Gary Friedrich goes out of his way to flunk the Bechdel test
As I’ve blogged about before, by the end of the 1960s Stan Lee had no idea what to do with Captain America. How do you make the quintessential representative of …
Tag: Stan Lee
Continuity: it matters behind the scenes too
There’s no question a lot of the Bronze Age was solid gold. Steve Englehart’s Avengers. Tomb of Dracula. Starlin’s Warlock and Captain Marvel. Plus less spectacular but solidly entertaining books such as Cary Bates …
It suddenly occurs to me that bronze and silver are not the same metal
Back in 2022, I settled on March 1972 as the cutoff for my ongoing Silver Age reread. In the grand scheme of things it’s not a particularly significant month. It …
Love hurts! Silver Age romances as the Bronze Age begins
It’s a cliche that “nobody stays dead in comics except Uncle Ben and Bucky — ooops.” It’s also wrong. Sub-Mariner #37 killed off Lady Dorma and 50-plus years later, she’s still …
“My letter’s on the fan page!” Silver Age Marvel Comics on Earth-616
As I described in my last post about the comic-book industry in comic-book worlds, Stan Lee of Earth-616 spent the 1950s writing war, horror and Patsy Walker comics for Marvel. …
The secrets of Marvel Comics revealed — or so I thought
It was soooo damn cool 50 years ago when my brother received Origins of Marvel Comics for a Christmas present. How could it not be cool? Even though I was a …
The only good goblin is a dead goblin
Comics nerds like us have generated endless discussion — spoken, print, online — about the decision to kill Gwen Stacey. Who came up with it? Why? What did her co-creator, …