The Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-man Board Game from Milton Bradley greatly expanded my love of Ditko (a name I didn’t know), and the Fantastic Four, and the Spider-man rogues in general. Along with Cap, Iron Man, Thor, and of course Hulk, as mentioned in my previous post, they were my first Marvel Super Heroes. Her cartoon assures Spider-Woman the tenth spot in my quest to discover Marvel Heroes. I saw Matt Murdock and a color-separated image of him thinking about, but not Being, Daredevil. It had to be within a few weeks of that when I saw the macabre cover of Amazing Spider-Man #220, with Moon Knight. I didn't get to read much of it, but I did read the Aunt May back-up story! That cover creeped me out good. I saw it a couple of times and felt like someone had walked across my grave, seeing Spider-Man in a coffin like that. And then, the number of super-heroes I could identify would double in one month. The two issues I schemed to buy for myself each featured a sup...

I watched the Avengers all the way through for only the second time, including its cinema debut the summer of 2012, where we went opening day in Horton Plaza, a reliable ways from our first shawarma experience later that afternoon over on Fourth Avenue. Me being my best friend and band mate, Anji Bug. I love how that one post-credit scene, of any of them, does no more previewing than simply showing they socialize. Now, I’m recalling the first of my Marvel Super Heroes. When I’m three, there’s already Spider-Man, and soon after, the Incredible Hulk, who I probably started watching in his first season. I already could read the TV Guide well enough. G-Force is already my favorite superhero team when I’m four, and I love Goldar from The Space Giants, and will meet the Superfriends just before Ultra Man and Spectre Man. Avengers is so great because at its core, it’s got the four of the first five Marvel heroes I found: Hulk, then Iron Man, Cap, and Thor. I’m less sure about Thor, b...

I gotta be honest. There is definitely an appeal to having an indefinite canonical origin for The Joker. It's just better if he comes out of nowhere, really. Now, Venom is from an era when villain origins could be built to last, and his had a lot of build-up. It's sorta cool that in 1984 you have the first half before you even know you'll have a second half: I'm talking, of course, about Spider-Man's black costume, and the symbiote from space it was revealed to be. In our discussion, aside from a distaste for the inconsistent depictions in Todd McFarlane's earliest issues, my partner Anji was more perturbed at how the alien costume only had a 'heel turn,' because Marvel intended to dispose of the design. Before it was really in any stories, the new black design had evoked a vocal backlash. A few months in, and seeing Spider-Man in action in the new costume was grabbing new fans. Her point though: In Web of Spider-Man #1, the costume/ symbiote h...

It's not where I first noticed it, but going back across Stern's run, this is the first place you see it, when the Black Cat targets purveyors of black market high art. ASM # 232 Mister Hyde stalks the Cobra Then you have Tarantula picking up where Cobra left off. Cobra chasing down Nose Norton was yet another instance: ASM #231. Ned Leeds and Marla Madison are caught in the middle of this one! Then, Ben Urich's caught up when Tarantula picks up the trail. So Norton is sort of the second hunted villain in a story line, in that someone besides the cops or Spidey is tracking a character who we'd agree is not deliberately on the side of angels. But the next storyline has even more villains chasing each other. Will O' the Wisp returns for revenge against Brand and ends up fighting their latest, fatal experiment. Tarantula's transformation scared the heck out of me! I just got to peep a few pages while I waited on Mom at the grocery store. I didn...

I think this may be, by some slim margin, the best cover of Amazing Spider-Man, the Marvel title that began publication in 1963. I'm going to include cover credits, where I know them. This one's by John Romita, Jr. I hope this brings back so many memories, or is at least very fun for fans of Spidey and comics in general! ASM #226 This has got to be one of Marvel's best covers of the decade! From 'Daydreams'- isn't this hilarious? Jonah in a track suit AND smoking a cigar. It's John Romita, Jr. again. You just can't leave out this dramatic second part of the most famous single Spider-Man storyline of the 80s, Kraven's Last Hunt. The mini-series was drawn by Mike Zeck and, I believe, inked by Bob Wiacek. It ran across all three Spider-Man titles, each week! Early Frank Miller cover href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_ADdv9Nhod6AHxpJSSWIHvCuVfdO_McIK0qJQ2DFHZ_hoz2tQXnjIpplC_3Rvfi1mXo3BD...

Barry Windsor-Smith plotted, drew and I believe largely colored a mini-series revival of a late Jack Kirby creation with which Marvel had failed to get a publishing hit. The sensibilities of a new generation, and probably some influence from the release of the movie Blade Runner, inspired the fabled Conan the Barbarian artist to bring his delicate, detailed line. I love how the story's colored cinematically. It's a story of one anachronistic marvel, awake in a world that left him for deactivated scrap, who identifies with marginalized, communal rebels. They risk their lives to survive in the capitalist wasteland of surgical video gamers and patrols of droids who terminate with prejudice. And the head of the company whose scrapyards they pick over? The woman who had Machine Man deactivated, decades before: Sunset Bain. Here's a link to my Tik Toks on Machine Man: @cecildisharoon AI gets out of the box: the retrofuturistic Machine Man (Barry Windsor-Smith art) ...

Denny O'Neil always said he needed to relate to the heroes he wrote, and Tony Stark was more-or-less antithetical to Denny's values as a social crusading Catholic and veteran of the Bay of Pigs conflict in 1962.   But Stark shared a vulnerablity Denny understood intimately.  So, the mainstream superheroics are given human dramatic stakes by Tony's manipulation by O'Neil creation Obadiah Stane, back into sorrows of the bottle and self-loathing.  Now, Denny had two stories to tell, with down-to-Earth James Rhodes standing in as Iron Man.  Now one of Marvel's best-known heroes- maybe the highest-profile character who could be tried this way- was a Black American, but most of all, a loyal friend, with a different approach and skillset to bring to the twenty year-old character.  Here's my podcast, with limited space remaining, quickly hitting the key insights I uncovered.  It really must've been torture to see Tony, and eventually Rhodey, in their personal d...

Some well-done, street-level adventure comics, here. Blind attorney Matt Murdock's the Devil of Hell's Kitchen in Frank Miller's tone-changing run, an echo of the approach in Denny O'Neil's Batman stories a decade earlier.  That's, of course, a Barry Windsor-Smith cover- the coloring gives it away, right? Ever realize Denny pioneered the 'secret identity slip' that keyed in Miller's Born Again  storyline with Mazzuchelli?   Art: Klaus Janson  First as editor, then as writer, here's some insights about what made Denny's Daredevil, click. And on Apple: Creatng Marvels: Daredevil

So, in his initial series, Spider-Man, Denny has the most ideas, initially, bringing in new characters the first few months.  Calypso, Madame Web, Hyrdo Man recur in later stories- such as Todd McFarlane’s smash-selling vehicle Spider=Man title in 1991, and the Madame and Hydro Man even return in cartoons.  Peter even gets an opponent at the Daily Globe, photographer Lance Bannon- before O’Neil abruptly shifts gears and does away with the Daily Globe newspaper era started by Marv Wolfman in a single issue, #210. However, those characters do not generally add much to any ongoing saga.   In some ways, while the stories in the middle do continue into each other, from 213-218, most O’Neil Spider-Man stories exist in an almost stand-alone fashion.  Hydro Man- who suffers from the most glaring flaw in this era’s villains, his obstinate motivation of revenge, like the Wizard in the next issue- does come back for a sort of humorous rivalry with Sandman ov...