I have to say, I loved the response to this particular quiz!  The responses were everything I hope for when I gin up one of these brain-teasers:  a reasonable amount of participation, a bit of brilliance from everyone who posted, some correct answers which I hadn’t thought of, and one question which nobody got…

I try to accommodate my readers.  Sometimes, it’s a snap, especially when the reader himself provides the inspiration, such as when Commando Cody raised the question of why Lightning Lad wasn’t held to task for killing Zaryan the Conqueror.

Other times, the sailing's not so smooth.  Figserello has been…

I haven’t bought a comic book, at least not a current one, in over two decades.  But that doesn’t mean my head is in the sand when it comes to what the popular things are.  Fora like the Captain Comics message board keep me posted on that; I may not know the bit-and-piece details, but I am privy to the general ideas. …

In the first four days that Part One of this article was on the board, it picked up over six hundred hits.  Wow.

Now, I know it wasn’t because I'm such a scintillating writer.  I’m not the kind of fellow who can write a page-turner.  I’m lucky when I get the subject and verb to…

If a rumour is pithy enough, especially if it involves a famous person and provides a cutting irony or a satisfying comeuppance, then the public will clutch it to its collective bosom, regardless of the facts.  H. L. Mencken proved this some ninety years ago, with his Bathtub Hoax.  I learnt it myself for the first…

Stan Lee, as the sole editor and principal writer for Marvel, was able to maintain a tight continuity for all of his characters, even when they appeared in other titles.  This was an advantage over Silver-Age DC, which grouped its titles under various editors.  If a DC hero crossed over into another editor’s title,…

Man oh man!  I don’t know if it’s because my questions were a bit too easy or because Jeff of Earth-J is a dyed-in-the-wool Silver-Age Marvel expert (I suspect it’s an admix of both), but he nailed most of the correct answers right out of the gate.  And of the two he missed, Philip Portelli picked up half the slack by…

See?  I didn’t forget.  It’s just that when it comes to Marvel Comics and trivia, things are a little tougher for me. 

Part of it is, no doubt, because I didn’t get into Marvel until late in the game, around 1965 or so.  I picked up all of those niggling bits of DC trivia  pretty much by osmosis,…

In the Imaginary Story “Clark Kent’s Super-Son”, a rare combination of green and red and gold kryptonite robs Clark Kent of his super-powers as well as his memories of ever being Superman.  He goes on to marry Lois Lane and they have a son, Clark, Junior, who inherits all the mighty abilities…

You’ve got the idea, now.

The stories themselves weren’t terribly bad.  They weren’t Kingdom Come, but neither were they ludicrous in the same way that the phrase “Jimmy Olsen story” makes Silver-Age fans…

As I mentioned last time, fans of comic books have to maintain an abundant suspension of disbelief to accept the fictional universe of their four-colour heroes.  To some degree, that’s true for fans of any medium’s fiction.  Even television dramas touted for their attention to realism, such as Dragnet, have to…

In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland, the White Queen tells Alice, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Whether they realise it or not, that’s pretty much the creed of comic-book fans.  In order to buy…

It’s funny how this business of humanity works.  Like it or not, you, me---all of us---are cross-connected to everyone else.   A single, random event can alter the path of one man’s life and, in turn, affect the destinies of so many others. 

That’s why thousands upon thousands of children owe their…

“The Hulk Vs. the Thing”/”The Avengers Take Over!”

Editor and writer: Stan Lee  Art: Jack Kirby (pencils), George Bell (inks)

 …

The fifty-pound turkey stood on the grass, panting nervously.  It was as if the fearful creature knew that Thanksgiving was only a little more than a week away.

That, of course, was impossible.  More likely what was giving the turkey fits was the small throng of low-level officials and spectators and…

Certain things in comic books were handled with a bit more discretion back in the old days. 

Although it seems pointlessly quaint to…

I came to Marvel Comics late in the game.  While I had been reading DC’s comics since the beginning of the Silver Age, I didn’t tumble to Marvel until about 1965.  Oh, I had seen Marvel Comics.  There had been a few lying around the barber shop where I got my hair cut.  I had taken a look at them, didn’t…

If you were a Jimmy Olsen fan during the Silver Age, it was a tough row to hoe.

For every story in which Jimmy demonstrated intelligence, resourcefulness, and competence, there were a dozen in which he was depicted as a vainglorious, overconfident doofus.  And that might not have been so bad, if most…

For the last couple of entries, we've been talking about Lightning Lad's rôle in the death of interplanetary criminal Zaryan the Conqueror.  This prompted the question from correspondent Commando Cody, "Why didn't the Legion then charge Lightning Lad with violating the club's code against…

Previously, Commando Cody suggested that Lightning Lad, of the Legion of Super-Heroes, violated the Legion code against killing.   In Adventure Comics # 304 (Jan., 1963), the Legionnaire destroyed the space-cruiser piloted by the interplanetary criminal Zaryan the Conqueror.  Nothing in that sequence indicated…