Leo Dorfman

Jimmy Olsen #138 (June, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Behind an attention-arresting cover, which — like most others Jack Kirby produced for DC Comics around this time — was built around an imaginative photo collage (and which also, like the cover of the issue of Jimmy Olsen that had immediately preceded it, featured Neal Adams’ inks over Kirby’s pencils), the comics readers of April, 1971 — including your humble blogger — were treated to the thrilling conclusion of the first multi-part storyline (indeed, the first storyline, period) of the massive Fourth World project written, drawn, and edited by Kirby.  Read More

Lois Lane #62 (January, 1966)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In tracking the publication dates of my earliest comics purchases via the Grand Comics Database, I’ve been a little surprised to find a lot of variation in how many (or few) comics I managed to pick up in a given month.  I guess the fact that I was an eight year old without a reliable means of regular transport to the nearest Tote-Sum convenience store provides a plausible enough reason — still, I’ve been somewhat bemused to discover that I apparently made only one comics purchase in November, 1965 — and of all the comics on the spinner rack that month, the single comic book that I chose was Lois Lane #62.

Lois Lane is one of those comic book characters that practically everyone knows, but of whom people have widely varying conceptions, based on what version of the character they’ve been exposed to and when.  If you line up all the renditions of the character in all media since her introduction in 1938, and look for qualities possessed by all of them, what do you have?  Lois Lane is a journalist.  Lois Lane knows Superman personally.  Lois Lane is… not a blonde.  Not a whole lot else, frankly.  Read More

Superman #180 (October, 1965)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

According to the Grand Comics Database, this particular comic book, the first one I ever bought, went on sale on the 5th day of August, 1965.  I probably didn’t buy it on that specific day, but it is possible.  In any case, I’m going to post about it today — exactly 50 years to the date it originally hit the stands.

Why Superman?  Well, then as now, he was the best-known comic book superhero in the world, having been published continuously from 1938 onwards.  And I already knew him from television, for even though the live-action series starring George Reeves had ended its run in 1958 (when I was two years old), episodes were being re-run every weekday afternoon by one of our two local stations.  It may be hard to believe in our era, when superheroes permeate popular culture in films, TV shows, games, toys, etc., but that was pretty much it for encountering comic book heroes in other media in the summer of 1965.  (Things would change drastically pretty soon afterwards, but that’s a subject for our next post.)  Read More