Tag Archives: comic book milestones

Action Comics #1 & Superman Celebrate 75 Years (1938-2013)

Let me hear you say “Look! Up in the Sky!, It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman!!!!

Comic - Action Comics 1

Well it all begins here my comic loving friends, because back in June of 1938, some seventy five years ago, the first issue of “Action Comics” was published and one of the stories featured a being whose powers and abilities were far beyond those of mortal men. Yes I am speaking of the one and only and now very legendary Superman. Since I’ve been doing a lot of comic book overview or release blasting blog posts here on the musings I felt it would be a nice idea to continue on with the occasional offering up of a toast to the Comic Book Milestone’s of note. There is probably not a bigger event for this medium and the super-hero mythology in general than the introduction of the Man of Steel. Kal-El was the creation of Jerry Simon and Joe Schuster, a creative team who not only initially had trouble selling their character to the masses, but a pair whose original creation was hardly a benevolent force for the greater good and was instead a raving madman with his sights set on world domination. Can you even imagine that? Lucky for all of us, the premise of Superman was reworked before being submitted to DC Comics and it would begin the engine of comic book heroism that was nothing less than extraordinary. “Action Comics” was a title that had a series of stories in it and not just a full on Superman appearance issue. We also had Zatara (a magician whose daughter is a favorite of Female Cosplayers everywhere in Zatanna) and also a western tale. Superman will grace these pages for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of issues before its reworking as a title in 1988 when it returned to an Anthology format and came out each week. These issues would not feature Superman at all until it returned to a regular monthly at #643.
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“Amazing Fantasy” #15 & Spider-Man Celebrate 50 Years (1962-2012)

Has it been fifty years already?

Comic - Amazing Fantasy 15

Hey there my fine feathered comic book fans; so in answer to my own question up above, yes it is because believe it or not we are at the 50th Anniversary of the very first appearance of the one and only Amazing Spider-Man who began his adventures in “Amazing Fantasy” #15. The issue was actually the very last one for the title and Spider-Man would get his own book in the early months of 1963 and while I will do a posting about that when the time is right, I did want to raise a glass to toast such an anniversary for this fantastic super-hero. According to the Wikipedia page for the title, writer Stan Lee was given the go ahead to run the story about this unusual hero since the book was going to be cancelled anyway and it was felt that they would not lose anything by publishing it. Pretty funny to see how this idea actually panned out in the end. Spider-Man’s origin story did not run the full issue of the comic book but instead only a few pages and while its interior art was done by the great Steve Ditko, the cover was actually penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Ditko. For those who might be wondering, this first appearance is valued at around 1 million dollars in Near Mint condition. That is amazing without a doubt.
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