When EC Comics was at its height, it became the target of hysteria about the effects of horror and crime comics on kids. Take a look at this “news” report from the time. Even stranger: The director of this segment? Irvin Kershner, who would a couple of decades later go on to direct THE EMPIRE […]
Author Archive | Scott Tipton
Meet the Man Behind the Madness
A nice little video clip from the ’90s about EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines.
One Hundred Percent Pure West
It’s a story I’ve told before, but in light of the subject of this week’s column, it bears repeating: Time for another time-travel trip in the Wayback Machine. Set the dials for the year 1975. Li’l Scott has been forcibly called inside from playing in the front yard. Visibly miffed at this development (though not […]
EC Comics and the Comics Code Authority: Reduction of the Innocent
The history of comics can be divided into two basic eras — pre-1950s and post-1950s. Many companies’ fortunes were tied to the outcome of the situation that took place during that period. So what did happen in the 1950s and how did it change everything? The answer is best explained through a look at EC […]
Odds and Ends Blast Off!
We haven’t done one of these for a while, so let’s look at a few bite-size nuggets of coolness from around the Interwebs, comic shops, toy stores and anywhere else that geek treasure might be found. And away we go… TALKING DAREDEVIL Have you been visiting Blastoff every day? Hopefully so, since something new has […]
What the What?!
Ah, the 1970s. When the only place to see Marvel superheroes come to life was on television, generally CBS. Predating even the INCREDIBLE HULK, SPIDER-MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA and DOCTOR STRANGE TV projects was this abortive attempt by David Bowie’s wife Angela in 1975 to get a DAREDEVIL AND BLACK WIDOW project off the ground. Though […]
The Worst Kept Secret in Town
Over at his site manwithoutfear.com, Kuljit Mithra has put together this hilarious (because it’s true) list of all the people who have been made aware over the years of Daredevil’s (not so) secret identity. In the Fall From Grace storyline, DD had convinced everyone he WASN’T Matt Murdock. After one paper ran a speculative story, […]
Earth, Too
Big news last week with the revelation of the new series slated to replace the six cancelled DC “New 52” series, two of which are books that have your humble professor excited to buy some DC Comics again: EARTH-TWO, from James Robinson and Nicola Scott, which will presumably feature the Justice Society of America in […]
“Brother, Take My Hand.”
There’s no two ways about it: my love of Marvel Comics comes directly from two sources: ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS and SON OF ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS. These two 1970s collections of the premiere issues of Marvel’s characters served as my introduction to the Marvel Universe, and in no more formative way than in the case of the […]
Tale of Sand: A Review
Our own Amy Ratcliffe reviews the new graphic novel Tale of Sand over at her own site, Geek With Curves. An adaptation of a lost screenplay by MUPPETS creator Jim Henson and longtime MUPPETS writer Jerry Juhl, Tale of Sand, says Amy, “is ambitious, surreal, and glorious.” I’m sold. To read Amy’s full review, click here.
Matt’s Brother Mike
Over at Comic Book Resources, writer Timothy Callahan has just posted an exhaustive history of one of the more head-scratchingest periods in super-hero history, the time when Matt Murdock was pretending to be his own fictional twin brother Mike. As Timothy writes, “Right! Because that’s clearly the best way to handle this situation. Concoct a […]
Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You
The recent induction of Daredevil to the Avengers has got me thinking: when I first started reading comics, there was always a sort of conventional wisdom that there were certain Marvel characters that absolutely, hands down, no-questions would never been in the Avengers. For the longest time, that “common-knowledge” list was kind of set in […]
Daredevil Goes Hollywood
Compared to media juggernauts like Spider-Man or the Hulk, ol’ Hornhead hasn’t made that big of a pop-culture splash yet. There was a fairly awful TV-movie back in the ’80s that teamed up the Hulk and Daredevil. Entitled TRIAL OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK (in which the Hulk is never put on trial, by the way; […]