What was the first mainstream comic to deal with drug addiction (I'm sure the underground ones had some stuff dealing with it too)? Was it the Spider-Man drug issues? If we count Mad, they had some pretty pointed stuff on drugs (Hippie Magazine, the "Heads you lose", "Modern Day Crucifixion" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" back covers) as well.

There were crime and horror comics that dealt with drug addiction, though I think many dealt with it in a lurid way. That True Crime issue contains the notorious “Murder, Morphine and Me” story with the he needle to the eye panel that was such a focus of Wertham’ s book.

Released forty years ago today, included with Kenner’s Super Powers Superman figure:






Mike’s Amazing World of Comics lists 23 of these mini-comics, culminating with #23 (Red Tornado). Now, there were more than 23 figures released, does that mean some figures didn’t get mini-comics?

Thanks.

Yes, such a collection would be awesome. The 40th anniversary of the toyline, which is this year, is the perfect time.

Maybe this is one for codystarbuck since it's the issue his nom de pleur debuted in, but has anyone ever commented on the fact that He-Man and Skeletor look like they're ripped right out of Jim Starlin's "Death Building" from Star*Reach #1?

Our "hero" is named Steve Apollo and he has the same bowl cut as Prince Adam and he even wears a similar collared vest and to combat his skull faced nemesis he turns into a burly barbarian...only he takes acid to make the change instead of raising a power sword and calling on the power of Grayskull. But other than that the resemblance is uncanny. Did he ever raze a stink over it?




This is my first read of the book and I just couldn't get over it.

Starlin would have had to have gotten in line, He-Man is Conan and Skeletor is Thulsa Doom 

OK, Mattel claimed that was not the case (though they WERE sued by Conan Properties, Inc. in the late 80's but Mattel won). But yeah, there's a lot of history and claims on what all the influences were. Mattel wanted to get in on the Star Wars action figure craze, and supposedly were leaning towards a Frazetta style action line. There are different claims on how it all came together, but artist and designer Mark Taylor is generally credited with influencing a lot of the early visual designs (with designer Roger Sweet claiming though that he himself actually invented the character, a whole other topic) and claims he had a personal idea from a sketch he did some years before (with a prototype-ish Skeletor looking character in the background):



Taylor has famously said that Skeletor's design (which he is credited with) was influenced by what he was convinced was a real corpse he saw at at carnival as a kid (and learned many years later was in fact the case!). In any case, the mini-comics came about because unlike Star Wars, the proposed He-Man line had no media tie-in so they had to invent something so kids would have some background on who the characters were. And supposedly when they still weren't sure the pitch was going to work, they told Mattel "oh, did we tell you there's a cartoon in the works?" Which there wasn't, but with the green light given based on that, it came to be!

So many other comparisons can and have been made beyond Conan, you've got Mighty Mightor, Thundarr, etc. I think lots of gray space and repeating themes when it comes to all of these fantasy barbarian type properties along the lines of what codystarbuck said.

you mean these?



-M