John Romita

Captain Marvel #46 (September, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Over the past couple of months we’ve been looking at the concluding issues of writer Steve Englehart’s runs on several different Marvel comics titles — and that “farewell tour” continues today, with our coverage of the end of Englehart’s tenure on Captain Marvel.  This one’s a bit different from our earlier forays into the writer’s final Avengers and Doctor Strange stories, however, as the ostensible main topic of this post, Captain Marvel #46, doesn’t carry a formal credit for Englehart at all.  That said, this issue most definitely concludes the multi-part storyline he and his co-plotter, artist Al Milgrom, had been developing since issue #41, and I see no good reason to doubt the author’s claim (made on his website as well as in his 2011 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — Captain Marvel, Vol. 4) that he and Milgrom had worked out the plot for this final chapter before his abrupt departure from the book (as well as from Marvel Comics overall) — especially since, to the best of my knowledge, neither Milgrom nor Chris Claremont (CM #46’s scripter of record) have ever disputed that assertion.  Read More

Marvel Feature #6 (September, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Cover to Savage Sword of Conan #1 (Aug., 1974). Art by Boris Valejo.

It’s been a while since we discussed Red Sonja on this blog — since the 50th anniversary of the publication of Savage Sword of Conan #1, to be precise, and that was back in June, 2024, a full two years ago — so before we jump into the main topic of today’s post, it’ll behoove us to spend just a little bit of time tracking what the She-Devil with a Sword had been up to between her appearance(s) in that black-and-white comic magazine and her sixth solo outing as a headliner in the second volume of the color “showcase” comic title Marvel Feature.  Beyond that, a brief recap of the heroine’s earlier history may also be useful, both as a primer for anyone out there not already thoroughly familiar with Big Red, and as a refresher for those who are.  (Though if you do already know all this background material backwards and forwards and choose to skip the next couple of paragraphs, that’s fine.  After all, how will the rest of us ever know?)  Read More

Invaders #8 (September, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As longtime readers of this blog well know — actually, as anyone who just started reading it three posts back has likely already sussed out — your humble blogger was very partial to superhero team books back in the day.  In the particular period we’re currently dealing with (i.e., in and around 1976), either Marvel or DC Comics could drop a new team title (or revive an old one) and it was all but a sure thing that I’d sample at least one issue.  There were a couple of exceptions, both on the DC side (the new Freedom Fighters and the revived Teen Titans, for the record); but, generally speaking, you could throw a bunch of costumed characters together, slap a group name on them, and my younger self would feel compelled to take a look — even in cases where the team seemed to have no real reason to exist (yeah, I’m looking at you, Champions).  Read More

Captain America #200 (August, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Welcome, all, to the first of four blog posts in which we’ll be commemorating May, 1976 as “Marvel Milestone Month” — a month in which, in a manner both unprecedented and (to the best of my knowledge), never repeated, four major Marvel Comics titles all celebrated a significant numerical milestone (“significant” being defined for our purposes as “a multiple of 50”) within a couple of weeks of each other.  Read More

Ghost Rider #19 (August, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

At the end of last Saturday’s Tomb of Dracula #47 post, I promised you that the next installment of this blog would feature “the strange, sad story of Ghost Rider #19.”  But, as anyone out there who already knows some version of this tale is well aware, its origins go back well before the May, 1976 publication of the comic whose Gil Kane-Frank Giacoia cover appears at the top of this post.  To begin with, this specific issue presents the conclusion of a multi-part storyline that had kicked off in Ghost Rider #17; but beyond that, the ongoing plot lines that find their (more or less) ultimate resolution in this arc extend back at least to Ghost Rider #8 (Oct., 1974)… and, arguably, all the way back to the feature’s debut in Marvel Spotlight #5 (Aug., 1972).  And seeing as how we haven’t discussed any issues of this series since July, 2023, when we hit the high points of Ghost Rider #1 and #2 in the context of covering the debut of spinoff character Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, in Marvel Spotlight #12 (Oct., 1973), we’re going to have to do some catching up to properly set the stage.  So let’s get to it, shall we?  Read More

Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man (1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Half a century ago this week, the new year of 1976 brought comics fans something that would have seemed an utter impossibility just a few years before — a all-new tabloid-sized comic book co-produced by the American comics industry’s two greatest rivals, DC and Marvel, featuring their flagship characters in a single 92-page adventure.  Read More

Omega the Unknown #1 (March, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’re probably already aware that this post is the fourth I’ve published this month.  If, in addition, you’re already familiar with its subject, you may also have noted that it’s the third out of that four to be devoted to a comic book featuring the writing of Steve Gerber.

Of course, if you are a regular reader, you may not consider that latter fact to even be all that notable, as your humble blogger has made it pretty clear that Gerber was (and is) one of my two favorite comics writers of this era (the other being his fellow Steve, Englehart).  And it probably wouldn’t have surprised my eighteen-year-old self, either, back in the waning days of 1975, to learn that Steve Gerber’s work would continue to hold my admiration, half a century on.

What did in fact surprise me way back then, however, was that, per the credits given on the first page of his latest project — a new superhero series called Omega the Unknown — Gerber was sharing the authorial byline… and with a woman, at that, at a time when female comics professionals in general were hardly numerous, and female writers even less so:  Read More

Conan the Barbarian #58 (January, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

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 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 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