Frank Frazetta

Adventure Comics #438 (Mar.-Apr., 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The issue of Adventure Comics we’re going to be looking at today was the eighth in a row to feature the Spectre as its headliner, and as such, might well have been taken by a casual browser of the spinner racks in December, 1974 as simply offering more of the same.  Yet this issue departed from its immediate predecessors in at least a couple of respects, beginning with its title logo.  In response to recent commercial trends, as of the Spectre’s third outing (issue #433), DC Comics had started slapping the word “Weird” above “Adventure” on the venerable series’ covers.  That was an adjustment which made good sense as far as the Astral Avenger was concerned… but wasn’t quite as good a fit with the King of the Seven Seas, Aquaman, who began a run as Spec’s backup in issue #435.  Read More

Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #1 (January, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In February of last year, we ran a post on the first issue of Worlds Unknown — a four-color anthology title from Marvel Comics devoted to the science fiction genre, with a special focus on adapting short stories and novels by well-known SF authors.  As we discussed at the time, this passion project of Marvel’s editor-in-chief, Roy Thomas, saw just six issues released in this format before it took a hard turn in a decidedly different direction (an adaptation of the fantasy film The Golden Voyage of Sinbad) for its final two issues, the last of which came out in April, 1974.

Given its poor performance in the marketplace, Thomas’ project could hardly be called a success; still, in October of the same year, it became clear that the editor hadn’t given up on the basic idea behind it, as that month saw the debut of a brand new entry in Marvel’s ever-growing, and ever more genre-diverse, line of black-and-white comics magazines:  Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction.  Read More

Conan the Barbarian #37 (April, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

At the time the topic of today’s blog post was originally published, January, 1974, new interior comic book art by Neal Adams wasn’t yet as rare as hen’s teeth — not quite.  Still, it was a good bit rarer than it had been just a year or so earlier, and thus it was a treat to see a second full-length story illustrated by the star artist come out just one month after the last one, which had appeared in DC Comics’ Batman #255.  (For the record, there was another story by Adams that came out in December, 1973, as well — a 10-page “Green Lantern” back-up in Flash #226, which my younger self managed to miss.)  Adding to the fun was the fact that Adams did all the art in the issue, pencilling and inking the issue’s cover as well as the whole 19-page story within.  (Or, at least, that’s what the credits said; per the Grand Comics Database, Joe Rubinstein assisted Adams in the inking of backgrounds.)  Read More

Marvel Spotlight #5 (August, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Like many another character to arise out of the production methods of the two major American comic book companies, Marvel Comics’ supernatural superhero Ghost Rider — the one with the flaming skull — had a number of creative minds involved in his beginnings.

Or, alternatively, he was in every significant sense the creation of one sole individual.  It all depends on whom you ask. (Or perhaps that should be “asked”, as more than one of the principals involved is no longer with us.)

That’s true in regards to a number of other comics characters as well, of course — though in most cases, the difference in opinion doesn’t make it all the way to federal court.  But more on that a bit later.  For now, let’s begin with a fact that’s not in dispute — to wit, that the flaming-skull guy who debuted in the 5th issue of Marvel Spotlight half a century ago was not the first comic book hero to bear the name “Ghost Rider”.  Read More

Conan the Barbarian #11 (November, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Continuing the blog’s commemoration of Giant-Size Marvel Month, we have today an unusual entry — one of only two 25-cent, 48-page Marvel comic books published in August, 1971 that was the second issue of its title to appear in the new format.  (The other, if you’re wondering, was the partially-new, partially-reprint Rawhide Kid #93.)  As we covered in last month’s Conan #10 post, a number of Marvel titles made the jump to 25 ¢/48 pages in July, anticipating the increase in price and size the rest of the line would make a month later.  But since most of them weren’t published monthly, only a couple managed to get out two issues in the new format before Marvel publisher Martin Goodman abruptly pulled the plug at the end of August, dropping the page count back down to the old standard of 32 pages — though lowering the price only to 20 cents, so that buyers were now spending a nickel more for the “classic” standard-size Marvel comic than they had been before the July-August jump.  Read More

Vampirella 1972 Annual

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I related on this blog back at the top of the month, in the summer of 1971 my young teenage self finally dared to dip a toe into the waters of the (allegedly) more mature comic book content represented by the black-and-white output of Warren Publishing.  But as daunted as I might have been by the prospect of encountering more gore and violence than my tender sensibilities were at that time accustomed to within the pages of Warren’s Eerie or Creepy, I’m certain that I experienced even greater trepidation regarding my decision as to whether or not I should purchase the magazine that’s the primary topic of today’s post.  Because, in addition to the same more generous amounts of violence and gore offered by its fellow Warren publications, Vampirella also appeared to promise a more substantial serving of sex.  Read More

Conan the Barbarian #8 (August, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Conan the Barbarian #8 was the third consecutive issue of the Marvel Comics series that I bought, and the fourth overall.  But it was the first one that had the map.

By “the map“, I am of course referring to this work of imaginative cartography, familiar to virtually everyone who read Marvel’s Conan comics even occasionally back in the day:

Read More

Conan the Barbarian #4 (April, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

For me as a young reader in early 1971, the road to Robert E. Howard’s fantasy realms of the Hyborian Age — and Marvel Comics’ version of the same — led through the equally imaginary landscapes of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

This was true despite the fact that, just one year earlier, I probably wouldn’t even have been able to tell you what the word “fantasy” meant, at least in terms of genre.  Science fiction, horror, mystery, Western, romance — I had at least a rudimentary understanding of all of those, even at age twelve.  But fantasy?  What was that?  Read More

Justice League of America #73 (August, 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Justice League of America was the first comic book title that you could say I “collected”, though I wouldn’t have used (or understood) that term at the time.  I bought my first issue, #40 (Nov., 1965) at the age of eight, just a month or so after buying my first comic book, period, and didn’t miss a single issue out of the next twenty-eight — a run of a little over three years.  Of course, it helped that I sent “National Comics” (i.e., DC) a dollar in the mail for a year’s subscription early on (and was then obliged to live with the legendary, dreaded folded-in-half crease for the next ten issues); but even after that ran out, I was able keep the run going without a break up through #68.  If you’re old enough to remember how unreliable standard newsstand distribution was in the latter half of the 1960s (or if you just happen to be a regular reader of this blog) you’ll realize that was something of a feat — especially for a kid who had to rely on his parents for transportation to the convenience stores where he bought his comics, and couldn’t be certain of getting to the spinner rack every single week.  Read More

Justice League of America #65 (September, 1968)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When last we left the non-costumed, non-codenamed, but nonetheless quite formidable supervillain T.O. Morrow — at the conclusion of the first half of 1968’s Justice League of America-Justice Society of America summer team-up extravaganza — he’d just managed to kill all the current members of Earth-Two’s JSA (some of them for the second time that issue), and was preparing to head back to his home world of Earth-One to similarly wipe out the JLA — secure in the knowledge provided by his future-predicting computer that the only way he could be stopped was if the Red Tornado intervened; and since the Red Tornado was 1) his own android creation, and 2) also dead, he was sitting in clover, as the saying goes.  Read More