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Post by Farrar on Apr 19, 2020 13:37:52 GMT -5
April 1970As for my Marvels that month: 
Avengers #77: After the Arkon two-parter, Wanda and Pietro were definitely here to stay, yay! Fantastic Four #100: A kind of slapdash issue celebrating the FF's 100th. Kirby did a lot of 9-panel pages, which made the story reminiscent of the old days, i.e., older FF stories that I'd read in Marvel Collectors' Item Classics.
Marvel Super-Heroes #27: I was buying this series for the X-Men reprints, here X-Men #8, featuring the debut of Unus the Untouchable. Finally, an "evil" mutant who was not repulsive-looking (apart from Wanda and Pietro, the X-Men villains had all been somewhat grotesque-looking). An okay story with some great Kirby-Stone art. That art team came to represent early 60s-mid 60s Marvel to me.
Sub-Mariner #27: So now I was following this book. I loved the accessible Sal Buscema storytelling, ably inked by Mike Esposito (here using his "Joe Gaudioso" pseudonym). Roy Thomas tried to inject some relevancy to the Subby stories, so there was talk of ecology in this mag. I also liked that there was a romantic triangle here; Dorma was highly jealous of Namor's friendship with Diane Arliss; Diane in turn had a huge crush on Namor--can you blame her? Anyway, I made it a point to also pick up Subby back issues comics (1968 series) to get myself up to speed on the series. Spectacular art in those older issues from John Buscema and Gene Colan, and Marie Severin's work wasn't too shabby either. However, it was our pal Sal who drew Subby with his trademark triangular-head shape, a plus in my eyes. An extra Marvel for me this month was Spider-Man #86, with the "new" Black Widow. I forgot to mention last month that she'd popped up in Avengers #76, and she broke up with Clint. Now unencumbered, in ASM #86 she got a makeover: new costume (out with the fishnets, in with the Emma Peel look), new hair-color (now she was a redhead!). Since I'd only known her as she'd appeared in the Avengers comic, she may as well have been a brand-new character as far as I was concerned. But I was excited that Natasha would be getting her own feature shortly, in a new comic Amazing Adventures (which Marvel mistakenly called "Amazing Tales" in an ASM caption, conflating its two forthcoming mags Amazing Adventures and Astonishing Tales), so there was that to look forward to. 
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2020 21:20:38 GMT -5
An extra Marvel for me this month was Spider-Man #86, with the "new" Black Widow. I forgot to mention last month that she'd popped up in Avengers #76, and she broke up with Clint. Now unencumbered, in ASM #86 she got a makeover: new costume (out with the fishnets, in with the Emma Peel look), new hair-color (now she was a redhead!). Since I'd only known her as she'd appeared in the Avengers comic, she may as well have been a brand-new character as far as I was concerned. But I was excited that Natasha would be getting her own feature shortly, in a new comic Amazing Adventures (which Marvel mistakenly called "Amazing Tales" in an ASM caption, conflating its two forthcoming mags Amazing Adventures and Astonishing Tales), so there was that to look forward to.
Prefer these covers...by far...compared to the current series which sucks arse in comparison.
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Post by Prince Hal on May 1, 2020 14:35:36 GMT -5
MAY 1970   Our Fighting Forces 126 No memory of the story, but I was always a sucker for a Kubert cover. And with a USS Stevens story (just the fourth in the series), any DC war comic was worth the 15 cents. Batman 223 (Giant) I recall this as a worthy collection. Nice cover that captures some of the flavor and appeal of the late, lamented 80-page Giants. DC Special 8 (Wanted) As I’ve mentioned before, this title disappointingly dropped its original focus on spotlighting one artist per issue for a thematic approach. Don’t know why, because I don’t think there would have been any royalties paid. Maybe DC felt it could use DC Special as a cheaper version of Showcase by culling from the vaults. If an issue sold well, they could explore the possibilities without paying for original material. As it turned out, the “WANTED” theme, spotlighting super-villains, must have been popular, because after another tryout in 1971, DC turned it into a regular title in May of 1972. Secret Origins, a similar title, came on board about six months later with no try-outs. Maturing Silver Age fans loved the reprint titles, because they were not moving on from comics as previous generations had, but were continuing their comics-buying habit.   Detective 401A nice Adams cover, particularly the shadowy effect created by the coloring. (nobody credited on GCD. Maybe Adams himself?) Batman vs. a big game hunter, a profession you’d’ve thought had gone out of style in 1970. A bit like one of the old Detective stories in Batman Annual 6 crossed with “The Most Dangerous Game.” GL/GA 78 The current event-of-the-month parade continues with O’Neil taking on Charles Manson and spiritual/ religious cults in “A Kind of Loving, A Way of Death.” (Get the Manson connection in Black Canary’s cover dialogue?)   Teen Titans 28 Check out Shax’s excellent review thread for the details, but TT was drifting. Just two issues ago, they’d shed their uniforms and were searching for a purpose. The unis are back (at least on the cover… gotta move product), the Marvel-style dissension returns (at least on the cover… gotta move product), and hip talk torn from today’s Tiger Beat headlines is there for all to see, courtesy Aqualad, ‘cause “copping out” is a thing in Atlantis, too (at least on the cover… gotta move product). Amazing Adventures 1 I remember picking up this issue at the fabled Tony’s Hi-Way Sweet Shoppe, because I happened to be there, and because it was just about the only comic on the rack. That also makes me think I didn’t pick it up in May, but later in the summer, because it was rare to find too many new comics at Tony’s. I was popping in to Tony’s between jobs during that summer, and a buddy was working the soda fountain, which was why I could order a Coke, heavier on the syrup than the seltzer. It also was cool to see a comic with two disparate features sharing the title. Already I was getting nostalgic for The Atom and Hawkman, I guess.
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Post by brutalis on May 4, 2020 8:01:34 GMT -5
May 1970 back issue purchasing of my titanic trio" Avengers 78, Ff 101, Captain MArvel 78. OOOOHHHH Kane Hulk!
Also bought as of 2 weeks ago: Outlaw Kid #1.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 4, 2020 14:07:30 GMT -5
 First one that I recognize reading, 50 years ago. |
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Post by Prince Hal on May 4, 2020 14:15:28 GMT -5
First one that I recognize reading, 50 years ago. Don't you love when seeing a cover takes you right back to when you first saw that comic? |
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Post by Farrar on May 4, 2020 15:15:50 GMT -5
May 1970
My DCs
Detective Comics #401: as I have mentioned, I was following this series for the Batgirl feature. This issue contained the conclusion of the Batgirl-Robin team-up story from #400. As always there was dynamic and quirky art by Gil Kane. Vince Colletta's inks didn't harm Kane's pencils, but I was used to Murphy Anderson's more realistic rendering of Kane's work. As for the story itself, it was just okay (though I enjoyed the story's Poe references; we'd read some of his work in school). Sadly, #401 would turn out to be the last Detective issue I bought back then. I don't recall seeing it at the neighborhood candy stores after this. The Batman feature was gaining momentum and so I assume the comic was selling out quickly in my neighborhood--the copies were gone by the time I made it to my candy stores! A few years ago I picked up the Batgirl Showcase volume that contained all her Detective back-up stories, so I brought myself up to date on the progression of her 1970s series. Adventure #395: So my subscription had ended and I was glad about that, I hated this Supergirl series (it had replaced the Legion series, after all!).... but for some reason I picked this issue up off the stands. How do I know for sure I had this comic? Because I remember the opening splash that featured famous women of the time. I knew the names Sophia Loren and Barbra Streisand even if I didn't know exactly what they looked like; even so I could see these weren't good likenesses. And that's supposed to be Greta Garbo  ?! Mortimer's renditions are awful!  The extra for me that May was Green Lantern (aka GL/GA)#78. I didn't normally read this series, though of course I knew about the series' new direction. I picked up this particular issue because of Black Canary. I was pleased that DC was including her here, as I'd read some friends' recent JLA books and she and Ollie were developing a relationship there. So why shouldn't she appear in the GL/GA book too? It just made sense. Anyway, I remember I took this comic with me on a multi-day class trip to the Amish country in Pennsylvania. I read this on the bus ride and loved the story and the idea that these costumed characters were interacting in a more realistic setting. This comic seemed so, well, grown-up to me. Interesting story by O'Neil, good characterizations, aided and abetted by the Adams-Giacoia art. Tom Palmer and Dick Giordano get all the, er, ink as Adams-inkers par excellence....but Frank Giacoia also proved to be a very good inker on Adams! Btw en route to the Amish country we got into a bus accident and we had to wait several hours out in a field until the new bus arrived. Apart from that, we had a great time on that trip, what with roasting marshmallows at night; hayrides; and the sticky, incomparably delicious shoofly pie. To this day I can't look at the cover of GL/GA #78 without thinking of shoofly pie. 
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Post by Farrar on May 13, 2020 14:26:05 GMT -5
May 1970My Marvels Part 1I didn't pick up Marvel's Greatest Comics #28 this month since it contained a reprint of Fantastic Four #36, and I already had FF#36--yay me! But I did pick up my other "regulars":  Avengers #78: Pencils by Sal B. (the first few pages were his try-out pages from months earlier) and embellished by the one and only Tom Palmer, so it looked a lot like the Big John-Palmer art of the previous issues. Glad to see Monica Lynne again. Fantastic Four #101: eh. Sub-Mariner #28: Environmental story by Roy Thomas and nice art by Sal and Mike Esposito (again as Joe Gaudioso). Now, I don't know if anyone is still with me here but when I first read this I wondered about the opening, in which it's explained that Namor is staying with Diane Arliss after rescuing her last issue.  You see at the end of the last issue #27, Namor had rescued both Diane and Dorma. So what happened to Dorma? What did Namor do, just send Dorma back to Atlantis by herself? While he would stay in NYC at Diane's humble abode? This lack of gallantry really caught my attention back then!  Anyway, later on I read that this story was written at the last minute and that originally the story that appeared in Subby #31 was supposed to be in this issue. (In fact the coming attractions for #27 had advertised a Namor-Triton-Stingray battle but as mentioned it didn't appear until #31.) So the fact that this was a last-minute fill-in story explained why there was a disconnect (IMO) between the events in #27 and in #28.
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Post by Farrar on May 13, 2020 16:32:33 GMT -5
May 1970My Marvels Part 2That month two new split mags debuted, Amazing Adventures and Astonishing Tales. I'd always been intrigued by the older split books, or at least their titles: Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish and Strange Tales had always seemed so exotic to me, even though I never read them. I was glad to see the Black Widow and the Inhumans in their own features, and while I wasn't particularly interested in Dr. Doom or Ka-Zar, I wanted to start from the beginning-- so I bought both comics that May.  Amazing Adventures #1: The Inhumans were drawn and written by jack Kirby. The story wasn't that great, and frankly neither was the art since it was inked by Chic Stone. Now I loved Stone's inking of Kirby in the old FFs I had, but for a 1970 comic it just seemed too clunky and old-fashioned. And Kirby (infamously) gave Black Bolt a thought bubble, which IMO diminished BB's mystique.  The Black Widow story was just okay too, but at least it had John Buscema art. I know Natasha's new costume was in response to Emma Peel's popularity, but I also wonder if Marvel just felt that her old costume was too similar to Black Canary's (who was getting some major airtime over at DC). Astonishing Tales #1: Good art by Kirby, this time inked by the Sinnottesque Sam Grainger (Ka-Zar); and by Wally Wood (Dr. Doom); but as mentioned I wasn't very interested in these characters and neither of these stories did much to change my mind. This was the first and only issue of AT I ever bought.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 5, 2020 15:30:29 GMT -5
Completely forgot that the calendar had flipped! So herewith, the comics I bought in... JUNE 1970ALL-STAR WESTERN 1
 DC tries another Western reprint title, this time with Pow Wow Smith, the “Indian Lawman,” who hadn’t seen the light of day for nearly 10 years. I was a sucker for Westerns and reprints, so why not spend 15 cents on a chance that Western comics might make a comeback? BATMAN 224
 Denny O’Neil takes Batman to New Orleans because it turns out that he digs le jazz hot. Who’d a thunk that? Anyway, a pretty bland Neal Adams cover encloses some nice interiors by Irv Novick, whose Batman resembles Adams’ more often than not, but too often still looks stiff and angular (like his Flash).  The NOLA setting is a nice idea, but the villain, yet another malicious deformed freak, subtly named for the demon of child sacrifice , which has nothing to do with the story, is Batman’s foe. Moloch wears red tights with stirrups; he looks more like Tiny from the Deadman series than he does some kind of “hellish beast,” as Batman describes him.  This is run-of-the-mill storytelling that relies almost entirely on the moodiness of the artwork to give it a lift. Novick sorta kinda carries it off, but in the long run, the lowlights outweigh the highlights. A few nice scenes do not a good story make. Bonus: The late Marty Pasko has a letter panning Batman 220 in this issue. BRAVE AND THE BOLD 91 (Batman and the Black Canary)  A dynamite cover by Cardy, which may sound redundant given his superior skills, but this is a standout, one of Cardy’s best. The artwork inside is also by Cardy, and is also excellent, which certainly turns a better-than-average Bob Haney story into a thing of beauty, and just maybe a joy forever. Haney’s Batman is not the grim avenger of O’Neil and Adams’ stories, but it’s fun to see Batman be a detective in what is essentially a comic book film noir. The use of Earth-One’s Larry Lance works perfectly, and of course Dinah Drake and Black Canary never have looked better. You can see Cardy striving for some Adams touches in his art, but his Batman is more approachable and less threatening than what we’re seeing in Batman and Detective. But that’s not a bad thing at all.   I do wish, though, that Cardy would have been consistent with how he drew Batman’s mask. (Not just in this story, but in other B and B stories, too.) Sometimes the black portion around his eyes and nose is a clearly defined part of the mask; at others, it looks simply like splotchy shading and takes away from the frightening aspect of Batman’s look. (Like the Norm Saunders Batman trading cards from the 60s.) Cardy always kept the ears Silver Age-short. Luckily for many of us, he did the same for Dinah's skirt.   CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN 75
An old favorite of mine goes to reprints after a long attempt as the Challs were morphed from a team of adventurers nto a league of witchfinders and exorcists. Why DC didn’t just cancel the book I don’t know, though I was grateful for the reprint issues. Two more reprint issues and DC pulled the plug. DETECTIVE 402
Nice cover, but as I said two months ago, Man-Bat just never did it for me. It was the moody Adams-Giordano art that made the issue for me. JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 82
Again, the JLA are yet again being controlled, defeated, tortured and /or imprisoned on a JLA cover, and again, it’s Neal Adams who gets to show them contorted and in agony. Despite my love of his artwork, I was never a huge fan of the Murphy Anderson heads, most of which always struck me as way off-model. Black Canary’s hair looks like it needs to be shampooed; GL’s mask is way too wide; Batman looks like he’s waiting t be called onto the set of a Hostess Twinkies ad; and that weird little cleft in GA’s beard always bugged me. SHOWCASE 92 (MANHUNTER 2070)
DC tries to resurrect its sf line, with this try-out and two reprint titles, From Beyond the Unknown and Strange Adventures. At least they’re trying, but Manhunter 2070 and Showcase were headed to that great black hole in the sky after the next issue. Too bad, because, clichés aside, I thought Sekowsky gave us his all in this strip, including a preview of the Mos Eisley bar scene. (Can't recall now which issue that was.) |
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 7, 2020 11:37:25 GMT -5
Didn't read this when it was new; but a couple of years later, when the son of some friends of my parents let me read it, when he heard I was a fan of Superman....  Never forgot the story, where Superman's powers have decreased and some crooks stick him in a rocket and shoot him off to die in space. He lands on an alien world, with a repressive government and meets a man called Supro, with the costume seen on the cover and a glider cape. He becomes the new Supro and becomes part of a revolt. Years later, when I am in college, I walked into my first comic shop, flip through the back issues and there is the comic. I never forgot that cover image and bought it (about 50 cents, as I recall). It was just like I remembered. Also found a couple of JLA favorites, with Adam Strange (including his wedding). |
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 7, 2020 11:47:34 GMT -5
ps I saw this listed on Mike's Amazing world, from this month....  I had never heard of nor seen this comic (only lasted 4 issues); however, a little poking around made me wish I had. Great cartoony art, with a sexy, plucky female star, who is oblivious to the dangers around her, as she knows she will get out of them. Looks great and a fun idea; but probably carried about as far as it could go. |
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Post by brutalis on Jun 8, 2020 7:21:58 GMT -5
June 1970: of course there is my usual back issue collecting of Avengers 79 and FF 102 circa 1980. Adding in this last year 2019 for Mighty Marvel Western 10, Ringo Kid 5, Star Spangled War 152 and Two Gun Kid 94.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 8, 2020 21:02:26 GMT -5
Looking at that Cardy cover that has to be the first time I have seen Black Canary's boots with practical heels, aside form her later cushion sole boots in the early Birds of Prey stuff. Not stilettos, not overly tall; something you could see her being able to fight in.
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Post by Farrar on Jun 17, 2020 21:46:06 GMT -5
June 1970My Marvels
Amazing Adventures #2: Inhumans: I didn't care for Kirby's dialogue, it sounded stilted to me. And Chic Stone's inking looked old-fashioned and clunky. Black Widow: this feature looked promising; Natasha had no super-powers, so I found her relatable. And while no one ever mentions John Verpooten as being among the pantheon of great inkers (with good reason), here his basic style meshed perfectly with Buscema's pencils: he was faithful to JB's lines and smoothed it out a bit, without homogenizing it (as I felt was the case when, say, Sinnott would ink Buscema). Anyway, Natasha was fighting on the side of the common man, sort of like GL and GA over at DC; and also like Batgirl in her back-up series over in Detective (the red hair/black costume furthered the association in my mind). But whereas Batgirl was refreshingly free of self-doubt or neurosis, Natasha had that can't-be-a-Marvel-character-without-it trademark angst. Avengers #79: I liked this core team of Wanda, Pietro, Clint, T'Challa, and the Vision. In the story Wanda referred to Natasha's recent dumping of Clint. I figured one of the reasons Roy Thomas brought Wanda back to the team was so he could get some romance in the book. By this time I had plenty of Avengers back issues including from the Kooky Quartet days, so I knew that back in the old days Clint had his eye on Wanda. I figured it was only a matter of time before we'd see a Clint-Wanda pairing in the new comics. Fantastic Four #102: First there was that cover--a familiar Subby pose, but the FF looked so uncharacteristically lanky on the cover--wait a minute, the cover was by Romita not by Kirby! What was going on? Well, I got my answer in the issue's Stan's Soapbox where it was announced that Kirby was leaving Marvel! Noooooooooo!!!!!!!! Thankfully #102's interior art was by Kirby-Sinnott...but what would the next issue bring? Sub-Mariner #29: An okay story, good art by Sal as usual. I liked the Namor-Dorma-Diane situation and here there was some dialogue about Namor asking Diane to "speak no more of any feelings she may have" for him. Huh? Such an encounter or dialogue had not occurred in any way, shape or form in any of the four previous Subby issues I'd read. Had something happened off panel that? If so, I felt cheated! Anyway, as I found out decades later, a story that had been intended for an earlier issue had been pulled (and printed later on)...so this particular piece of dialogue in #29 referred to something that happened in a story that hadn't actually been published at the time. Marvel Super-Heroes #28 was on sale this month too, but as it no longer included X-Men reprints (just Daredevil and Iron Man, two characters I wasn't especially interested in), I skipped this comic. What I didn't know was that in the next month, July, the X-Men book would be revived and it would continue with the reprints that had started in MSH.
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?! Mortimer's renditions are awful! 