Jack Kirby

Captain America #186 (June, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Art by Gil Kane and Joe Sinnott.

The last issue of Captain America we discussed in this space, was, as I’m sure you’ll remember, a highly significant one for the series, featuring as it did not only the tragic death of Roscoe, the young man who’d attempted to replace Steve Rogers in the titular role, but also Steve’s inevitable response to that tragedy: the abandonment of his briefly-held “Nomad” identity to once again take up the shield of Captain America, as he prepared to deal with the return of his greatest arch-enemy (and the man who’d brutally murdered Roscoe) — the Red Skull.

Interestingly, however, issue #183’s letters column devoted at least as much attention to the hero who shared the series’ title logo with Cap (even if the book’s “official” title, per the indicia, had been, and would remain, simply Captain America) — namely, the Falcon.  In response to a missive from reader Bob Stenson that included a brief, vaguely critical remark about the Falcon’s decision not to come to the aid of his erstwhile partner Steve Rogers against the Golden Archer back in CA #179, the book’s anonymous letters-page answerer (identified by the Grand Comics Database as series scribe Steve Englehart) took the opportunity to preview some upcoming — and ominous-sounding — developments in regards to Marvel Comics’ first Black American superhero:  Read More

Giant-Size Avengers #4 (Jun., 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in August, 1974, after laying the necessary narrative groundwork for many months, Avengers writer Steve Englehart had inaugurated his “Celestial Madonna” story arc with a pair of issues that came out within a couple of weeks of each other: Avengers #129 and Giant-Size Avengers #2.  Half a year later, in February, 1975, the saga would reach its conclusion in a parallel fashion, with the final chapters appearing in that month’s issues of both the regular monthly Avengers title and its giant-sized quarterly companion.  Read More

1st Issue Special #1 (April, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the relative dearth of DC Comics-related posts on this blog over the last twelve months or so, compared to how many I’d been turning out just a couple of years earlier.  Today, we’ll be talking about something that’s been even more scarce in these parts in recent times: posts about comics written and drawn by Jack Kirby.  Sure, I might have only managed to bang out eight posts concerning DC books in 2024 (out of sixty-four overall), but that’s still better than my record for Kirby posts over that same year, which is: zero.  Considering that I wrote about ten Kirby-kreated books as recently as 2022 (and twenty in the year before that), that’s a pretty dramatic change.  Read More

Strange Tales #178 (February, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in June, we took a look at Captain Marvel #34, which was the last issue drawn and plotted by Jim Starlin.  As we discussed in that post, Starlin abruptly quit the series after delivering only one chapter of his first post-“Thanos War” storyline, unhappy with Marvel Comics’ seeming unwillingness, or inability, to give him a single consistent inker on the bi-monthly title.

Per remarks the creator has made in interviews over the years, his leaving Captain Marvel amounted to his leaving Marvel, period, at least for a little while.  As he explained in 1998 for an interview published in Comic Book Artist #2:  Read More

Giant-Size Avengers #3 (February, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last month we took a look at Avengers #131, which ended with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes being transported against their wills to the realm of Limbo, where they were set to face off against a Legion of the Unliving assembled by their long-time foe, Kang the Conqueror.  This month, we’ll be discussing the “two-part triple-length triumph” which that comic’s final page promised as a follow-up… a story which, following a pattern that had been set the last time that an issue of the quarterly Giant-Size Avengers rolled around, doesn’t actually begin in the book whose Gil Kane-Frank Giacoia cover graces the top of this post; but, rather, in the one whose cover by Ron Wilson and Giacoia is shown at right: the latest (as of fifty years ago) issue of our assembled heroes’ regular monthly title, Avengers #132 (Feb., 1975).  Read More

Giant-Size Man-Thing #3 (February, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

OK, let’s get this out of the way first:  Back in the mid-1970s, Marvel Comics actually published five issues of a series called Giant-Size Man-Thing.

Hahahahahahahahah!

Everyone good now?

As I mentioned in my post about Man-Thing #8 a few months back, there’s really no reason why “Giant-Size Man-Thing” should be exponentially funnier than “Man-Thing” is by itself.  I mean, any double meaning you want to read into the phrase is right there in the regular-sized version, right?  Yet, put those two hyphenates together, in that order, and hilarity — or at least an extended period of snickering — inevitably ensues. Read More

Astonishing Tales #27 (December, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in May, we covered Astonishing Tales #25, featuring the premiere outing (and origin story) of Deathlok the Demolisher.  Our main topic of discussion today is the third Deathlok story — but since this particular feature went in for serialized storytelling in a big way (not to mention doing more than a fair amount of jumping around in time, especially in the earliest episodes), we’ll first need to spend a bit of time and space recapping the major events of Astonishing Tales #26 (whose cover by primary creator Rich Buckler is shown at right) before moving on to the main event.

As discussed at some length in the aforementioned AT #25 post, later decades would find the question of just how much Buckler contributed to the creation of the Deathlok character, as well as to his earliest adventures, versus what the series’ first scripter, Doug Moench, brought to the enterprise, to be a matter of considerable contention; with that in mind, your humble blogger invites you to peruse the credits on the following splash page, where we find Buckler credited for “art/concept/plot”, while Moench gets a double nod for “script/plot”.  This is in contrast to AT #25, where we were told Buckler had “conceived, plotted, & drawn” the work, while Moench had only “scripted” it. Read More

Giant-Size Avengers #2 (November, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

For the most part, the comics that came out as part of Marvel’s “Giant-Size” line in 1974 and 1975 featured stories that, while generally understood to be in continuity with those in the regular-size titles, didn’t directly lead into and/or out of those books.  Such had been the case with Giant-Size Avengers #1 (Aug., 1974), a standalone that was written by Marvel’s editor-in-chief (and former Avengers scribe) Roy Thomas, rather than by the man who’d been authoring the monthly adventures of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes since August, 1972, Steve Englehart.  But with the second issue of the Avengers’ new quarterly vehicle, Englehart was given the reins — and he decided to treat the book as an extra, if plus-sized, issue of the monthly title.

Of course, that didn’t mean that the contents of the “Giant-Size” version of the series shouldn’t be special.  And with Giant-Size Avengers #2, Englehart and his artistic collaborators definitely delivered on that idea, giving readers a twenty-nine page epic that stands to this day as one of the all-time Avengers classics — perhaps even, as writer Kurt Busiek (author of more than a few great Avengers yarns of his own) said in 2014, “the uncontested, anyone-who-says-otherwise-is-sadly-mistaken best single issue of AVENGERS”.  Read More

Thor #228 (October, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The primary subject of today’s blog post is the advent of artist Rich Buckler as the regular artist on Marvel Comics’ Thor (and despite the post’s title, we’ll be spending at least as much time on issue #227 — Buckler’s actual debut on the series — as we will on #228).  But as it’s been a while since we last checked in on the God of Thunder (at least in his own book), it’s probably advisable that we take a few moments here at the top to orient ourselves to the current lay of the land in Thor, in terms both of its ongoing storyline and of its creative team.  Read More