Jim Mooney

Batman #255 (Mar.-Apr., 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As of December, 1973, it had been seventeen months since my younger self had bought an issue of Batman.  For the record, that issue had been #245, in which the lead story (as well as the cover) had been drawn by Neal Adams.  The last issue I’d bought before that had been #244, which had also had a lead story illustrated by Adams; the last one before that had been #243, which was drawn by (you guessed it) Neal Adams; and before that came #242, which didn’t feature the art of Neal Adams, but did continue the Ra’s al Ghul saga begun in issue #232 by writer Denny O’Neil and artist… Neal Adams.  You see the pattern, right?  Adams’ art wasn’t the only factor that came into play when I stood at the spinner rack and pondered over whether to buy the latest issue of the Masked Manhunter’s title — but it was definitely the largest factor, and the presence of the artist’s work made it pretty much a no-brainer that I would buy that particular comic book.  Read More

Marvel Spotlight #12 (October, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In several previous blog posts (most extensively in this one), I’ve described the early 1970s horror boom in American comics as part of a larger wave of interest in monsters (especially among young people) that can be traced back to the arrival of the classic old Universal monster movies on television in the late 1950s, and that flourished in the following decade and beyond, ultimately giving us such enduring cultural artifacts as Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s hit 1962 single “Monster Mash”, the Gothic TV soap opera Dark Shadows (which premiered in 1966, but didn’t really didn’t take off until the arrival of the vampire Barnabas Collins in ’67), and, lest we forget, Count Chocula and Franken Berry breakfast cereals, which first crept onto grocery shelves in 1971.  It was a legitimate popular phenomenon, but one that had largely passed American color comics by — at least until the early 1971 revisions to the Comics Code, which allowed for vampires, werewolves, and ghouls to be used “when handled in the classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high calibre literary works” for the first time since the Code’s adoption in 1954.  Before too many months had passed, spinner racks were filling up with titles like Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night, Frankenstein, and Swamp Thing — and fifty years ago, in the summer of 1973, new ones were continuing to arrive.  Read More

Sub-Mariner #62 (June, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In our post last October regarding Sub-Mariner #57, we discussed how Subby’s creator Bill Everett, who’d returned to write and draw the series in 1972 with issue #50, began to have trouble keeping up with the book’s monthly schedule due to chronic health issues; this situation eventually led to occasional fill-ins by other creators, as well as to ongoing help for Everett on both the writing and artistic ends of things.

During this period, the continuing uncertainty over Everett’s status month-to-month was evidenced in the title’s letters pages, where the anonymous Marvel Bullpener(s) responsible for answering reader correspondence would be telling fans in one issue (#55) that Everett probably wouldn’t be handling every story going forward, as “getting back into the swing of a monthly deadline is harder than you might imagine”; then, a few months later (in issue #58), explaining that “due to deadline problems, Bill will now be doing final art over the layouts of Irv Wesley [i.e., Sam Kweskin, who occasionally used the Wesley pen name], while Steve Gerber, working closely with the ebullient Mr. Everett, who will continue to plot the yarns, handles the scripting chores”; and then, finally, acknowledging (in #59) that “Bouncin’ Bill Everett has, indeed, moved on to other projects for Mighty Marvel (the monthly deadline on Subby’s book, sadly, proved too much for the compulsively conscientious Mr. Everett to handle)”.  Read More

Thor #207 (January, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In our last post we discussed Amazing Adventures #16, one of three comics published in October, 1972 in which a trio of young comic-book writers staged an unofficial crossover between Marvel and DC Comics, set at the annual Halloween Parade in Rutland, Vermont, and featuring themselves as characters, without telling their bosses they were doing so.  In this post, we’ll be taking a look at another of those comics: Thor #207, which, behind its dynamic cover by Gil Kane and Joe Sinnott, features a script by Gerry Conway and art by John Buscema, Vince Colletta… as well as Marie Severin, whose mysterious credit for “good works” covers her renderings of the story’s likenesses of Conway, Steve Englehart, Len Wein, and Glynis Oliver (who, as it happens, also served as the story’s colorist, under her then-married name of Glynis Wein).  Read More

Defenders #3 (December, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As we discussed on the blog back in May, the first issue of The Defenders (which was actually the fourth outing for the titular super-team, following their three-issue tryout run in Marvel Feature) ended on a note of mystery, as the Sub-Mariner revealed to his allies, Doctor Strange and the Hulk, that prior to the events of that comic, he’d been attacked by none other than the Silver Surfer — who had at the time appeared to be himself allied with Necrodamus, the sorcerous acolyte of the Undying Ones whose attempt to summon those evil extradimensional entities our three heroes had just then thwarted, though only barely.  Read More

Fear #11 (December, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last month, in our epic Swamp Thing #1 post, we covered at some length the parallel creation and development of Man-Thing and Swamp Thing, two swamp monsters who were both introduced to the comic-book-reading world in early 1971 by the two largest American comics companies, Marvel and DC.  As noted in that post, while both characters received their own ongoing color-comics series in the summer of 1972 — well over a year after their respective introductions in Savage Tales #1 and House of Secrets #92 — Man-Thing managed to make it out of the gate a month before his distinguished competition, with the July release of Fear #10.  Read More

Avengers #105 (November, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Writing about Avengers #100 back in March of this year, I referred to the four issues that immediately followed that milestone as a “victory lap” for Roy Thomas, whose nearly-six-year tenure as the title’s writer was about to come to an end.   In characterizing Avengers #101-104 in such a fashion, I don’t mean to denigrate them; they’re not bad comics, by any means.  But coming directly upon the heels of the three-part “Olympus Trilogy” crafted by Thomas with Barry Windsor-Smith — and, right before that, the “Kree-Skrull War” epic by Thomas, Neal Adams, and Sal and John Buscema — these comics can’t help but seem somewhat anticlimactic by comparison.  I suppose there’s always been a part of me that kind of wishes that Thomas had just quit while he was ahead.  Read More

Captain America #155 (November, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When Steve Englehart came on board as the new writer for Captain America in June, 1972, your humble blogger had been a regular reader of the series for about ten months — coming on board with issue #144 — after having been an off-and-on one ever since #105, way back in June, 1968.  Originally drawn in by #144’s dramatic cover by John Romita (the effect of which was unquestionably enhanced by the Falcon’s sharp new costume design, also by Romita), I’d hung around for the quite enjoyable Hydra/Kingpin/Red Skull multi-parter that had followed, as delivered by writer Gary Friedrich and a cadre of artists including Gil Kane and Sal Buscema.  And when that storyline wrapped up in issue #148, I’d stayed with the book — despite the fact that the subsequent yarns concocted by Friedrich’s replacement Gerry Conway weren’t all that compelling.  I suppose that inertia may have been carrying me along by that point; that, and the fact that by mid-1972 I was buying the vast majority of Marvel Comics’ superheroic output.  In the context of the Marvel Universe as a whole, Captain America felt like a key title, and I didn’t want to miss anything important.  Read More

Thor #203 (September, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Three weeks ago, I promised the readers of this blog that we’d be covering the beginning of Marvel Comics’ “Phase Two” era in today’s post.  And we will definitely be doing that, before we’re done for the day — though, first, we still have some “Phase One” business to finish up with; namely, the conclusion of the Blackworld/Ego-Prime storyline that had been running in Thor (though only as a secondary plot to the series’ main action) ever since issue #195, which had come out in October, 1971.  Read More

Defenders #1 (August, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in July of last year, we covered the advent of the Marvel Comics superhero team the Defenders in Marvel Feature #1.  This new team’s debut had come following a tryout of sorts in two late-1970 issues of Sub-Mariner; although in those comics, the grouping went by the unofficial moniker of “Titans Three”, and their number included the Silver Surfer, rather than the guy who ended up actually being the de facto leader of the team (whose other members were Sub-Mariner and the Hulk, by the way) — Doctor Strange — for the simple reason that Marvel editor-in-chief Stan Lee had a proprietary interest in the Surfer, and wouldn’t let associate editor/writer Roy Thomas use him as a permanent member of the new super-team, now formally christened “the Defenders”, when it became the basis for an ongoing feature.  Read More