Frank Miller | Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books

Marvel Super Action #1 (January, 1976)

As was discussed in detail in our post about Marvel Preview #4 several weeks ago, by 1975 all four of the black-and-white comics magazines with which Marvel Comics had made a big push into that market just two years before were winding down. But Marvel was far from throwing in the towel on the B&W format itself. Accepting that the early-’70s horror boom that had inspired the launches of Dracula Lives and its ilk was pretty much over, Marvel now looked to other genres for new titles that could replace those that had made up the “Marvel Monster Group”. Read More

Amazing Spider-Man #85 (June, 1970)

Posted on March 14, 2020 by Alan Stewart

In July, 1969, Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Stan Lee announced in his “Stan’s Soapbox” column that the company was instituting a new “no continued stories” policy for all its titles. Today, that policy (which remained in place for about a year and a half, at least officially) is widely considered to have been not Lee’s own idea, but rather one that was imposed on him by his then-boss, publisher Martin Goodman. Assuming that’s true, it’s interesting to consider how much Lee flouted the policy in one of the relatively few books he still wrote himself, The Amazing Spider-Man — which, as it happens, was also the company’s best-selling title, and thus probably the one most likely to be noticed by Goodman. Read More

Daredevil #57 (October, 1969)

Posted on August 10, 2019 by Alan Stewart

The last issue of Daredevil discussed in this blog, #55, ended with the Man Without Fear’s decisive triumph over Starr Saxon, the sinister technologist who’d discovered his secret identity as attorney Matt Murdock back in #51. While Daredevil’s strategy against Saxon had centered on the rather drastic expedient of staging Matt’s violent demise in an aerial explosion, his ultimate victory actually came about when, while tussling with our hero high over the streets of Manhattan, Saxon slipped and fell to his (apparent) death. With the man who had known Daredevil’s secret no longer among the living, that specific problem was obviously now solved; but, considering that DD was still left with no civilian identity, and that all of his friends and loved ones still thought he was dead, you’d probably be surprised to find the guy, at the beginning of issue #56, swinging through New York’s concrete canyons singing a happy tune.

On second thought, if you were familiar with late-Sixties Marvel comics — maybe you wouldn’t be. Read More