Gerry Conway

Hulk #178 (August, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As regular readers of this blog may recall, I was never a regular buyer of The Incredible Hulk, back in the day.  While I always enjoyed the character when he appeared as a guest star, or in a team setting à la the Defenders, for whatever reason his Jekyll & Hyde-cum-Frankenstein premise never had much appeal to me as the basis for a lead character.  Or maybe I simply preferred my superheroes to have a little more going on upstairs.  In any case, after dipping my toe in the water one time back in 1969, I had since refrained from picking up Hulk except on those occasions when it crossed over with another series I was currently buying, or when it tied up leftover plotlines from a canceled series I had been buying.  Read More

Dracula Lives #6 (May, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In March, 1974, Marvel Comics’ black-and-white magazine Dracula Lives entered its second year of publication with a format relatively little changed from its first issue — meaning that it featured three all-new stories of the titular vampire (one set in the present, two set in the past), supplemented by illustrated text features and a reprint or two, all packaged behind a color painted cover.  (In this case, the cover was provided by Luis Dominguez, an Argentinian artist who’d been busy of late drawing covers [and occasional stories] for various DC Comics anthology titles; this was his third published cover for a Marvel horror magazine.)  Read More

Werewolf by Night #14 (February, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

It’s been over a year since we last looked in on our favorite teenage werewolf, Jack Russell, so we have a bit of catching up to do before we get into our discussion of today’s main topic.  Following issue #3‘s conclusion of the extended plotline concerning the Darkhold — the mystical bound volume that had acted as a MacGuffin for most of the series’ early run — subsequent installments had seen Jack involved in a succession of one or two-part adventures that usually involved his younger sister Lissa (who learned Jack’s lycanthropic secret in issue #4) and/or his best friend Jack Cowan (who had to wait until issue #12 to get clued in regarding that vital info).  On the creative end, the feature’s original writer-artist team of Gerry Conway and Mike Ploog, who’d been on board ever since the Werewolf’s three-issue tryout in Marvel Spotlight, came to an end with #4; while Ploog remained the book’s penciller for three more issues, Conway was succeeded by Len Wein, who served as writer through #8.  That last issue was drawn by Werner Roth as his one and only effort on the title; the next saw the arrival of a new artist — Tom Sutton — who was joined by an “old” writer — Gerry Conway.  (As a side note, the same month that Werewolf by Night #8 came out saw the Werewolf meet Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up #12 — a Conway-Wein collaboration that firmly established Jack Russell’s adventures as taking place in the main Marvel Comics continuity.)  Read More

Amazing Spider-Man #129 (February, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

I don’t suppose I need to explain to anyone reading this just why the topic of today’s post is so significant.  After all, even if you didn’t know anything about the 129th issue of Amazing Spider-Man before you arrived here, just a look at the comic’s iconic cover by Gil Kane and John Romita would quickly clue you in to its contents.  And what other comic-book character’s fiftieth anniversary in this month of October, 2023 could possibly compare in importance to the first appearance of… the Jackal?

Nah, just kidding.  I’m talking about the other guy.  (Although I freely acknowledge that the debut of the Jackal is significant in its own way, especially for ’90s-era Spider-Man fans who still have nightmares about the Clone Saga.)  Read More

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

Fantastic Four #141 (December, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Hard times at the Baxter Building.  Bleak House.  Heartbreak Hotel.  Is life not ironic?  If nothing else?  As Annihilus remarked back in issue #140.  Love and work had come between the Fantastic Four, America’s greatest superheroes.  For almost a year — a year in real time, a year in Paul Hood’s whirlpool teens, but a few days, no more, in the motionless, imperceptible time of Marvel comics — Sue Richards, née Storm, the Invisible Girl, had been estranged from her husband, Reed Richards.  With Franklin, their mysteriously equipped son, she was in seclusion in the country.  She would return only when Reed learned to understand the obligations of family, those paramount bonds that lay beneath the surface of his work.  In her stead, the Medusa had joined the Fantastic Four.  Medusa: Tibetan-born Inhuman and cousin of Johnny Storm’s paramour, Crystal, the Elemental…

The mood in the Baxter Building was grim.  Besides the Richards’s marital problems, Crystal had recently chosen to marry Quicksilver instead of Johnny Storm.  Sue was worried about Franklin’s trances; Reed was worried about Sue; Johnny was worried about Crystal; Ben Grimm was worried about himself.

It was a good period for readers of the F.F….

— from Rick Moody’s 1994 novel The Ice Storm.

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Daredevil #105 (November, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In summer,1973, my younger self was still pretty isolated as a comic-book reader.  Good, lasting face-to-face friendships with fellow enthusiasts were on the horizon, but had not yet arrived, and I wasn’t reading fanzines.  Therefore, I generally picked up on hot new titles — or on newly hot streaks on older titles — via the publishers’ own marketing efforts, or by reader buzz in the letters columns… or by sheer happenstance.

So how did t I finally catch on to what artist-plotter Jim Starlin was up to in Captain Marvel, some five issues and eight months into his soon-to-be-classic run?  As best as I can tell, it was due mostly to the latter of those three options — more specifically, via a very unlikely tie-in with, of all things, Daredevil.  Read More

Savage Tales #2 (October, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I’ve noted in previous posts, Marvel Comics’ Savage Tales #1 — the company’s second attempt to break into the black-and-white comics magazine market, following Spectacular Spider-Man (or, if you prefer, its third, following Pussycat; or even the fourth, if you want to go all the way back to 1955’s Mad knock-off, Snafu) passed my then-thirteen-year-old self by upon its January, 1971 release.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I passed it by.  I was doubtless aware of it, since it had been plugged in Marvel’s Bullpen Bulletins columns; but, at the time, I hadn’t dared to take so much as a peek at the “mature” black-and-white offerings then available on the magazine racks (my first Warren Publishing purchase wouldn’t happen until that summer) — unless you counted Mad, which I didn’t.  Plus, I hadn’t even sampled the adventures of Savage Tales‘ headliner, Conan the Barbarian, in his titular Comics Code-approved color series yet (my first issue of that book would be #4 — which, as it happens, came out just one week after Savage Tales #1).  But even if I had been inclined to give the new magazine a try, I would likely have been too intimidated by the “mature” cover painting by John Buscema (not to mention the big “M” label positioned adjacent to that painting’s bloodily severed head) to risk sneaking it into my very Southern Baptist household.  Read More

Dracula Lives #3 (October, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Arriving on stands in June, 1973, the third issue of Marvel Comics’ new “Marvel Monster Group” of black-and-white titles got off to a strong start with a spectacular cover by Neal Adams.  Over a year prior, the star artist had begun backing away from a long stint as the most prolific cover artist for Marvel’s primary rival, DC Comics — a tour of duty extending back past the turn of the decade, and one which at its productive peak had seen him turning out ten or more covers a month.  Of course, Adams had kept his hand in the cover game (at Marvel as well as its chief competitor) even after curtailing his commitment to DC; but the painting that graced Dracula Lives #3 represented a new phase for the artist, one which would see him produce a number of covers in that medium for Marvel (though not in any sort of quantity approaching that of his earlier output at DC), primarily for black-and-white titles that weren’t even out yet as of this issue’s release (e.g., The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu) — titles which, when they did eventually make it to the magazine racks, would end the present horror-centric hegemony of the Marvel Monster Group.  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