Holiday Reading Room GIANT SUPERHERO HOLIDAY GRAB-BAG " 'Tis the Season..."

As your Christmas gift from us this year...

...we offer a never-reprinted story from Marvel Treasury Edition #13 (1976) featuring a slew of superheroes and superheroines...in a tale unseen for two generations!

Segue into a reprint of Marvel Two-In-One #6 (1973) "...as Those Who Will Not See!" featuring Spider-Man and the Thing.

After that, we return to the narrative...

Cue the reprint of Avengers V1N58 (1968)..."Even an Android can Cry!", which features the Vision joining the Avengers!

Then back to the snowball fight...

If you think we're about to do another "flashback" involving a reprint, specifically "He Who Strikes the Silver Surfer!", the Hulk story from Tales to Astonish #93 (1967), you'd be correct, True Believer!

But, after the not-so jolly green giant relives the adventure in his head...

...as a reprint of "Once Upon a Time---the Ox!" from Daredevil #86 (1972) which featured Matt Murdock breaking up with his then-girlfriend Karen Page and hooking up with Natasha Romanova, the Black Widow demonstrated!

Speaking of Natasha...

It's a very cleverly-done "framing sequence" to tie the reprints together.

In fact, it's so clever that, when it was reprinted (in Spanish) in Grandes Herois Marvel #2 (1983)...

...the story was presented as a self-contained tale...without the reprints!

The book used different Yuletide-themed reprints after "'Tis the Season!"!

(So, technically the story was "reprinted", but since it wasn't in English, and my audience is 99.99% English-speaking, I consider it "never-reprinted")

BTW, it did use the Treasury's front cover by Gil Kane, John Romita, and Joe Sinnott...

...but not the back cover...which we present here!

And, just to show you our hearts are filled with the Joy of the Season, here's the inside covers, which feature new John Romita/Frank Giacoia art...

Don't say we never gave ya nothin'!

Merry Christmas

and

Happy New Year!

To paraphrase what they say at the end of the James Bond movies...

Hero Histories WILL Return...

Holiday Reading Room DCU HOLIDAY BASH "The House of Peace"

There are many, many, tales of super-heroes at Christmastime...

...but sadly, few Hannukah (or Chanukah) stories...except for this never-reprinted one from DC's DCU Holiday Bash II (1998)!

The DCU Holiday Bash annual only ran three years in the late 1990s with a few of the stories collected in a now out-of-print hardcover in 2000.

The rest of the tales (including this one) have never been reprinted, so we thought that, a generation later, these time-lost classics deserved to be seen by a new audience!

Halloween Horror THE SPECTRE "You Have Failed, Spectre!"

One of the least-known facts about DC's resident Angel of Vengeance...

...is that, for a while, he was reduced to being a CryptKeeper-style horror-host in his own book!

This status-changing story from DC's The Spectre #9 (1969) by writer Mick Friedrich, penciler Jerry Grandenetti, and inker Bill Draut has never been reprinted in color, so unless you have this over 50 year-old issue, you probably haven't seen it like this!

In the previous issue, God (yes, that guy!) removed the Ghostly Guardian's sight, forcing him to resolve a situation while blind, but restored it by the story's end!

The Spectre's comic lasted only one more issue, and the character's final Silver Age appearance a year later was in an annual Justice League/Justice Society team-up where he sacrificed himself  to keep Earth One and Earth Two from colliding!

He returned as the lead feature in Adventure Comics, in 1974, where the character was far more merciless and lethal than ever before!

But that's a story for another time...

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Showcase Presents

The Spectre

(which reprints this tale...but in black-and-white!)

CoronaVirus Comics GREEN LANTERN "Disease!!"

During World War II, one of the most pressing homefront problems...

...was shortages of desperately-needed materials, including medical supplies!

Co-creators Bill Finger (writer) and Mart Nodell (illustrator) incorporate enough plot twists in this tale from DC's Green Lantern #1 (1941) to fill several stories by other creatives!

Unlike, say, the Green Hornet (who was considered a criminal by both the cops and the underworld) the Green Lantern was a hero...but one who didn't mind "bending" the law in a good cause!

One can only imagine what today's lawyers would do in response to his actions...

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Golden Age Green Lantern Archives
Volume 1

CoronaVirus Comics SUPERMAN "The Last Days of Superman!"

Our recent blogathon featured a never-reprinted 1968 mini-series based on....

...the-often reprinted 1962 book-length tale shown above, which was based on the following never-reprinted post-Golden Age story from DC's Superman #66 (1950)!

BTW, in pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths canon, stories published before 1956 were considered to be tales of Earth-Two versions of Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman/etc!

You'd think a story this momentous would rate the cover, right?

Nope!

The cover's totally-unrelated to any story in the comic, although it was seasonally-appropriate since the issue came out late summer-early autumn, during baseball season!

Illustrated by Al Plastino and Stan Kaye, and scripted by...someone (we don't know who), this was a reworking of an Adventures of Superman radio show storyline, though we haven't tracked down which specific one it was.

Trivia: All three versions indicate they are "real" (Not a Dream! Not a Hoax! Not an Imaginary Story!) and were all part of "official" continuity for the Earth-One and Earth-Two Supermen!

Why do three variations on the same story?

DC's editors believed the comics audience changed every few years as kids supposedly-outgrew reading them, so a story could be reworked six-seven years after initial publication and appear "fresh and original" to the "new" fans!

Lord knows what they'd think of today's comics fans and collectors, some of whom are senior citizens!

And no, I'm not telling you how old I am...

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Superman: Greatest Stories Ever Told

Volume 1

(including Superman #156 which was a full-length reworking of this never-reprinted tale!)