|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Feb 9, 2022 16:41:43 GMT -5
February 1972 (Marvel)Avengers 99 Loved Barry Windsor-Smith's work on Conan and gave Avengers a try again. Conan the Barbarian #15 would ahve been a regular purchase, but I never could find this one on the stands! Thor 199 Buscema and the Mangog brought me back.    Picked up two other Marvels: Creatures on the Loose 17 and Marvel Premiere 2, because even if the stories were meh, ya hadda love them Gil Kane covers!  
|
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Feb 9, 2022 16:52:24 GMT -5
February 1972 (DC) Action 411, Adventure 418, Detective 422, From Beyond the Unknown 16: for the reprints. All-Star Western: So good to see new Western comic again! Brave and the Bold 101: Never missed an issue... that weakness for team-ups. Flash 214: A 100-pager, and all reprints! Yes! Forever People 8; New Gods 8 (a classic); Jimmy Olsen 148: Because Kirby, of course (new and reprints)! Tarzan 207: A no-brainer... Kubert writing and drawing the Lord of the Jungle? Who didn't buy this? Best covers?   
|
|
|
|
Post by Farrar on Feb 17, 2022 21:38:27 GMT -5
February 1972As I've mentioned, my interest in comics was waning. This month I bought only one-count 'em one-comic off the stands: Avengers #99 After a steady stream of Avengers comics from #63 through #97, I'd somehow failed to buy or find #98 ****. Now that that interminable Kree-Skrull War was finally over (#97), I couldn't wait to see Wanda and Vision's reunion. But as mentioned I'd missed #98 so I was thrilled to find #99 on the stands. You know, after all these years I still remember how shocked I was at #99. Worst.art.I'd.ever.seen (in a comic book). I couldn't believe how amateurish Barry Smith's art was in #99. WHERE WAS BUSCEMA (who'd penciled #97)??!!  I'd thought Smith's art was awful back in X-Men #53, but at least in that comic it just looked like what it was--a youngster aping early Kirby, so there was a kind of primitive cuteness about it. Then in Avengers #66 and #67 it looked as if Smith had improved; there were some interesting panel layouts plus he was helped there by inkers Shores and Klein. But sorry, his work in Avengers #99 was abominable, at least the hero faces. I couldn't believe my eyes; in some panels Cap's and Vision's heads looked lightbulb-shaped; and Wanda looked as if a child had drawn her.     I knew Barry Smith was the Conan artist at that time, and even though I didn't read that series I also knew he was receiving accolades for his Conan work; but IMO he was REALLY unsuited for superheroes, at this time anyway. I was so disgusted by the look of this story; I felt Marvel was just tossing any old person who happened to be around on this book. The only consolation was the story itself, as there was plenty of Wanda-Vision interaction, with the promise of romantic complications galore. Just my type of story! But really, it was hard to get the past #99's art. For me the gold standard of comic book art was John Buscema, esp. when inked by Klein (sadly Klein was deceased by 1972); or Big John inked by Palmer, Giacoia, Sal, Adkins--just about anyone! Other gold standards for me were/are Swan-Klein/Swan-Abel/Swan-Anderson; Schaffenberger; Kirby inked by Sinnott. Their art was beautiful and accessible, with just the right amount of detail. Compared to those artists' work, Smith's less-than-finished-art was a shock to my system. Of course now that I'm an adult I appreciate his work more, but back then I was really annoyed by it and how sloppy and ragged it looked to me in #99. ****Years later I finally read #98, in one of the Avengers Essential volumes.
|
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Mar 2, 2022 1:34:00 GMT -5
  Picked these up later, when I was buying the Diana Prince, Wonder Woman issues and the Rose & Thorn appearances, in Wonder Woman. Lot of bondage covers between these two series (and some other DC titles) in this era. |
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Mar 2, 2022 11:06:16 GMT -5
February 1972 (Marvel)Avengers 99 Loved Barry Windsor-Smith's work on Conan and gave Avengers a try again. Conan the Barbarian #15 would ahve been a regular purchase, but I never could find this one on the stands! Thor 199 Buscema and the Mangog brought me back. You know, there was a thread on our favourite year in comics a little while ago... Judging from the books you show here, February 1972 might have been my favourite month! |
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Mar 2, 2022 23:24:18 GMT -5
Lot of bondage covers between these two series (and some other DC titles) in this era.
Interesting - have you noticed whether it was mostly from the same artists or was it more dependent on the title? I know WW had a bondage theme historically, can't remember any other series or characters known for it, though..
|
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Mar 3, 2022 0:09:23 GMT -5
Lot of bondage covers between these two series (and some other DC titles) in this era.
Interesting - have you noticed whether it was mostly from the same artists or was it more dependent on the title? I know WW had a bondage theme historically, can't remember any other series or characters known for it, though..
Lois Lane has several over the span of a year or so and there are a bunch, during the Diana prince, Wonder Woman phase, This was also when the Code was relaxed, in regards horror content; and, that is a factor in the themes on the WW covers. Lois had more standard damsel-in-distress situations, but quite a lot of them. Supergirl, over in Adventure Comics, has a few, too. Here's a sample, between Lois Lane #120 and 133 (Jan 1972 to June 1973)     Adventure Comics, from the same period....     Wonder Woman    Action 417  There are a couple of months for Adventure Comics, just before this time span (#412 & 414). Adventure #416 features a reprint of the Wonder Woman GA story, Villainy, Inc, which is just one big bondage romp, after a prison break by several of her female foes, with everyone form the villains, to Wonder Woman to the Amazons getting hogtied. They made certain that was prominently featured on the front cover. Mister Miracle has it built into his gimmick, so he is well represented over these months. Our Fighting Forces has one, Forever People #8 has them chained up, Our Army at War has Sgt Rock restrained and being interrogated, etc. My guess would be the relaxation of the Code, since you also see more supernatural elements in covers of other superhero comics, plus plenty of graveyards and other horror imagery. Plus, the mystery books push the envelope more. It wasn't DC alone, as Marvel has a lot of similar imagery during this period. It's always been a trope; but, it seems like it turns up a lot, between 1971 and 1973, with DC books. The Wonder Woman covers , just prior to her getting the costume and powers back, are particularly lurid, as they suggest torture, more than the Lois Lane or other books. The war comic examples are typical evil Nazis torturing people, which was common in the mens adventure magazines of the 50s and 60s; but, not so much the war comics. That's why I think the Code relaxation, plus shrinking newsstand space suggests that maybe Carmine felt that getting more lurid would sell more. Supposedly, horror was the only thing really selling and Mister Miracle soon gets turned over to mystery/horror and Jimmy Olsen starts having monsters and such. Adventure gives way to the Spectre. Ty Templeton commented on the Lois covers, on his blog...Obviously, the stuff sold or Overstreet wouldn't have entries for such covers and Wertham wouldn't have singled out such things, along with the horror and crime books. This stuff is pretty tame compared to some of what you saw in the pre-Code books, especially when you see stuff like the Schomburg covers, at Timely and a lot of the stuff from Fiction House and some of the other smaller GA publishers. |
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Mar 4, 2022 12:11:09 GMT -5
March 1972I picked up a couple of anniversary issues, Avengers 100 and Thor 200.   From DC,    Batman 241 Nice cover, but the Golden Age reprint (from Batman 4) took the cake. Detective 423 Another different cover, and again, fun reprints (from Big Town and Gangbusters), but the Batman and Batgirl stories? Meh. Justice League of America 98 Something big is brewing if Sargon is showing up… Korak 46 What a difference from the Gold Key version! Kubert was a magician. Loved Frank Thorne's art on the Korak strories. Mister Miracle 8 The King is still a presence at DC!    Our Army at War 245 A quarter always bought you a good product here: a dramatic Kubert cover, Russ Heath on Rock, a couple of reprints and Sam Glanzman on the USS Stevens. Superboy 185 The 100-pagers are in their heyday as the best bargain on the stands. Superman 251 No idea why I bought this. Well, it’s not a bad cover, and there was a reprint form 1947, so… Tarzan 208 Kubert rippin’ it up again. Wonder Woman 200 Striking cover. That was enough to get me to buy. And (cue strings) the saddest moment of the month: picking up the final issue of (Son of) Tomahawk, a comic I had followed faithfully for five years, when I’d first started seeing it on the stands (115 issues into its very long run).  The Kubert cover seems to be a bit of an homage to The Searchers, and the Sam Glanzman story that preceded the eight-page Tomahawk reprint that closed the issue was aptly titled… “A Good Day to Die.” I wrote this fanboyish account of the Buckskinned Backwoodsman last year in the Complete Batman thread for some reason. Hope you don’t mind if I rerun it here: “Tomahawk first appeared in Star Spangled 69 (on sale in April, 1947) and became the cover and lead feature with #96; he remained there through #121 (on sale in August, 1951). He also was featured through the final issue of SS, #130 (on sale May, 1952). The only issues on which Tomahawk's logo wasn't displayed when he wasn't the cover feature were #69, 70, 81-89 (when most of them featured new character, Captain Compass's logo), and that final issue, 130. That was 62 straight issues of stories. He also appeared in three straight issues of World's Finest (33-35) in 1948. Now we're up to 65 stories. Meanwhile, two years before finishing the run in Star Spangled, Tomahawk got his own eponymous magazine, the first issue of which went on sale in July of 1950; it ran through #140, which went on sale in March, 1972, just shy of 22 years. (With #131, the logo, though not the title, changed to Son of Tomahawk.) During that run, he also appeared again in WF, from issue #65 through #101! He also popped up a handful of times in the 80s and maybe even the 90s. I know he was in an issue of Swamp Thing in the late 80's/ early 90s, too. That's nearly 500 appearances (some admittedly were reprints used as back-ups as the years went by) and over 200 appearances as a cover feature. Quite an achievement for a non-super-powered character, IYAM.”
|
|
|
|
Post by Farrar on Mar 27, 2022 11:16:48 GMT -5
March 1972That month, nothing off the stands for me  At that time the only comic I was really following was the Avengers and I missed this month's issue, the 100th. After getting every single Avengers issue since #63 off the stands, so that I had Avengers #63-97, a couple of months earlier I'd missed #98. Then I got #99, but now I couldn't find #100 on the stands. The handwriting was on the wall for me; my comic book reading/buying was getting less and less important to me by the month. Postscript: When I got back into comics about 10 years ago, I bought the Essentials and tons of back issues, so I have #100 now  . Beautiful cover, with a gorgeous two page splash on pages 2 and 3. Barry Windsor-Smith's art here had grown by leaps and bounds since his work in #98. His own inks on the first several pages gave it a charcoally-look--just beautiful. Then Sinnott's inks for the middle of the book--well, it's Sinnott, 'nuff said. I especially love this panel, love the faces esp. Wanda's.  Syd Shores's inks on the last pages don't grab me as much, but still look better IMO than Tom Sutton's inks in #98. Glad I finally obtained #100, even if it was decades after it was published!
|
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Apr 27, 2022 10:30:36 GMT -5
April 1972Avengers 101: just to see if after the Kree-Skrull epic and the special 100th issue, I'd stick around. I did, but only for another issue or two. Conan the Barbarian 16: A triumph, even if it was a reprint. I t was colored beautifully and the stroy was still enchanting.  Kull the Conqueror 3: Such great art, courtesy the Severins.  Action 413, Adventure 420, Detective 424, From Beyond the Unknown 17: For the reprints. Brave and the Bold 102: Bought this faithfully, but how long were they going to wring out every last drop of 1960s-style protest melodrama from the Teen Titans/ Batman relationship? Forever People 9: Love that cover!  Justice League of America 99: Awaiting the big 100th issue. New Gods 9: Already you could tell that DC didn't seem so keen on the Fourth World anymore. But I still enjoyed it. Superman 252: Another wonderful 100-pager. Never missed any of them. World's Finest 212: A dull cover (except for the actual red blood!), but I was a longtime J'onn J'onzz fan and had to represent! 
|
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 27, 2022 19:38:47 GMT -5
Conan #16 and Kull #3 the same month? Truly, 1972 was a year of wonders! Those two are among my favourite American comics ever.
As were several other books seen above!
|
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Apr 28, 2022 0:06:57 GMT -5
April 1972
Dark Shadows #14 - I read this while on summer vacation, so it must have been left on the stands for a few months at whatever roadside store we stopped off at on our way out to my grandparents' place, about a 6 hour drive from our town. A lot of my early comic-reading memories are associated with these summer vacations, I suppose the parents probably used to buy us our choice of a few comics as a treat and to keep us kids quiet in the car. I never have seen the tv show, but I liked spooky, supernatural stories and the cover to this one probably atttacted me.
Kull, the Conqueror #3 - to be honest, I'm not absolutely sure I read this particular issue at the time: I've read the Severins' Kull run so many times since that apart from #1, I no longer remember which ones I didn't get until later on as back-issues. But I did read several of them at the time and this may well have been one of them.
Tomb of Dracula #3 - I think this was the first ToD issue I actually owned. I missed #1, read someone else's copy of #2, and bought #3. I was a huge Dracula fan as a kid after reading the Stoker novel - it was almost an obsession - and the comic didn't disappoint, in large part due to Colan's artwork.
As I have probably mentioned before, I'm amazed I didn't get the BWS Conan comic out as I'm sure I would have loved it at that age. Also this month there was a Doctor Strange revival in Marvel Premiere, which I also would have jumped on, as I was a huge Doctor Strange fan from the 3 or 4 issues of the Roy Thomas run I had read a few years earlier. I can only think that I just didn't happen to see these comics on the stands, or perhaps they never made it to our area.
|
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Apr 28, 2022 0:15:34 GMT -5
March 1972
Marvel Spotlight #4 - a month late, but I wanted to mention this because these early Werewolf stories in Marvel Spotlight and then in Werewolf by Night meant a lot to me at the time. I felt an intense interest in the whole idea of the Darkhold, of a book possessing such magical power. And Mike Ploog's artwork really captured my imagination. Looking back, the stories really weren't all that great at this stage of the character, but at th time it made an enormous impression.
|
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on May 2, 2022 21:36:46 GMT -5
A neighbor had this one and let me borrow it....  Fury and a friend are training paratroops, as civilians. They get recruited by a younger Sam Sawyer to join him on a secret mission, in Europe. They aren't keen on getting into things, but go along and run across Dum-Dum Dugan, with a circus. Later, Ed Brubaker revamped the story, as part of the Marvels Project, to have the mission be to help Prof Erskine escape from Germany, to bring the super soldier formula research to the US. It also throws in the other attempts at it, with the Destroyer (as retconned by Roy Thomas, in Invaders) and the character John Steele, who was an old Timely character, who debuted in Daring Mystery Comics #1, as a soldier who had served in the Civil War and WW1. This version has him captured by the Germans, at the end of WW1 and held in suspended animation, for study. Prof Erskine is one of those who studies him and the research around the SSF is based on his physical attributes and blood and tissue samples. He escapes after an Allied bombing releases him from his chamber and runs into Fury and his team. he stays behind in Europe, fighting the Nazis from within occupied territory, until D-Day. He then turns up in Secret Avengers, with some group, known as the Shadow Council. |
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on May 6, 2022 14:22:26 GMT -5
May 1972
A weak month, with DC dropping its price from 25 to 20 cents, the page count from 48 to 32 and of course, the reprints. I dropped a few books that I was buying almost entirely for those. Conan 17 Always enjoyed Reese's inks over Kane's pencils, but Conan's face isn't exactly Conan's face, if you know what I mean.  Sgt. Fury 101, because it reprinted an issue I'd never seen that told the origin of the Holwers. With a nice new Severin cover.  Detective 425 The nice unexpected Wrightson cover outweighed the usual meh features. The Batman story involves a murder on the set of a production of Macbeth, so there was that. I think the ugly trade dress was supposed to make you think there were still a batch of reprints in the issue.  Phantom Stranger 20 Aparo always is top-notch.  Korak 47 And the same was true of Frank Thorne.  Wanted 1 REPRINTS! 
|
|
I'd thought Smith's art was awful back in X-Men #53, but at least in that comic it just looked like what it was--a youngster aping early Kirby, so there was a kind of primitive cuteness about it. Then in Avengers #66 and #67 it looked as if Smith had improved; there were some interesting panel layouts plus he was helped there by inkers Shores and Klein. But sorry, his work in Avengers #99 was abominable, at least the hero faces. I couldn't believe my eyes; in some panels Cap's and Vision's heads looked lightbulb-shaped; and Wanda looked as if a child had drawn her. 
At that time the only comic I was really following was the Avengers and I missed this month's issue, the 100th.
. Beautiful cover, with a gorgeous two page splash on pages 2 and 3. Barry Windsor-Smith's art here had grown by leaps and bounds since his work in #98. His own inks on the first several pages gave it a charcoally-look--just beautiful. Then Sinnott's inks for the middle of the book--well, it's Sinnott, 'nuff said. I especially love this panel, love the faces esp. Wanda's.