Al Milgrom

Daredevil #107 (December, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in July, we took a look at Daredevil #105, in which a plotline involving a series of mysteriously-empowered new supervillains — one that had meandered through the generally street-level-set series for the past nine issues — suddenly took an unexpected turn for the cosmic, as our Man Without Fear found himself involved with Moondragon — a woman who, though Earth-born, presently called Saturn’s moon of Titan her home.  In other words, DD had somehow managed to wander into the outskirts of the “Thanos War” saga being chronicled by artist-writer Jim Starlin over in the pages of Captain Marvel.  Read More

Captain Marvel #29 (November, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I’ve shared in previous posts, your humble blogger was a relative latecomer to Jim Starlin’s run on Captain Marvel.  While I’d bought a few issues of the title way back in 1969, I had abandoned it after Roy Thomas and Gil Kane’s Fawcett-inspired makeover in issue #17 and hadn’t paid much attention to Mar-Vell since, save for his guest appearances in Avengers.  For my younger self in the summer of 1973, Jim Starlin was the guy who’d drawn a pretty good “Doctor Strange” story in Marvel Premiere earlier in the year, just before Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner took over that feature and made it really good.  But then, he showed up in the middle of Daredevil #105, having drawn (and almost certainly also plotted) an origin for that issue’s ostensible villainess, Moondragon, which introduced me for the first time to the epic storyline concerning Saturn’s moon of Titan, and its most dangerous denizen, Thanos, that the young creator had been chronicling in Captain Marvel since coming on board that series with issue #25, back in December, 1972.  And then, only a couple of weeks after that, Marvel Feature #12 had arrived in spinner racks, with an even more Thanos-centric yarn, this one drawn (and also at least co-plotted) all the way through by Starlin.  If DD #105 hadn’t already 100% convinced me to check out Starlin’s Captain Marvel the first chance I got, MF #12 surely must have clinched the sale.  Read More

Sword of Sorcery #4 (Sep.-Oct., 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last December, we looked at the first issue of Sword of Sorcery — DC Comics’ new (as of December, 1972, that is) bi-monthly series featuring author Fritz Leiber’s fantasy fiction duo, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.  The debut of the two roguish heroes in their own title came five months after their introduction to DC readers in Wonder Woman #202, courtesy of writer Samuel R. Delany, artist Dick Giordano, and editor Denny O’Neil — the latter of whom, not so coincidentally, would be not only editing DC’s new sword-and-sorcery title (the company’s first ongoing effort in that genre), but scripting it, as well.  SoS #1’s art, meantime, was contributed by a young penciller named Howard Chaykin, with inks by the mysterious “Crusty Bunkers” (whom, as we’d soon learn, consisted of various talents working out of the Continuity Associates studio run by Neal Adams and Giordano.)  Read More

Amazing Spider-Man #122 (July, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Like its immediate predecessor, the 122nd issue of Amazing Spider-Man leads off with a cover by John Romita, which, if not quite as iconic as that of #121, is still an exceptionally arresting image.  Not to mention one which, back in April, 1973, would likely have shocked the hell out of any semi-regular reader of the web-slinger’s series who had somehow managed to miss not only that most monumental of issues, but also any fannish discussion of same over the several weeks since its release on March 13th.

If there were any such readers fifty years ago, and if they hoped for some sort of recap to bring them up to speed on the details of how so something so unthinkable as the murder of Spider-Man’s beloved Gwen Stacy had come to pass, they were pretty much out of luck — because the creative team behind both the previous episode and this one — i.e., scripter Gerry Conway, penciller Gil Kane, foreground inker John Romita (who may have also contributed to the plot) and background inker Tony Mortellaro — weren’t about to break their storyline’s headlong momentum with any more exposition than was minimally required, let alone any flashbacks:  Read More

Forever People #11 (Oct.-Nov., 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I previously covered back in June in my post about the first issue of The Demon, sometime in the first half of 1972 DC Comics requested writer-artist-editor Jack Kirby to come up with a couple of new series concepts to complement the three titles already on his schedule.  The results were pitches for what ultimately became The Demon and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth — and DC liked them a lot.  Indeed, from Kirby’s perspective, they may have liked them a little too much. Read More