The year was 1962, and Marvel editor Stan Lee was feeling the pressure. Stan had come out of the gate three for three: his first three new “Marvel Comics” had been met with unexpected success at the newsstands. THE FANTASTIC FOUR, the INCREDIBLE HULK and the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN were not only selling like hotcakes, but […]
This column first appeared March 19, 2008. This is a tough one. Not only is Dave Stevens’ creation THE ROCKETEER such a longtime favorite of mine, but I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Dave many times over the last 20 years or so, and he was just a hell of a nice […]
When you’re a little kid, it’s hard to predict what’s going to scare you. I could read horror comics all the time, and they never did much for me one way or the other. But what scared the dickens out of Li’l Scott back in 1976? This issue of WORLD’S FINEST, for one thing. In […]
Last week we discussed the odd phenomenon of translating animated cartoons into comic books, focusing on the Pink Panther, if you recall. Well, by special request, we’ll be returning to the topic this week, for the benefit of a certain reader who demanded to know what a “BEEP BEEP THE ROAD RUNNER” comic looked like. […]
Some of my favorite comics as a little kid weren’t necessarily always the superhero stuff. No, I found just as much enjoyment out of the offerings from Gold Key/Whitman, usually the licensed adaptations of some of my then-favorite cartoons, books like BEEP BEEP! THE ROAD RUNNER, UNCLE SCROOGE and THE PINK PANTHER. What’s odd when […]
I think I’ve mentioned in these pages before that one of my favorite things about the San Diego Comic-Con is the annual back-issue crawl that fellow C101 columnist Chris Ryall and I make on Sunday afternoon. Quickly filing through aisles and aisles of quarter and dollar longboxes, it’s the most prime example of comic-book Darwinism. […]
I love comics. And specifically, I love old comics. And even more specifically, I love old comics I’ve never read before, because you absolutely never know what you’re gonna find. Case in point: this year at the San Diego Comic Con, I found myself trying to put together a full set of Jack Kirby’s 1970s […]
So I signed up for HBO Max a couple of months back, mostly to get access to the new Wonder Woman movie. Much to my surprise, HBO Max has quickly become my favorite streaming service, thanks to its sizable backlist of classic films through the TCM hub, something most other services are sorely lacking. Another […]
A few years back, it was big news all around when Clark Kent and Lois Lane finally tied the knot, an editorial decision DC stuck with for a decade or so, before kicking over their universe and starting again with the New 52. What no one seemed to make much mention of was that this […]
If you just signed up for HBO MAX for the Snyder Cut of JUSTICE LEAGUE, do yourself a favor and check out an overlooked original gem the streamer offers: DOOM PATROL, starring White Collar‘s Matt Bomer as Negative Man, Brendan Fraser as Robotman and Timothy Dalton as The Chief. Since Doom Patrol is just about […]
Flipping channels the other night, I happened across a film from a few years back that featured Superman and Batman grimacing and sneering at each other while a weirdly floppy-haired Luthor gads about the screen. Rather than subject myself to that, I climbed into the Wayback Machine and headed for June of 1952, when The […]
Let’s take a trip back to the heady days of the Silver Age of Comics, when the most important thing was how ludicrously attention-getting the cover of your comic book could be, and figuring out how to make sense of it on the inside was clearly secondary. Case in point? SUPERBOY #96 (April 1962), “The […]
I caught Sam Raimi’s SPIDER-MAN on TV the other night, and enjoyed once more the way Willem DaFoe and James Franco perfectly captured the fractured relationship between Norman Osborn (secretly Spider-Man’s arch-enemy the Green Goblin) and his son Harry, Peter Parker’s best friend and roommate. I was recently inspired to go back and take a […]
