Neal Adams

Savage Sword of Conan #14 (September, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

You’d likely never guess it from the wholly acceptable, but not especially memorable Earl Norem cover to the comic book that’s our topic for today — but, half a century ago, Savage Sword of Conan #14 represented something of the end of an era… even if no one knew it at the time.  That’s because its pages contained the very last collaboration between writer Roy Thomas and artist Neal Adams — two creators whose previous joint efforts, though relatively few in number, comprised some of the high water marks of the late Silver and early Bronze Ages of comics.  Read More

All-Star Comics #62 (Sept.-Oct., 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Cover to All-Star Comics #58 (Jan.-Feb., 1976). Art by Mike Grell.

Cover to All-Star Comics #59 (Mar.-Apr., 1976). Art by Ernie Chan.

Last October, we took a look at All-Star Comics #58 — the first issue of DC Comics’ revival of the title which had played host to the original superhero team, the Justice Society of America, back in the Golden Age of Comics — as well as its immediate follow-up, issue #59.  Together, these two premiere installments presented a single story that established writer/editor Gerry Conway’s vision for updating the JSA for success in the comic book marketplace of the mid-1970s — a vision that involved taking the aging, veteran heroes who’d traditionally made up the ranks of the Justice Society (a large roster represented here by a core group of Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Dr. Mid-Nite, Dr. Fate, and Wildcat) and teaming them up with a trio of younger champions of the right: Robin, the Star-Spangled Kid, and a brand-new character called Power Girl — under a new, not-quite-official umbrella name, the “Super Squad”.  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

Phantom Stranger #41 (Feb.-Mar., 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Cover to Phantom Stranger #11 (Jan.-Feb., 1971). Art by Neal Adams.

By the time that the 41st issue of Phantom Stranger arrived in spinner racks in November, 1975, I had been buying the title regularly for a full five years — or, to put it another way, for an unbroken run of thirty issues.  That made it unique among the DC Comics offerings I was picking up regularly at the time, as none of the others — Beowulf, Claw the Unconquered, Hercules Unbound, Kong the Untamed, Warlord, and the just-revived All-Star Comics — had even been around just one year before, let alone five.  As for the other DC books that I’d been routinely buying back when I first sampled Phantom Stranger in November, 1970 — these included Green Lantern, House of Mystery, Jimmy Olsen, Justice League of America, Superman, and World’s Finest — while most of them were still going concerns, a couple weren’t; and those that were still being published had become occasional purchases for me, at best.  Phantom Stranger was the only DC comic I’d bought continuously for the last half-decade — the sole survivor of my own personal DC Comics class of ’70.

And after this month, it would be gone, as well… because the 41st issue of Phantom Stranger was also to be the final one.  Read More

Marvel Preview #4 (January, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in the early months of 1973, Marvel Comics confidently made a big push into the black-and-white comics magazine market then dominated by Warren Publishing with a slate of four horror titles — Dracula Lives, Monsters Unleashed, Tales of the Zombie, and Vampire Tales — obviously designed to go head-to-head with Warren’s trio of Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella.  Within two-and-a-half years, however, all four of those books had shuffled off back to the graveyard, victims of a general downturn in the horror genre’s appeal to American comics fans that had also prompted a significant pruning of Marvel’s color comics of that ilk.  (TTFN, Man-Thing; catch ya later, Morbius; Living Mummy, we hardly knew ye.)

Still, if you’d taken a look at the magazine racks in October, 1975, Marvel’s confidence in its ability to compete in the B&W comics field — or, at least, its determination to do so — would hardly have seemed to have diminished since the heady days of the “Marvel Monster Group”.  That month, you might have scored copies of Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #18, Planet of the Apes #15, Savage Sword of Conan #9… maybe even Crazy #15 or Doc Savage #2 (which had both come out in August, but wouldn’t be bumped off the stands by new issues until December).  And also, of course, the book that’s the main topic of today’s post:  the fourth issue of Marvel Preview.  Read More

Batman Family #1 (Sep.-Oct., 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that when I picked up Detective Comics #450 in the late spring of 1975, it had been well over a year since I’d bought an issue of that title.  As it happens, I could have said the same thing about most of DC Comics’ other Bat-books of the time.  The last issue of Batman itself that I’d purchased had been #255, which had come out at the end of 1973, and I hadn’t been paying any attention at all to World’s Finest (which of course was technically Superman’s book at least as much as it was Batman’s) since well before that.  Granted, I was a somewhat more frequent consumer of Brave and the Bold, where every new issue arrived possessing the baseline advantage of Jim Aparo’s reliably fine artwork, then might pick up additional interest based on who the Masked Manhunter’s co-star happened to be this time around.  Still, you get the basic idea; while I continued to like the character of Batman just fine, DC’s “Batman family” of comic-book titles was mostly leaving my younger self cold.  Read More

Savage Sword of Conan #4 (February, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The fifty-year-old comics magazine we’ll be looking at today leads off with a cover by fantasy painter Boris Vallejo that actually illustrates the issue’s lead story — something which wasn’t exactly unheard of with Marvel’s black-and-white comics of the 1970s, but wasn’t quite what you’d call commonplace, either.  About the only significant discrepancy between cover and story is that the young lady in Vallejo’s painting is depicted as wearing a little less clothing than the equivalent character drawn by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala in the story’s version of this same scene… but it really is only a little less, as we’ll soon see.  Read More

Giant-Size Avengers #3 (February, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last month we took a look at Avengers #131, which ended with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes being transported against their wills to the realm of Limbo, where they were set to face off against a Legion of the Unliving assembled by their long-time foe, Kang the Conqueror.  This month, we’ll be discussing the “two-part triple-length triumph” which that comic’s final page promised as a follow-up… a story which, following a pattern that had been set the last time that an issue of the quarterly Giant-Size Avengers rolled around, doesn’t actually begin in the book whose Gil Kane-Frank Giacoia cover graces the top of this post; but, rather, in the one whose cover by Ron Wilson and Giacoia is shown at right: the latest (as of fifty years ago) issue of our assembled heroes’ regular monthly title, Avengers #132 (Feb., 1975).  Read More

Grim Ghost #1 (January, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In November, 1974, your humble blogger was pretty much a “just Marvel and DC, please” kind of guy where color comic books were concerned.  But, naturally, that didn’t mean I was unaware of the wares of other companies.  How could I have been?  All of the spinner racks I can recall from the first decade or so of my comics buying didn’t sort the new books by publisher (or by any other system, for that matter).  So if you wanted to make sure you got a look at every new DC or Marvel book out in any given week, you generally got at least a cursory glance at every new Archie, Charlton, Fawcett, Gold Key, and Harvey, as well.

And if a brand-new publisher showed up?  You noticed — especially if one of their books sported a cover by Neal Adams, like Atlas/Seaboard’s Ironjaw #1 did.    Read More