“And lo, there shall come a time, when the old order shall changeth …” as Stan Lee might have put it in an issue of Thor or The Avengers … Under Comic-Con’s management, WonderCon lasted from 2003 through 2011 at Moscone Center in San Francisco. During that time, attendance rose steadily, with 2005—to me at... Continue Reading →
Captain Atom #84, January 1967. Cover by Steve Ditko. TM & © DC. Click on the images in this post to see them larger on your screen! “Way back when … in ’67 …” as Steely Dan once sang … if I had returned home from one of my twice-weekly trips to the newsstand in... Continue Reading →
Avengers #93, November 1971. Cover by Neal Adams and Tom Palmer. TM & © MARVEL. Click on the images in this post to see them larger on your screen! Avengers #93, cover dated November 1971, but on sale in August of that year, is special for a number of reasons. First off, it’s the first... Continue Reading →
Watch out ladies ... there's a wolf-man on the loose in Metropolis! Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #44, April 1960 TM & © DC Click on the images in this post to see them larger on your screen! I loved Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen as a kid, so much so that when my older brother, Rick,... Continue Reading →
Definitely "THE WORLD'S GREATEST COMIC MAGAZINE," Fantastic Four #45, Dec, 1965. All art TM & © MARVEL Click on the images in this post to see them larger on your screen! Welcome to the first installment of my new (hopefully!) weekly feature, Tales from My Spinner Rack. This week we focus on my all-time favorite... Continue Reading →
New year, new banner! In honor of the debut of our new feature, "Tales from My Spinner Rack," we're featuring a brand new banner based on the graphics I'm creating special for each weekly post. The image above shows the filtered graphic, while the one below shows the original photo, compiled from four different pics... Continue Reading →
The year ended with a big month of reading: NINE books, including a biography of Agatha Christie and a stack of graphic novels. I read more than 80 books in 2022 and I surpassed my GoodReads challenge by sixteen or so additional books, topping off at 76 from an additional goal of 60. (Some of... Continue Reading →
Over the past few years, I have slowly built up a second comic book collection, this one far more curated than the “buy anything on the stands” or “I have to have EVERY Marvel comic they put out” approach of my youth. That first collection, shared—and largely bankrolled for the first quarter century or so... Continue Reading →
I always think about Peanuts and Charles M. Schulz at this time of year. A Charlie Brown Christmas is so ingrained into the hearts and minds of anyone who grew up in the last half-century—especially those of us who saw it when it first debuted in 1965 on CBS—not to mention Schulz's ongoing Christmas strips... Continue Reading →
Kind of a mixed bag of books for November ... but I enjoyed all of them. August 1961 and June 1962 Marvel Omnibuses These Marvel Omnibus editions reprint the entirety of a month’s worth of Marvel Comics in the historic months of August 1961—when Fantastic Four #1 debuted—and June 1962—when Amazing Fantasy #15 (the first... Continue Reading →
(Above: a badge from APE 2008 designed by me (far left); the APE Exhibit Hall at the Concourse Exhibition Center; and Paige Braddock's simian cartoonist for the APE 2008 Program Book cover, colored by me.) When I look back over my 20+ year career with San Diego Comic-Con, I can definitely see what meant the... Continue Reading →
A couple of massive books ate up most of my time in the first full month of fall, but everything I read in October was very enjoyable, even if one of them had a subject matter whom I detest. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton This massive autobiographical graphic novel reveals... Continue Reading →
A shortened reading month, as I took a long trip and left the iPad (and Kindle) at home, but I did buy a ton of books in the UK (okay … 15 or so, plus 8 vintage paperbacks in lovely Hay-on-Wye), so there's much more to come. The Church of Baseball by Ron Shelton If... Continue Reading →
Of all the things I did in my 21-year career at San Diego Comic-Con, the thing I am proudest of—and most enjoyed doing—were the event’s yearly Souvenir Books. While I enjoyed doing the Update magazines (which evolved into Comic-Con Magazine and finally, Comic-Con Annual ... more on that here), the three-times a year schedule was... Continue Reading →
A bit more reading this month, once again offset by a stack of graphic novels and comics-related books, but book-ended by a crime thriller by a new (to me) author and the yearly offering from a favorite writer. Missing, Presumed ... by Susie SteinerA vibrant, beautiful young woman from the British upper class goes missing... Continue Reading →
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