We had a virtual birthday party for David Anthony Kraft, anyway! He had too much cheer for the happiness and friendships to end. So! Peter Benno Gillis also wrote the title which has become signature DAK, The Defender, by Marvel Comics Group. Dwight Zimmerman here became friends in art class back in North Dakota. One day, he put in a year's notice and joined Dave the Dude in the Big Apple! Jim Salicrup? Only the founding Mad Genius Associate. The Spider-Editor of my youth, and uncredited writer of Spidey Super Stories. He's busy with the Papercutz imprints today. Jo Duffy? She makes it over the roped bridge, past the gorilla, and gives DAK a sterling tribute. She pioneered writing and editing at Marvel, wrote Power Man and Iron Fist, Catwoman , and something called Star Wars . She's quick to explain, he basically WAS his Dollar Bill supporting character, dropped into the midst of the Defenders via Valkyrie's attempt to attend Empire State University...camera...

My original first posts were removed due to my own Copyright concerns at the time. When I began publishing here on April 4th, 2009, I had this story, and this photograph from the cosmos, and joy that I was allowing myself the decadent luxury of writing my own Fantastic Four story, while opening the door to my own Integr8d Soul fiction concepts. I felt compelled to try to re-capture something of the wonder I felt as a child, combined with soul-searching stories turned into adventures. Now, I realize those stories didn't have but a small slice of relatable every day stuff, and were more or less homages to the melodramatic comics style. When I included Escondido as my setting for "The Vanishing Wave"- an idea of mine long predating the Marvel Universe, which had only seen 'Iron Man' by 2009, but long after Jim Starlin's original Thanos battles in 1991 that led to people being snapped very temporarily out of existence- I really wanted to reclaim the feeling I...

One thing about reading Yi: your sense of revulsion at the depravations of his enemies will probably enlist your investment in the Admiral overcoming his larger-than-life hardships. His foes, even those with some redeeming quality, repulse decency. They ravage with a very hyper-masculine, testosterone-ridden sort of aggression, but channeled with a lust for devastation, and a desire to break people. It is a time and place in the world with no refuge for those who are not warriors. Their fate is never marked by some romantic exception; when the brave fall, the weak, die. This story drives that point home, as Yi Soon Shin, avenging the destroyed Navy and Korean dead, becomes Hunter and Destroyer. There is no negotiating, only an increasingly-desperate need to out-smart the barbaric invasion, as well as work within the ever-sabotaged coalition of brave Korean forces. Now, Yi maintains his command, his body wrecked by Songo's tortures and fierce combat, while allied with Ming ...

OK, Best Spider-Man Team-Ups of the Years brings you a quartet of comics this time out, so Face Front! First, the two-parter that won the spotlight: 1978’s Best, with the grand prize, Spider-Man with Mighty Thor versus The Living Monolith in Marvel Team Up #70! What epic spectacle, the great in power shaking the city while our point-of-view character, Spidey, at one point hitches a ride on Thor’s hammer, Mjonir! That scene’s homaged on the very cover of Marvel Team-Up #148, where I first caught that tactic with my young eyes. So, Marvel Team Up #68 set up the return of Havok, the X-Man whose origins share the source of power with the villain of our piece, the archeologist who also shares mutant solar-absorbing abilities. But should Havok fall…! Let’s say, Thor is just about the only cavalry who’d have a chance. The 1972 first pairing of the god and the graduate, Marvel Team-Up #7, was my choice of winner in that year! Here, it’s my 2nd favorite Spider-Man/ Thor story. ...

Happy Birthday this week to DAK- Many happy trips more 'round the sun, many howls at the moon! Part One: Man-Wolf! Wait...Man-Wolf? Lue Lyron: So the story goes, one day working as an assistant editor at Marvel Comics Group, you’re walking past Roy Thomas, after hearing you’d get a series to write one day for a while, and he stops his conversation with Steve Englehart, who was visiting from California. Roy just turns casually to you and says, “I’ve been meaning to assign you a book. I have your first series for you to write.” Then he picks right up talking to Steve, while you walk away savoring that bombshell. (DAK’s account of how he and George became the new creators on the ongoing Man-Wolf series appeared in Creatures On The Loose #33, a personable text piece of that sort that delights we readers. This is the team’s introduction in their first color comics issue at Marvel in 1974.) DAK: Everyone likes to use the phrase, “break into comics”- but I like to say, I...

The story goes, a motorcycling youth fresh from a stint traveling with the carnival came to New York City, all of 20, 21, hoping to join Marvel Comics Group. David Anthony Kraft arrived with counter-cultural rebellion and a head full of imagination. His high school years spent reading science fiction paper backs in the back of the classroom led straight to a professional status: he took the initiative and inquired about becoming estate executor to pulp writer Otis Adelbert Kline! (I discovered Kline's initials presented as OAK and wondered if that wasn't the inspiration for the "DAK" nomenclature.) Science fiction writer Leigh Brackett (who famously drafted The Empire Strikes Back script) and Marvel's Stan Lee were also formative influences. Fictioneer also published hard back editions of Jack London, Frank Baum, the autobiography of A.E. van Vogt, Robert E. Howard, and E. Hoffmann Price, a colorful ex-soldier and pulp writer who became an early ...

Marvel Comics Group- in its phase as a slightly anarchic bastion of experimentation and creativity- published the comics reprinted here from 1976 to 1978, Leading off this volume we have the second half of Steve Gerber's run. The Steve Gerber stories are SO creative and smartly-written, with Buscema's competent layouts and nice superhero art. The ideas are so weird and original! The inks vary a bit in their outcome, but overall I like the Buscema/ Janson combo. If anything, a bit more subtlety in the art would better compliment Steve's restless wit and canny observations. These are not standard sorts of stories on the whole- the villains are strange but thought-provoking. Plots are both bizarre and driven by commentary about the modern world and individual struggles for identity in sublime pop form. Steve Gerber continued writing in comics and cartoons; after he authored Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, Man-Thing, and the team-up adventures of the Fantastic Four...