Hawkeye!

This is a handsome poster ad for the original Hawkeye limited. Back then it seemed almost every other Marvel character was getting a limited, but Hawkeye was well deserving of one, and adding Mockingbird to the mix was inspired. The ending with them getting married was a real surprise and added real heft to one of Marvel's most interesting heroes.

His outfit never looked quite like this one in the comics, but I love this particular design by Mark Gruenwald and it looks very slick under Brett Breeding's inks.

By now it's probably not a spoiler that Hawkeye shows up briefly in the Thor movie, but I was totally unaware of it, and frankly was very pleased. We got very little of him, and I'm eager to see more next summer.

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How Solemn As One By One!

How Solemn As One by One
(Washington City, 1865.)

by Walt Whitman

HOW solemn as one by one,
As the ranks returning worn and sweaty, as the men file by where
stand,
As the faces the masks appear, as I glance at the faces studying the
masks,
(As I glance upward out of this page studying you, dear friend,
whoever you are,)
How solemn the thought of my whispering soul to each in the ranks,
and to you,
I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul,
O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,
Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;
The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,
Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill,
Nor the bayonet stab, O friend.

Cover art by Pat Boyette.

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Fightin' Faces Of War!

Take time this Memorial Day between hotdogs to remember the brave men and women who have died to make our way of life possible.

Cover art by Dick Giordano.

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Kitchen Sink's Spirited Coverage!

It was a blue day indeed when Warren Magazines cancelled their Spirit. These black, white and gray classics were my window into the wonder of Will Eisner. I was sad to see them go, but some years later I found that the Spirit had merely wandered over to Kitchen Sink, the company that would keep him in front of the public longer than any other.

They treated The Spirit with great respect at Denis Kitchen's operation, as shown by the delicious wraparound covers they used. Here is a lush gallery of those expansive (and at the time still somewhat rare) wraparound covers created by Will Eisner just for these reprints.



















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Pocket Full Of Marvel!

Steve Ditko
John Romita
John Romita
Gil Kane
John Romita
Frank Brunner
Frank Brunner
Sal Buscema
Herb Trimpe

These handsome and handy full-color volumes from Pocket Books featuring some of the earliest Marvel adventures were mainstays of my collection. The stories have been reprinted many times since in larger versions, both in color and otherwise, but these were in the late 1970's a fantastic way to have quick access to classic Ditko and Kirby stories from Marvel's earliest years.

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Snuff Said!

Stan "The Man" Lee's attempt at marketing Underground Comics was ultimately a failure, possibly to a lack of understanding of the audience or perhaps likely a lack of patience with the product. Maybe it was a breakdown between Stan and editor Denis Kitchen, but it did gives us this memorable cover by Peter Poplaski.

The project ran two more issues before Stan...ahem...cut it off. The series revived for two more issues later under the Kitchen Sink label.

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Some Good Radiation Byrnes!

John Byrne & Duffy Vohland
Above is a lively Captain Atom poster shot by John Byrne. Byrne really had some impact on the character after the original run.


In these scenes from the last story of the Doomsday +1 saga published in two parts in Charlton Bullseye, the team finds new duds, and Boyd gives a shout out to Joe Gill's and Steve Ditko's good Captain.


Here's another shot of Captain Atom, in a classic Gil Kane down-and-out pose at the mercy of his arch enemy The Ghost.


John Byrne & Duffy Vohland
Byrne inked the last Steve Ditko Charlton story starring Captain Atom. Those stories from Charlton Bullseye have been featured on this blog before, and you can find them here and here.

You get the feeling that Byrne really would'nt have minded drawing some episodes of Captain Atom. It's a pity it never developed.

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Steranko's Sherlock!

Jim Steranko must really like Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, as can be seen from the double-page spread above from Mediascene. Steranko not only did a first-rate pastiche of the classic Hound tale in Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #3, but he's also illustrated a sequel to that story by Michael Hardwick, titled Revenge of the Hound.

Here are some sample pages from Steranko's SHIELD/Sherlock story.




Here are his illustrations for Hardwick's book.

The painting above of the great detective also served as a cover for a revived Argosy Magazine.






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Six Million Dollar Cover Art!

Joe Staton was the workhorse at Charlton in the middle 70's. Not unlike John Buscema at Marvel, Staton seemed to be the go-to guy to launch a series for Charlton. He did the first few issues of Space:1999, Emergency (covers only), and as you can see above The Six Million Dollar Man.

Staton has a real flair, and recently with his taking on the Dick Tracy comics strip, he's getting the kudos he's long deserved.

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