John Romita Jr.

Strange Tales #169 (September, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Voodoo.

 

It’s the current rage, don’t you know. Paperbacks on the subject litter newsstands throughout the world. Voodoo cults are reportedly springing up in major cities throughout the United States. And, figuring on television’s propensity for jumping on a fad with the obliterating properties of an overweight pachyderm, it probably won’t be too long before we see a Voodoo situation comedy laugh-tracking its way across our screens — Loa in the Family.

 

Leave it to the Marvel Comics Group, long renown [sic] for its many innovations in the comics field, to find a new slant on this late-breaking craze. And the result of this new slant promises to outlive the current interest in Voodoo.

— Tony Isabella, “Introducing Brother Voodoo!  The Creation of Marvel’s Most Mysterious Superhero”, in Tales of the Zombie #2 (Oct., 1973).  Read More

Amazing Spider-Man #122 (July, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Like its immediate predecessor, the 122nd issue of Amazing Spider-Man leads off with a cover by John Romita, which, if not quite as iconic as that of #121, is still an exceptionally arresting image.  Not to mention one which, back in April, 1973, would likely have shocked the hell out of any semi-regular reader of the web-slinger’s series who had somehow managed to miss not only that most monumental of issues, but also any fannish discussion of same over the several weeks since its release on March 13th.

If there were any such readers fifty years ago, and if they hoped for some sort of recap to bring them up to speed on the details of how so something so unthinkable as the murder of Spider-Man’s beloved Gwen Stacy had come to pass, they were pretty much out of luck — because the creative team behind both the previous episode and this one — i.e., scripter Gerry Conway, penciller Gil Kane, foreground inker John Romita (who may have also contributed to the plot) and background inker Tony Mortellaro — weren’t about to break their storyline’s headlong momentum with any more exposition than was minimally required, let alone any flashbacks:  Read More

Conan the Barbarian #15 (May, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When we last left Conan back in December, he and his two companions — Zephra (daughter of Conan’s old foe, the wizard Zukala), and Elric (ruler of an otherworldly realm called Melniboné) had just fended off an attack by Prince Gaynor the Damned and his Chaos Pack of beast-men.  We now pick up the tale where Conan the Barbarian #14 left off, as presented by the same storytellers — plotters Michael Moorcock (creator of Elric) and James Cawthorn, scripter Roy Thomas, artist Barry Windsor-Smith, and co-inker (with Windsor-Smith) Sal Buscema:  Read More

Batman #219 (February, 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might have noticed that it’s been a while since I’ve written here about either Detective Comics or Batman.  The last issue of the former title to receive the “Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books” spotlight was issue #369 (Nov., 1967), while the most recent issue of the latter to rate a post was #197 (Dec., 1967).  Not counting the hero’s appearances in issues of Justice League of America, World’s Finest Comics, and (most significantly) The Brave and the Bold that I have posted about, this blog has been a Batman-free zone for more than two years.  That’s quite a contrast to the first two years of this enterprise, during which time the blog covered comics published from mid-1965 to mid-1967, and Batman and Detective accounted for nine posts between them.  Read More

Amazing Spider-Man #78 (November, 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

By the late summer of 1969, Marvel Comics had been slowly but steadily increasing the number of black characters in its titles for some time.  Having already introduced the first black costumed superhero, the Black Panther, to the world in 1966, Marvel had gone on to develop such non-costumed, supporting cast-type African-American characters as newspaper editor Joe “Robbie” Robertson and his family (in Amazing Spider-Man); while Gabe Jones, who’d been appearing as one of Sgt. Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos in that World War II army unit’s series since 1963, was gaining greater visibility in the present-day Marvel Universe as one of Fury’s agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..  June, 1969, had brought the debut of Marvel’s first African-American hero, the Falcon (the Panther, of course, was African, but not American) — and with August came the first appearance of yet another black costumed character, the Prowler.  This character, however, would be introduced as the world not as a superhero — but as a super-villain.  Read More