Classic comics: Thirty years ago this month

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Since I am going by cover date of issues and not actual month bought... here is the issues I own on May 1982.

Action Comics 531
Avengers 219
Batman 347
Brave and the Bold 186
Captain America 269
Conan the Barbarian 134
Creepy 137
DC Comics Presents 45
Defenders 107
Detective Comics 514
Incredible Hulk 271
Jonah Hex 60
New Teen Titans 19
Saga of Swamp Thing 1
Uncanny X-Men 157
Warlord 57

[Polar Bear]

Bought and later sold/gave away:
All-Star Squadron #9
Dazzler #15
Iron Man #158
New Teen Titans #19


Bought and kept:
Amazing Spider-Man #228
Avengers #219
Best of DC #24
Captain America #269
Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #3
Defenders #107
Fantastic Four #242
Incredible Hulk #271
Ka-Zar the Savage #14
Marvel Team-Up #117
Marvel Two-in-One #87
New Adventures of Superboy #29
Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #66
Rom #30
Saga of Swamp Thing #1
Uncanny X-Men #157
Weird War Tales #111


Didn't buy at the time, but later acquired as a back issue or in a collection:
Cerebus #38
Daredevil #182
Detective Comics #514
Legion of Super-Heroes #287
Marvel Fanfare #2
Moon Knight #19
Wonder Woman #291

Personal pick of the month: Avengers #219, with Moondragon having set herself up as a goddess on the planet Ba-Bani and a really, really small team of Avengers trying to stop her ... so that the planet could be at war again. This issue really captured my imagination at the time--I postulated that some of the Ba-Bani had seen the Avengers and been inspired, and that a super-team sprang up in imitation of them, trying to achieve peace on the war-torn planet. I created personal histories, statistics for them (in the Marvel Super-Heroes role-playing game), and everything!

[Shellhead]

I regret that I wasn't buying Legion of Super-Heroes back then. This would have been right around the time of the Great Darkness Saga, one of the best Legion storylines ever. The buildup to it was slow, deliberate and mysterious, and the dramatic reveal was huge. Although I had dabbled a bit in Legion in the '70s, I didn't get around to reading the Great Darkness Saga until many years later, and the cover gave away the big reveal.

[Slam_Bradley]

This would have been the last month of ninth grade. So I wasn't buying a lot.

Definitely purchased at the time...

All-Star Squadron #12
Arak # 12
Warlord 60

May have purchased at the time, maybe later on...
Amazing Spider-Man # 231
Batman # 350
Detective 517
Marvel Team-up 120

Purchased later...
Captain Carrot # 6
Tales of the New Teen Titans 3

Have read...
Daredevil # 186

[NathanIrwin]

I didn't realize it until I started readign through the thread... but May 1982 was a pretty important month for my comic-collecting.

That month I came back to the US for summer vacation, after spending most of the preceding year living in Karachi, Pakistan. New comics were hard to come by in Karachi, and the few you could get were usually 3 to 6 months behind what was on sale in the states. But older issues were much more easily available second-hand. Also, DCs were MUCH more common than Marvels. I had already latched on to the Flash and Green Lantern, but the biggest surprise was coming home and finding Legion of Super Heroes 290 on the stands. I'd only seen the Gerry Conway/Jimmy Janes issues up to that point. The (new to me) Levitz/Giffen issues quite literally blew my mind!

Also, this would have been the first time I saw All-Star Squadron on sale, and I know I picked up a few issues that summer before heading back to Karachi.

After that summer, it worked out that we'd be home twice a year (Christmas and summer), instead of just summers. For the next few years, my collection consisted of snatching up whatever issues were on sale during vacations, then having to wait several months until the following issues would finally turn up in Pakistan. It didn't always work -- when my collection finally came out of storage three years ago, I found all kinds of 3- to 6-moth gaps in various titles. Took me about a year to complete those runs.

[berk]

In June 1982 I read:

Master of Kung Fu #116
Night Force #2
Saga of the Swamp Thing #5


Marvel was nearly dead to me at this point. Other than MoKF and some of the Epic stuff they were putting out very little that interested me. I was trying to fill the gap with some DC series, but only a few of their series really caught my eye. I do think that both NF and SotST are under-rated comics, though.

[Scott Harris]

Comics I own from this month:

Action #435
All-Star Squadron #13
Avengers #223
Captain America #273
DC Comics Presents Annual #1
Elfquest #13 (well, in one form or another)
Ghost Rider #72
Ghost Rider #73
Incredible Hulk Annual #11
Jonah Hex #64
Rom #34
Superman Family #222
Thor #323
Thor #324
X-Men #161
Unknown Soldier #267
Warlord #61
Wonder Woman #295
World's Finest #283


Wow, there are some all-time great covers this month! Avengers #223 is a personal favorite, but Wolverine #1 is iconic and Moon Knight #23 and 24 are fantastic.

Comic that means the most to me: Avengers #223, though Cap #273 with the Howling Commandos reunion is a close second. Comic I would like to own that I do not have: let's go with Marvel Graphic Novel #3: Dreadstar.

Cover of the month: Too many great ones to pick from but I will reluctantly go with Moon Knight #23:

[Slam_Bradley]

Let's see. This was before I was working. Or driving regularly...so I wasn't buying much.

All-Star Squadron 13
Arak 13
DCCP Annual 1
Flash 313 (purchased for the Dr. Fate back-up)
Warlord 61


I'm pretty sure a buddy of mine bought the Hercules mini and the Wolverine mini...so I'd have read them then. I've read them since, I know.

[Richard Bishop]

Using cover date and not date of release,the following books from June 1982 are currently in my collection. This was still a couple of years before I got into collecting hardcore, but I've gone back and picked up a lot of books that I missed the first time around.

Amazing Spider-Man #229
Avengers #220
Captain America #270
Daredevil #183
Defenders #108
Doctor Strange #53
Fantastic Four #243
Ghost Rider #69
Iron Man #159
Ka-Zar the Savage #15
Master of Kung Fu #113
Moon Knight #20
Power Man and Iron Fist #82
Thor #320
Uncanny X-Men #158

[Shellhead]

These are the new comics that I bought back in June of 1982, and the ones in bold are still in my collection.

Avengers #223: I wasn't enjoying Avengers much at this point, but I liked Hawkeye and the Scott Lang version of Ant-man, so I bought this issue anyway. It was so-so.

Captain America #273-4: I don't remember these both coming out in the same month, but at this point, I was biking to the comic store nearly every week. I wasn't buying Cap regularly, but I was a big fan of Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos, so I bought these two issues. They were so-so.

Daredevil #187: The whole first Miller run was pretty great, though I didn't enjoy this issue nearly as much. The sensory overload idea was reasonable, just not that much fun in the execution.

Fantastic Four #246: Another solid issue by John Byrne. I don't remember it anymore, but I'm sure that I enjoyed it at the time.

Hercules #1-2: This was a really fun and enjoyable mini-series. Layton did the definitive Hercules run in my opinion. Wish I still had these comics.

Marvel Fanfare #4: I wasn't enjoying the main X-comics anymore because I wasn't impressed with Claremont after the collaboration with Byrne ended. But this Marvel Fanfare run started out with a decent X-Men story.

Marvel Graphic Novel #3: This featured Dreadstar, so it was a mandatory buy for me. It wasn't the strongest installment in the storyline, but I was thrilled when Syzygy Darklock appeared at the end.

Master of Kung Fu #116: Love the Gene Day artwork, and the story was decent, too.

Moon Knight #23-4: I know that I was enjoying MK back then, but I barely remember these covers and nothing of the stories inside.

New Teen Titans #23: I wasn't digging the Omega Men crossover stuff, but I loved the Teen Titans of this era.

Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-man #70: What a ludicrously long comic book name. Like many people, I was very interested in Cloak and Dagger back then. It took me a few years to realize that they were more of an interesting visual than interesting characters.

Tales of the New Teen Titans #4: Starfire will never be my favorite Titan, but she's nice to look at. This was a decent origin issue.

Uncanny X-Men #161: I was bored with the X-Men, but interested in Strucker and Hydra, so I bought this issue. Surprisingly, the best part of the issue was the retconned backstory of Xavier and Magneto as old friends.

Wolverine #1-2: I liked Wolverine and I liked Frank Miller back then. This should have been a great mini-series, but I found it just so-so. I was probably just starting to get burned out on Wolverine.

[Jolly Mon]

Looking at Mike's Index, a pretty good month for me. I was in the Navy, stationed in South Carolina, hadn't yet met or married my future wife, and apparently spent a good deal of time at Galaxy Comics in Charleston. Here's what I got, working from memory (and the Index):

Adventure Comics (1st digest issue) #491
All-Star Squadron #13
Avengers #223 (later got another copy with the Marvel Legends Hawkeye figure)
Captain America #273 & 274
Daredevil #187
Dazzler #20
DC Comics Presents #49 & Annual #1
Defenders #111
FF #246
Fury of Firestorm #4
Hercules #1 & 2 (still one of my favorite minis)
JLA #206
Legion of Super-Heroes #291
Marvel Fanfare #4
Marvel Graphic Novel #3 (Dreadstar)
Marvel Two-in-one Annual #7
Moon Knight #23 & 24
New Teen Titans #23
Tales of New Teen Titans #4
Team America #4 & 5 (yes, for some reason it interested me, but I dropped it after this)
X-Men #161
Wolverine #1 & 2

[destro]

Comics I own from this month:

Action #435
All-Star Squadron #13
Avengers #223
Captain America #273
DC Comics Presents Annual #1
Elfquest #13 (well, in one form or another)
Ghost Rider #72
Ghost Rider #73
Incredible Hulk Annual #11
Jonah Hex #64
Rom #34
Superman Family #222
Thor #323
Thor #324
X-Men #161
Unknown Soldier #267
Warlord #61
Wonder Woman #295
World's Finest #283


Wow, there are some all-time great covers this month! Avengers #223 is a personal favorite, but Wolverine #1 is iconic and Moon Knight #23 and 24 are fantastic.

Comic that means the most to me: Avengers #223, though Cap #273 with the Howling Commandos reunion is a close second. Comic I would like to own that I do not have: let's go with Marvel Graphic Novel #3: Dreadstar.

Cover of the month: Too many great ones to pick from but I will reluctantly go with Moon Knight #23:

Ah, Bill S. at his best! I love that MK issue.

[Simon Garth]

It was the best of times, it was (nearly) the worst of times. 30 years ago was a great time for comics and music. Music had the immediate post-punk phase of Joy Division, Gang of Four and then Two-Tone (as revisited in the last couple of days in Punk Britannia part 3). Meanwhile, in comics, Daredevil, Fantastic Four & the Legion were still around their peaks, though Teen Titans, Avengers and X-Men, if not yet exactly having jumped the shark yet, were revving up the motorbikes and fearlessly eying up the ramp.

And on the horizon there were ominous clouds approaching.... only a couple of years away from the the life-sucking abominations of Secret Wars, Crapfest on Infinite Earths and worst of all, the sheer aural & visual horror of the New Romantics.

[Gothos]

It was the best of times, it was (nearly) the worst of times. 30 years ago was a great time for comics and music. Music had the immediate post-punk phase of Joy Division, Gang of Four and then Two-Tone (as revisited in the last couple of days in Punk Britannia part 3). Meanwhile, in comics, Daredevil, Fantastic Four & the Legion were still around their peaks, though Teen Titans, Avengers and X-Men, if not yet exactly having jumped the shark yet, were revving up the motorbikes and fearlessly eying up the ramp.

And on the horizon there were ominous clouds approaching.... only a couple of years away from the the life-sucking abominations of Secret Wars, Crapfest on Infinite Earths and worst of all, the sheer aural & visual horror of the New Romantics.

Who are the New Romantics?

[Gothos]

What, two days gone by and SG still hasn't defined who the "New Romantics" are?

Watch out, Garth. If you propound terms that sound suspiciously like theoretical constructs, but then don't explain them, you're lose your membership in FTWDOFBWAT.

(Fan-Theorists Who Drive Other Fans Batshit With Abstruse Theories)