Jack Kirby

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

Phantom Stranger #33 (Oct.-Nov., 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Cover art by Michael W. Kaluta.

Cover art by Nick Cardy.

It’s been quite a while since we covered an issue of Phantom Stranger on the blog — more specifically, since May, 2023, when we took a look at PS #26.  As I wrote at the time, that issue’s crossover between the comic’s lead and backup features (the latter then being “The Spawn of Frankenstein”) represented the end of an era for the Joe Orlando-edited title, as the very next issue, #27, would bring a complete overhaul of the creative teams for both strips.

Gone from the front of the book were writer Len Wein (who’d written every Phantom Stranger story since issue #14) and artist Jim Aparo (whose association with the character went all the way back to #7); replacing the duo were Arnold Drake and Gerry Talaoc, respectively.  Meanwhile, writer Marv Wolfman and artist Michael W. Kaluta had departed the back pages, leaving the chronicling of the modern adventures of Mary Shelley’s classic creation to Steve Skeates and Bernard Bailey.  Read More

Marvel Premiere #15 (May, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In early 1974, when a slot for a new continuing feature opened up in Marvel Premiere (due to the previous tenant Dr. Strange having vacated the premises to return to headlining his own title), it must have seemed a virtual no-brainer to offer it to a character who could help Marvel Comics cash in even further on the burgeoning martial arts craze than they were already doing with the Master of Kung Fu series (which had debuted in September, 1973) and its brand-new black-and-white magazine spinoff The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu (which launched in early February, just a couple of weeks prior to the release of today’s featured fifty-year-old comic).  But for Marvel to do that, someone was first going to have to invent such a character; and in this instance, that process of invention began with the company’s then-editor-in-chief, Roy Thomas.  Read More