Marvel Comics’ revived “Warlock” feature, now written and drawn by Jim Starlin.  In the first episode of a new multi-part storyline, the one-time savior of Counter-Earth learned for the first time of the galactic-level threat represented by the Universal Church of Truth — a militant religious organization determined to bring the entire universe under its tyrannical control, led by an entity called the Magus; an entity who, somehow, was the very same being as Adam Warlock himself.

But while I’m sure we’re all eager to proceed with this issue’s continuation of Starlin’s saga, your humble blogger feels he would be remiss not to first encourage you all to take a closer look at the book’s cover — more specifically, at the upper right-hand corner of said cover, where we would normally expect to see the Comics Code Authority’s seal of approval on the contents of this comic book — because in this particular case, approval has evidently been granted by the Cosmic Code Authority.  Read More

1st Issue Special #1 (April, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the relative dearth of DC Comics-related posts on this blog over the last twelve months or so, compared to how many I’d been turning out just a couple of years earlier.  Today, we’ll be talking about something that’s been even more scarce in these parts in recent times: posts about comics written and drawn by Jack Kirby.  Sure, I might have only managed to bang out eight posts concerning DC books in 2024 (out of sixty-four overall), but that’s still better than my record for Kirby posts over that same year, which is: zero.  Considering that I wrote about ten Kirby-kreated books as recently as 2022 (and twenty in the year before that), that’s a pretty dramatic change.  Read More

Avengers #134 (April, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

While it may say “Avengers #134 (April, 1975)” on the title line above — and, yes, that is that very issue’s cover (pencilled by Gil Kane, inked by Joe Sinnott, and probably touched up by John Romita) that’s displayed right above that — we’ll actually be beginning this post by looking at the preceding issue, Avengers #133 (whose cover by Kane, Dave Cockrum, and Frank Giacoia is shown at left).  That’s because the last time we checked in with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes was in November’s post about Giant-Size Avengers #3, which, as you may remember, ended right in the middle of the extended storyline that today is generally known as the “Celestial Madonna Saga”.  And while covering more than one comic in a single blog post is hardly anything new around these parts, your humble blogger feels moved to point out that, even more than with most continued stories of this era, this one happens to be so information-dense, particularly at this juncture, that a brief synopsis could never, ever cut it.  Read More