Marvel - August 1961!

This is a fun little time capsule which takes a keen comics fan back to that epic month when Marvel Comics was pretty much birthed. August 1961 saw the publication of titles from the company which had been "Atlas" such as sundry Millie the Model and Patsy Walker books and westerns such as The Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt Outlaw and romances such as Teen-Age Romance and Love Romances. Monsters ruled the roost in titles like Journey into Mystery, Tales to Astonish, Strange Tales and many more. But two new books hit the stands that month, a title called simply Amazing Fantasy, and its companion dubbed The Fantastic Four. The former faded but gave birth to a certain arachnid hero, but the latter became the ground floor for a whole new universe. Below are the covers of the titles available in this epic month in the order they are presented in this volume. The editors have taken care to identify the talent for each story and cover.  

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Coolest Crossover Of All Time!

I waited for decades for the Avengers and Justice League to mix it up in an official crossover event. That did happen thanks to Kurt Busiek and George Perez, and that event sort of marked my swansong to mainstream comics. But that's another story.

As great as the JLA-Avengers crossover was (and I enjoyed it plenty) the coolest crossover I've seen in comics was when Frank Castle took his hardware to the mean streets of Riverdale and mixed it up with Archie Andrews and his gang. Batton Lash weaves an intriguing and typically well-crafted story.


John Buscema and Stan Goldberg hit the artwork on this out of the ballpark, and the covers were exquisite. The story is a humdinger, featuring an Archie lookalike and such. I'll have to confess that I bought both versions of this story, the one from Marvel and the one from Archie. They each have their own charm of presentation for sure.

For a much more detailed look at the comic see this link.


Highly recommended. You'll have a blast!

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