Context!

I love me a timeline. This one’s built mostly from Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, mainly because I couldn’t help but scribble it out as I went along. In the year since I did that, so many of my posts presume knowledge of the content that it’s simply good sense to get the thing on-line for reference.

Super, thanks for asking

Am I missing the right allele that codes for the protein which likes Superman?

It is unwise to annoy cartoonists

One does not discuss superhero comics without considering John Byrne most seriously.

EEEEEEAARRRHHAHH!

Woodgod – oh my I loved this. It was Marvel Premiere 31, bought with my own hands and much revered – I’m sad not to have it today. Even now it stands as Bill Mantlo’s redemption for me.

Today is for taboo III: Mess-Factor

This is the third of three posts about Marvel mutantdom in the late 1970s and 1980s; the previous two were Today is for taboo and Today is for taboo II.

I’ll open with perhaps the most rage-inducing comics-geek phrase I can produce: I like Cyclops better than Wolverine.

How did I get these mutton chops?

Quick! Count the Wolverine things he doesn’t have.

Wolverine, sheathe your claws! In fact, go away. (Denial … crumbling …) All right, I admit it, that would be covering up for my 80s self who dribbled all over the hairy bastard like everyone else.

What you mean “we?”

… white man?

Like “African-American” and “person of color,” “Native American” was not a phrase of my childhood, simply because they weren’t invented yet.

Never heard of’em

… which happen to be our very own writers and editors!

I’d been reading comics for about four years. I had read Origin of Marvel Comics, and Son of Origins, I’d struggled with The Steranko History of Comics volume 1,  I had my issues of FOOM coming in the mail, and I had an envelope stuffed with Marvel Value Stamps. I was eleven, I was finally afforded an allowance that didn’t vanish with a single candy bar, and more than anything in the world, and as far as real life is concerned, considering I’d already met Leonard Nimoy, I wanted to be in on the ground floor of a new, world-beating, mighty Marvel comic magazine.

Doom’s face

FF #10, Stan & Jack in “postmodern R us”

In the unbelievably awesome Fantastic Four Annual #2, when Victor von Doom puts on his mask for the first time, a minion protests, “But master, it has not completely cooled yet!” and in the from-behind panel when he’s putting it on, vapor rises from the contact point to remind us of how hot it was.