This year marks the 50th anniversary of Volume 2 of “The Steranko History of Comics,” a work that it’s fair to say blew my mind as a kid. I call it a “work” because I never know how to classify…
Returning to our retrospective on the kookiest superheroes of all time, I give you the short but spectacular career of Hip Knox, raised from birth to be a master of the art of hypnotism. Obviously he wasn’t raised to be…
When it comes to vigilante justice, why should millionaire playboys, off-duty cops and crackpot scientists have all the fun? In HIT Comics #1, beekeeper Richard Raleigh gets into the act with an M.O. that combines his skills as a brawler…
Things have been kind of slow around here, so I thought I’d start a series of posts on some of the weirder superhero comics I’ve come across. In recent years, many of these long-forgotten oddities have fallen into the public…
I’ve always been interested in the ways comic books imagined the future, especially when I was living in the “future” in question. As a kid, I read a reprint of an old Captain Marvel (“Shazam” variety) tale that featured a…
I didn’t grow up as a fan of Stan Lee. In fact, it’s fair to say that as a kid, I didn’t “get” Marvel at all. Weaned on Superman and Batman, I viewed superheroes as unflappable paragons of confidence, competence…
One of the key architects of the “Marvel Age of Comics,” Steve Ditko passed away last week at age 90. I was going to write that he “left us,” but for most of his career he wasn’t really among us,…
The city of Los Angeles arranged a nice tribute to Adam West yesterday, flashing the bat-signal on the side of City Hall. The cool part is they got the symbol right: there have been several iterations over the years,…
Last month I got got to see my personal “most anticipated” Marvel film: Dr Strange. The good doctor has always been my favorite Marvel character, and while I don’t know if I’d call this entry my favorite Marvel film, I was very…
Comic book artist Murphy Anderson passed away on Oct. 23, and while I always knew I liked his work, it hadn’t occurred to me until now just how many of the most powerful and best-remembered images of my childhood flowed from his brush. I…
