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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 12, 2015 18:00:11 GMT -5
House of Mystery #187 July-August 1970 I got this out of a $1 box. Significant water damage, but readable. The first story is a 12-pager with nice big panels and beautiful Alex Toth art. Written by Robert Kanigher, the editor who gave you Wonder Tot and Egg Fu. It's about a pretty girl with red hair who is cursed by a jealous witch who ties up her life force with that of a fox. When the fox dies, she dies. So of course she marries a relentless country squire who chases the foxes whenever he can. In one scene, Cain hides the fox in his rustic cabin. But ultimately, he gets the fox and brings it home to show his wife, who is now dead. The end. Let's see, there's some Sergio Aragones gag pages. And a couple of other stories, one about a physicist whose ghost helps develop the atomic bomb and another story about an undertaker who is mean to his apprentice. It should have been drawn by Graham Ingels. I like to look through comics from 1970 page by page and proclaim whether each page is Silver Age or Bronze Age. The Sergio Aragones pages are definitely Bronze Age. The Alex Toth art pages look very Bronze Age to me. I know he was an artist who worked all through the Silver Age but those panels! They are so big! Bronze Age. And ad for Young America Record Club's ROCK FESTIVAL is also Bronze Age. What about the Palisades Park ad? No decision. Those ads ran for decades. What about the house ad for the Teen Titans? Aqualad is punching Robin. Didn't he do that all the time? The Comic Book Database says Cain - the host of House of Mystery through the 1970s - first appeared in House of Mystery #175. I never read House of Mystery as a kid but I know the character from Sandman. I had no idea his first introduction was so late.
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Post by MDG on Nov 13, 2015 8:47:37 GMT -5
House of Mystery #187 July-August 1970 I like to look through comics from 1970 page by page and proclaim whether each page is Silver Age or Bronze Age. The Sergio Aragones pages are definitely Bronze Age. The Alex Toth art pages look very Bronze Age to me. I know he was an artist who worked all through the Silver Age but those panels! They are so big! Bronze Age.... The Comic Book Database says Cain - the host of House of Mystery through the 1970s - first appeared in House of Mystery #175. I never read House of Mystery as a kid but I know the character from Sandman. I had no idea his first introduction was so late. It's a moving target, but for me, Joe Orlando taking over/launching the mystery books at DC is one of the clearest delineations between silver and bronze age. One month: Next month:
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 13, 2015 10:28:23 GMT -5
Thanks, MDG! I don't know much about House of Mystery and House of Secrets. I flipped through them when visiting other kids in the 1970s but I don't think I ever bought a single issue. (I would sometimes buy issues of Plop at the used-book store, 2 for 25 cents! I had dozens of beat-up issues of Plop in a pile on my bookshelf. I didn't dare store them with my other comics.)
So it's very nice to see a fan weighing in with a tidbit like yours.
I do have the Millennium Edition of House of Mystery #1. I love that story about the female werewolf.
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Post by Action Ace on Nov 13, 2015 13:18:04 GMT -5
In the house ad for the next issue of Adventure, Ultra Boy, Duo Damsel and Bouncing Boy are about to turn the corner to find a dinosaur chewing on Superboy's cape. I'd much rather read that! There's more building a ship out of scratch than dinosaur eating Superboy in the issue. But guest stars you'll love also appear. Supergirl replaced The Legion as the lead feature in the next issue.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 13, 2015 19:27:10 GMT -5
Bargain bin comic for the day: The Phantom Stranger #17 January-February 1972 This is pretty cool. A 26-page Phantom Stranger story! With Jim Aparo art! Nice! It's written by Len Wein. And the villain is Tannarak! I actually haven't read that many Phantom Stranger stories but I've seen Tannarak before. He's like Phantom Stranger's Lex Luthor, isn't he? Also, this is the first appearance of Cassandra Craft. I've seen her before too. She's a beautiful blonde who's blind and has an interest in the occult. She's the Phantom Stranger's Vicki Vale. No? Phantom Stranger's Inza Nelson? Phantom Stranger's Topaz? Then there's a story with Doctor Thirteen, the Ghost-Breaker. From Star-Spangled Comics #124 in 1952. There's a mysterious tower. Everybody who climbs it kills him- or herself! And Doctor Thirteen proves that it's not the supernatural because ... I forget. I read it a week or so ago and all I remember it that it was wonderfully silly. That was his thing. He always proved that there was no such thing as the supernatural. I remember him mostly from several issues of Detective Comics where he was investigating the ghost of Hugo Strange. To say the least, he's not compatible with the DC Universe. I think this is the very first time I've read a Doctor Thirteen story from the original 1950s run. Pretty cool, really. The Comic Book Database has no guess for the credits. I don't either, but the story is signed "Starr" on the splash. I don't know who that is. And there's also a not-very-good horror reprint with no recurring characters. The letters page contains a long letter from Dave Sim, Kitchener, Ontario! He likes Phantom Stranger a lot and thinks Jim Aparo is the perfect artist for the series. He speaks rather disparagingly of most new comics, but he still likes Batman and Detective. He also says "I have been following Jack Kirby's new books at National with their ever growing menagerie of science fiction characters." I guess that means he likes it, but he doesn't elaborate.
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Post by Cei-U! on Nov 13, 2015 21:35:18 GMT -5
"Starr" refers to Leonard Starr, who left comic books later in the '50s to launch a long, successful career in syndicated strips, first on the award-winning soap opera strip "On Stage / Mary Perkins," later on the 1980s revival of "Little Orphan Annie" (called simply "Annie" to reflect the success of the Broadway musical). A fine draftsman who drew some of comics' most beautiful women.
Cei-U! I summon the past master!
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 13, 2015 22:35:00 GMT -5
"Starr" refers to Leonard Starr, who left comic books later in the '50s to launch a long, successful career in syndicated strips, first on the award-winning soap opera strip "On Stage / Mary Perkins," later on the 1980s revival of "Little Orphan Annie" (called simply "Annie" to reflect the success of the Broadway musical). A fine draftsman who drew some of comics' most beautiful women. Cei-U! I summon the past master! Well. I didn't expect that! Thanks, Cei-U! It was a good art job! Not flashy like Kubert or Wood or Infantino of that period, but solid 1950s comic book art, pleasant, tells the story, more than interesting enough to spend a few minutes going back through it when you're done to admire the art again.
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Post by batlaw on Nov 14, 2015 4:28:56 GMT -5
Perhaps not nec "classic", but I just finished Red Son. Not sure how or why I never got it until now, but glad I finally did. It's pretty good.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 14, 2015 13:24:12 GMT -5
Perhaps not nec "classic", but I just finished Red Son. Not sure how or why I never got it until now, but glad I finally did. It's pretty good. It is pretty good. And the covers are absolutely gorgeous. Dave Johnson is a treasure.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 14, 2015 13:43:56 GMT -5
I decided to get a few low-grade issues of Supergirl comics "through the ages" for my nephew for Christmas. So I went on eBay and got this for $7: And I got this for $5:
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2015 18:28:20 GMT -5
Lois falls in love with a horse. Therefore, all your arguments are invalid. I really can't argue with that. My 12 year old nephew was combing through the same boxes and he got to this before I did: He doesn't read very many comics but he likes Supergirl. For his birthday last year, I got him an issue of Action Comics, an all-Supergirl 80-Page Giant. The one with the origin of Streaky the Super-Cat! (We all love Streaky around here.) So he bought Supergirl #8 for $2. I read the story. It's hilarious! I find early 1970s DC to be very hit and miss, but this one was definitely a hit! That Cover is a mistake see S Emblem and compare it with the picture below ... that's a goof for sure!
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Post by Spike-X on Nov 14, 2015 21:53:25 GMT -5
It's a deliberate mistake, though - if it had been drawn on her other boob (or maybe it was - it looks like a hasty last-minute correction), it would have been partly obscured.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 14, 2015 22:27:26 GMT -5
Marvel Team-Up #7 March 1973 In the current series of bargain bin reviews, this is the first issue from a series that I bought regularly when I was a kid. I started getting Marvel Team-Up with the two-part story in #39 and #40 featuring Spidey, Human Torch, Sons of the Tiger, the Sandman, the Crime-Master, the Big Man, Montana, Fancy Dan and the Ox. I bought it regularly for about three years and then sporadically all the way to the end. But I never read very many of the early issues. The first issue was reprinted in a Treasury Edition and I had a few back issues (notably that wonderfully dumb Spidey-Hercules team-up in #28 where giant robots stole Manhattan and Hercules had to drag it back into place with giant chains wrapped around his chest) but I always wondered about some of those other issues I never read. So there were about ten issues of Marvel Team-Up I'd never read in that bargain bin and I bought two. (The other one will be discussed on this thread soon.) It was tough choosing! I picked #7 because it was the oldest issue of MTU in the bin and also because it was in much better shape than many of the other issues I ended up buying. Ross Andru/Jim Mooney art. Pretty cool. Peter Parker is walking around New York at night when he stumbles on a couple of muggers attacking a girl. He beats them up and they run away and the girl also tries to take off when Peter offers to walk her to a safe place and she says she doesn't want to get involved. Peter gets kind of pissy about it, standing alone in the dark alley, fists clenched, head down, feeling sorry for himself because ... the girl wasn't appreciative enough? I don't know. Maybe it's just because it was an early 1970s Spidey comic. But he's not alone in the alley. Thor is sitting on a fire escape, laughing at Peter. It's kind of funny and weird, Thor leaning his chin on the rail, with his legs dangling over the side. Peter, instead of being impressed by a laughing god, says "What the heck are you doing here?" Thor says: METHINKS THOU DOST SPEAK TOO FAMILIAR ... TO A GOD. To which Peter responds: NOW I KNOW WHAT PEOPLE SEE IN YOU, THUNDER GOD. YOUR OVERWHELMING HUMILITY AND CHARM. Anyway, they soon get whisked away into a big adventure involving trolls and Asgard and reverse black-and-white printing effects. And they find an asteroid that's got a bunch of machinery inside. And it turns out the head troll had stolen a device from the Watcher, who shows up on the last page to explain everything that happened in the proceeding 15 or so pages. Nice art. I hadn't really paid too much attention to the splash page so I didn't notice who the writer was. But as I was going through it, Spidey swings into a group of trolls and says: "It's time for 'Beat that Troll' ... and guess who the bad guys are?" And he clobbers a troll and says: "Good guess, Bumpkins!" As soon as I saw "Bumpkins," I thought, "Gerry Conway wrote this!" And I was right. I probably would have loved this if I had picked it up as a back issue in the mid-1970s. I still find it kind of charming, especially the panel of Thor sitting on the fire escape like one of the Bowery Boys. And the last-minute appearance of the Watcher is random and weird. I also love those weird boxes framing the art on the covers of the 20-cent Marvel comics. They're not as good as go-go checks, but they'll do.
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 15, 2015 7:06:10 GMT -5
What a nice review. I remember the Thor fire escape scene.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,069
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Post by Confessor on Nov 15, 2015 8:34:32 GMT -5
Marvel Team-Up #7 March 1973 In the current series of bargain bin reviews, this is the first issue from a series that I bought regularly when I was a kid. I started getting Marvel Team-Up with the two-part story in #39 and #40 featuring Spidey, Human Torch, Sons of the Tiger, the Sandman, the Crime-Master, the Big Man, Montana, Fancy Dan and the Ox. I bought it regularly for about three years and then sporadically all the way to the end. But I never read very many of the early issues. The first issue was reprinted in a Treasury Edition and I had a few back issues (notably that wonderfully dumb Spidey-Hercules team-up in #28 where giant robots stole Manhattan and Hercules had to drag it back into place with giant chains wrapped around his chest) but I always wondered about some of those other issues I never read. So there were about ten issues of Marvel Team-Up I'd never read in that bargain bin and I bought two. (The other one will be discussed on this thread soon.) It was tough choosing! I picked #7 because it was the oldest issue of MTU in the bin and also because it was in much better shape than many of the other issues I ended up buying. Ross Andru/Jim Mooney art. Pretty cool. Peter Parker is walking around New York at night when he stumbles on a couple of muggers attacking a girl. He beats them up and they run away and the girl also tries to take off when Peter offers to walk to her a safe place and she says she doesn't want to get involved. Peter gets kind of pissy about it, standing alone in the dark alley, fists clenched, head down, feeling sorry for himself because ... the girl wasn't appreciative enough? I don't know. Maybe it's just because it was an early 1970s Spidey comic. But he's not alone in the alley. Thor is sitting on a fire escape, laughing at Peter. It's kind of funny and weird, Thor leaning his chin on the rail, with his legs dangling over the side. Peter, instead of being impressed by a laughing god, says "What the heck are you doing here?" Thor says: METHINKS THOU DOST SPEAK TOO FAMILIAR ... TO A GOD. To which Peter responds: NOW I KNOW WHAT PEOPLE SEE IN YOU, THUNDER GOD. YOUR OVERWHELMING HUMILITY AND CHARM. Anyway, they soon get whisked away into a big adventure involving trolls and Asgard and reverse black-and-white printing effects. And they find an asteroid that's got a bunch of machinery inside. And it turns out the head troll had stolen a device from the Watcher, who shows up on the last page to explain everything that happened in the proceeding 15 or so pages. Nice art. I hadn't really paid too much attention to the splash page so I didn't notice who the writer was. But as I was going through it, Spidey swings into a group of trolls and says: "It's time for 'Beat that Troll' ... and guess who the bad guys are?" And he clobbers a troll and says: "Good guess, Bumpkins!" As soon as I saw "Bumpkins," I thought, "Gerry Conway wrote this!" And I was right. I probably would have loved this if I had picked it up as a back issue in the mid-1970s. I still find it kind of charming, especially the panel of Thor sitting on the fire escape like one of the Bowery Boys. And the last-minute appearance of the Watcher is random and weird. I also love those weird boxes framing the art on the covers of the 20-cent Marvel comics. They're not as good as go-go checks, but they'll do. Great write up, Hoosier X. Note to self: must pick up more early issues of Marvel Team-Up.
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