I had never listened this band before! I l love it!!!!!!That’s Jazzy Johnny Romita in the preview frame. He took over drawing The Amazing Spider-Man in 1966, after Steve Ditko abruptly quit the book and left Marvel Comics. Ditko returned to Marvel later, but he never drew Spider-Man again.
2 comments September 25th, 2007
Before there was Dr. Strangelove, there was … Dr. Strange!
1 comment September 25th, 2007
That’s Fabulous Flo Steinberg, Marvel’s Corresponding Secretary, and cancer survivor, in the preview frame.
Add comment September 24th, 2007
The links to the BBC program by Jonathan Ross, In Search of Steve Ditko that I discuss here have been pulled from YouTube. The customized YouTube player is very impressive, because it supports play lists and presents them in a very slick way. But alas, my attempts at adding play lists to the Flash video player haven’t gone well. So I’ll post the Ditko documentary in separate installments. This is a tiny 320×240 video, and letterboxed at that, scaled up to 440×330.
3 comments September 24th, 2007
In the documentary I just posted, In Search of Steve Ditko, there’s a scene where host Jonathan Ross pulls a comic book out of his collection to show to his guests. It’s House of Secrets #92, a DC title that introduced the character Swamp Thing, illustrated by Berni Wrightson. This elicited a huge laugh from me.
As I explained in my post about the Ditko program, being a comics fan at 15 was tough. Due to social pressure I almost gave up the hobby, and would have if not for my friend Morris, who had placed a small ad in the local free weekly “penny seller,” saying he wanted to start a comic book club. My mother gave me permission to meet Morris, despite his being ten years older than myself. I suppose the fact that he was a married father helped.
Meeting Morris was an event with enormous implications, beyond keeping me from quitting my comic book habit. He was a lean and bearded hippie, with wire rim glasses. Shortly after we met, Morris, who is Jewish, bought what he once called a Nazimobile — a new VW Bug (Volkswagen Beetle). Kids who saw Morris picking me up and dropping me off from our trips to buy comic books thought Morris was very cool indeed. The improvement in my social standing at school, and the changes in my life resulting from that, were profound to say the least.
Anyway, during my first visit with Morris, the very first comic book he pulled out of his collection to show me was the then-recent comic House of Secrets #92, which I hadn’t seen because the drug store where I bought comics hadn’t carried it. Having several copies of the issue, Morris let me keep the comic as an introductory present, and I still have it.
Add comment September 22nd, 2007