Mockingbird | Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books

Marvel Super Action #1 (January, 1976)

As was discussed in detail in our post about Marvel Preview #4 several weeks ago, by 1975 all four of the black-and-white comics magazines with which Marvel Comics had made a big push into that market just two years before were winding down. But Marvel was far from throwing in the towel on the B&W format itself. Accepting that the early-’70s horror boom that had inspired the launches of Dracula Lives and its ilk was pretty much over, Marvel now looked to other genres for new titles that could replace those that had made up the “Marvel Monster Group”. Read More

Astonishing Tales #12 (June, 1972)

Posted on March 23, 2022 by Alan Stewart

Any of you out there who aren’t already familiar with this particular comic book may be taking a look at its John Buscema-Joe Sinnott cover right now and thinking, “Nice, but what’s so special about Ka-Zar rasslin’ a big alligator, even underwater, that Astonishing Tales #12 should rate its own blog post?” The fact of the matter, however, is that this issue (along with its immediate follow-up, Astonishing Tales #13) represents a significant chapter in the histories of not one, but two, semi-major Marvel Comics characters — neither one of whom happens to be the self-styled Lord of the Savage Land. Read More

Astonishing Tales #3 (December, 1970)

Posted on September 19, 2020 by Alan Stewart

As I’ve discussed in a previous post, when Marvel Comics brought back their mid-Sixties double-feature format with two titles in 1970, my younger self promptly jumped on one of them — Amazing Adventures, co-starring the Inhumans and Black Widow — picking up both the first and second issues. For some reason, however, I put off sampling the companion title — Astonishing Tales, headlined by Ka-Zar and Doctor Doom — for several months, so my first issue was the series’ third. Yes, reader; that does indeed mean that I turned up my nose at new work from not just one, but two giants of comic book art — Jack Kirby (who already had one foot out the door at Marvel) and Wally Wood (who was just putting a foot back in). What can I say? I was a callow youth, who pretty much took Kirby for granted (he put a couple of new books out every month, after all; if you missed one, there’d be another one along in a couple of weeks) — and, truth to tell, I didn’t yet know who Wood even was, or why I should care. Read More