Forty Years ago this Month

[Scott Harris]

Johnny Thunder did actually get a third issue, though I've never seen one in the wild. But they do exist. Another great Toth cover:

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

Johnny Thunder did actually get a third issue, though I've never seen one in the wild. But they do exist. Another great Toth cover:

Duly noted. And I found another one of these short run reprint series--G.I. War Tales, which ran for four issues.

[Rob Allen]

I continued buying almost anything Marvel published, and ventured a little further into DC this month.

I remember buying 100-Page Super Spectacular, Amazing Adventures, Spider-Man, Avengers, Beware, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Chamber of Chills, Conan, Creatures on the Loose, Crypt of Shadows, Demon, Fantastic Four, Frankenstein, Hero for Hire, Kamandi, Kull, Marvel Feature, Marvel Premiere, Marvel Team-Up, Night Nurse, Secret Origins, Shazam, Spoof, Sub-Mariner, Swamp Thing, Sword of Sorcery, Tarzan, Thor, Tomb of Dracula, Weird Worlds, and Werewolf by Night.

That's 23 Marvel and 9 DC. It was a few more months before I started reading the mainstream DC superhero titles, Warren & Skywald magazines, and National Lampoon.

Standout comic of the month: Conan, "The Song of Red Sonja". Like benday-dot, I've always considered this one of the best single comic books ever published. Barry Smith drew, inked and colored it, which was and still is unusual in the industry. This issue showed that he had completely mastered his craft.

[T GUy]

Johnny Thunder did actually get a third issue, though I've never seen one in the wild. But they do exist. Another great Toth cover:

Been there, done that, got the comicbook.

[Scott Harris]

January, 1973. Comics I own that were on sale this month:

Action Comics #422
Avengers #110
Brave and the Bold #106
Captain America #160
The Cat #3
Chili #22
Combat Kelly #6
The Demon #7
Doc Savage #4
House of Secrets #106
Jughead #214
Life with Archie #131
Marvel Spotlight #9
Marvel Team-Up #8
Our Army at War #255
Our Fighting Forces #142
Phantom Stranger #24
Shanna the She-Devil #3
Star Spangled War Stories #168
Strange Adventures #241
Supergirl #4
Superman #262
Jimmy Olsen #157
Thor #210
Witching Hour #29

Comic that means the most to me is definitely Avengers #110:




This was the last issue I needed to complete my full run of Avengers, so it holds a special place in my memory.

Cover of the month goes to House of Secrets #106:




Comic I would like to own that I currently don't is Wonder Woman #205, which has proven elusive at reasonable prices.

[Slam_Bradley]

Still before I started buying my own comics.

The only one I think I own in original is Wanted #7.

I've read most of the stuff that has been reprinted over the years.

Pretty sure that we had a copy of Archie's Joke Book #182. It rings bells.

[dan bailey]

I bought Monster Madness #2 at the time. That's it, from what I can tell, though Doom Patrol #123 might've come home with me as well.

As for what I own these days --

100-Page Super Spectacular #15
Astonishing Tales #17
Cat #3
Challengers of the Unknown #79
Combat Kelly #6
Ghost Stories #36
Gun-Slinger #2
Gunhawks #4
Legion of Super-Heroes #2
Our Fighting Forces #142
Rawhide Kid #110
Star Spangled War Stories #168
Strange Adventures #241
Sub-Mariner #60
Trigger Twins #1
Wanted, the World's Most Dangerous Villains #7

[berk]

The only one I bought at the time was Fear #13, which I think is near the beginning of Gerber's run on Man-Thing. Lots of other great comics out that month, though - Demon #7, for example.

[Polar Bear]

I own:

• Avengers #110
• Defenders #5
• Fear #13 (Man-Thing)
• Fantastic Four #133
• Hero for Hire #8
• Korak #51
• Tarzan #218

I used to own Demon #7 but have sent it to a better home.

I own reprints of Amazing Spider-Man #119, Brave & Bold #106, & Marvel Team-Up #8.

I wish I owned Daredevil #98 (Gerber), Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #10 (Alex Toth), & Kamandi #4 (Kirby).

Cover of the month: Gold Key is killing the competition on covers, especially with Dagar the Invincible #3. Check out the copy at the bottom of the painting:



I mean, who doesn't want to read a comic about that, right? I may need to add this run to my want list just for the covers (thus violating my primary 2013 Classic Comics goal right off the top...).

[MWGallaher]

That month, I bought:
100-Page Super Spectacular DC-15 : I still liked Superboy, and I'd grab almost any Super-Spec. What a value!

Astonishing Tales #17: Supporting character Gemini was visually intriguing. I remember being very curious about the footnote referring to his introductory story ("The Brothers Link", a quickly aborted feature that had debuted as a backup months earlier).

Brave and Bold #106: Pure gold. Haney, Aparo, Batman & GA, plus the magnetic B&B "question mark" guest star!

Challengers of the Unknown #79 : I was still a sucker for a movie monster-inspired cover, like this faux Kong.

Crazy #2 : I had seen and coveted some issues of Not Brand Ecch years earlier, and jumped at the chance to see these reprints.

Defenders #5 : This was my second issue of this series, which I would stick with to the end.

Doom Patrol #123 : I ate this one up! Absolutely loved this team from first sight.

Legion of Super-Heroes #2 : Legion stories seemed so substantial and involving. I wanted more like this.

Phantom Stranger #24 : I had quickly learned to love Aparo, and this was some of his best.

Wanted, the World's Most Dangerous Villains #7 : I was intrigued by these unknown heroes Johnny Quick and Hour-Man. Johnny Quick would prove to be a fairly frequently reprinted feature in this era, as I recall, and I remember developing something of a grudge against him for some odd reason. It later astonished me to learn that this feature had significantly outlasted The (Golden Age) Flash, of which it seemed like a sorry imitation to me at the time.

Wonder Woman #205I felt like I was on the ground floor with WW since I'd been there for the renewal of the traditional version an issue earlier.

Interesting to see that 6 out of the 11 comics I bought were reprints. I had absolutely no prejudice against them, and probably appreciated the value in self-contained stories, since at the time, almost every Marvel I picked up seemed to be a chapter in an ongoing serial that I wasn't up on.

Favorite Issue of the Month: Phantom Stranger, by far! One of my favorite runs of any comic, ever.

Cover of the Month: Aparo's PS #24 cover gets this nod from me, too, but I also quite like the dramatic cover to Falling in Love #140.

Comic I'd Most Like to Have: Supernatural Thrillers #3. I read part of this issue in the store, waiting to be picked up after a movie, but I didn't have the money to buy it. Never did get a copy, I don't think. I remember being very attracted by that awesome logo: "Valley of the WORM"!

[Slam_Bradley]

Wanted, the World's Most Dangerous Villains #7 : I was intrigued by these unknown heroes Johnny Quick and Hour-Man. Johnny Quick would prove to be a fairly frequently reprinted feature in this era, as I recall, and I remember developing something of a grudge against him for some odd reason. It later astonished me to learn that this feature had significantly outlasted The (Golden Age) Flash, of which it seemed like a sorry imitation to me at the time.

I wonder if one of the reasons that they reprinted a lot of Johnny Quick stories is that Mort Meskin's art was a cut above the Golden Age norm.

[Shellhead]

The only ones that I bought at the time:

Doom Patrol #123: My first issue of Doom Patrol, and last until the late '80s. Never forgot AVM Man, though.

Fantastic Four#133: I still have this issue, though the cover has been missing for a long time.

Stuff I bought (and then sold) later:

Conan #25
Defenders #5
Hero for Hire #8

[dan bailey]

Comic I'd Most Like to Have: Supernatural Thrillers #3. I read part of this issue in the store, waiting to be picked up after a movie, but I didn't have the money to buy it. Never did get a copy, I don't think. I remember being very attracted by that awesome logo: "Valley of the WORM"!

I would've bought this as a back issue a couple of years after the fact, & I still distinctly remember certain panels in color. (I've got it right now, the GCD tells me, in B&W reprint form in Kull & the Barbarians #1). All things considered, I thought it held up quite nicely in comparison to the much more detailed adaptation that in retrospect was likely the first OGN I ever bought, Jan Strnad & Richard Corben's Bloodstar from Morning Star Press. (Since my copy is long gone, I'm going to assume that those now sell for thousands & thousands of dollars. I don't have the heart to look.)

I did the same -- acquired it a couple of years later, that is -- with this month's Journey Into Mystery #4, as it happens, because it featured an adapation of Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark," pencilled by Gene Colan & inked by Dan Akins. Unfortunately, I just discovered via a check of the GCD that contrary to my expectations, it appears not to have been reprinted, even though its inspiration, Robert Bloch's "Shambler from the Stars" (pencilled by Jim Starlin, inked by Tom Palmer) from JIM #3, is in the all-reprint B&W Masters of Terror #1, as is another HPL story, the Barry Smith-drawn "Terrible Old Man" (Tower of Shadows #3). Two other HPL adapations, Johnny Craig's "The Music of Erich Zann" (Chamber of Darkness #5 -- probably, as I've noted previously, my initial exposure to Lovecraft in any form, since I bought that comic new in 1970 & wouldn't have picked up my fateful copy of The Dunwich Horror at the used store in Texarkana some 3 years later) & Tom Palmer's "Pickman's Model" (Tower of Shadows #9) grace the second & final issue ... but not "Haunter."

No "Haunter" sequel (Bloch's "The Shadow From the Steeple," drawn by Rich Bucker, from JIM #5), either. Gah! Time to modify the ever-expanding want list yet again!

Offhand, I'm wondering if those are the only two distinctly Lovecraftian adaptations from '70s Marvels that might never have been reprinted ...

(Why, yes, I did work on -- I don't think I ever quite finished it -- an article on Marvel's HPL adapations for a planned Lovecraft one-shot that never came out back in the mid-'70s ... I suppose that's sort of obvious.

[MRP]

Let's see...

I know I had Combat Kelly #6 as a kid (it was the first war comic I ever read). It came from a stash of comics my neighbor kept for her grandkids, but gave to me when they outgrew comics-so I got the book in '77 or so not when it came out. I got Heroes for Hire 8 form the same woman.

When I was actively collecting in high school and afterwards (before I sold off most of it when I moved from CT to Ohio) I had:
Avengers #110
Cap #160
Cat #3
Defenders #5
Iron Man #57
Mr. Miracle #13

I still have collected editions of some of those but not the originals.

The only book from this month I currently own in floppy form is Phantom Stranger #24.

The book I would most like to own and my cover of the month is Dagar the Invincible #3



though Conan #25 is on my want list too.

-M

[MDG]

Two other HPL adapations, Johnny Craig's "The Music of Erich Zann" (Chamber of Darkness #....

I'd love to see a collection of Craig's post-EC four-color work, but I don't think he did enough for any one company to make it worthwhile. (No, I don't care about Iron Man)