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Post by Farrar on May 2, 2018 15:35:03 GMT -5
And from Marvel off the racks in May 1968:  Nice, right? Fantastic Four #77. I enjoyed the Kirby-Sinnott art and liked how the dialogue really underscored the different personalities of the three male FFers, but hoo boy--as I have mentioned, I was getting tired of this cosmic menace/whatever story. I was so glad this was part four, the last part. Great cover! X-Men #46. So at the end of the main story, which was only 14 or so pages, the X-Men are told they have to split up. WTF? I was interested in team books, dammit. Marvel Collectors' Item Classics #16. Loved MCIC primarily for its FF reprints (though I read the other features too).
Silver Surfer #1. So why did I buy this, since I wasn't that interested in solo titles and I was not a Surfer fan--I'd just had enough of him in the FF comic! Well, look at that cover. Who could resist? Also I think I may have wanted to get in on the ground floor here; and I may have succumbed to the hype in the Bullpen Bulletins page, which proclaimed that this was a different type of comic (it was giant-sized and cost a quarter for one thing). At any rate I bought SS #1 and while the story--the Surfer's origin--was pedestrian, John Buscema's art was sublime. Every panel was a masterpiece. To this day Buscema's art in this SS series, along with JB's Sub-Mariner run back then, remains the most beautiful art I've ever seen in a Marvel comic. |
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Post by brutalis on May 3, 2018 7:55:19 GMT -5
May 1968 via the future 1978'ish or so where as a teen I buy older classic comics:
Avengers 54: Masters of Evil, Black Knight and Jarvis "betraying" the Avengers. Woohah!
Captain Marvel 4: Mar-Vell versus Subby! Pure Colan goodness and good to see Cap fighting earthbound villainy.
Daredevil 42: More Colan goodness and one of my fave Daredevil villains in the Jester!
Fantastic Four 77: It's FF. Need I say more?
Won Silver Surfer 1 through an in-store LCS lottery. The LCS I used for the most part had moved locations and was trying to draw in new customers and old customers to follow. For a $50 dollar purchase of comics for the week you were given a lottery ticket. I wound up winning Surfer. I held on to it for several months and word got around town that I had won and several other LCS offered to buy it from me. Eventually sold it for $300 to one shop.
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Post by Prince Hal on May 17, 2018 15:17:07 GMT -5
May 1968 I am officially in my heyday as a comics reader, with access to more comics than I had ever seen before. And even with this many comics, I could always manage to find the money to buy the ones I wanted. Which was basically everything I saw. In May 1968 it was 34 12-centers, a DC 80-page Giant and a Famous Monsters. Grand total: $4.70. Man, those were the halcyon days! This was also the first time I ever traded a comic. A friend who lived across the street, Billy, who was also into comics, was a crazy spy fan: James Bond, Man from U.N.C.L.E., and of course, Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD.The original Strange Tales series had been non-existent as far as I can remember. We knew about the SHIELD stories only through ads and Bullpen Bulletins. But when SHIELD #1 came out, we got to see Fury in all his espionagiac (?) glory, with the Steranko art that was setting the comics world ablaze. My buddy loved Fury, and devoured the first two issues, as I had. But neither of us could find Agent of SHIELD #3 anywhere on the stands, even at my two stores near my high school that had proved to be my comic cornucopias. I resolved to go in-country and explore the stores in the three other towns between our town and the big city to see if I could find our newest Holy Grail. I found one, and only one, copy, which I probably read ion the bus ride home. I ran it across the street for my friend to read, but that wasn’t enough for him. He had to have it. I was fine with his reading it, but it was SHIELD and Steranko and the story and art – to us anyway – were so cutting edge that you had to wear oven mitts just to turn the pages.   Long story short, he began with a few comics, than added more and more, and I really didn’t want to trade at all. It wasn’t that I was trying to drive up the price. O way was I that sophisticated a haggler. Finally, though, he just told me to take an entire large box of books, because he wanted that comic so much. I could no longer resist, and I lumbered home with about 50 books, many of which were early Marvels that I’d never even seen (Daredevil 16 springs immediately to mind…) and probably increased the size of my collection by a third. I knew I’d never see a copy of SHIELD 3 ever again, and I was right. But the trade was just too good to turn down. And of course, many years later, in a world I never thought would be made, Marvel reprinted the entire SHIELD series and I was able to read about the Hellhound of Ravenlock again! |
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Post by brutalis on May 17, 2018 17:19:36 GMT -5
May 1968 I am officially in my heyday as a comics reader, with access to more comics than I had ever seen before. And even with this many comics, I could always manage to find the money to buy the ones I wanted. Which was basically everything I saw. In May 1968 it was 34 12-centers, a DC 80-page Giant and a Famous Monsters. Grand total: $4.70. Man, those were the halcyon days! You are a lucky man Prince Hal because I would have loved to have been collecting comic books in the 60's and especially during the "growth" of Marvel. |
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Post by Prince Hal on May 17, 2018 18:03:52 GMT -5
May 1968 I am officially in my heyday as a comics reader, with access to more comics than I had ever seen before. And even with this many comics, I could always manage to find the money to buy the ones I wanted. Which was basically everything I saw. In May 1968 it was 34 12-centers, a DC 80-page Giant and a Famous Monsters. Grand total: $4.70. Man, those were the halcyon days! You are a lucky man Prince Hal because I would have loved to have been collecting comic books in the 60's and especially during the "growth" of Marvel. Those were the days. I still have many of the books I innocently inherited from my pal Billy. He bested me once, though, which I will describe in a future entry in a Comic Lover's Memories. |
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Post by Farrar on May 18, 2018 15:33:03 GMT -5
May 1968 ... This was also the first time I ever traded a comic. A friend who lived across the street, Billy, who was also into comics, was a crazy spy fan: James Bond, Man from U.N.C.L.E., and of course, Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. I was very possessive of my comics. I never traded or even let my friends or cousins read my comics; I encouraged them to buy their own copies. My friends were more generous than I was, though, and often let me read their comics, a few of which I sometimes "forgot" to return.  Amazingly they never noticed or if they did, they never mentioned it. The original Strange Tales series had been non-existent as far as I can remember. We knew about the SHIELD stories only through ads and Bullpen Bulletins. But when SHIELD #1 came out, we got to see Fury in all his espionagiac (?) glory, with the Steranko art that was setting the comics world ablaze. Yes! At the time I'd never read or even saw Steranko's work in SHIELD but I'd read about him in those Bullpen Bulletins...so in a few months (spoiler alert!) when he showed up in my X-Men comics, I knew enough to know he was considered to be a very special, singular talent. |
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2018 16:04:02 GMT -5
May 1968 ... This was also the first time I ever traded a comic. A friend who lived across the street, Billy, who was also into comics, was a crazy spy fan: James Bond, Man from U.N.C.L.E., and of course, Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. I was very possessive of my comics. I never traded or even let my friends or cousins read my comics; I encouraged them to buy their own copies. My friends were more generous than I was, though, and often let me read their comics, a few of which I sometimes "forgot" to return. Amazingly they never noticed or if they did, they never mentioned it. The original Strange Tales series had been non-existent as far as I can remember. We knew about the SHIELD stories only through ads and Bullpen Bulletins. But when SHIELD #1 came out, we got to see Fury in all his espionagiac (?) glory, with the Steranko art that was setting the comics world ablaze. Yes! At the time I'd never read or even saw Steranko's work in SHIELD but I'd read about him in those Bullpen Bulletins...so in a few months (spoiler alert!) when he showed up in my X-Men comics, I knew enough to know he was considered to be a very special, singular talent. Your last line is well said ... very special, singular talent ... I've loved his art so elegantly drawn too ... |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 2, 2018 16:04:04 GMT -5
I’m going to need more than one post because I have such good memories of so many of the books that came out this month and that whole summer. I wonder if it’s because even at 14, I was seeking refuge from the horrors of 1968, a year that had exploded with the bloody carnage of Tet, welcomed spring with the martyrdom of Dr. King and now, as summer beckoned, began with yet another outrage, the kick in the gut to whatever hope and optimism had been struggling to survive, when Robert Kennedy was murdered in a hotel kitchen in Los Angeles. My political awakening had begun during that year, my freshman year in high school, and it would be complete by the end of my sophomore year. As devastating a year as 1968 was, it was met with a resurgence in the arts, and comics were no exception. In them I found a familiar refuge but also a new imagination and intellectual stimulation.    Action 366 The Virus X serial reaches its fourth and final chapter as 52 pages of melodrama and psychodrama come to a head. Yes, another “Superman Dies!“ story, but when you hadn’t been around for the previous one --the Weisinger Theory of Fanboy Longevity proved true one final time -- this one was pretty powerful. The greatest superhero of them all covered with super-leprosy was particularly disturbing… And even though you knew Supes would be back, it still was reassuring when he did return. Blackhawk 242 Even as a casual reader of the Blackhawks, I felt their pain during the “Junk Heap Heroes” phase. But I never expected this… one of the great stories of the late Silver Age, courtesy Blackhawk fan Marv Wolfman, and actually a retcon/reboot. In those days and earlier, this kind of story occasionally occurred (Remember Lew Moxon?) but nobody had come up with a fancy name for the concept. Written with love and a deep regard for the classic Blackhawks, the story wove -- rather than wedged --a new strand into Blackhawk’s life story and turned what had become a juvenile group of D-listers back into what the cover called them: “Knights.” No fan could have known that this was the penultimate issue of the title; new editor Dick Giordano had been told he had to just fill two issues before it would be canceled. Instead he gave the Blackhawks a Viking’s funeral. Those two issues helped to ease the pain that most of the post World War Two-era Blackhawk comics had caused. Hawk and the Dove 1 Comics are getting politicized? I loved it. As I said, only 14, but everyone had started picking sides, and I had made my decision.     Detective 378 An all-time great cover. Justice League of America 64 “Sumer is icumen in; Lhude sing cuckoo…” And, hey, bring me a JLA-JSA team-up! This one starred a big red-faced android from the Golden Age who showed up two months before of a big red-faced android from the Golden Age would show up in in Avengers! Showcase 76 Another stunning cover, and a groundbreaking story, too. If Showcase 72 ("Top Gun") had been a stalking horse for Bat Lash, it worked. I had rarely ever seen a Western comic on the stands, so this was another gift from the gods. Cardy’s art was never better; it was simply beautiful. Aragones’ story was straight out of Maverick, but with nods to a bunch of other Westerns, which were still a big deal in the movies and on TV. To be continued... |
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Post by brutalis on Jun 4, 2018 8:13:38 GMT -5
June 1968 via my usual back issue purchases in the 80's.
Avengers 55
Captain Marvel 5
FF 78
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Post by Deleted on Jun 5, 2018 22:07:09 GMT -5
Hmm, it seems that the only book from this month I currently own is the giant classic version of King Kong, which I just purchased on Sunday at the con I was at.  -M |
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Post by Farrar on Jun 6, 2018 16:05:27 GMT -5
June 1968
Bought off the racks back then: My Merry Marvel mags Yep, just these two. One I liked a lot, the other not so much. Fantastic Four #78: Now this was the type of FF story I wanted to read! After a 4-issue long stint featuring Galactus, the Surfer, the cosmos, the microworld and the kitchen sink  I was relieved that the book returned to more "mundane" aspects of the team, that is, Reed trying to change Ben back to his pre-cosmic ray form. My first exposure to the team was issue #68 and that issue had also included Reed trying to change Ben back, so the idea that this was a recurring topic in the book gave me a sense of continuity. It reinforced my feeling that the FF series was like one long novel. The actual fighting/villain in #78, the Wizard, was almost an afterthought. What can I say, I always liked the human aspect of the comics far more than the battles. X-Men #47: So at the end of the last issue the X-Men were told they needed to break up. Evidently that meant the team could still fight in pairs, though; and here we get the Beast and Iceman. Great issue if you're a super-fan of theirs, but I was not. So this was a wasted issue for me. And since I was a relatively new X reader I'd never seen Zelda and Vera before and I did find the Bobby-Zelda-Hank-Vera interactions amusing. But the story itself and the battle with the baddie bored me to tears. The plot/script was by Gary Friedrich and Arnold Drake. I'd appreciate Drake's work later on when I read back issues of the Doom Patrol. But this X story was not exactly his finest moment IMO. And the, er, icing on the cake was the second story about Iceman's powers. Again, I was not an Iceman fan so the story held little interest for me. On the plus side I've always liked Werner Roth's art. He penciled both stories (over Don Heck layouts for the first story) and as usual with Roth, the characters were appropriately visually attractive or creepy-malevolent-looking; and looked like they had some vitality.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 6, 2018 17:10:14 GMT -5
June 1968
Bought off the racks back then: My Merry Marvel magsYep, just these two. One I liked a lot, the other not so much. Fantastic Four #78: Now this was the type of FF story I wanted to read! After a 4-issue long stint featuring Galactus, the Surfer, the cosmos, the microworld and the kitchen sink I was relieved that the book returned to more "mundane" aspects of the team, that is, Reed trying to change Ben back to his pre-cosmic ray form. My first exposure to the team was issue #68 and that issue had also included Reed trying to change Ben back, so the idea that this was a recurring topic in the book gave me a sense of continuity. It reinforced my feeling that the FF series was like one long novel. The actual fighting/villain in #78, the Wizard, was almost an afterthought. What can I say, I always liked the human aspect of the comics far more than the battles. X-Men #47: So at the end of the last issue the X-Men were told they needed to break up. Evidently that meant the team could still fight in pairs, though; and here we get the Beast and Iceman. Great issue if you're a super-fan of theirs, but I was not. So this was a wasted issue for me. And since I was a relatively new X reader I'd never seen Zelda and Vera before and I did find the Bobby-Zelda-Hank-Vera interactions amusing. But the story itself and the battle with the baddie bored me to tears. The story was by Arnold Drake--I'd appreciate his work later on when I read back issues of the Doom Patrol. But this X story was not exactly his finest moment IMO. And the, er, icing on the cake was the second story about Iceman's powers. Again, I was not an Iceman fan so the story held little interest for me. On the plus side I've always liked Werner Roth's art. He penciled both stories (over Don Heck layouts for the first story) and as usual with Roth, the characters were appropriately visually attractive or creepy-malevolent-looking; and looked like they had some vitality. Both of these are on my Marvel list, about which I shall inevitably post.  I recall really liking the FF issue, too, and for similar reasons. Even a Kirby melodrama had epic proportions thanks to his in-your-face layouts and art. DC didn't really have anyone who could bring "epic-ness" to the comic page like that. Hell, who did? |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2018 19:37:24 GMT -5
Farrar -- Fantastic Four #78 is one of my favorites and I do remember reading it and I wished that I still have that issue today. Your write up here jarred my memory and that's one of the better stories back then. Thanks for sharing it. Your thoughts on the human aspects -- hit me like a tons of bricks!
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Post by Farrar on Jun 15, 2018 13:40:57 GMT -5
Now as for June 1968 and DC, these were the only two DCs I got off the racks back then:  Secret Six #3: My favorite DC series back then. It was a team book, always a set-up I liked. And even though I groused about the minutest change in artists in other books (Jack Abel-instead-of-George Klein inking-and-nearly-ruining Curt Swan's Legion pencils IMO) I had no problem with this issue's new artist, Jack Sparling (Frank Springer ahd penciled the previous two issues). Maybe it's because Sparling and Springer seemed similar in style to me; their work seemed grittier, "sloppier" than the beautiful, clean, idealized images produced by Swan or Kurt Schaffenberger or the Kirby-Sinnott team over at Marvel on the FF. Both Sparling's and Springer's art seemed realistic to me and IMO that kind of art suited the series' premise. I loved that this comic focused on real, non-superpowered people who used their various complementary talents to tackle/solve tough cases. And that cover, by Sparling! One of my all-time favorites. Adventure #371: Well, another Adams covers. Ho hum. The funny thing is this cover depicts the second story--the back-up story in other words--in this issue, a 1962 Superboy reprint that had a couple of panels added to make it a "Legion" story. Maybe the issue's lead story was delayed or still being worked on and there was no story "hook" fleshed out for Neal to grab onto, so instead he had to pick/was assigned a scene from the second story. 1962 1968 These were the extra panels added to the 1968 version. This didn't appear in the 1962 story.  |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 23, 2018 7:42:31 GMT -5
I said I’d be back to write about the Marvel and other books I bought in June of 1968, and back I have returned. Although comics were more readily available to me now, I still had to hunt them down at different stores. Because no one store ever had all the comics you wanted to buy, you had to be like an explorer, alert to any sign that a store might have a few comics on display. Oftentimes, one indicator was the word “confectionery” displayed on the awning over the entrance. Another was “stationery.” “Luncheonette” and “fountain” were other indicators. (Couldn't find a picture with "confectionery" on the awning, but trust me, there were loads of them.)   Anyway, you became adept at spotting such places from your parents’ car or the bus and filing them away for future reference. I mention this because in June of 1968 I was attending my cousin’s eighth grade graduation in Jersey City. After the ceremony, I saw my grandfather (my mother's father), whom I rarely saw, but was always (and still am) fascinated by. We talked briefly and then, without warning, he reached not his coat pocket and brought out four brand-new, shiny quarters. I thanked him, recalled that I had seen a candy store down the street and made a beeline for it, the quarters burning a hole in my tightly squeezed hand. Four quarters meant eight 12-cent comics, and I bought eight twelve-cent comics within about three minutes. I vividly remember six of the comics I bought that day…  ![]()    Thanks again, Pop! Later that month I also bagged more Marvels: Captain America 105 Hulk 107 Iron Man 5
Marvel Super-Heroes 16 -- starring the Phantom Eagle( Loved that comic!) Marvel Tales 16 SHIELD 4 Sgt. Fury 57 Sub-Mariner 5 X-Men 47 One other favorite of mine appeared out of the blue that month, Gold Key's accurate, stunningly illustrated -- though blandly written -- adaptation of one of the great movies ever: King Kong.
   What I loved about it , aside from the stunning art, was that it simply showed up. Gold Key was not known for making a fuss or fanfare about next month's comics. Where this came from, why it appeared, and what made Gold Key publish it has remained a mystery. It was simply a gift from the comic gods, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I "lost" it and my entire collection of comics less maybe ten or twelve books the next summer. It's a story I'll have to tell someday in the Comic Fan's Memories thread. |
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Amazingly they never noticed or if they did, they never mentioned it. 
I was relieved that the book returned to more "mundane" aspects of the team, that is, Reed trying to change Ben back to his pre-cosmic ray form. My first exposure to the team was issue #68 and that issue had also included Reed trying to change Ben back, so the idea that this was a recurring topic in the book gave me a sense of continuity. It reinforced my feeling that the FF series was like one long novel. The actual fighting/villain in #78, the Wizard, was almost an afterthought. What can I say, I always liked the human aspect of the comics far more than the battles. 