Sal Buscema - RIP

Sad news that Sal Buscema passed away on Friday 23 January at the age of 89 years old , just a few days before his 90th birthday. Sal was probably best known for his long runs on Spider-Man, Hulk, Captain America, the Avengers and the Defenders. Like his late brother John, Sal worked on most titles at some point in his career and covered all genres from sword and sorcery, to romance to horror comics. Some of my earliest Marvel purchases in the late 1960’s contained Sals artwork and he has remained a favourite of mine ever since. I have followed his work from Marvel to DC and many indie publishers over the years. My personal favourite Sal comics were form the early 1970’s, but everything he did was just wonderful.

Above - Our pal Sal at the drwing board - the last of the Marvel legends?

Favourite comics: Jimmy Olsen # 135: Jack Kirby, Neal Adams

Jack Kirby came to DC in 1970 with a deal that allowed him to create and edit three brand-new interconnected titles based on concepts that had been working on during his last few years at Marvel. Seemingly his deal at DC also called for him to work on one of their existing titles which turned out to be “Superman’s pal, Jimmy Olsen” , on the face of it a strange choice for someone like Kirby to work on with his galaxy spanning concepts. However, in November 1970 with Jimmy Olsen #133, Kirby began work on what would become known as the “Fourth World” series. The first issue of Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen that I picked up was actually issue 139 and over the next couple of years I managed to pick up most of Kirbys 15 issue run on Jimmy Olsen (#133-#139 and #141 -#148) except for the above #135 (with an excellent cover by Neal Adams) which I tracked down a few years ago. Of all Kirby’s DC output at this time Jimmy Olsen and Kamandi were by far my favourites and despite the 11 -12 year old me from 1971/72, not always understanding what was going on (and who the heck Don Rickles was!!!??) I loved this series which introduced me to golden age characters like the Newsboy Legion and (my favourite) the Golden Guardian. Below are a few pages for this excellent comic with some of Kirby's best art as DC.

Happy New Year

All the best to everyone for 2026. I sometimes wish it was 1974 as in the above SHAZAM! Bob Oksner cover, but at least we can revist the 1970s from time to time through our old comics .

The Groovy 1970's Christmas Countdown: Son O God by Neal Adams, Michel Choquette and Sean Kelly

It’s been some time since I mentioned the cheerfully blasphemous “Son-O’-God” comic strip that appeared in the National Lampoon magazine in the 1970’s. I picked up the pages shown here 6 months ago on eBay for a pretty decent price, and was waiting until Christmas to show them. In the “Lampoon” stories the “Son-O-God” is Benny Davis a nerdy young man in his late 20’s who still lives with his parents in Brooklyn. When he says “JESUS CHRIST!” he transforms into a muscular super-hero version of Jesus with a six-pack, cape, and halo, ready to do battle with Catholicism, Islam, and the Antichrist. It still surprises me that no publisher has taken on the chore of collecting all the National Lampoon comic strips (not just "Son O God") – then again maybe we are less tolerant today of anything poking fun at religion.

The Groovy 1970's Christmas Countdown: Hot Wheels #6 -Neal Adams & Alex Toth

In 1970 DC Comics released what seemed to be a pretty strange comic book series based on the highly successful kids toys "Hot Wheels". In the comic the action revolved around the main character Jack Wheeler and his friends as they race and save the day in Hot Wheel cars. Only 6 issues where ever publish but everyone is an artistic triumph with ourtanding art by Alex Toth (# 1-5) and Neal Adams who drew the above final Christmas themed issue.

Although not pat of this comic series below is a stunning advert for Hot Wheels cars by the legendary Alex Toth.

The Groovy 1970's Christmas Countdown: Spider-Man the Newspaper strip -Stan Lee & John Romita Snr

I don't recall ever reading the Spider-Man newspaper strip in my local/national papers but I did read them when I picked up vol 1 of the collected strips in 2005. Most newspaper adventure strip rarely had much of a Christmas storyline to them as they were probably in the middle of an ongoing adventure as the festive season arrived. However, the Spider-Man newspaper strip went all out and featured a specially written Christmas themed tale.

This story follows on from an earlier segment involving J Jonah Jamieson who hires Kraven the Hunter to capture Spider-Man. As can be seen from the above colour Sunday strip, in the story Peter heads to a department store to buy Christmas presents but it is so busy that he decides to shop as Spider-Man. The strip then meanders a bit and over the next few instalments Peter basically goes through the presents he bought and calls Mary Jane and Aunt May. The action improves (very slightly) when Spider-Man see a crook and captures him. This is not the best Christmas tale but it has a. certain charm to it and of course it is nicely illustrated by the late great John Romita.

Next up: Hot toys, comics, and Santa all in a Christmas comic!