Secret Bases & Supposedly Secure HQs: A Modest Gallery Of The Out-Of-Sight Places Where Comics Characters Retreat To.

And so, with the new week thoroughly underway, might I present a modest and hopefully beguiling gallery of just a few of the kind of places where comics characters go to live and work? 1. from 2007’s X-Factor: Life & Death Matters HB, by Peter David, Dennis Calero, Cory Petit, Jose Villarrubia et al. 2. […]

A Few Thoughts On Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, World’s Greatest Paranormal Investigator.

By chance, I discovered that the second Hellboy story to appear in print, and the first that I ever saw, is now going for truly eye-watering amounts of money. A four-page black and white mini-comic that came with 1993’s Comics Buyer’s Guide #1070, it’s a slight and overly wordy tale that, for all the glee […]

On Jack Kirby In The Seventies.

A two-part essay I wrote for The Comics MNT about Jack Kirby’s work in the 70s has just been brought out from behind the sites’ Patreon paywall. I wrote it during the well-celebrated hundreth anniversary of Kirby’s birth last year, when it was heartening to see the media, mainstream as well as niche, paying respectful and […]

A Favourite Panel From 1976’s The Invaders #9, by Thomas, Robbins, Springer et al.

When the ninth issue of The Invaders arrived in 1976, Frank Robbins was already one of superhero fandom’s least favourite artists. Or so it seemed, from the anecdotal evidence offered up by fanzines and conversations overheard in London’s Dark They Were And Golden Eyed. Along with the likes of Jack Kirby and Don Heck, Robbins […]

Not Giving A Soft White Damn: A Modest Gallery of Snowbound Comicbook Pages

As the British heatwave blazes on, the most common visual theme in my recent comics reading has been snow. Here are but the first five examples of a tendency that continued incongruously throughout this week. 1. from Dudley D. Watkins’ Desperate Dan, in 1939’s The Dandy Monster Comic. 2. from Crime’s Dumbest Wise Guy: Peter […]

Oh Mr Nixon! A Modest Gallery of Comicbook Pages Featuring The Likeness Of America’s 37th President.

Whatever I’m reading recently, I seem to be stumbling over the presence of Richard Milhous Nixon. So for the last of this week’s galleries, I’ve posted just a few of the many comicbook representations of one of America’s most – shall we say? – fascinating Presidents. 1. from 1987’s Watchmen #10, by Alan Moore, Dave […]

Smalltown UK Feline Superheroes: A Modest Gallery Of Sweetly Little League Costumed British Crimefighters

And so, the 5th of 6 modest galleries for the days during which the blogger is unavoidably preoccupied elsewhere. This one concerns the feline-powered superkids that British comics threw up between the second half of the 60s and the middle of the 80s. Bless them all. 1. from The Leopard From Lime Street, by Tom […]