Secret Origins

The Fox and the Crow #97 (Apr.-May, 1966)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

My early comic book buying and reading didn’t include a lot of “funny” comics.  (There was Mad, but I don’t consider it a comic book so much as a magazine with a lot of comics in it.)  No, not for me were the kid humor titles from Harvey (Casper, Richie Rich, Hot Stuff, etc.), the teen humor of Archie and his brethren, or even the “celebrity” books (Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis) from my favored publisher, DC Comics.  And while I eventually came to have an appreciation for the work of such great creators as Carl Barks, there wouldn’t be any Disney comics in my collection until after I became an adult.  It wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy funny cartoon characters — I routinely watched them on TV on Saturday mornings (and occasionally on weekday afternoons).  I suspect that at my advanced age of eight years, I’d decided that such characters were simply too “babyish” to spend my money on, if not necessarily my time.

But for whatever reason, in February, 1966, I made an exception — and it was for The Fox and the Crow.  Read More

Batman #179 (March, 1966)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In January, 1966, I bought my first issue of Batman.  I’d already had plenty of exposure to the character by this time, of course, in multiple issues of Justice League of America, plus appearances in The Brave and the Bold and World’s Finest.  More to the point, one of the very first comics I’d bought had been the 344th issue of Detective, Batman’s “other” book (and arguably the primary Batman book, as it was the 27th issue of Detective in which the character made his debut way back in 1939).  Still, up until January, 1966, I hadn’t gotten around to buying an actual issue of the Caped Crusader’s titular comic.

But if I was ever going to pick up an issue of Batman, there could hardly have been another month when I would have been more primed to do so than January of 1966.  Because on January 12, eight days prior to the release of Batman #179, American television viewers saw this on their screens for the very first time: Read More