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Post by Farrar on Dec 1, 2017 14:10:22 GMT -5
5 year old me may not know about comic books yet but i was drawing away in family books we had. Mom hated me doodling but when i saw a blank spot i thought it needed filling. A cartoonist before i even knew what a cartoonist was! Oh, I can relate. I was always drawing from a young age--copying Toucan Sam (from the Froot Loops cereal box), Sugar Bear (Sugar Crisp cereal box), the Beatles as they appeared on the TV cartoons, Rocky and Bullwinkle...so of course when I started to read DC and Marvel, I started to draw superheroes. So one day, when I was still in grade school, my class went to a well-known art museum. On the (public) bus ride home I was doodling superheroes, and a lady complimented my drawing, saying how detailed it was, etc. (the same sort of feedback I often received from my teachers and my friends' parents). When I got home lil' ol' innocent me told my mother about the nice things the lady had said about my sketches, which I then showed her. Well, she blew up: "You've just been to the museum! How can you still draw that junk? You should be drawing what's in museums!" |
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Post by Farrar on Dec 1, 2017 14:33:00 GMT -5
Adventure 365Jim Shooter, at 17, is shaking things up nicely. We don’t even notice that with Superboy as part of a five-hero team, the Legionnaires don’t have to endure most of the travails they endure on their Mission Impossible-style exploit. (Which, come to think of it, was pretty popular then.) He knew that smaller teams were much better for story quality; you can’t do a space epic every issue. Also, fwiw I've read in a few Shooter interviews that it was Curt Swan (via Mort) who asked Shooter not to include so many characters in his stories. World’s Finest 173Loved this issue! Don’t know if it still holds up, but hell, how well does anything 50 years old hold up? ☺ Still mystified by Kralik, who was supposedly the foe Superman feared more than any other. I figured I’d missed this guy along the way, but it turned out that, despite a flashback that showed Superman defeating Kralik in a showdown on an alien world, this was actually his one and only appearance. Shooter, who wrote the story,was fond of introducing backstories that had never been seen on panel -- this WF story is a great example. Also, as I'm sure we'll discuss in this thread in mid-2018, he did that first Mordru story, in which the Legion explicitly refers to a history with Mordru--but which was never shown in previous issues. As a reader back then I disliked this device and felt cheated. IMO if it hadn't been shown on panel, or been referred to in a footnote or something, then it didn't happen.  |
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Post by Farrar on Dec 1, 2017 14:45:33 GMT -5
December 1967Marvel:
Bought these two off the stands. Couldn't manage to find the X-Men comic, however.   DC: I too had the aforementioned Adventure #365 back then. I see that Mike gives it release date as December 26th, which absolutely fits with my recollection that I received/read this particular issue at my paternal grandmother's house, when we kids were staying with her for a few days post-Christmas. My grandmother always gave us money to buy things like candy or coloring books; in my case I would buy at least one comic  and plenty of candy. 
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Post by Farrar on Dec 1, 2017 15:09:11 GMT -5
And finally, since I am strolling down memory lane, here's a comic that I saw on the stands but didn't buy back in December 1967.  Yes, it's the WF comic that Prince Hal mentioned. Now WF wasn't a series I was particularly interested in, but I had written a letter about a previous issue a few months earlier. So when I saw this comic in the candy store I flipped it open to the letter page. And there was my letter! I couldn't believe it. Now for some reason--maybe I had already spent what little money I had on me on the Avengers, or the FF comic, or both? Or maybe I wanted an egg cream or some more licorice instead--at any rate, I didn't buy this WF comic. And when I did have some more money, this issue must have been gone. So I never had this issue back then. As the decades passed I forgot the exact issue number, but thanks to online resources (blogs that reprint lettercols; GCD) I managed to narrow down the range of issues the letter appeared in, but not the exact issue. So a few years ago when my cousin said he was attending a comic con with his son (a major manga fan) and he inquired if I wanted anything, I asked him to take a look at World's Finest comics #171-#180 back issues and check the letter pages. Which is what he did--and finally, he found the right issue! So now I do own a copy--for somewhat more than the original 12 cents cover price  |
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Post by brutalis on Dec 1, 2017 15:49:08 GMT -5
5 year old me may not know about comic books yet but i was drawing away in family books we had. Mom hated me doodling but when i saw a blank spot i thought it needed filling. A cartoonist before i even knew what a cartoonist was! Oh, I can relate. I was always drawing from a young age--copying Toucan Sam (from the Froot Loops cereal box), Sugar Bear (Sugar Crisp cereal box), the Beatles as they appeared on the TV cartoons, Rocky and Bullwinkle...so of course when I started to read DC and Marvel, I started to draw superheroes. So one day, when I was still in grade school, my class went to a well-known art museum. On the (public) bus ride home I was doodling superheroes, and a lady complimented my drawing, saying how detailed it was, etc. (the same sort of feedback I often received from my teachers and my friends' parents). When I got home lil' ol' innocent me told my mother about the nice things the lady had said about my sketches, which I then showed her. Well, she blew up: "You've just been to the museum! How can you still draw that junk? You should be drawing what's in museums!" Sounds just like my time growing up. Toucan Sam, Tony the Tiger, Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer as a wee little one and as i got older turned towards rocket ships and dinosaurs. Once i discovered comic books it was all superhero and super-villain slug fests. By high school all my teachers knew of my comic love and drawing and if I ever turned in a test without something drawn on them they would return them ungraded until I drew on them. Of course the parents never understood my comic and art enthusiasm so they were always on me about getting outside and playing (which i did plenty of) with the other kids in the neighborhood. I was always carrying a notebook full of drawings everywhere i went and sketching or doodling all of the time. Only one who ever really understood was my great great grandfather who i had only ever seen once when i was around 7 years old and he was in his late 70's. He was retired and living in St. Petersburg Florida and knew/spoke just a little bit of broken English. He and his wife were Swiss/German and escaped from Germany as Hitler was coming into power. But with only one visit from there on he would send me sketches, doodles and other art he would draw every month by mail. Still have those and even a couple of oil paintings he did. He loved the American West and cowboys and drawing the countryside so i must have inherited my artistic love from him. Thanks Great Grandpa Beyner!!! |
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 1, 2017 16:50:12 GMT -5
And finally, since I am strolling down memory lane, here's a comic that I saw on the stands but didn't buy back in December 1967. Yes, it's the WF comic that Prince Hal mentioned. Now WF wasn't a series I was particularly interested in, but I had written a letter about a previous issue a few months earlier. So when I saw this comic in the candy store I flipped it open to the letter page. And there was my letter! I couldn't believe it. Now for some reason--maybe I had already spent what little money I had on me on the Avengers, or the FF comic, or both? Or maybe I wanted an egg cream or some more licorice instead--at any rate, I didn't buy this WF comic. And when I did have some more money, this issue must have been gone. So I never had this issue back then. As the decades passed I forgot the exact issue number, but thanks to online resources (blogs that reprint lettercols; GCD) I managed to narrow down the range of issues the letter appeared in, but not the exact issue. So a few years ago when my cousin said he was attending a comic con with his son (a major manga fan) and he inquired if I wanted anything, I asked him to take a look at World's Finest comics #171-#180 back issues and check the letter pages. Which is what he did--and finally, he found the right issue! So now I do own a copy--for somewhat more than the original 12 cents cover price I love the stories of Holy Grail Comics! So glad you finally found it, farrar. As you point out, in those days, you were often faced with desperate choices; there was no guarantee a comic would be there when you could next afford to come back. There was no "holding" a comic with the proprieter of a candy store! Also, your info on Shooter's penchant for introducing characters as if they'd already been part of the continuity is spot-on. I should have associated that with him before the Kralik story, because he had also done it with the Fatal Five in their first appearance. And when I first saw Mordru, I finally had enough older issues to at least be able to piece together some sort of continuity... and it sure didn't include him! I wonder if Shooter did it just to screw with other nerdy 13-year-olds' heads. And thanks also for the note about Curt Swan, who did himself and the readers a favor by reining in the young Shooter, who might well have been planning space epics with dozens of heroes and villains for every issue. (Maybe Curt had been talking to Mike Sekowsky.) |
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 1, 2017 16:55:11 GMT -5
5 year old me may not know about comic books yet but i was drawing away in family books we had. Mom hated me doodling but when i saw a blank spot i thought it needed filling. A cartoonist before i even knew what a cartoonist was! Oh, I can relate. I was always drawing from a young age--copying Toucan Sam (from the Froot Loops cereal box), Sugar Bear (Sugar Crisp cereal box), the Beatles as they appeared on the TV cartoons, Rocky and Bullwinkle...so of course when I started to read DC and Marvel, I started to draw superheroes. So one day, when I was still in grade school, my class went to a well-known art museum. On the (public) bus ride home I was doodling superheroes, and a lady complimented my drawing, saying how detailed it was, etc. (the same sort of feedback I often received from my teachers and my friends' parents). When I got home lil' ol' innocent me told my mother about the nice things the lady had said about my sketches, which I then showed her. Well, she blew up: "You've just been to the museum! How can you still draw that junk? You should be drawing what's in museums!" I used to draw, too! The comics definitely awakened that interest in me, and like you two, brutalis and Farrar, I became a serial doodler, an inveterate scribbler. My school notes were more doodles than handwriting. (Still are, truth be told.) I think I eventually began to copy John Buscema more than anyone. Sorry about your art critic, mom, btw... Been there. Experienced that. |
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Post by Farrar on Dec 5, 2017 22:27:25 GMT -5
... Also, your info on Shooter's penchant for introducing characters as if they'd already been part of the continuity is spot-on. I should have associated that with him before the Kralik story, because he had also done it with the Fatal Five in their first appearance. And when I first saw Mordru, I finally had enough older issues to at least be able to piece together some sort of continuity... and it sure didn't include him! For me, the Fatal Five example is a bit different; in the Fatal Five's case, there was no mention in that story that the Legion had ever previously encountered the FF. It was just that the FF were known intergalactic criminals. And in fact in the story the LSH is shown receiving more info/intelligence about the FF, since they'd never actually met them. But in the Mordru story, it was explicitly stated that the Legion had encountered him before (paraphrasing:"You're a newbie, Shadow Lass, so I'll tell you all about our battle with Mordru and how we trapped him." ). That was something that had never been shown on panel or explained in a footnote (as,say, Stan might have done) or anything. And like you, there came a time when I had amassed a lot of Adventure LSH back issues and knew there had been no such earlier enounter--so back then as a young fan I found that supposed earlier encounter to be akin to cheating. As an adult, however, I applaud Shooter's inventiveness and appreciate what he was trying to do. He saw the LSH's future setting as being wide open, and in interviews has stated he wanted to put forth the feeling "that there was a history of the Legion that you [readers] didn't know." (Legion Companion, 56). |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 3, 2018 12:51:46 GMT -5
The only comic I own that went on sale in January 1968is Huckleberry Hound #33  which I plucked out of a dollar bin a year or so ago. I owned a fair share of books from this month before I sold off my Silver Age collection 15 years ago (all the first issues of books emerging from the split books-Hulk 102, Cap 100, Iron Man/Subby 1 plus Avengers, Thor, Strange Tales and GL 59) but that little issue of Huck ina spaceship is all I have from it now. -M |
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Post by brutalis on Jan 3, 2018 16:29:46 GMT -5
50 years ago January 1968 I own 3 comics in total. Avengers #50 (how appropriate in the 50 years ago thread) and Fantastic Four #73 both bought somewhere around 1978-1980 from my used bookstore turned LCS All About Comics (hey Alan) and Hanna Barbera Super TV Heroes #1 somewhere around the mid 70's when I found it one summer spent with my Grandparents up in Payson because it has Herculoids and Space Ghost of course!!!!
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Post by Farrar on Jan 3, 2018 17:25:26 GMT -5
Bought at the time, hot off the racks!
Marvel:  Avengers #50: I liked the John Buscema pencils/inks, but I was very disappointed that my favorite characters, Wanda and Pietro, didn't appear in this issue. They'd been captured by Magneto in #47 and had spent the next couple of issues on the sidelines, and now this. Fantastic Four #73: Another disappointment for me, as this issue's story continued from the current Daredevil issue, and I wasn't reading Daredevil. So this story seemed like an interruption to me and was "meh". I wanted to see more of the FF's interpersonal dynamics that I'd seen in the previous 4 issues: Ben's problems with his appearance; Sue's pregnancy; Johnny and Crystal. X-Men #42: Since I'd just started reading the X-Men comic a couple of months earlier, I wasn't invested in Professor X; he'd struck me as being just a stodgy, older, and not very interesting character. His death here, while moving, didn't matter much to me. But despite the spotty distribution back then, starting with #42 and over the next couple of years I managed to get every X-Men issue off the stands, through #66 (when the book was canceled). Marvel Collectors' Item Classics #14: This issue reprinted FF #20. Sure I also read the other features included in MCIC--Iron Man, Hulk, Dr. Strange--but it was the FF that was the draw for me here. |
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Post by Farrar on Jan 3, 2018 17:54:04 GMT -5
DC published in Jan. 1968:The only DC I got off the racks in January 1968 was Adventure #366. I was a Legion fanatic. 
Bought a year or so later:
Action #360I was still reading a lot of my cousins' DCs and I recall first seeing the cover below in the house ads. The game motif fascinated me and there were so many characters here--there seemed to be such a rich history here. But I never came across this issue at the candy stores in my neighborhood.  One fine summer day a year or so later, while walking to a park in another neighborhood with my father and sibs, I saw this guy on the street selling comics--and he had this comic! I don't recall the price, I think it was more than the original 25 cents--but I'll never forget begging my dad to buy this comic for me...which he did! I was in heaven. This comic didn't disappoint. It compiled several of the serialized Supergirl stories from Action #278-285 and presented a saga throughout which Supergirl (then in her "Superman's secret weapon" phase) lost her powers/memory, lived as a non-superperson for awhile, regained her powers/memory, and finally, was pubicly introduced to the world. It was a classic coming-of-age/quest for self-knowledge epic. I remember being entranced by all the various characters and I loved how the story unfolded over several "chapters." This issue remains one of the treasured comic books from my childhood.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 4, 2018 13:22:47 GMT -5
January 1968This first month of the new year was in many ways the beginning of my life as a bona fide comics collector. I finally had access to enough stores that I was almost always able to find whatever comics I wanted (partially thanks to the new distribution deal that allowed Marvel to expand its line), was finally able to buy several consecutive issues of titles (a huge help toward being a knowledgeable fan), and I usually had enough money in my pocket to buy what I wanted. My grandmother and my uncle usually slipped me a couple of dollars a month, I parceled out the “emergency dollar” my mother gave me to keep in my wallet (which she knew I spent on candy and soda and, I think, comics, too). Look at this wonderful month: Five Marvels (.60); 17 DC’s ($2.04); one Gold Key – Turok -- (.12); and two Warrens (.90). Grand total? $3.66. Did it get any better than being able to dive in headfirst to the Marvel Universe?    Cap 100! (I have the cover – one of Kirby’s all-timers -- on some kind of wooden board hanging above me as I type.) Avengers 50! (no cheapo “anniversary” issues back then) The team a t one of its lowest points, a dynamic Buscema cover with a swashbuckling bowslinger swooping in to take on a Titan. Spider-Man 59, with its appeals to action… and action, courtesy Jazzy Johnny Romita.    Not Brand Echh 7, a return to MAD’s comic book days that was wildly irreverent toward the normally serious world of super-heroes, meta-comics in the pre-Gaiman Era; And X-Men 42. What a time to jump on! I began my study of classic movies with my first-ever Famous Monsters (#49), and got a first dose of “adult” horror in Eerie 14.   And at DC, it was heaven on earth! I finally see an issue of Tomahawk (Huzzah!) and become a fan of the comic I always knew I’d be a fan of if I could only find it.    And for once, I can find more than just one or two new titles a week thanks to the two great candy stores I would hit on my walk from school to the bus. And what a nice month it was: Showcase featuring the Creeper; Doom Patrol, another new favorite;
  
Batman 200; Teen Titans with that unforgettable Cardy cover; Bomba (!) What the heck was a Bomba? The Spectre (with Neal Adams and Wildcat!); Validus electrocuting Superboy in Adventure (I'm with you, Farrar !); and the usual derring-do in Aquaman (the first I’d seen in over a year); Action; Detective; JLA (with both GA and J’onn J’onzz); Superboy, with his new younger parents (a change I didn’t care for, actually); World’s Finest; Hunter’s Hellcats; Sgt. Rock and Johnny Cloud and Unit 3 in OAAW! Man, the hits just kept on comin’! The only comic I don’t recall seeing that I would have grabbed was Strange Adventures; I’d have to wait till February to find one of those. All in all, though, one of my best months, and the start of a bunch of beautiful friendships!
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zilch
Full Member
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Post by zilch on Jan 4, 2018 18:24:44 GMT -5
My 100th Comic!
"What!?!" astute readers of my posts (i know someone's reading them... *crickets*) yell in protest. "You only posted one frickin' comic in November! How can you already have a hunert of 'em by January??" (my readership also is from the Bronx, apparently) 'Lemme 'splain....
Our neighbor was a milkman who drove a semi from grocery store to grocery store, and my mom would do their laundry for a couple of galleons of milk that would "fall off the truck" to coin a phrase. Back then, they came in nifty steel milk crates that would stack up in their back yard. We used them to build forts (imagine steel forts!), stepladders out of empty cisterns (imagine bunker forts!!) and storage.
I was getting comics by then, but my memories of early childhood are non-existent before age 7 or so, but i do remember reading some stuff, and only posting about stuff i definitely remember getting off the stands as opposed to flea markets or used book stores.
I definitely remember reading Not Brand Echh in the quarter size, but also remember reading this one. More super-heroes (although parody or satire, but what's a 7 year old to care?) for the coin, i would imagine.
I remember reading Spectre #3 on a family vacation to Minnesota later that summer, so we probably got it off the racks and i took it with me.
I took one of those steel milk cases and rounded up all the comics in the house and put them in one, filling it exactly with 100 comics (although some of those might be Famous Monsters of Filmlands that my brother bought). On top of the pile was my 100th comic.
And one of my favorites of all time... Tomahawk #115! Dad was a voracious reader of Western paperbacks and probably picked this out thinking i would like it and boy was he right!!!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2018 0:43:18 GMT -5
Superman #202 I was going through my 2 long boxes and 1 short box of comics and discovered that I have about close to 150-230 odd comics and Superman #202 caught my eye and it's came out in January 1968. I had a dollar allowance back then I used .25 cents to buy this book and kept it all these years. I'm thinking of reading tomorrow for good old times sake! It's fairly good shape and it's in a plastic sleeve for protection. I've already working on sorting the comics out and placing them in two piles - one to keep and one to be sold at my local LCS. I'm going there on the 12th of January to deliver books to be sold and get store credit for it. I was a 80 page DC Giant fan back then and still is. Farrar ... thanks for jarring my memory and I do have this book and keeping it.
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and plenty of candy.
