John Verpoorten

Eternals #1 (July, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

By April, 1976, the return of artist/writer Jack Kirby to Marvel Comics could no longer be considered news.  His first new cover for the publisher (an Avengers illustration fronting Marvel Treasury Edition #7) had appeared the previous July, and his first new full comic book, Captain America #193, three months after that.  Still, we hadn’t seen any brand-new series concepts from Kirby yet — and, given that he had been the House of Ideas’ preeminent idea man for roughly the first decade of “the Marvel Age of Comics” (i.e., 1961-70), longtime Marvelites were eager to see what would next emerge from the protean imagination of “King” Kirby — as, of course, were virtually all the creator’s many fans, regardless of their preference for one comics publisher or another.  Read More

Captain America #197 (May, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last October, at the end of our post concerning Captain America #193 (Jan., 1976) — a comic which, you’ll remember, featured the return of artist/writer/editor Jack “King” Kirby to the star-spangled hero he’d co-created with Joe Simon back in 1940 — your humble blogger invited you all to return in May, 2026 to see how the eight-issue, Bicentennial-themed storyline that had kicked off therein would turn out.  Four months later, however, I’ve come to the realization that trying to cover seven chapters’ worth of Kirby’s epic in a single go would likely result in a post of such length as to try the patience of even the most indulgent followers of this blog — and so, I’ve decided to break up the remainder of our “Madbomb” coverage into two posts, the first of which is presented here.  (Of course, given that this piece is still aiming to hit the high points of four individual comics, it’s still likely to be a pretty long read… though not quite as much of an imposition on your time as our originally planned Captain America #200 mega-post would have been, so at least there’s that.)  Read More

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

Posted on 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

Giant-Size Avengers #4 (Jun., 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in August, 1974, after laying the necessary narrative groundwork for many months, Avengers writer Steve Englehart had inaugurated his “Celestial Madonna” story arc with a pair of issues that came out within a couple of weeks of each other: Avengers #129 and Giant-Size Avengers #2.  Half a year later, in February, 1975, the saga would reach its conclusion in a parallel fashion, with the final chapters appearing in that month’s issues of both the regular monthly Avengers title and its giant-sized quarterly companion.  Read More

Captain America #182 (February, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The cover of Captain America #182 — drawn by Ron Wilson and Frank Giacoia (with probable touch-ups by John Romita) — offered few, if any, hints of major surprises to be found within its pages.  Here’s Steve Rogers in his new heroic identity of Nomad, continuing his ongoing battle against the Serpent Squad, with a symbolic (and huge) representation of his former (and, of course, much better-known) costumed alter ego looming in the background.  Pretty much what anyone who’d been following this title for the past several months would expect.

But upon turning to the issue’s opening splash page, we readers of November, 1974, learned that changes had indeed come to Captain America…  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

Captain America #172 (April, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The ostensible main topic of today’s post, Captain America #172, is the first issue of the series in which writer Steve Englehart and artist Sal Buscema’s “Secret Empire” saga has the center stage completely to itself.  But the storyline may be said to have properly started three issues before this, in #169; and its earliest seeds show up a full six issues before that, in #163.  Read More

Frankenstein #5 (September, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last October, we took a look at Marvel Comics’ Frankenstein #1 (Jan., 1973), the first issue of an ongoing series that kicked off with an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel of the same name.  This adaptation, written by Gary Friedrich and drawn by Mike Ploog, would run for three issues, and probably still ranks as one of the most faithful takes on Shelley’s classic work ever attempted in comic books (even if Ploog’s design for the Monster owed at least as much to Universal Studios’ Frankenstein movies of the 1930s and ’40s as it did to Shelley’s text).

As you may recall, Friedrich and Ploog retold Shelley’s story within a narrative framework set a hundred year’s after its events, as an Arctic expedition led by Captain Robert Walton IV — the namesake and great-grandson of a character from the novel — discovered the body of Victor Frankenstein’s Monster frozen in a wall of ice.  The expedition not only retrieved the Monster, but inadvertently resuscitated him, setting off a chain of events which ultimately caused the wreck of Walton’s ship and the deaths of most of his crew.  Read More

Captain America #162 (June, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

It’s been some seven months since the blog last checked in with Captain America.  As regular readers may recall, at that time we took a look at the storyline that kicked off new writer Steve Englehart’s tenure on the title — a four-issue saga in which our star-spangled Avenger (aka Steve Rogers) learned that during the post-World War II era, while he himself had been frozen in ice, he’d been replaced by another Captain America — the “Commie-busting” Cap whose adventures Atlas (aka Marvel) Comics had published for a few years in the 1950s.  That iteration of the hero, along with his partner Bucky, had ultimately gone insane, becoming an avatar of bigotry — and a menace to society whom the real Captain America, along with his partner, the Falcon, and girlfriend, sometime S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter, had to take down before he could permanently damage Cap’s reputation… and a whole lot else, besides.  Read More

Defenders #4 (February, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Behind an attention-grabbing cover pencilled by John Buscema from a rough layout by Jim Starlin (and inked by Frank Giacoia), the Defenders creative team of writer Steve Englehart, penciller Sal Buscema, and inker Frank McLaughlin began this latest installment of the super-team’s continuing adventures right where the previous one had left off.

It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a happy scene…  Read More