John Romita | Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books

Conan the Barbarian #58 (January, 1976)

Last month we took a look at Conan the Barbarian #57, an issue mostly devoted to setting up the opening chapter of writer/editor Roy Thomas’ adaptation (and very extensive expansion) of Conan creator Robert E. Howard’s 1934 short story “Queen of the Black Coast” (full text available online here). Turning past the cover by Johns Buscema and Romita, we find issue #58 beginning exactly where #57 left off, with our favorite Cimmerian adventurer riding hard for the docks of an Argossean seaport, a contingent of the city’s soldiers in hot pursuit… Read More

Avengers #142 (December, 1975)

Posted on September 13 by Alan Stewart

Last month we took a look at Avengers #141, which, as regular readers of this blog will remember, ended with three time-travelers — the founding Avenger named Thor, the would-be Avenger known as Moondragon, and their temporary ally, Immortus — touching down in the American West of 1873, just in time to be startled by someone coming up behind them… a someone, or someones, whom our travelers could see, but whose identities remained unknown to us readers…

…at least until the cover of the next issue — the subject of today’s post — where the illustration by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia (with a likely assist from John Romita) rather gives the game away ahead of the book’s opening splash page… Read More

Conan the Barbarian #57 (December, 1975)

Posted on September 6 by Alan Stewart

The cover of this issue of Conan the Barbarian, as produced by the art team of Gil Kane and Vince Colletta, is unquestionably a solid piece of work; if it has any real flaw, it’s that it’s a little generic. Yes, Conan is shown holding a length of chain in one hand, which at least vaguely nods to the “A Barbarian Chained!” title blurb at the cover’s bottom (and, for the record, we will indeed see our hero so bound before this issue’s story is over and done). But other than that, it’s just a generic Conan illustration, which could have appeared anywhere, anytime, over the past several years of the title’s run, and has little true relation to this specific issue’s contents.

But, in a way, that was an appropriate choice, back in September,1975. Conan the Barbarian was at this time on the verge of making a major shift in direction, setting a new course that the series would henceforth follow all the way through issue #100, published more than three and a half years later. So the cover of Conan #57 could be taken as a capper for the entire run up to this point — a run that as recently as the past year (the last for which the Academy of Comic Book Arts’ “Shazam” Awards were given) had been deemed “Best Continuing Feature” — a fact the cover itself proudly proclaims. In that sense, this cover serves not only (or even primarily) to promote the single story contained within the comic’s pages, but to commemorate this whole era of the series… what we might call “Conan the Barbarian B.B.”. Read More

Avengers #141 (November, 1975)

Posted on August 16 by Alan Stewart

The main topic of today’s post is Avengers #141, which kicked off the last major story arc of one of the series’ defining writers, Steve Englehart — and also featured the debut on the series of one of its most celebrated artists, George Pérez. But given that the last issue of the title we looked at on this blog was #137, back in April — and that that one ended on a fairly large cliffhanger, with the Wasp having just been seriously injured by the enigmatic alien known as the Stranger — we’ll have some catching up to do in regards to the three intervening issues before we can move on to the latest doings of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, circa August, 1975. Read More

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

Posted on July 30 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

Man-Thing #22 (October, 1975)

Posted on July 19 by Alan Stewart

When we last checked in with the Man-Thing back in March, at the end of his 18th issue, it was for the finale of the three-part “Mad Viking” trilogy — one of the most intense and memorable storylines to have yet appeared in the feature, perhaps matched only by “The Kid’s Night Out!” (which had in fact been published concurrently with it, in the Man-Thing’s quarterly Giant-Size vehicle). As you may recall, Man-Thing #18 concluded with Manny, his human friend Richard Rory, and a distressed teenager named Carol Selby abandoning the small Florida town of Citrusville in the wake of a book burning incident at the town’s high school in which people as well as pages had perished. That downbeat ending presaged a significant change in direction for the series — one which writer Steve Gerber and artist Jim Mooney would manage to explore in depth for only three issues before having to abruptly wrap up everything as best they could in the title’s terminal release, Man-Thing #22. Read More

Thor #240 (October, 1975)

Posted on July 12 by Alan Stewart

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before on this blog, Thor was my favorite Marvel superhero back in the 1970s. (Just for the record, he still is.) That didn’t mean that Thor was my favorite Marvel superhero comic book for most of that decade, however — at least, not so far as the new issues coming out then were concerned. The reason for that disparity stems from the fact that, while my enthusiasm for the Son of Odin might have originally been inspired by a general affinity for myth and legend (and for modern heroic fantasy fiction derived from them), it was based at least as much on my admiration for the work that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had done on the feature in the mid-to-late 1960s. Thor/Journey into Mystery was the one major Marvel title I endeavored to acquire a complete run of back in my collecting heyday (I eventually made it back as far as JiM #96, if you’re curious). So I had those Lee-Kirby classics — which I was picking up sporadically, just a few at a time — to compare the current issues to. And despite regularly featuring a high quality of artwork (usually by John Buscema, working with a variety of mostly sympathetic inkers), the new stories (which for most of the first half of the 1970s were written by Gerry Conway) just didn’t measure up in my eyes… neither to those great old Thor/JiM comics, nor to the best of what Marvel was offering elsewhere in the superhero genre in those days. Read More

Avengers #137 (July, 1975)

Posted on April 19 by Alan Stewart

As we discussed in our Giant-Size Avengers #4 post back in February, that comic had marked the end of a long sequence of stories by writer Steve Englehart and his various artistic collaborators — the “Celestial Madonna” saga — that had brought significant changes to the team. Perhaps the most of critical of these were the exits of the Swordsman (who’d actually perished in Giant-Size Avengers #2, but had been kinda-sorta brought back since then) and Mantis (who’d only “officially” become an Avenger in the final pages of GSA #4, but had been such a regular part of their adventures since issue #114 that she really might as well have been a member all along). Whatever else might be in store for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, it certainly made sense that one or more additions to the team’s roster — whether in the form or returning veterans, fresh new recruits, or a mix of both — lay in the near future. Read More

Giant-Size X-Men #1 (May, 1975)

Posted on April 5 by Alan Stewart

Cover layout by Gil Kane, featuring only the new X-Men team lineup.

The completed original art for the cover, with the new team pencilled by Kane and the old team pencilled by Dave Cockrum; all inks by Cockrum.

Half a century after its original release, there’s little doubt that the subject of today’s post was the most historically significant mainstream American comic book released in 1975; indeed, it’s arguably in the very top tier for the entire decade of the Seventies. But in April, 1975, it arrived with very little fanfare — at least in the relatively isolated comics-reading world of your humble blogger, who at age seventeen still wasn’t tuned in to what little fan press there was at the time. I don’t recall seeing any house ads for Giant-Size X-Men #1 ahead of its release, and the only promotion of the book I’ve been able to locate in any Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page published around then is a brief mention in the column that ran in the company’s March-shipping issues, reporting how artist Dave Cockrum’s being chosen to illustrate the project represented the realization of the “fan dream of a lifetime”. That may well have been the only heads-up I had that this book was coming out at all, prior to seeing its soon-to-be-iconic cover by Cockrum and Gil Kane staring out at me from the spinner rack. Read More

Defenders #24 (June, 1975)

Posted on March 19 by Alan Stewart

Last month, we took a look at the first half of Steve Gerber and Sal Buscema’s “Sons of the Serpent” storyline with a single blog post covering Defenders #22 and #23. Today, we’ll be wrapping things up in a similar fashion, with one post serving for our survey of both the third and fourth chapters of this half-century old graphic narrative.

Before we get into the story itself, however, I invite you to take a closer look at Defenders #24’s excellent (if just a bit crowded) cover by Gil Kane and Klaus Janson (and also by John Romita, per the Grand Comics Database). Specifically, at the blurb trumpeting the presence within of “5 fearsome Defenders and 3 startling guest stars“. Five Defenders? I guess that means that Yellowjacket’s been bumped up to full membership status, huh? That’s certainly what the anonymous Marvel Comics bullpenner who wrote that copy appears to have thought, at any rate. (Of course, if you accept the notion of the Defenders being a “non-team”, as your humble blogger has always chosen to do, it’s basically a moot point, since any superhero who shows up in any issue may reasonably be called a member. Or a non-member. You know what I mean.)

And now, on with the show… Read More