The World's Greatest Comic Magazine!

-
Here's another one from my past. Probably one of the most important comic books I ever bought, or rather my parents bought as I was only nine or ten at the time and didn't exactly get a weekly allowance. The Old Man didn't believe in allowances of a financial nature. We had a roof over our head, clothes on our back and food in our belly, what more did we need? As I've gotten older and have kids of my own, I see the logic in the Old Man's philosophy. I've also adopted His "If you don't work you don't eat" mantra, but I'm getting off track.
Fantastic Four #185 pitted the Fantastic Four against the evil warlock Nicholas Scratch (one of my favorite badguy names of all time), a mess of hooded witches and a sky full of gargoyles as they desperately attempted to rescue li'l Franklin Richards. As usual, the cover was misleading. In the Mighty Marvel tradition, the issue ended on a cliffhanger. Comics veteran Len Wein really knew how to write a suspenful tale, but what impressed me most and left a lasting impression on me to this day, was the artwork. This was the first of many issues of the "world's greatest comic magazine" that I bought. I was familiar with them, of course, through the cartoons being aired around that time, but they fell short of their four-color counterparts. Relative newcomer George Perez, teamed with another veteran Joe Sinnott, longtime inker for Jack Kirby, provided some of the most indellible images of my youth. I think I even aped this cover as a kid with my own version of the Fantastic Four. I used to draw these crude mini comics where me and three friends had become the Fantastic Four and...well, that's a post for a different day.

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting George Perez. I shook his hand, a hand that has penciled some of the greatest work in comic book history, and said, "Mr. Perez, I just wanted to remind you that you're awesome." He laughed, caught off guard a bit, I think and said, "Thanks."

Getting back to my youth, due to my infrequent trips to town, I never managed to pick up #186 to see how they rescued Franklin or defeated Nicholas Scratch and his band of witches.
So, along with completing my Invaders series this year, I also intend to find out. Keep it here, boppers and I'll let you know how it turns out.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Watchin' Too Much Damn TV!

-
Free time is a valuable commodity to me, so when I'm not at work, playing with my kids, spending QT with the wife or working on my latest comic book project, I try to watch as little TV as possible. As I've said before, I'm particular about what I watch. For instance, I finally managed to talk myself out of watching Surface. I found a pretty cool show called Cinema Insomnia on my local public access channel. Hosted by a rather odd fellow named Mr. Lobo, CI plays some perfectly rotten horror/scifi movies, but it's not the movies that're worth watching. Like Svengoolie, it's all the stuff around it that makes this show interesting and entertaining, though probably not to everybody. As for TV shows that've been around awhile, According to Jim is pretty damn funny in spite of the fact that it falls into the Home Improvement catigory of sitcoms (i.e. dumb guy with smart wife). The comedic chemestry between the cast is nothing short of brillian...
Read more

The Final Frontier

-
Image
Born March 3rd, 1920, James "Scotty" Doohan met the Final Frontier July 20th, 2005, solidifying his immortality not only as a great character actor who, week-after-week coaxed the Enterprise into "Givin' it all she's got!" but a true Hollywood legend. I say character actor not as a bad thing as some of the most memorable Hollywood icons were portrayed by character actors. After all, they have all the best lines! Generations to come will shout out in their best Scottish burr "She canna take much more, Cap'n!" or "She's gonna blow!" Actors of the day will come and go, but guys like Scotty will live forever...
Read more

The Stormtroopers Are Comin'!

-
Well, my first Mid-Ohio Con has come and gone and, I gotta say, aside from the drive there and back, it was a blast. I met a lot of really cool people, picked up some great comics (which I'll be reviewing later over at my other blog ) and ate a great hunk of steak for supper. Seriously, I wasn't hungry till about eleven a.m. the next day. I guess this is the last time the convention will be held at the Columbus Hilton, which is a shame because it's a beautiful hotel. I ran into a lot of familiar faces and met a lot of new people. Columbus is an awesome city. Too bad the weather sucked. It would've been fun to do a little exploring like Nik and I did when we went to S.P.A.C.E. earlier this year. There were, of course, losts of folks in costume. Batman, Superman and Aquaman were the obvious expectations (well, maybe not Aquaman ) but it seemed the most popular costume this year was Stormtroopers. Oh, my God! There were so many Stormtroopers, I was beginnin...
Read more