No DCs for me, but I have these two Marvel classics, Avengers #25 and Fantastic Four #48, bought a few years ago. I owned them as back issues many years ago but the FF was coverless, so I never actually knew what the cover looked like until a few years ago. 



I also have Fantasy Masterpieces #1, bought a few years ago (LOL--"Stevey Ditko"?)  

I know there aren't many of us old enough to have bought comics off the newsstands 50 years ago, but I hope no one minds if I continue to add my 12 cents. It gives me a chance to go down Memory Lane (courtesy Mike's Amazing website) and recall a golden time.

Purchased that month:



Batman 178: The cover far outstrips the interior art, but, wow, what a cover! Can’t do much better than Kane and Anderson.





JLA 42: A Marvel-style hero acting in a most un-DC way. I thought Metamorpho was cool for going his own way.





WF 155: The usual WF/Weisinger stuff. It all came down to a game of “round up the usual suspects” to figure out which member of the cast was acting in the ridiculous manner required by a convoluted plot. But I kept coming back every month! And I was one of the 11-year-old kids who fell for the notion tat the Editors’ Round Table was a sincere way for Mort to give us all a taste of the treasures of the DC vaults and not just a way to put lipstick on a pig and reprint old stories so that he wouldn’t have to pay for new ones about Green Arrow or Aquaman.






OAAW 164: Hadda have the annuals!

(Loved Mlle. Marie!)



Superman 184: About every other month, Superman was somehow deprived of his powers and had to prove he was more than just 190 pounds of muscle-bound beefcake. Usually these were fun, b/c Superman proved he had a brain.






Adventure 341: Awesome follow-up to the war against Computo, with another great cover, this one straight out of a monster movie. Brainiac 5 goes all Reed Richards at the end, with a Legion version of the ultimate nullifier that creates an anti-matter “force thing” that eliminates the dastardly Computo. But not before the death of one of Triplicate Girl’s bodies and the destruction of much of Metropolis. Marvel-type stuff here, with a continuing story, an earth-threatening villain, and a batch of heroes in battle against him/it.





Wasn’t buying Marvel much at all, but I should’ve been, b/c a certain humongous entity showed up for the first time:

I have a few back issues from this month:

Aquaman #26
Doom Patrol #102
Mystery in Space #106

I have many Jan. 1966 comics in reprint form in various Showcases and Essentials, but the only physical comic book I currently own from 1/66 is Adventure #342, which I bought a few years ago when I was getting back into comics.
Prince Hal's eloquent post about the beauties and intricacies of this story is spot on (no surprise ). The public vote was a GREAT piece of storytelling. It's a fascinating look at what were perceived as  "male" (unsympathetic, unemotional) and "female" (more sympathetic; suckers for romance) traits back then.  As Hal noted, most of the women voted in favor of exonerating Star Boy, with the very assertive Saturn Girl the only female who voted against Star Boy. This was in keeping with her strong, no-nonsense personality at that time. The invulnerable guys--Superboy, Mon-El and Ultra Boy--voted in favor of Star Boy, but so did the non-invulnerable Lighting Lad, who'd been through so much (dying, losing an arm). Again, in keeping with his personality that had been established at that time and his experiences on the battlefront. He had a different perspective due to his physical traumas.

Also interesting is that Dream Girl, who hadn't been seen since issue #317, appears in this story and it seems natural and not overly-contrived. That's the thing about the Legion, it had a great sense of its own past. This was fostered in part by the letter columns, in which readers regularly referred back to the older issues, even from years earlier.  And even though Star Boy is expelled here, he will show up in the next issue.
 
I wonder if this story was directly inspired by any specific real life trials/controversies/events about self-defense and the like going on at that particular time (I haven't come across anything specific from then that would fit the bill though).

February, 1965



I have quite a few of the books that came out this month, but can only recall buying two from the newsstand back then.

Don’t know why, except that I may not have had as much spare change as I did in other months.



I do remember that I wanted one issue in particular because I had seen ads for it the month before: 



The thing was, I wasn’t a real fan of the Flash I think I may have read only one of his regular comics and knew him mostly from the JLA, but I know that I wanted this issue because of the layout and the Johnny Quick story.



You had to love the annuals that showed the title character beckoning you to take a peek, as Superman 183 had just a few months before.

 




This design popped up every so often on the DC Giants, with Batman and Sgt. Rock later getting on board.





The Johnny Quick story made me want to read it because I’d never heard of him and his costume caught my eye right away. I loved the idea that the annuals revealed the past and helped you feel like more of a part of what was a long tradition. To an 11-year-old kid, learning about what seemed to be classic secrets unearthed just for us (from 20 or 30 years ago!) made the annuals irresistible.




The other book I bought that month was Adventure 343.



I liked the cover, which simultaneously brought you up to date if you were a new reader while also rewarded the Legion fans by recognizing continuity, which as we know, was a rare bird at DC in those days.





However, it was the back-up story that I remember reading. Again, I was sucker for those “Hall of Fame Classics” that Weisinger used here and in World’s Finest. He was saving money by reprinting old stories that he did not have to pay rights for, but at least he was picking important stories like the one I was mesmerized by in February 1966. It was “Pete Ross’ Super-Secret,” the story in which Pete learned that his best friend, Clark Kent, was also Superboy, thanks to a flash of lightning.






Two things: Pete was one of the noblest characters in the Superboy saga, even though at times Superboy was cruel to Pete as only Kal-El could be to his friends and family. He never revealed the secret, and I don’t think was ever even tempted to IIRC. Pete often helped Superboy preserve his secret without Superboy’s realizing it and really distinguished himself when Mordru came to Smallville a couple of years later.



Author Edmond Hamilton’s paean to friendship and loyalty was perfect for the intended audience without being saccharine. Pete proved to be a foxhole-worthy friend. (I hope later DC revisionist history didn’t screw with this.) 

It had originally run five years previously in Superboy 90 as just the third story, and was not even blurbed on the cover, odd given its significance.

Here’s what really got me: I can remember how bad I had felt for Pete in a story I had read in Superboy 106 (1963)...


when Superboy “tested” Pete’s worthiness to be his successor by pretending he had died. Who knows whether Hamilton was aware of the irony created by the events of the earlier story? Probably not. (I don’t remember if there was a reference to the story in #90 in the story in #106.)

The latter was probably just one of those moments when Mort said, “Here’s a grabby cover: make up a story to fit it.”

However unwittingly, Hamilton cast a shadow over Superboy and bathed Pete Ross in glory, and it made for great melodrama and even naturalism, as we saw Superboy acting immaturely and hurtfully toward Pete and Pete acting in quite the opposite way, the unsung hero of Superboy comics in the Silver Age.

FEBRUARY 1966 I now own....

Action Comics #336
Adventure Comics #343
Superboy #128
Superman #185
Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane #64
Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #92


In Reprints...
Amazing Spider-Man #36
Atom #24
Avengers #27
Detective Comics #350
Fantastic Four #50
Green Lantern #44
Hawkman #13
House of Mystery #158
Metal Men #19
Tales of Suspense #77
Tales to Astonish #79 (Hulk only)
Wonder Woman #161