Purchased in March 1984, back when there was still snow all through the winter. I was still buying my comics from Heroes' World, as I recall, and needed to get a monthly money order in U.S. dollars from the post office! I don't miss everything from the past.

Arak #34 : Making his way to Damascus, Arak meets a djinn in the desert. I reviewed that a bit earlier in another thread. 

Batman #372 : another very good issue of the Moench-Newton-Alcala team. It's about boxing, and it was funny to see how both Bruce and Alfred enjoy the sport and defended it.

Conan #159 : Generic S&S story. Buscema cover (pencils and ink).

Conan the King #23 : Conan acts like a tyrant following the apparent death of his firstborn. Convinced that a certain hostile baron is in cahoots with the murderers he has him tried by ordeal (thrown in a river, all tied up, to see if he will float). Regaining a moment of decency, Conan dives after the baron sinks (which should prove he was guilty). I loved the way that even our hero can be depicted as unfair, irrational and even cruel when angered.

Legion of super-heroes #312 : after plenty of cosmic-shattering menaces, we deal with a straightforward police operation! It was quite welcome.

Secret Wars #3 : I don't think Jim Shooter liked the X-Men very much. In this issue Spider-Man trashes the team, and the Wasp would do it as well a while later. Surprisingly (to me), Shooter didn't get the "voice" of the X-characters... He was very good when it came to writing just about every other Marvel character, but with the mutants it always felt wrong. Cyclops was too much of a whiner, Wolverine showed no evolution from his first appearance... I never understood why that was. Perhaps only Chris Claremont knew how those characters actually clicked by that time.

New Mutants #17 : The pink-dressed Hellions are still here. The idea of a competing school for mutants with its own super-team was good, but it wasn't used as successfully as it could have been. Plus, their powers were boring for the most part.

Savage Sword of Conan #100 : remarkable in that it's not an anniversary issue. Under Roy Thomas, this mag reaching its hundredth issue would have been a big deal, as happened with issue #200. But this time? Nah. There was a minimal investment in SSoC; it sold, and that was that.

Tales of the Teen Titans #43 : The Judas contract continues, and it is an excellent super-hero adventure. The backstory of Deathstroke made him an interesting villain. (I don't care for him as an "anti-hero". He's a bad guy).

Thor #344 : Focus on Balder the Brave, whose return from the dead wasn't an easy experience. But he would come out of his funk eventually!

X-Men #182 : Rogue must deal with the part of her that is Carol Danvers. John Romita Jr's art was growing on me more and more!


A pretty small month. Considering the exchange rate, perhaps that was for the best!

Alien Legion #1
Amazing Spider-Man #253
American Flagg #10
Aztec Ace #2
Batman #372
Blue Devil #1
Captain America #294
Coyote #5
Defenders #132
Demon Dreams #2
Detective Comics #539
Doctor Strange #65
Dreadstar #10
Fantastic Four #267
Fury of Firestorm #24
Hercules #4
Jon Sable, Freelance #14
Legion of Super-Heroes #312
Marvel Graphic Novel #10
New Gods #1
Saga of Swamp Thing #25
Starslayer #18
Tales of the Teen Titans #43
Thor #344
Thriller #7
Vanguard Illustrated #5
Zot #1

Not a lot, as I am homing in on graduating high school (ugh.....I'm old! To make it worse, I watched the debut of Little House on the Prairie, 50 years ago!)



After the fact:

I loved Sienkiewicz' art, but also felt the departure of tone was not good for the series.... I saw the bear storyline through to the end, but dropped New Mutants after that.  I recently bought the TPB of the Demon Bear storyline, and felt the whole thing was sort of mediocre.

Bought in May 1984 :

Arak #36, still in Arabian Nights territory.

Batman #374. All I remember from this one is the cover, but as the issue is pencilled by Don Newton it must have had pretty good art.

Conan #161. Oy vey! Now they decide to bring back Fafnir, the red-haired Vanirman who died in issue #20. (They seem to think his name is "Redbeard" most of the time, though.) Fafnir's death had been a poignant moment; bringing him back here is truly pissing on a great story. Oh, and he's now got a demon hand because we've never seen that before in sword and sorcery stories. No way will that paw cause trouble down the line, right?

Conan the King #24, continuing the excellent run by Alan Zelenetz. Conan's first born is supposed to be dead, and his second son is turning out to be very unlike his father. He's not strong, he's not brave; he's however petty, arrogant and very interested in magic. This issue has something we don't see enough of: a magic practitioner who's barely competent. Too often witches and wizards are shown as ominously powerful; here we get the Dollar Store version.

Kull #5, once again with a nice Michael Golden cover. We abandon the double-sized format, but this book stays really good.

Secret Wars #5. The entire concept of this series was silly. I look forward to its redeeming scene, in which Doom steals the Beyonder's power.

Micronauts #59. This is the end of the most recent war against a returned Baron Karza, and it is rather unsatisfying. The good Baron came back from the dead recently and assumed control of the Microverse once again (an event that defies all logic considering how quickly the status quo from issue #1 was reinstated, but one that was welcome as far as the book's interest went). Over the past year, our heroes have done all they could to topple him from his throne once again. However in the past few months the Micronauts/X-Men miniseries came along, a series in which the two teams joined forces with Karza to face the evil Charles Xavier, who was busy destroying the entire microverse with his mental powers. (Apparently, Evil Xavier's powers have omnicidal proportions. Why are evil versions of our heroes always more powerful than their good counterpart?)

That miniseries concluded, we now pick up where we had left... the Micronauts go back to the Microverse after a brief journey to Earth, and they find the place an utter shambles. Karza has killed everyone on Homeworld, or turned them into monsters in his body banks. Good guys and bad guys trade punches, Princess Mari stabs the Baron in the chest...the end.

Wait, that's it? After all this build up, we get Indiana Jones shooting that sword-wielding guy in the market? Yup. The creators of the mag are going away, and we have to finish this.

Then we reset the status quo once more: Mari isn't angry at Rann anymore, Microtron and Biotron are resurrected (or more correctly acceptable copies of them), we get rid of Fireflyte, and the team gets a new ship, the Endeavour II. Now concerning that ship... The original Endeavour was a masterclass in science-fiction vessel design. We could easily have used a new version thereof in this issue. But no, we get the most generic spaceship you can imagine; and furthermore, mention is made of its having variable geometry -weasel words meaning that we won't bother drawing it the same way two issues in a row. Then the tale is over, and the back cover informs us that Mantlo and Guice are leaving the book to work on Swords of the Swashbucklers. There would be an extra issue introducing the new creative team, but talk about a coitus interruptus finale!

New Mutants #19, with the Demon Bear and more Sienkiewicz. An uncommon artistic approach for a super-hero comic, and I for one was delighted!

New Teen Titans #1. I'm pretty sure I bought that, if only because it was a #1 issue (a rarity in those happier days). Both this title and the new Legion of Super-heroes were basically created to give their star artists, George Perez and Keith Giffen, a higher grade of paper; alas, both gentlemen would move away almost immediately.

Sub-Mariner #1. I remember that this mini-series was available at our local tobacconist, so I bought all four issues. It had Banny Bulanadi inking. But beggars can't be choosers.

Savage sword of Conan #102: an excellently-drawn issue, thanks to Gary Kwapisz.

Savage sword of Conan #103: a contender for the title of "worst issue of SSoC ever". It didn't win, but still. (It has Pablo Marcos art, though, if you are interested).

Tales of the Teen Titans #45. I had no idea there was an Aquaboy. Er, I mean Aqualad.

Thor #346-347. Slowly inching toward another Ragnarok, aren't we? More of the famous Simonson run.

Transformers #1. What, this comic was published that late? I could have sworn it was many years earlier! Anyway, I bought it... but not the rest of the miniseries. The art was very lackluster, as I recall, despite a Sienkiewicz cover.

West Coast Avengers #1. First issue... of course, I'd buy it! I might send my kids to college thanks to this book, one day! I always had a soft spot for Hawkeye, too.

X-Men #184. Professor Xavier, once again on his two feet and eager for action, wears a very ugly yellow bodysuit (a fact acknowledged by Nightcrawler in a letter page, somewhere). Here Xavier and the X-Men fight the Black Queen Selene, a character I would have killed as fast as I could if I had been, say, Wolverine. It turns out Wolvie would instead try to kill Rachel when she'd try to to that exact thing a little while later, because "X-Men don't kill". Ah, plot-mandated variable morality...

Then: Nada. To busy getting ready to graduate high school and secure a Navy ROTC scholarship, to go to college Didn't find out I got the scholarship until the day of our National Honor Society Awards night. Pretty much down to the wire, thanks to some health issues that I had to get tested and cleared (all negative, just skewed results on my physical that had to be tested more thoroughly).

Later: