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Post by brutalis on Jul 9, 2018 8:15:25 GMT -5
July 1968 comics I have purchased after the fact:
Continuing my big 4 series collecting with Avengers 56, Avengers Annual 2, Fantastic Four 79 and CAptain Marvel 6.
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Post by Farrar on Jul 15, 2018 16:42:02 GMT -5
On sale in JULY 1968The only DC I managed to snag back then was Adventure #372 starring my beloved Legion.  This is the conclusion of the story that began in the last issue. Here in #372, Timber Wolf and Chemical King join the Legion. I'd read about TW many times in the letter columns and he did pop up all grown-up complete with pencil mustache in the Adult Legion story in #354, an issue I'd read courtesy of my cousins. But this was the first time I ever saw him as a teen (I hadn't read #327, his first and only appearance prior to 354/372). And thanks to that same Adult Legion story, I was already familiar with Chemical King; in #354 he was shown as one of the fallen Legionnaires who were honored with a memorial statue. Btw later on I wrote a letter proposing that he and Quantum Queen (also shown on the cover) would make a great match, since they both had royal names and "scientific" powers...and they were both fated to die prematurely. Yes, I was quite the romantic!   That's CK in green and black, and QQ in fuchsia.
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zilch
Full Member
Posts: 244 
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Post by zilch on Jul 15, 2018 18:01:35 GMT -5
The only three comics i can say for sure that i got this month:
Not Brand Eecchhh #10
Spectre #6
and Tomahawk #119
-z
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Post by Farrar on Jul 16, 2018 21:12:38 GMT -5
My merry Marvel mags, bought back in July 1968  Avengers Annual/King-Size Special #2: My family and I were upstate on vacation and while we kids certainly had fun (pulling what turned out to be the fire alarm at our hotel; pilfering copious bars of Cashmere Bouquet soap from the hotel supply closets), for me the undisputed highlight of our trip was a visit to an old-fashioned souvenir shop that had a --gasp!-- spinner rack. I immediately grabbed an Avengers comic--Avengers Annual #2, a comic that has one of the greatest comic book covers ever. Now I hadn't managed to find an Avengers comic since #53, so I was really excited to FINALLY find one. But the story was filled with references to #56, which I hadn't read (I picked it up much later on as a back issue), so I got kinda confused. And I really wasn't all that thrilled by the then-current line-up of Hawkeye, Black Panther, Hank Pym as Goliath, and Wasp, along with Cap; I thought it was a really bland line-up. I did enjoy Hank and Jan battling their alternate timeline selves in the story. But as I've mentioned before, I missed Wanda and Pietro. Well, at least they appeared in the beautiful Buscema pin-up in this Annual. Plus they (or their alternate timeline selves) appeared in a panel in the story.  Pin-up from Avengers Annual #2 Fantastic Four #79: My kind of story; lot of space devoted to the private lives of Johnny and Crystal; Sue and Reed; and Ben and Alicia. Alicia showed up here with dull brown hair instead of her usual pale orange/strawberry blonde hair and it was kind of jarring (there was at least one letter later on complaining about the switch. And Marvel even started coloring her hair brown in the MCIC reprints for a while then too). But hey, back then we Silver Age fans got riled up if a character so much as changed the part in their hair, right? Anyway, in this story the battle royale was--as with the previous FF issue--almost an afterthought. I really liked when the FF comic spent time focusing on the relationships between the characters. The pace seemed less frenetic than the other superhero comics I was reading at the time.  From FF #79 X-Men #48: The X-Men were still in pairs and as the cover shows, this issue featured Marvel Girl (my fave X character back then) and Cyclops. I loved characters with mental powers and I'd always been intrigued by Jean's telekinesis and at this juncture she'd also added the then-deceased Professor X's psychic/telepathic powers to her repertoire...so IMO she was clearly the most powerful X-person around. Note:This is well before her backstory was expanded and before all that Phoenix stuff (which I didn't read until a few years ago). In this story Marvel Girl was so much more powerful and versatile than poor Scott, who could only shoot out those beams. I loved that she got a chance to shine in this issue. Marvel Collectors' Item Classics #17: I was reading MCIC mainly for the FF reprints but this one had a bonus for me: Hawkeye's first appearance, in the Iron Man Tales of Suspense #57 reprint. I was familiar with Hawk and the Black Widow from the Avengers, so it was interesting to see how they'd first gotten together.  Hawkeye and the Black Widow in ToS #57 |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 20, 2018 13:40:07 GMT -5
DCAdventure 372 Anthro 2 Aquaman 41 Batman 205 Creeper 3 Bomba 7 Geek 1 Detective 379 Doom Patrol 121 Green Lantern 63 Justice League of America 65 Our Army at War 197 Showcase (Angel and the Ape) 77 Spectre 6 Superboy 150 Lois Lane 86 (Giant) Teen Titans 17 Tomahawk 118 Wonder Woman 178 World’s Finest 178 MarvelSpider-Man 65 Avengers 56 Avengers Annual 2 Captain America 105 Daredevil 44 Fantastic Four 79 Hulk Annual 1 Iron Man 6 Marvel Collectors’ Item Classics 17 Mighty Marvel Western 1 SHIELD 5 Silver Surfer 2 Tales of Asgard 1 Thor 156 OtherCheyenne Kid 68 7 @ .25 = $1.75 28 @ .12 = $3.36 35 comics = $6.11 My most expensive month ever! Thank you, Nana. I think she was slipping me a few quarters here and there. I wasn’t working then, and in my family, you weren’t paid for doing work around the house, and there was no such thing as an allowance, so I guess I had to rely on my grandmother and my uncle’s occasional, “Here’s a dollar for your ‘books’, “ and just asking my mother for some change because I was “going down the Avenue.” These are the ones I still recall fondly: Avengers 56 and Avengers Annual #2 were excellent introductions to the Marvel Universe for someone who only recently had been able to immerse himself in it. The Buscema-Klein art on the monthly was superb (two pages below), and the annual had more than an overtone of the JLA-JSA team-ups. Roy Thomas was feeling his oats – in a good way.   Cap’s plight was beyond wrenching to me, if only because it was never going to change. Bucky was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and Stan Lee. Bucky was as dead as a doornail. (Apologies to Chas. Dickens.) ☺   Like the two Avengers titles, the other Marvels I bought that month were also great examples of the strength of the Marvel ethos. FF 79 was a heartbreaker, and if the “Must I always be the Thing?” song had been played enough already, I have to say that for a relatively new reader, the pathos was still real. Thor 156? A great “Alamo-style” cover, with Asgard itself in dire straits, the fatalistic heroism of Norse mythology, and the feeling that the survival of the universe really was at stake in the penultimate chapter in what may still be the best-ever summertime saga of them all. 
Silver Surfer was the GL/GA of its time. I felt as if I were reading adult literature , however pulpy the paper it was printed on. Buscema was nailing the pain and angst in the Surfer’s face and body language, Stan was philosophizing in a way only a 14-year-old kid could find new and heavy. But it was all so serious, so poignant, so relevant. And I say that unsnarkily, believe me.  I looked forward to Tales of Asgard like few other comics before or since, hoping that it would be the first of a series like Marvel Tales, Marvel Collectors’ Item Classics and Marvel Super-Heroes devoted to Thor and the Asgardians. Alas, now a more knowledgeable fan, I immediately turned to the indicia to see how frequently Takes would come out and was mystified by the term “one-shot.” “One-shot?” What th’? Not the last time I was disappointed by a comic that month. The HULK Annual was an unexpected surprise. You had to buy it even if you weren’t really a big Hulk fan (which I wasn’t) for that now iconic Steranko cover. Hulk’s face by Marie Severin, of course. I love Marie’s art, of course, but there was nothing wrong with Steranko’s version of the Hulk’s face. Shades of Jack Kirby’s Superman!  And – unbeknownst to me -- Steranko said over and out to writing and penciling SHIELD with the resolution of the Scorpio storyline. And what a way to say farewell! Like watching a great movie and reading a great novel all at once. (Yeah, I know it’s a comic. Like I said, I was 14!) Here’s a link. Just enjoy Steranko at his peak. diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2011/12/lo-there-shall-come-endings-week.htmlHere's a taste... one of the great splash pages I'd ever seen:  Yikes” A giant-sized full-color Spectacular Spider-Man. 35 CENTS!! Had to get in on the future of comics! Double Yikes! Mighty Marvel Western! I was there, podnuh! (And figured if marvel could get a Western reprint title going, they could certainly get more of those Tales of Asgard published! Over at DC, Doom Patrol 121 was the comic of the month for me. Quite the wake-up call for a Silver Age comic, particularly a DC comic. Well done, Drake, Premiani and Boltinoff. Those last pages are especially powerful because they are so unsentimental. "Fire away!" is a great final proclamation of togetherness and heroism. (I wonder if gen'l. McAuliffe's "Nuts!" was ringing in Arnold Drake's ears.) I was devastated; DP had only started appearing on the newsstands I could get to just a few issues earlier, and I loved it. A growing-up moment even more painful than finding the term “one-shot” on the first page of Tales of Asgard.   
Adventure 372, for that great cover. Superboy in a million pieces, done in by the always-frightening hangman-style villain. Batman 205, for another unique cover. And of course, Brother Power, The Geek#1! What a weird book for any company to put out, let alone DC. The hippie look was working its way into the suburbs and I was fascinated with this one. Odd art, odd story, bizarre approach. Joe Simon strikes, and two months later, the malignant and massively unhip Mort Weisinger unfortunately struck back…    This was a great time for comics, whether you were 14 or not.
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Post by brutalis on Aug 2, 2018 8:07:18 GMT -5
August 1968 has lots of great goodies that I would have gotten if collecting at the time.
My usual foray into the past finds me buying:
Avengers 57: CLASSIC beyond reproach with Vision.
Captain Marvel 7
FF 80
FF annual 6
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Post by Farrar on Aug 6, 2018 13:59:30 GMT -5
Bought off the stands in August 1968
DC: Just this one, Adventure #373. One of my least favorite Adams covers. Karate Kid getting pounced didn't look dramatic to me, it just looked silly. Something about the perspective seemed off. And for a cover that makes liberal use of motion lines and punches and shocked expressions (E. LAd, Projectra), the cover felt static and phony. IMHO of course. And inside the book, a surprise--the new Legion penciler was Win Mortimer. What a letdown from Curt Swan. That Jack Abel continued as the inker gave a sense of artistic continuity and visual consistency, but still...it took me a while to get used to Mortimer's Legion. I will say he made them look younger and more naive, more like teenagers, as opposed to Swan's perfectly-built-but-on-a-slightly-smaller-scale gods and goddesses. But there was no indication of bone structure or hair texture in Mortimer's work; it was flat (and not helped by Abel's trademark inking style; he rarely added weight or depth to pencils). To me, the Legion feature now had the look of a children's book.  ETA: I was in such a hurry before I forgot to add that I also had Secret Six #4!As I have stated, this was my favorite DC series back then. Look at that cover! Like many kids my friends and I loved to climb -- trees, rock formations, alcoves in front of our buildings lol -- so this cover really appealed to me. I'm pretty sure I got this while visiting my grandmother. I had all SS issues, #1-#4, that had been published to date.  |
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Post by Farrar on Aug 6, 2018 15:07:45 GMT -5
My Marvels off the stands in August 1968.  I was still finding and buying my Marvels separately wherever I could find them, one at a time, at different neighborhood candy stores. Can you imagine if I'd seen Avengers #57 and X-Men #49--with those covers--at the same time?!
Avengers #57: Well, we know it's a classic now. And that cover alone was worth my hard-earned 12 cents . The interior art by Buscema and Klein was perfection; to this day Klein remains my favorite Buscema inker. But to be honest, I wasn't crazy about this Vision guy. Instead, I was more intrigued that Natasha had returned to her Black Widow identity (she'd renounced it a year earlier in #45, my first-ever Avengers issue). I had high hopes that this meant she'd be returning to the comic on a regular basis.  Fantastic Four #80: A perfunctory cover, a boring issue. The male FFers went on an adventure with Wyatt Wingfoot. Sue, who was pregnant and nearing her due date, wasn't shown in the story at all. X-Men #49: Now this was more like it--the X-Men were a team again! No more of that fighting mutant menaces in pairs bit as had been the case in the previous two issues. Great cover of course. The interior art was by Don Heck (layouts) and Werner Roth (finishes). I always liked Roth's X-Men art--he made them look attractive and not too "superhero-ey." Plus this issue introduced a new character, Lorna Dane. I was hoping the X-Men would add some new characters and Lorna seemed to be a step in the right direction.  But the real highlight for me that month is when I bought (or more correctly, my friend's parents bought for me) Fantastic Four Annual/King-Size Special #6. I knew FF#80 (above) was just a filler issue and that Sue would give birth in this Annual. I was not disappointed; the story and art were among the best Stan and Jack ever produced (IMO)--a story that worked on both an epic and a human level. I remember when and where I bought this Annual like it was yesterday: I was with a friend, whose parents drove us to a shopping center somewhere in the suburbs. There was a huuuggge store that had a long, seemingly-never ending magazine/comic rack and we both snatched copies of the FF Annual (my friend wasn't normally a comic book fan but I guess my enthusiasm was contagious!). At the same time we also bought copies of this issue of MAD magazine. All in all it was a great summer. 
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Post by Prince Hal on Aug 22, 2018 9:34:46 GMT -5
Farrar , the reminiscences you wrote of August 1968, showing just what a part comics played in our lives then and now, are just what I love about this kind of thread. Always interesting to hear about the unique associations various comics have for us. The late 60s were a highlight of my comics collecting, despite the trauma the country was enduring. August was a gold mine of stories and characters whose memories I still treasure. First, the list of comics I bought that month for a grand total of $4.73: Action 368 (Are there any other Infantino Superman covers?) Adventure 373
Atom and Hawkman 39Bat Lash 1
Blackhawk 243
B and B 80
Captain Action 1
Challengers of the Unknown 64
DC Special 1
Detective 380
Green Lantern 64
Hawk and the Dove 2
Metal Men 34
Secret Six 4
Star Spangled War Stories 141
Superboy 151
World’s Finest 179 (Annual)
Avengers 57
Captain America 107
Daredevil 45
Fantastic Four Annual 6
Hulk 109
Marvel Super-Heroes 17 (Black Knight)
Marvel Tales 17
Nick Fury 6
Sgt. Fury 59
Spectacular Spider-Man 2
Spider-Man 66
Spider-Man Annual 5
Sub-Mariner 7
Thor 157
The ones I still remember with particular fondness:    Three stand-outs from DC. The Blackhawks go down in a blaze of glory, not to be seen for another eight years after having been published for 27 years, allowed to disappear gracefully after having endured the ignominy of their "Junk-Heap Heroes" phase. This was a rousing intercontinental espionage story courtesy a more disciplined than usual Bob Haney and the cinematic, adventure-strip-style art of Pat Boyette. I was so disappointed that this (and the preceding issue) were an elegy rather than a new chapter. DC Special was just that. A startlingly different approach by DC, with each issue dedicated to the work of one artist. From the great cover to the framing pages and the wide-ranging selection, this was as close to a Golden Age anthology book as we were likely to see from DC, which really had no counterpart to the wonderful Marvel reprint line, as the DC annuals were character-driven. The 100-pagers would help to fill that gap eventually, but it would be a while. That approach didn't last. Only this and the fifth issue actually were devoted to one artist's work (Kubert), but those two were worth it. Not that the rest of the DC Special issues weren't decent, but they were for the most part, just reprints. Welcomed by DC fans like me, but not quite what had been promised originally. What more need be said about Bat Lash, one of the great DC characters ever? I loved every minute of every one of the handful of Bat Lash stories. It was one of those serendipitous moments when artist, writer and editor melded perfectly.    Though not a Hulk fan, I loved the artwork and story on this one and the follow-up, but never really followed the Hulk after this little gem. The Trimpe-Severin art (accent on the Severin) was a strong selling point! The final chapter of my favorite Thor saga lived up to the grandeur and power of the earlier chapters; if these had been the only Thor stories ever published, I would still have rested easy. Marvel Super-Heroes was a textbook for a comics nerd like me. Obscure characters from a company whose Golden Age wasn't nearly as crucial to its current line as DC's, plus a showcase story for a fan favorite who otherwise would not have merited a stand-alone try-out. I spent many an hour with MSH in particular. A bottle of Coca Cola, a box of Bugles and the Black Knight. How simple it was to go to heaven on a late-summer day in 1968!
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Post by Prince Hal on Aug 31, 2018 13:41:52 GMT -5
A day early, but I may not have time tom'w... September, 1968
DCAction 369 Adventure 374 Anthro 3 ( I really enjoyed this series! Great Howie Post artwork and stories.)  Aquaman 42 (That ugly corner logo! DC was worried no one would recognize the comic b/c of the unique -- and excellent -- cover design)  Batman 206 (The cover is not a cheat!)  Beware the Creeper 4 (I really enjoyed this series, too.) Detective 381 Flash 183 JLA 66 (First Denny O’Neil story; end of Gardner Fox’s 68-issue run) JLA 67 (80-page Giant; admission stories of GA, Hawkman and the Atom!)  Showcase 78 (Jonny Double) Spectre 7 (The solo Hourman story was the highlight for me.) Superman 211 Teen Titans 18 (The first Starfire… a Russian super-teen.)  Tomahawk 119 World’s Finest 180 MARVEL
 Amazing Spider-Man 67 (Still a favorite cover.) Avengers 58 (Ju-u-u-ust a bit of a classic.)  
Incredible Hulk 110 (More Severin fun!) Mighty Marvel Western 2 (My kind of comic; hours of reading what were all new stories to me, for a quarter.) Nick Fury 7 (Steranko does Dali on the cover, but it’s Springer doing Springer inside.)  Rawhide Kid 67 Sgt. Fury 60 (More John Severin art to savor.)  Silver Surfer 3 (For a sophomore in high school, this was metaphysical philosophy.)  Sub-Mariner 8 (What a great cover!)  X-Men 50 (Where Steranko goes, I will follow…)  |
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Post by brutalis on Aug 31, 2018 15:20:45 GMT -5
September 1968 and 6 year old me would have been in comic book heaven. Soooooo much goodness on the stands that I would have eagerly spent every penny I had trying to get them. Lots from this month that I have managed to purchase and read in reprints or collections!
Bought later in life towards filling my collections:
Avengers 58
Fantastic Four 81
Captain Marvel 8
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zilch
Full Member
Posts: 244
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Post by zilch on Sept 1, 2018 21:05:21 GMT -5
Seven year old self reading in the back seat of a 1968 Dodge Dart...
Famous Monsters of Filmland #53
Marvel Collectors Item Classics #18
Not Brand Echh #11
Tomahawk #119
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2018 10:54:50 GMT -5
Seven year old self reading in the back seat of a 1968 Dodge Dart... Famous Monsters of Filmland #53 Marvel Collectors Item Classics #18 Not Brand Echh #11 Tomahawk #119 My first car was a 1970 Dodge Dart ... I was chuckling seeing this post and I did read Not Brand Echh a year later. |
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Post by Farrar on Sept 17, 2018 17:12:27 GMT -5
On sale in September 1968...here's what i got off the racks at the time: First, DC Adventure #374. Well, Curt Swan may have been gone from the inside (Win Mortimer had become the Legion's regular penciler as of last month) but at least we got a gorgeous Swan cover. Lois Lane #88. I hadn't managed to find an LL comic for six months (last issue I had was #83). And Neal Adams returns to his Ben Casey roots with this cover  . As for the comic's interior, I still didn't like the Irv Novick-drawn Lois. Oh well, at least the back- up feature was a reprint of a Schaffenberger-illo'd story from 1961: Lois falls for a hunky Clark Kent lookalike...  ...but the romance is doomed, as he is ultimately revealed to be--well, take a look:  |
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Post by Farrar on Sept 21, 2018 15:53:46 GMT -5
And now for what I got off the stands in Sep. 1968: Marvel. Look at those covers! Classics all, showcasing soon-to-be Marvel mainstays: the Vision...Crystal...Lorna Dane (she wasn't called Polaris at that time)...and, er, the Infant Terrible.  I liked that Crystal was becoming more prominent in the FF (though seemingly at the expense of Sue; for the second straight issue Sue was excluded from the comic--not good); Lorna seemed promising, but could she live up to that immortal cover?; and I loved following the FF's old adventures in the invaluable MCIC. Confession: I know Avengers #58's "Even an Android Can Cry" is a bonafide classic, but I have to admit I didn't much care for it at the time. There was no real Avengers (team) battle in this issue; instead we were treated to a story that uncovered the Vision's connection to Wonder Man (or Wondy's brain patterns). As a relatively new reader of the Avengers comic I'd never heard of Wonder Man so the story didn't have much of impact on me. Frankly I was annoyed that the Vision--a johnny-come-lately in my eyes--was joining the Avengers, instead of the Black Widow and instead of Wanda and Pietro returning (they'd been gone since #53). I took some consolation in the fact that the story contained a beautiful full page Buscema-Klein illustration of the Avengers past and present; at least I got to see Wanda, Pietro and 'Tasha there. But I remember thinking what the heck was Spidey doing on that page (at the time, I wasn't aware that he'd previously been offered membership in ASM Annual #3). Also, I know I bought this comic one afternoon while at my grandmother's--when we kids visited her she always took us to the candy store around the corner and she bought comics, candy and ice cream sodas for us. I remember the day I bought this comic was one of those balmy late summer days, so I was puzzled as to why Jan was wearing an outfit that looked like it should be worn in the dead of winter. It was like an ice skating costume. Some months ago I came across a blog or the like in which someone referred to it as Jan's "Mrs. Santa Claus" costume   |
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