Gerry Conway

All-Star Comics #62 (Sept.-Oct., 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Cover to All-Star Comics #58 (Jan.-Feb., 1976). Art by Mike Grell.

Cover to All-Star Comics #59 (Mar.-Apr., 1976). Art by Ernie Chan.

Last October, we took a look at All-Star Comics #58 — the first issue of DC Comics’ revival of the title which had played host to the original superhero team, the Justice Society of America, back in the Golden Age of Comics — as well as its immediate follow-up, issue #59.  Together, these two premiere installments presented a single story that established writer/editor Gerry Conway’s vision for updating the JSA for success in the comic book marketplace of the mid-1970s — a vision that involved taking the aging, veteran heroes who’d traditionally made up the ranks of the Justice Society (a large roster represented here by a core group of Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Dr. Mid-Nite, Dr. Fate, and Wildcat) and teaming them up with a trio of younger champions of the right: Robin, the Star-Spangled Kid, and a brand-new character called Power Girl — under a new, not-quite-official umbrella name, the “Super Squad”.  Read More

Avengers #150 (August, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Welcome to the third of our posts commemorating May, 1976 as “Marvel Milestone Month“.  Following our looks at Captain America #200 and Thor #250, this time around we’re taking on the “Spectacular 150th Anniversary Special” issue of Avengers… although we’ll actually be spending more time on the following month’s issue, #151, since the “official” milestone issue turned out to be a disappointing misfire… unless, of course, you really were jonesing back then for an incomplete reprint of Avengers #16 (May, 1965) fronted by a mere six pages of new material from writer Steve Englehart and artist George Pérez.  Read More

Thor #250 (August, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Welcome to the second installment in our series of four posts commemorating May, 1976 as “Marvel Milestone Month“.  Last time, we looked at Captain America’s “Special Bicentennial Issue”, aka Captain America #200; this go-round, it’s “The Spectacular 250th Issue!” of the four-color home of everyone’s favorite Norse God of Thunder.  (Technically, it’s only the 125th issue of this publication released under the title Thor; for its first 125 issues, the book was officially known as Journey into Mystery, and what’s more, the Son of Odin didn’t even show up until #83.  But I bet you already knew all that, didn’t you?)  Read More

Tomb of Dracula #45 (June, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Before we dive into the individual comic book that’s the main topic of today’s post, your humble blogger would like to call your attention to a more general aspect of comics history, one that’s making its debut on this site with the Gene Colan-Tom Palmer cover shown above.  Yes, it’s the Uniform Product Code — which, as best as I can tell, actually first started appearing on DC Comics’ publications in February, 1976, but, as we didn’t cover any DC books last month, had to wait for March to show up here, in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of its adoption by Marvel.  I don’t really have anything else to say about the UPC, except that we’d all best get used to it (again), because it’s not going away anytime soon.  (Yeah, sure, around the turn of the next decade the big publishers will begin using a different graphic in its place on their direct-sales editions.  But the real estate consumed by that rectangular box won’t be coming back for a long, long time.)  Read More

1st Issue Special #13 (April, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In late January, 1975, DC Comics premiered a new ongoing title called 1st Issue Special with an initial installment starring “Atlas”, the latest creation of writer/artist Jack Kirby.  Almost exactly one year later, DC released the thirteenth — and as it turned out, the last — issue of that same title.  This time, the cover feature was “Return of the New Gods”, featuring some of the earliest creations Kirby had produced for the publisher upon his arrival there in 1970.

There was one major difference this time, however; Jack Kirby himself wasn’t involved, having left DC to return to its greatest rival, Marvel Comics, some months earlier (although his final contracted work for the former company had only appeared a few weeks before this, in Kamandi #40).  But if anyone at Kirby’s former employer found this fact to be at all ironic, they kept it to themselves.  Not only was the “King of Comics” not creatively or editorially included as part of this stab at reviving his “Fourth World” characters and concepts — his name didn’t even appear anywhere within its pages.  Read More

Metal Men #45 (Apr.-May, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As of January, 1976, your humble blogger had been reading DC Comics publications for over ten years — but never, in all that time, had I read a single comic-book story featuring the Metal Men, those robotic heroes created in 1962 by writer Robert Kanigher and artist Ross Andru.  Not any of their 4 tryout issues of Showcase, nor any issue of their own series (which consisted of 41 original installments released in 1963-69, followed by 3 reprint editions published in 1972-73)… not even any of their 6 Brave and the Bold team-ups with Batman and other DC heroes.  Oh, I knew who they were, all right, through the normal process of comics-fan osmosis (house ads, letters-page references, etc.); I might even have been able to rattle off their names.  But I’d never read a single one of their adventures.  Read More

Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man (1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Half a century ago this week, the new year of 1976 brought comics fans something that would have seemed an utter impossibility just a few years before — a all-new tabloid-sized comic book co-produced by the American comics industry’s two greatest rivals, DC and Marvel, featuring their flagship characters in a single 92-page adventure.  Read More

All-Star Comics #58 (Jan.-Feb., 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In October, 1975 — just a little less than a quarter-century since their last headlining appearance in All-Star Comics #57 (Feb.-Mar., 1951), and about half that time since their revival in Flash #137 (Jun., 1963) — the Justice Society of America finally returned to newsstands in their own book.  The premiere superhero team, not just of DC Comics but of all comics, was at last back in full force, ready to reclaim its former glory.

And it had Marvel Comics to thank for the opportunity.  Read More

1st Issue Special #9 (December, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

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

Hercules Unbound #1 (Oct.-Nov., 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Fifty-plus years ago, the spring of 1975 brought news of personnel changes to the major American comic book companies that might not have made it into any major metropolitan newspapers, but were guaranteed to garner headlines in the comics fanzines of the time.  Without doubt, the most dramatic such development was the return of artist/writer/editor Jack Kirby to Marvel Comics following a five-year tenure at rival DC; but another change that happened more or less simultaneously with Kirby’s move — and was essentially the reverse mirror image of it — was also significant enough to get a fair amount of ink in The Comics Reader and its ilk: the return of Gerry Conway to DC Comics as both a writer and an editor after having spent the better part of the past half-decade writing for Marvel, where he’d ultimately been responsible for such high-profile titles as Thor, Fantastic Four, and Amazing-Spider-Man. Read More