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
1975’s team-up between the Justice League of America and the Justice Society of America was the thirteenth such event since the annual tradition had begun in 1963. Over the years, DC Comics fans had been privileged to vicariously visit such parallel worlds as Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Three, Earth-X, and even the short-lived Earth-A. But there was one particular Earth that had been established as existing in what would eventually be known as “the DC multiverse” that had yet to be glimpsed in any of the JLA-JSA summer shindigs… though readers of those comics could hardly claim to be unfamiliar with the place. After all, they lived there.
Of course, I’m talking about Earth-Prime. Read More
When last the regular readers of this blog saw Captain Marvel, he’d just been defeated and taken prisoner by the Watcher — a formerly benign, self-declared non-interventionist, whose sudden heel turn after over a decade of Marvel Comics appearances seemed to come out of nowhere — who had then proceeded to hand him over to the mysterious, heretofore unseen enemies who’d been giving our hero trouble ever since the end of auteur Jim Starlin’s run on the series — the Lunatic Legion.
Our first glimpse of those baddies (see right) made them look pretty loony, indeed. But, considering that storytellers Steve Englehart (co-plotter/scripter), Al Milgrom (co-plotter/penciller) and Klaus Janson (inker) were giving us a Captain Marvel’s-eye view of the LL, here — and also considering that Mar-Vell was, at the time, tripping balls on LSD (euphemistically referred to in the story as “Vitamin C”, so as not to draw the unwelcome attention of the Comics Code Authority) — one might reasonably doubt whether the image we saw here was entirely representative of objective reality. Read More
In February of last year, we ran a post on the first issue of Worlds Unknown — a four-color anthology title from Marvel Comics devoted to the science fiction genre, with a special focus on adapting short stories and novels by well-known SF authors. As we discussed at the time, this passion project of Marvel’s editor-in-chief, Roy Thomas, saw just six issues released in this format before it took a hard turn in a decidedly different direction (an adaptation of the fantasy film The Golden Voyage of Sinbad) for its final two issues, the last of which came out in April, 1974.
Given its poor performance in the marketplace, Thomas’ project could hardly be called a success; still, in October of the same year, it became clear that the editor hadn’t given up on the basic idea behind it, as that month saw the debut of a brand new entry in Marvel’s ever-growing, and ever more genre-diverse, line of black-and-white comics magazines: Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction. Read More
I don’t suppose I need to explain to anyone reading this just why the topic of today’s post is so significant. After all, even if you didn’t know anything about the 129th issue of Amazing Spider-Man before you arrived here, just a look at the comic’s iconic cover by Gil Kane and John Romita would quickly clue you in to its contents. And what other comic-book character’s fiftieth anniversary in this month of October, 2023 could possibly compare in importance to the first appearance of… the Jackal?
Nah, just kidding. I’m talking about the other guy. (Although I freely acknowledge that the debut of the Jackal is significant in its own way, especially for ’90s-era Spider-Man fans who still have nightmares about the Clone Saga.) Read More
Like its immediate predecessor, the 122nd issue of Amazing Spider-Man leads off with a cover by John Romita, which, if not quite as iconic as that of #121, is still an exceptionally arresting image. Not to mention one which, back in April, 1973, would likely have shocked the hell out of any semi-regular reader of the web-slinger’s series who had somehow managed to miss not only that most monumental of issues, but also any fannish discussion of same over the several weeks since its release on March 13th.
If there were any such readers fifty years ago, and if they hoped for some sort of recap to bring them up to speed on the details of how so something so unthinkable as the murder of Spider-Man’s beloved Gwen Stacy had come to pass, they were pretty much out of luck — because the creative team behind both the previous episode and this one — i.e., scripter Gerry Conway, penciller Gil Kane, foreground inker John Romita (who may have also contributed to the plot) and background inker Tony Mortellaro — weren’t about to break their storyline’s headlong momentum with any more exposition than was minimally required, let alone any flashbacks: Read More
Readers of our Avengers #105 post back in July may recall how that issue’s plot — the first from the title’s brand new writer, Steve Englehart — concerned the team’s search for their missing member Quicksilver, who’d disappeared towards the end of the previous issue. Following the inconclusive resolution to their efforts in that tale, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes would continue their quest for the mutant speedster for months to come. But, surprisingly — well, it surprised me, back in November, 1972 — when Pietro Maximoff was finally “found”, it didn’t happen in the pages of Avengers; instead, Quicksilver resurfaced in, of all things, an issue of Fantastic Four — which, as it happened, was the new super-team scripting gig of Roy Thomas, the man who’d written Avengers for the last five-plus years prior to Englehart taking over, and thus the guy who’d launched the whole “where is Pietro?” mystery in the first place. From a creative standpoint, it made a certain kind of sense that Thomas would be the one to ultimately wrap things up; but in terms of the ongoing mega-story of the Marvel Universe, it seemed to come out of nowhere. How did Quicksilver ever manage to end up in the Himalayan homeland of the Inhumans, the Great Refuge? And why the heck was he fighting the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch, Johnny Storm? Read More
First off, please be advised that this blog post is going to be one of the long ones. That’s primarily due to the fact that, in addition to covering the specific fifty-year-old comic book that gives the post its title, your humble blogger is also going to take a shot at answering the age-old conundrum: who came first, DC Comics’ Swamp Thing or Marvel Comics’ Man-Thing? (Regular readers may recall that when the blog spotlighted the second Man-Thing story, back in March, I promised something of this sort would be forthcoming; that moment has at last arrived.)
But it’s also destined to be at least a bit on the long side because before I can even get into discussing Swamp Thing #1, I feel that it’s necessary to give some attention to an even older comic, one that came out over fifty-one years ago. Of course, I’m talking about House of Secrets #92, published by DC in April, 1971; the comic book whose first eight pages gave us the very first “Swamp Thing” story, as written by Len Wein, drawn (mostly) by Bernie Wrightson, and edited by Joe Orlando. Neither the behind-the-scenes story of how Swamp Thing-the-series came to be — nor my own initial reactions to the first issue of the latter, as a fifteen-year-old reader in August, 1972 — make a whole lot of sense outside of the context of that classic tale. So, that’s where we’re starting, on what in all probability will indeed be a lengthy (though hopefully also enjoyable) journey. Forewarned is forearmed, eh? Read More
Regular readers of this blog will recall how, over the past year, we’ve been tracking the Fourth World-adjacent story material that appeared in various “Superman” family titles — mostly in Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane — during the period that Jack Kirby was writing, drawing, and editing Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen. The most significant piece of this material was that having to do with Morgan Edge, the head of Galaxy Broadcasting (and thus the boss of Lois and Jimmy, as well as of Superman’s alter ego Clark Kent). Originally created by Kirby, Edge was introduced in his first Fourth World comic, Jimmy Olsen #133, as being secretly involved with the criminal organization Intergang — and thereby, as shown in the very next issue, also an operative of the dark lord of Apokolips, Darkseid. More recently, however, it had been revealed in Lois Lane #118 that the Morgan Edge we readers had been reading about in all the Superman books wasn’t the real Edge at all — rather, he was an evil clone who’d been created by Darkseid’s minions in the Evil Factory to pose as the media mogul. Read More
Batman #237’s “Night of the Reaper!” wasn’t the first comic book story set at the real-life Rutland, VT Halloween Parade; that distinction goes to Avengers #83, which was published one year earlier (and was covered here on this blog last October). Nor would it be the last such tale.
But it was almost certainly the best of the bunch.
That’s really not surprising, given that the story was crafted by one of the most outstanding creative teams of the era — writer Denny O’Neil, penciller Neal Adams, and inker Dick Giordano — as well as that it, more than most of its fellows, aspired to be about something more than either the Parade itself, or conventional superheroic goings-on — something decidedly more serious, in fact — and was largely successful in achieving this aim, ultimately addressing the subject of the Holocaust in a dramatic, but sensitive, manner.
Nevertheless, the origins of this classic story in certain actual (but not very serious) events — and the appearance within its pages of several equally actual persons who either already were, or would soon become, well-known comics industry professionals — can’t help but be responsible for a certain amount of “Night of the Reaper!” lasting appeal. And it’s with those events, and persons, that we begin. Read More