Roy Thomas

Avengers #84 (January, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As the year 1970 wound down, it seemed that mainstream American comic books had, at last, embraced the “sword and sorcery” fantasy subgenre in all its pulpy glory.  After some tentative moves in that direction — courtesy of DC Comics’ three “Nightmaster” issues of Showcase in 1969, which were followed in 1970 by Marvel’s publication of several S&S short tales in its new horror anthology titles like Chamber of Darkness and Tower of Shadows — Marvel finally jumped into the deep-end of the pool in July, 1970, with a licensed adaptation of the field’s most prototypical character, Robert E. Howard’s Conan:  Read More

Sub-Mariner #34 (February, 1971)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When Sub-Mariner #34 came out in November, 1970, it had been precisely one year since I’d bought an issue of the title.  It’s somewhat ironic, then, that there’s a well-known direct connection between that issue, Sub-Mariner #22 and the subject of today’s post — even if it’s a connection that’s only obvious — and perhaps even only exists — in retrospect.

That connection, of course, is that both comics are generally understood to be major building blocks in the development of the Defenders, the “non-team” that, for some of us old geezer fans, all but epitomizes 1970s Marvel Comics (at least as far as superheroes are concerned).  Read More

Avengers #83 (December, 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Fifty years ago, one didn’t necessarily expect fresh linguistic coinages to turn up in comic books right away.  If anything, comics were notorious for incorporating slang words and expressions (especially those presumably favored by America’s youth) years past their peak of popularity– if, indeed, they’d ever been popular at all.

But in its incorporation of the phrase “male chauvinist pigs” on its cover, Marvel Comics’ Avengers #83 seems to have been right on the money.  Read More

Astonishing Tales #3 (December, 1970)

Posted on 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

It was April, 1970…

Posted on by Alan Stewart

On July 21, 2015, this blog made its debut with a post entitled “It was the summer of ’65…”.  In that first installment, I described my earliest experiences with comic books, leading up to to my very first comics purchase in the, well, summer of ’65.  Since then, I’ve been writing about some of the most interesting individual issues I bought in my first few years as an avid comics reader (and nascent collector), while also attempting to chronicle, more generally, the evolution of my own comics tastes and interests, and setting that personal narrative in the broader context of what was going on in the funnybook industry (and, more broadly, in American culture), during those years.

But now, almost half a decade after starting this project, I’ve reached the point in the narrative of my comic book buying and reading where that story almost came to an end, fifty years ago.  I’ve arrived at the time in my life when, at least for a while, I stopped buying comics.  Read More

Sub-Mariner #22 (February, 1970)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in September, I wrote about buying and reading my first issue of Sub-Mariner, #20, a mostly done-in-one tale (in keeping with Marvel’s new “no continued stories” policy) which nevertheless ended on an inconclusive note — though Namor, Prince of Atlantis, had escaped the clutches of Doctor Doom, he was still a fugitive in New York City, hunted by the U.S. military as well as by the municipal police, and unable to escape to the ocean depths due to having had his gills surgically closed by a forgettable villain from outer space called (checks notes) the Stalker.  I ended the post by asking the question: would my twelve-year-old self be invested enough in Namor’s plight to come back for issue #21?  On the face of it, it seemed a dubious prospect, as I was becoming somewhat less interested in comics in general around this time.  After all, if I was on the verge of dropping titles I’d been buying regularly for a year or more, including Avengers and Daredevil, what sense would it make for me to start getting involved with yet another series?  Read More

Avengers #71 (December, 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

At the conclusion of Avengers #70, published fifty years and one month ago, readers were promised that the next issue would feature “the most shocking surprise guests of all!!”  A month later, those fans who picked #71 up off the spinner rack wouldn’t have to look any further than the dynamic Sal Buscema-Sam Grainger cover to learn the identity of those guest stars — though it’s likely that a lot of them had already gotten the news courtesy of the Mighty Marvel Checklist entry for the book that ran in that month’s Marvel comics’ Bullpen Bulletins text page: “The battle that time forgot!  The Avengers take on Cap, the Torch, and Namor in wartime Paris!  Don’t miss “Endgame!”

In October, 1969, my twelve-year-old self had yet to read a single Golden Age Marvel (or Timely, if you prefer) comic book story.  And while I’d gleaned enough information in my few years of reading current Marvel comics to know that Captain America, the original Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner had all been around in the 1940s, I’m not sure if I knew whether or not they’d ever appeared in the same story together before.  I certainly didn’t know about the Invaders — and neither did anyone else, including their creator Roy Thomas (also the scribe of our current tale), since they wouldn’t actually exist for another six years.  So to see these three characters in World War II-era action was a whole new thing for me (and probably for a lot of other readers as well). Read More

Sub-Mariner #20 (December, 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Sub-Mariner was the last Marvel solo superhero title of the late ’60s that I got around to sampling as a young comics reader.  As I indicated in my Incredible Hulk #118 post a few months back, it probably took a while for me to warm up to the Avenging Son of Atlantis (as it likely also did for ol’ Greenskin) simply because it was hard for me to see the guy as a bona fide superhero.  After all, when I encountered Prince Namor in other comics — mostly reprints of Fantastic Four and Avengers stories from the early Sixties — he was usually fighting other heroes while attempting to conquer the surface world.  And though I understood that, these days, he was no longer actively trying to overthrow human civilization, the Sub-Mariner still seemed to have such an attitude.  He was a damned imperious sort of Rex, if you know what I mean.  Read More

Avengers #70 (November, 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

If you’re a regular reader, you may recall that at the conclusion of last month’s post concerning Avengers #69, your humble blogger unburdened himself of a shameful, half-century-old secret — namely, that upon his first encounter with the brand-new supervillain group the Squadron Sinister way back in August, 1969, he had not the faintest clue that they were intended as parodies of the Justice League of America — who were, of course, the Avengers’ counterparts over at Marvel Comics’ Distinguished Competition, not to mention a team that he’d been reading about regularly for almost four years.

Imagine my gratified surprise when, subsequent to that post going up, I heard from a number of fellow old fans that they, too, had failed to get writer Roy Thomas’ joke back in the day.  I’m honestly not sure whether that means that my twelve-year-old self wasn’t all that dumb after all, or simply that a lot of us were that dumb, but either way, I’ll take it as a win.  Read More

Avengers #69 (October, 1969)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In his Introduction to the 2008 Marvel Masterworks volume reprinting this issue, scripter Roy Thomas compliments his artistic collaborator Sal Buscema for the “dramatic yet difficult cover”, noting that “it’s always hard to have a bunch of little guys fighting one big guy — and Goliath’s in-between size just complicated things further.”  That’s undoubtedly true; but my recent re-reading of Thomas’ words in preparation for writing this post reminded me of another cover that met the very same challenge, with at least a couple of the same characters — namely, Sal’s big brother John’s cover for Avengers #45, which came out almost exactly two years prior to Avengers #69, and which also just so happens to have been not only my first Avengers comic, but my first Marvel comic, period.  There’s no good reason why any of that should be particularly significant to anyone except me, I realize; but I hope you’ll pardon my momentary self-indulgence in deciding to highlight it here anyway.  Read More