Tuesday, December 22, 2020

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...

Friday, December 18, 2020

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!