Dan Adkins

Astonishing Tales #33 (January, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in May of this year, we took a look at Astonishing Tales #31, which featured Deathlok the Demolisher… although only for its first ten pages.  As regular readers of this blog may recall, the ongoing series plotted and (mostly) drawn by Deathlok’s primary creator, Rich Buckler, had in the spring of 1975 recently been having scheduling problems, leading Marvel Comics to make the bi-monthly title full reprint for one issue (#29), bring in additional pencilling help for the next (#30), and then, having only enough new content to fill half of the last (#31), pad out the rest of that book with yet another reprint.  Still, we found cause for cautious optimism in what Deathlok material we did get in AT #31, per the coming-on-board of new (hopefully to become regular) inker Klaus Janson, as well as some welcome progression in the feature’s meandering plotlines.

How well-founded was our optimism?  Well, let’s start with the fact that this post, which is mostly about issue #33, is appearing in October… meaning that, fifty years ago, it took Marvel five months to bring out two issues of this book, rather than the expected four.  Not exactly what you’d call a good sign.  Read More

Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #6 (November, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last October, we took a look at the first issue of Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction — Marvel Comics’ latest (as of 1974), and, as things turned out, last (as of 2025) attempt to produce an SF anthology comic adapting well-known short stories and novels in the genre.  As I related in that earlier post, my younger self definitely enjoyed that premiere offering, but still somehow ended up not buying another issue until the August, 1975 release of the subject of today’s post.  Whether the magazine had been having distribution problems in my area in the ten-month interval between UWoSF #1 and #6, or I simply passed on #2 through #5 for reasons now forgotten, I’m glad that the stars aligned for me to buy this one.  Read More

Thor #240 (October, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before on this blog, Thor was my favorite Marvel superhero back in the 1970s.  (Just for the record, he still is.)  That didn’t mean that Thor was my favorite Marvel superhero comic book for most of that decade, however — at least, not so far as the new issues coming out then were concerned.  The reason for that disparity stems from the fact that, while my enthusiasm for the Son of Odin might have originally been inspired by a general affinity for myth and legend (and for modern heroic fantasy fiction derived from them), it was based at least as much on my admiration for the work that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had done on the feature in the mid-to-late 1960s.  Thor/Journey into Mystery was the one major Marvel title I endeavored to acquire a complete run of back in my collecting heyday (I eventually made it back as far as JiM #96, if you’re curious).  So I had those Lee-Kirby classics — which I was picking up sporadically, just a few at a time — to compare the current issues to.  And despite regularly featuring a high quality of artwork (usually by John Buscema, working with a variety of mostly sympathetic inkers), the new stories (which for most of the first half of the 1970s were written by Gerry Conway) just didn’t measure up in my eyes… neither to those great old Thor/JiM comics, nor to the best of what Marvel was offering elsewhere in the superhero genre in those days.  Read More

Doctor Strange #9 (August, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When we last left Doctor Strange back in January, he and his lover/apprentice Clea were trapped in the Dark Dimension, facing down the demonic minions of the Dread Dormammu — a group led by Dormammu’s chief disciple, Orini, whom both Doc and we readers had just learned was Clea’s own father.

That startling revelation had come on the closing page of Doctor Strange #7; for that reason, despite the fact that the title up there says this post is about issue #9, we’re going to be starting things off instead with a look at #8, whose cover by Gil Kane and Tom Palmer is shown at right.  If you’re a regular reader, you already know this drill by heart… so, let’s get started:  Read More

Strange Tales #178 (February, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in June, we took a look at Captain Marvel #34, which was the last issue drawn and plotted by Jim Starlin.  As we discussed in that post, Starlin abruptly quit the series after delivering only one chapter of his first post-“Thanos War” storyline, unhappy with Marvel Comics’ seeming unwillingness, or inability, to give him a single consistent inker on the bi-monthly title.

Per remarks the creator has made in interviews over the years, his leaving Captain Marvel amounted to his leaving Marvel, period, at least for a little while.  As he explained in 1998 for an interview published in Comic Book Artist #2:  Read More

Giant-Size Defenders #3 (January, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As we’ve discussed in this space previously, Marvel Comics seems to have been in an almighty rush to get as many “Giant-Size” comics to market as possible in the first half of 1974.  Along with a multitude of title, frequency, price, and format changes, most seemingly made on the fly, one likely result of this haste was the release of Giant-Size Defenders #1 in April, 1974 as a mostly-reprint package, its only new content (not counting the Gil Kane-John Romita-Frank Giacoia cover) being a 9-page framing sequence.  Written by Tony Isabella and illustrated by Jim Starlin and Al Milgrom, that strip unquestionably looked great, and it read just fine; there simply wasn’t enough of it. Read More

Thor #228 (October, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The primary subject of today’s blog post is the advent of artist Rich Buckler as the regular artist on Marvel Comics’ Thor (and despite the post’s title, we’ll be spending at least as much time on issue #227 — Buckler’s actual debut on the series — as we will on #228).  But as it’s been a while since we last checked in on the God of Thunder (at least in his own book), it’s probably advisable that we take a few moments here at the top to orient ourselves to the current lay of the land in Thor, in terms both of its ongoing storyline and of its creative team.  Read More

Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu #1 (September, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

While this blog has briefly touched on the matter of Marvel’s 1974-75 line of “Giant-Size” comics in a few previous discussions, this is the first time we’ve devoted a post to a book in that fairly short-lived format.  So, I hope you all won’t mind if we take a little time here at the top of the page, before we flip past Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu #1’s Ron Wilson-Mike Esposito cover to take a look at this issue’s specific contents, to get into a little background on the introduction and early days of the “Giant-Size” format in general.  It’s an interesting story (at least in my opinion) that seems to indicate a certain degree of disorder in the Marvel offices around this time — disorder which might rise to the level of full-on chaos, but then again might not, depending on your point of view.  Read More

Savage Sword of Conan #1 (August, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In June, 1974, the Hyborian Age was clearly in full flower at Marvel Comics.  Along with the latest installment of the publisher’s successful ongoing Conan the Barbarian series (issue #42, for the record), the month also brought the fans of Robert E. Howard’s famous sword-and-sorcery hero the first issue of a brand-new quarterly companion title, Giant-Size Conan.  This new series got off to a spectacular start, featuring the first chapter of a multi-part adaptation of Howard’s one and only Conan novel, “The Hour of the Dragon”, as written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Gil Kane and Tom Sutton.

And that wasn’t even the biggest news in Conan comics this month; rather, that distinction went to the main topic of today’s blog post, The Savage Sword of Conan #1 — the first issue of a brand-new black-and-white bi-monthly magazine devoted to the barbarian adventurer and his fellow Howardian heroes.  It was, in some ways, Conan’s third coming as far as the b&w comics market went, following as it did both the initial release of Savage Tales in January, 1971, and the subsequent relaunch of that title with its long-delayed second issue in June, 1973.  It was also the biggest black-and-white comic Marvel had yet published — a square-bound number that weighed in at 80 pages (as compared to the then standard 64), and cost a whole buck (as compared to Marvel’s other b&w offerings’ going price of 75 cents).  Read More