The Ottawa Comic Book Guy

Good morning, a little birdie told me that I needed a Marvel topic for my next entry. I thought that wasn't a bad idea, considering how many DC Comics Presents/Superman articles seem to keep coming up from my son's picks. So I thought, that since The Defenders was one of my favourite Marvel (non)team titles of all-time (at least until they changed the title to the New Defenders around issue 125), and the fact that I am currently watching season one of Jessica Jones , where Patsy Walker is a main character, I decided that I would go with the spawn of the Devil himself, Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan. Created by Roy Thomas and designed by Gary Freidrich, Daimon was originally conceived to be a horror character after Stan Lee Suggested that Satan himself would be a good character for a comic book. Thomas disagreed and suggested to Lee that a series starring the offspring of the Devil would be better instead. Making his debut in Ghost Rider #1  (Sept 1973), Daimon Hell

The recent article(s) on Charlton Comics I did have made me think about my own collection. I have a lot of DC (surprised?). I also have a fair share of Marvel Comics. Some Gold Key/Dells. A large number of Dark Horse Star Wars and Buffyverse. IDW. And one Dynamite comic (and what a dynamite comic) Which leads me to thinking that with the amount of comics past and present made by companies other than the Big Two, why don't I have more? Is it because I am too invested in the mainstream? Am I afraid to give something a chance? I don't seem to have problems for the most part when comics adapted to the big or small screen have changes (racial changes for the most part don;t bother me, for example, I am a person that has always believed that Bond was never just one man, that he was a bugaboo/persona; so a black Bond doesn't bother me. There are black Kryptonians, and Amazons, and possibly, white Wakandians so that doesn't bug me. Nor does switching gender or sexual prefere

Good day, and welcome back for those of my regular readers. At first, when my son went and made today's pick of a book for review, I was sighing a little on the inside, because he had picked another Superman book. But then, after hearing that news that Henry Cavill was now done as Superman in the DC movie franchise, I feel like this can be a good pick for things after all. The book I will be doing today is Adventures of Superman  # 618 (September 2003) "Four on the Floor, Break Stuff" - Writer: Joe Casey, Artist: Charlie Adlard, Colourists:  Tania and Rich Horie, Letterer: Comic Craft, Associate Editor: Tom Palmer Jr., Editor: Eddie Berganza Before we begin with what is happening in this issue, we need to quickly recap that in the last few issues before this one, Mxyzptlk has split himself into a pair of twins and has also decided to bother people by selling them encyclopedias door to door. (In the old days this actually happened, folks). BY the beginning of this

Good day everyone. When we left our last column, we had come up to end of the Atomic Age at Charlton, which was an era of acquisitions for the partners in creating their staple of characters. They had begun to expand into various genres that make up the variety of the hobby we love, and they had begun to collect the talent that they would be known for. Before we go any farther, we need to discuss Dick Giordano's contribution to the company. Originally hired as a freelance artist in 1952, by the mid-sixties he was promoted to executive editor, replacing the very successful (for a middle of the road comic publisher) Pat Masulli. Before his promotion he had done just about every job you can think off on the artistic creative side on such titles as Fightin' Army , Annie Oakley , Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid. He was also the primary cover artist (a sample is above The Green Planet issue 1 from 1962) during his employment with the company. He was responsible for bringing Ste

Welcome back to the Ottawa Comic Book Guy blog. This episode will (and probably the next) will feature Charlton Comics, a company that existed in one form or another from 1944 (although they didn't start doing comic books until after World War II in 1946) until 1986. Although they never quite got as big as the big two, or Gold Key/Dell, they managed to stay alive by having some great characters, great talent working for them (very cheaply) and having some serious business savvy to stay afloat during the lean times. The company known as Charlton began as a partnership of John Santangelo Sr. and Ed Levy in 1944. The founders had one of the most unusual origin story's for a partnership, they met while in prison together. Santangelo had been sent up river for a year and a day for violating the Copyright Act of 1928 and publishing sheet music without proper licensing and Levy, an attorney by trade until he was convicted of illegally appropriating trust funds. Once they were

Today I am going to go a little off the "beaten path." I am going to list the various creators I have liked  and enjoyed over the years in different places. I will mention the creator and a bit of what I have read that that person had a hand in creating and why I remember liking it, in no particular order (except for last, I'm saving that for my favourite.) I know Boris is dying of anticipation: Boris Karloff - For the picture above (OK enough jokes for now). Jim Shooter - For almost everything he has done that I have read from the Legion of Super-Heroes, and for his editorialship at Marvel in the early 1980s. After Marvel's early 1960 early development years, despite what others may think, I find that Shooter's reign at Marvel had the books tight and cohesive with continuity. Stories were annotated with several asterisks per issue referencing previous books and/or series and he was responsible for bringing out the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe