Gil Kane

Amazing Spider-Man #103 (December, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane began work on the 103rd issue of Amazing Spider-Man over half a century ago, the comics-scripting sabbatical of the title’s regular writer (and Marvel editor) Stan Lee — originally announced as “a couple of weeks away from the typewriter” — was going on its third month.  For their first two issues together, Thomas and Kane had been kept busy resolving the “six arms to hold you” plotline Lee and Kane had set up in AS-M #100, while also introducing Marvel’s first vampire supervillain, Morbius. — an idea inspired by Lee’s interest in taking advantage of the new freedoms offered by recent revisions to the Comics Code.  But now, having restored Peter Parker and his web-slinging alter ego to their normal two-armed status quo, as well as having sent Morbius to a watery grave (don’t worry, it didn’t hold him), the two creators were finally on their own.  What would they do now?

As Thomas recalled in 2000 for a personal reminiscence of his longtime friend and collaborator Kane, originally published in Alter Ego #4:  Read More

Amazing Spider-Man #102 (November, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Today, we continue this blog’s commemoration of Giant-Size Marvel Month (aka August, 1971) with a look at a comic book that does both of our previous subjects, Thor #193 and Avengers #93, one better — literally — by way of a story that checks in at a whopping 35 pages,  compared to those other two worthies’ 34-page yarns.  How did scripter Roy Thomas, penciller Gil Kane, and inker Frank Giacoia pull off this trick?  I’m not sure, but it seems they may have nicked a page from Hulk #145, the only Marvel comic published that month whose extra-length story ran a mere 33 pages.

In any event, Amazing Spider-Man #102’s “Vampire at Large” kicks off precisely where the previous issue‘s installment, “A Monster Called… Morbius!” left off (the opening splash even recycles the dialogue from that tale’s final page):  Read More

Amazing Spider-Man #101 (October, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As we’ve discussed in previous posts on this blog, the year 1971 brought the first significant revisions to the American comic book industry’s self-regulating mechanism, the Comics Code Authority, since its establishment in 1954.  Among the most important changes made to the Code in that year was the relaxing of restrictions on the depiction of certain sorts of imaginary creatures; or, as a newly added statement read: “Vampires, ghouls and werewolves shall be permitted to be used when handled in the classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high calibre literary works…”  Read More

Green Lantern #85 (Aug.-Sep., 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As we related on this blog back in February, in early 1971 Marvel Comics became the first major American comic-book company to publish a story dealing with drug abuse, when they released three monthly issues of Amazing Spider-Man without the Comics Code Authority’s Seal of Approval.  But DC Comics could easily have been the first to do so, instead, if only they’d had the nerve — or at least that’s how artist Neal Adams tells the story.

That story appears to begin with a project that DC was invited to produce for a government agency (either the City or the State of New York, depending on the version of Adams’ narrative you consult).  Both Adams and his creative collaborator on DC’s famously socially conscious title Green Lantern, writer Denny O’Neil, were asked to submit treatments for a comic book about drug addiction.  This, presumably, would have been some sort of giveaway comic, distributed in such a manner that the Comics Code would have been irrelevant — but the project never came to fruition.  As Adams told interviewer Bryan Stroud in 2007:  Read More

Amazing Spider-Man #100 (September, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In June, 1971, we Marvel Comics readers turned to the “Bullpen Bulletins” text page appearing in that month’s issues (including the book that’s the topic of today’s post, naturally) to find the “Stan Lee’s Soapbox” reproduced below.  This was a particularly lengthy edition of editor Lee’s monthly column, taking up almost a third of the page’s available real estate — but considering the occasion, that didn’t seem at all inappropriate.  Read More

Green Lantern #84 (Jun.-Jul., 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Although writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams had begun their tenure on Green Lantern in 1970 with a run of grounded stories featuring more-or-less realistic antagonists, as they moved into their second year they appeared more willing to incorporate the sort of colorfully code-named and costumed supervillains that had been the series’ bread-and-butter prior to their own advent.  Already in GL #82 they’d brought back Sinestro,  the renegade ex-Green Lantern; and now, two issues later, they were drafting yet another veteran foe back into active service — although you couldn’t tell that from the cover, which (like #82’s before it) gave no hint of who the story’s main bad guy actually was.  While O’Neil and Adams (and their editor, Julius Schwartz) may have decided that it was a good idea to include more old-school superhero genre elements in their storytelling, they evidently didn’t think putting a returning villain’s puss on the cover would have much if any impact on the book’s sales.  Read More

Green Lantern #83 (Apr.-May, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

A half-century after writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams’ history-making run on “Green Lantern/Green Arrow”, it’s easy to see those thirteen comics as being more of one piece than they actually were.  The run is well remembered, and rightfully so, for its consistent emphasis on social issues; but while it’s true that “relevance” was the watchword throughout the O’Neil-Adams tenure on Green Lantern, it’s worth noting that the expression of that guiding principle varied quite a bit over the two years of the project’s duration — as did the kinds of stories within which the writer-artist team couched their social commentary.  Read More

Amazing Spider-Man #96 (May, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

A half-century after the fact, I’m at something of a loss to explain why I stopped reading Amazing Spider-Man for almost an entire year, after my subscription ran out with issue #85 in March, 1970.  Regular readers of this blog may remember that my younger self went through a period of being considerably less interested in comic books than I previously had been, a period that began in the fall of 1969 and extended through the next spring.  But my subscription had actually carried through the bulk of that time span, as it had for my other favorite Marvel comic of the time, Fantastic Four; and I was back to picking up FF, at least occasionally, by June, 1970.  Somehow, though, even as late as February, 1971 — well after I’d resumed buying Avengers, Daredevil, and other Marvel standbys on a semi-regular basis — I was still avoiding becoming reacquainted with May Parker’s favorite nephew.

Until Amazing Spider-Man #96, that is.  This one brought me back into the fold.  Read More

Detective Comics #407 (January, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Seven months ago, I blogged about a number of comics that I wish I’d bought back in April, 1970, the only month in the last 55 years in which I didn’t acquire a single new comic book.  (At least not until April, 2020, when COVID-19’s temporary shutdown of the comics industry took the matter out of my, and everyone else’s, hands for a while.)  Regular readers of this blog with good memories may recall that among those “comics that got away” was the 400th issue of Detective Comics.

That, of course, was the issue that featured the first appearance of Man-Bat — an important new adversary (and sometime ally) of Batman — created by artist Neal Adams.  Unless, of course it was actually editor Julius Schwartz who came up with the character.  In any event, it wasn’t writer Frank Robbins.  Probably not, anyway.  Read More

Green Lantern #80 (October, 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

I have no doubt that many of the comic book fans who picked Green Lantern #80 up out of the spinner rack in August, 1970, took one look at the cover and immediately thought of Bobby Seale, and the 1969-70 trial of the Chicago Eight/Seven:

Courtroom sketch by Howard Brodie, from the collection of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

But I’m also pretty sure that my thirteen-year-old self wasn’t one of them.

While I feel certain that the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite (which, along with Mad magazine, was my main source of information on current affairs in those days) covered that story, I don’t remember being anything more than dimly aware of it, if that.  (My family usually had “Uncle Walter” on while we were doing other things, like eating dinner, which made it pretty easy to miss stuff.)  And so, when I scrutinized artist Neal Adams’ dramatic cover for GL #80, I didn’t understand that it was directly referencing the October 29, 1969 incident in which Judge Julius Hoffman had ordered Seale, a defendant with seven others in a federal case charging them with conspiracy and other crimes, to be bound and gagged following the latter’s allegedly disruptive behavior in the courtroom. Read More