GH: SUPERMAN #382

By 1983, SUPERMAN was feeling a bit like a product of a different age. While some effort was being made to modernize the Man of Steel, including having Gil Kane provide covers as he does here, the actual contents of the magazine were still very much of a piece with the kinds of stories that were being run ten years previous when I had first read an issue. On a certain level, this did represent a…

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BHOC: FANTASTIC FOUR #204

It was right before this issue of FANTASTIC FOUR came out that SUPERMAN THE MOVIE finally opened on December 15, 1978. And strangely, for a film that sits so highly in my personal lexicon, I don’t really have a strong recollection of going to see if for the first time. I don’t think we got to it until the second week, and I can recall that my family saw it in some distant theater rather than our…

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BHOC: SUPERMAN FAMILY #194

After my brief moment of having let an issue of SUPERMAN FAMILY go by and then turning back and picking it up later, I seemed to be back on the train of purchasing the series regularly. And I’m not entirely certain why. Some of it, I’m sure, is that I just liked Superman. And while every issue was a mixed bag, there must have been enough good bits in each one to keep me coming back. Or maybe the…

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GH: SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #9

As I got older, my tastes in comics began to change, or at least to grow more expansive. And so I wound up trying titles that might have done nothing for me before, like SAGA OF THE SWAMPO THING, The series was a bit of a hybrid, existing in a world halfway between that of DC’s other mystery/supernatural series and a horror hero title like Marvel’s INCREDIBLE HULK or WEREWOLF BY NIGHT. So I could…

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BHOC: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #164

I can remember this stretch of issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA trying my patience a little bit. As writer Gerry Conway continued to unravel the mystery of Zatanna’s mother and her upbringing, I increasingly was checked out on the series. A lot of this had to do, I expect, with my absolute inability to care about magical fantasy realms of any sort, so investing a whole lot of emotional energy…

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BHOC: FAMOUS 1st EDITION #C-61

The marketing build-up to the premiere of SUPERMAN THE MOVIE was gathering speed, and one of the benefits of it was this, the final FAMOUS 1st EDITION that DC produced during the 1970s (though they’d bring the format back to a limited degree in recent years.) These were Treasury Edition sized reproductions of the most crucial and most expensive Golden Age comic book in DC’s library. As a kid, I…

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GH: THE FLASH #319

Ever since I was six years old, the Flash has been my favorite super hero. There was something about the combination of elements–the slick costume, the simple power, the gallery of recurring villains, the sort of serious-but-not-too-serious tone of the strip–that really connected with me. But as time went on and I got older, both I and the Flash started to change. There was a clear push away from…

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BHOC: UNCANNY X-MEN #119

UNCANNY X-MEN was perhaps the first Marvel comic book to display an awards symbol on its front cover, in this case that of the UK Eagle Awards. I can say that, speaking for myself, I had no idea what the Eagle Awards were (nor any inkling just how small they were as compared to similar awards today) and so I was at least somewhat impressed by this distinction being shown to one of my favorite…

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BHOC: NOVA #24

I wasn’t yet sophisticated enough in my knowledge of and contact with the comic book industry to be able to tell when a title that I was following was in trouble. While there were places even in those pre-internet days where more plugged-in fans could learn such information, I had no awareness of them. So every once in a while, a series that I’d been following simply stopped showing up at my…

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GH: BATMAN #359

As I’ve mentioned often in the past, growing up, I was never all that much of a fan of Batman. I didn’t dislike the Masked Manhunter, it was more a question of liking a particular flavor of him. I first encountered the Caped Crusader in daily reruns of the 1966 live action television show, and like most other kids of that age, I took them entirely seriously. I also occasionally read comics…

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BHOC: MARVEL TALES #101

This issue of MARVEL TALES presented me with a slightly more manageable conundrum. I didn’t own a copy of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #124, the issue that was reprinted here, but I had read it. I believe my school buddy Don Sims had a copy, and I’d read it at his place at some point. Consequently, this issue would hold very few surprises for me. But it was still a relatively simple choice to drop 35 cents…

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BHOC: INVADERS #38

INVADERS was a series on a downward slope, and much closer to cancellation that I realized as a regular reader. I could tell that something was off about the book, but I was so invested in the Golden Age as a concept and in the formative versions of these characters, like the Justice Society of America over at DC, that I never allowed it to puncture my enthusiasm for the series. INVADERS was a…

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GH: UNCANNY X-MEN #171

By 1982 when I was forced to pare back my comic book buying due to a lack of income, there was no more popular series in the land than UNCANNY X-MEN. Following the enormous reaction to the “Dark Phoenix Saga” by Chris Claremont and John Byrne a year or two earlier, the title simply exploded, especially in the fan-oriented Direct Sales market. But this growth also coincided with my growing…

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BHOC: INCREDIBLE HULK #233

Another issue of INCREDIBLE HULK that I bought by rote when it showed up on the spinner rack at my local 7-11 one Thursday. I was enjoying the title well enough, but it was never a huge favorite of mine. The concept felt so limited to me, and I had a hard time relating to the simple-minded brute that was the central character. On the other hand, INCREDIBLE HULK was one of Marvel’s most popular…

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BHOC: GODZILLA #20

As I’ve spoken about in the past, as a kid I didn’t really have much interest in monster movies. They were more the fascination of my younger brother Ken, and so they would wind up on television whenever the 4:30 Movie would run their yearly week-long marathon, or they’d show up on some other channel. Consequently, Marvel’s ongoing GODZILLA title was of no real interest to be, despite the fact…

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GH: ROM #43

ROM, SPACEKNIGHT is one of the better-remembered series of the early 1980s, this despite the fact that it was a toy tie-in comic. The toy was a bust, but the comic wound up running for 75 issues, a respectable run by any metric. Along with MICRONAUTS, it was writer Bill Manto’s greatest success in this period, as he invested these series with the same amount of imagination and energy that he…

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BHOC: DEFENDERS #69

It was momentum, pure and simple, that kept me purchasing DEFENDERS each and every month through this period. As it was a Marvel team title, on some level I felt as though i “had to” buy it or risk missing something important. Which is crazy, but also a part of the key to Marvel’s success in those days. The pervading sell that everything that happened in the Marvel Universe was contributing to a…

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