Al Feldstein

Captain America #164 (August, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Fifty years ago, John Romita’s cover for the topic of today’s blog post promised a certain degree of novelty; not only did it nod to the then-hot horror genre via presenting the superheroic Falcon as a werewolf, but it also heralded the debut of a new supervillain — and a Black female one at that.  (Nightshade may not have been the first such character to appear in American comics, but her particular race-gender combo made her stand out in this era, nevertheless… actually, as far as your humble blogger can tell, it still does.)

But we readers of May, 1973 couldn’t guess the full scope of the novelty awaiting us until we turned to this issue’s first page:  Read More

Avengers #93 (November, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

If there’s a single comic book that best exemplifies the potential of the all-new, 48-page format which Marvel Comics rolled out to great fanfare in August, 1971 (or, as we’ve christened it on this blog, Giant-Size Marvel Month), it surely must be the subject of today’s post: Avengers #93, featuring the 34-page story “This Beachhead Earth” — which, in addition to being the mid-point of the extended storyline known as the Kree-Skrull War, was also the first installment of a short but superlative run on the series by the creative team of scripter Roy Thomas, penciller Neal Adams, and inker Tom Palmer.

And if any set of classic comics exemplifies just how contentious two talented creators can become over the issue of who deserves the credit for which aspects of their storied collaboration, it’s the same short Avengers run by Thomas, Adams, and Palmer. Read More

Avengers #88 (May, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In our last post, we took a look at Justice League of America #89 — a very special issue of DC Comic’s premiere super-team book, in which writer Mike Friedrich paid homage to one of his literary heroes by basing his story’s central character of “Harlequin Ellis” on the noted science fiction author and screenwriter, Harlan Ellison.

By a remarkable (but apparently entirely random) coincidence, the same month that saw the publication pf JLA #89 (March, 1971) also saw the release of a very special issue of the Marvel Comics series featuring that publisher’s nearest analogue to the Justice League, Avengers, which writer Roy Thomas had scripted from a plot outline by the real Harlan Ellison.  You really can’t make this stuff up, y’know?  Read More

Mad #129 (September, 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

This post wasn’t originally supposed to be a postmortem on Mad.  In fact, I’d originally planned to run it on July 1st — which, if I’d followed through, would have seen it beat the news of Mad‘s impending demise (at least as a purveyor of new material) by a couple of days.  That would have made for a timely, even prescient post, rather than one that may seem like it’s bringing up the rear, commentary-wise — and at some distance, at that.  Read More