The year of the comics

It’s Jerry Grayson’s fault. He knows all these people with opinions about comics and culture, and as the geek social fallacies would advise, said, “Hey, if I get all my friends together, they’ll be friends too!!” Which actually worked this time, for a jam let’s-all-try-it discussion for his own 1972 Project.

Paint my van

September is Cosmic Zap month here at Doctor Xaos Comics Madness. “Cosmic Zap” was Steve Gerber’s term for the proliferation of mystic, space-SF, psychedelic stories throughout Marvel Comics and perhaps comics in general during the mid-70s, especially those written and illustrated by Jim Starlin. I’m posting about it through the month because it’s my birthday (the 4th).

Fizzle

FOOM #11

In 1976, my first issue of FOOM came in the mail, about Jack Kirby’s return to Marvel. He actually hadn’t been gone all that long, but at that time DC and Marvel were perceived as Ormadz and Ahriman, and even that was too vague for me to process because the Marvel fanfare said nothing about what he’d been doing during his … uh, hiatus “over there,” i.e., the New Gods collectively speaking, and others.