Five months after the Wasp’s debut, Henry Pym underwent the first of his identity changes, utilizing his growth serum to grow beyond normal size as Giant-Man. At first, Pym was limited to a maximum height of 12 feet, but was later able to reach heights of 100 feet, although it proved too debilitating to be […]
Was spending some quarantine time yesterday re-watching Peyton Reed’s wonderful ANT-MAN movie, and it got me in the mood to talk about Ant-Man. Let’s get started! Here’s a question I get a lot: “Who’s your favorite super-hero?” It’s a question I usually dread, because it requires a lot of explaining, but here we go. It’s […]
One thing about Marvel Comics in the ’60s and ’70s: it had no compunctions about following the popular trends. After all, this was a company that survived the dark days of comics in the 1950s by pumping out tons of comics about whatever was succeeding elsewhere, not just in comics, but TV and film as […]
“There came a time when the old gods died…” So begins the first issue of Jack Kirby’s NEW GODS #1, the centerpiece of what many consider the crowning work of his career, the “Fourth World” saga of interconnecting titles for DC Comics. But in a way, that opening also served as notice to comics fans […]
You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Me personally, I’ve always been a huge Blue Beetle fan, and am still missing Mr. Ted Kord. However, Ted Kord was not the first Blue Beetle to appear in comics. In fact, the Blue Beetle goes back a lot farther than you might expect? How far, […]
Previously, in Comics 101: Last time, we introduced you to the beginnings of one of DC Comics’ lesser lights: Terry Sloane, the Man of a Thousand Talents known as Mr. Terrific. With a less than memorable costume and not much in the way of superpowers, why did Mr. Terrific stand the test of time in […]
Some characters you like and you don’t even know why. There’s no good reason I should have liked Mr. Terrific as a kid. No super powers, a bad costume, a hopelessly old-fashioned name, and yet, for some reason, he’s always been a sentimental favorite, even though by the time I was first introduced to the […]
The now seemingly endless wait for the next Marvel Cinematic Universe film has got me thinking about the larger Avengers property in the movies, and what Marvel Studios can do with it now that the long-simmering Thanos storyline has finally come to an end. And if you ask me, there’s only one choice: 1986’s “Under […]
Previously, in Comics 101: We’ve been discussing the original Stretching Sleuth in recent weeks, Jack Cole’s Golden-Age creation for Quality Comics, Plastic Man. When we left off, Plas had acquired a sidekick in the affable if dimwitted Woozy Winks, and his creator Jack Cole was just beginning a decade-plus run on the character that would […]
Time for a “Back-in-my-day” moment: when I was first reading comics as a kid, there were certain characters that I only heard about and fleetingly saw, since reprints were scarce, back issues weren’t readily available (this was before comic shops, mind you), and the notion of the Internet was about as realistic as the computer […]
Editor’s Note: It’s been pretty dark, tense times lately, I think we can all agree, and so I really felt like spreading a little goofy fun instead. Enjoy this lost entry from the COMICS 101 Archives: With Superman/Batman teamups on everyone’s mind these days, I myself have been thinking about a longtime favorite Batman teamup […]
With great movies like THE WINTER SOLDIER, CIVIL WAR and ENDGAME only days away, it’s easy to forget that Captain America didn’t always mean cinematic quality. Cap was in movie theatres as early as 1944, thanks to the 15-episode Republic Saturday-morning serial CAPTAIN AMERICA. Starring Dick Purcell, the serial pitted a shieldless Captain America (who […]
What do I love about Captain America? For one, he is a moral compass whose virtue extends beyond the confines of his book. Like all boy scout heroes, one can usually find their way if they’re willing to ask themselves, “What would Steve Rogers do?” It may seem a little naïve and childish, but having […]
