Bob Smith | Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books

1st Issue Special #9 (December, 1975)

My first encounter with Doctor Fate dates back to 1966, when I met him as a member of the Justice Society of America in Justice League of America #46 — the opening half of that year’s annual summer JLA-JSA meet-up event, which, as it happened, was the first such event I experienced as a young comics fan. As I wrote in my post about that issue nine years ago, he very quickly became one of my very favorite JSAers, probably due as much to his look (that golden, whole-head-covering helmet was so cool) as to his power set (I developed a predilection for the supernaturally-based superfolks pretty early on, for whatever reason). That opinion hadn’t changed by September, 1975, so when the sorcerer from Salem was granted a solo showcase in the ninth issue of 1st Issue Special (his first such since 1944!), it was pretty much a given that I would show up for the occasion. Read More

Green Lantern #86 (Oct.-Nov., 1971)

Posted on August 28, 2021 by Alan Stewart

There’s a lot going on on the cover of Green Lantern #86. Besides boasting an outstanding illustration by Neal Adams that would probably be even better remembered than it is if it hadn’t followed right on the heels of its instantly iconic predecessor, the cover also boldly heralds the inclusion within the comic’s pages of “an important message” from no less a personage than the 1966-73 mayor of New York City, John Lindsay — and proudly announces that Green Lantern has won the Academy Award for Best Comic. That’s a lot to take in — but don’t worry, we’ll get to it all, starting with the subject of Adams’ compelling cover image — the concluding installment of the groundbreaking two-part story focused on drug addiction that Adams and writer Denny O’Neil had begun in the previous issue, #85. Read More

The Brave and the Bold #76 (Feb.-March, 1968)

Posted on December 17, 2017 by Alan Stewart

When I picked up this issue of Brave and the Bold fifty years ago (give or take a couple of weeks), Batman’s co-star in the book, Plastic Man, had been around for over twenty-six years — almost as long as the Caped Crusader himself. But he’d only been a DC Comics hero for a little over one year — which is about as long as my ten-year-old self had been aware of him. Read More