Who the hell is Blue Five?

From the original Marvel comics adaptation of Star Wars.

FOOM

I have decided to try and collect all 22 issues of Marvels fan club magazine FOOM. FOOM stands for Friends Of Ol' Marvel and the magazine ran from 1973 to 1978. Heres what i have so far.

Issue 6 cover art unknown (if anyone knows please comment).

Issue 8 with cover art by John Romita and back cover by John Byrne.

Issue 9 with cover by Jim Starlin and back cover by John Byrne? (i think).

Issue 12 with cover by John Buscema front and back? (again, i think).

Issue 15 with wraparound cover by Gene Colan.

For more about FOOM go here:

                 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOOM

                 http://bronzeagebabies.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=foom

Guardians of the Galaxy 1 Midtown Comics Variant.

Look what i got in the post this morning.

Beautiful J Scott Campbell cover, takes me back to the wildstorm days.

Transformers and Action Force

Marvel U.K. ran an Action Force and Transformers crossover story called Ancient Relics in 1987.
Written by Simon Furman and drawn by Geoff Senior part 1 featured in Transformers 125 with the other four parts featuring in Action Force 24-27. For any Americans out there, Action Force was the U.K. name for G.I. Joe back in the day.

It featured a Marvel UK created character called Centurion...

And some great scenes such as Megatron throwing around puny human tanks...

and a Grimlock vs Megatron rumble.

Most issues of Action Force weekly also featured classic Transformer toy ads on the back cover.

For more on the Ancient Relics storyline go here http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Ancient_Relics!

And for more on Centurion http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Centurion_(Marvel)

X-MEN signed by Romita Jnr ?

I have a copy of Uncanny X-Men 196 that came as part of an ebay lot a couple of years ago. It is signed on the cover and page 1 "John Romita Jnr 85"

The seller made no mention of the comic being signed, which seems odd. I have checked against images of JRJR's signature online and for my money its the real deal.

So now i have a 95% genuine signed book by my favourite old school Marvel artist. 

Old School Bryan Hitch from Marvel UK

In anticipation of Age of Ultron here's some old school Bryan Hitch art from the good old days of Marvel UK.

For more Bryan Hitch:
http://www.comicvine.com/bryan-hitch/26-5061/
http://www.bryanhitchbook.com/#

Marvel Comics Bags

 Found these bags tucked in the side of one of my comic boxes. The paper one is from 1991 and the plastic from 1996.

Captain America Annual #8 1986

This afternoon I'm in the loft still trying to sort out this:

Ive been coming up here on and off for months and don't seem to be getting anywhere. I think its because i keep stopping to read gems like this:

 

Captain America Annual 8 from 1986. This issue features a great team up between  Cap and Wolvie. The story involves a villan called The Overrider and his robot TESS. TESS stands for Total Elimination of Super-Soldiers, a project proposed by Prof Daniel Schumann to keep the Super-soldiers in check after the war. As it turns out Cap was the only Super-Soldier created and the project was scrapped. Forty years later a mutant called Richard Rennselaer, A.K.A. Overrider has control of a TESS robot that Prof Schumann had completed in secret.

The Overrider plans to take control of Americas nuclear missiles and bury them on the ocean floor. He is doing all this as his son suffers from "Nuclear Psychosis, an overwhelming dread that the world will end at any moment".

 

At the end Cap gives Wolverine a speech condoning his methods and telling him The Avengers would never have him, which is quite ironic as The Ol' Canucklehead seems to be on every team going at the moment!

A great old school comic, written by Mark Gruenwald with great artwork by Mike Zeck.

New Comic Book Day!

 

Good haul today, particularly looking forward to reading the new Daredevil and Punisher books. I try to pick up my standing order every 2 weeks so the next fortnights reading will be:

Daredevil #1

Punisher #1

X-Men Legacy #252

Uncanny X-Force #12

X-Men Schism #2

Astonishing X-Men #40

Secret Warriors #28

Uncanny X-Men #541

Secret Avengers #15

Wolverine #13

Amazing Spider-man #666

Fear Itself FF One Shot

Avengers #15

X-Men #15

Moon Knight #4

The Dark Tower - The Gunslinger #3

American Vampire #17

plus the free DC comics new 52 preview comic.

I'm really enjoying American Vampire, plus as a fan of the Dark Tower books the comics are always a good read. Four of the Marvel titles are Fear Itself tie ins which can be a bit hit and miss, i really like the core stories during big events but the tie ins seem a bit tacked on.  I'm mostly a Marvel kinda guy but flicking through the DC new 52 preview I'm considering giving a few titles a try, Jim Lee's art on Justice League is beautiful and i always loved WildC.A.T.S so will definitely be picking up Grifter. Anyway, gotta go. Comics dont read themselves!

Marvel Comics Civil War.

I missed Civil War when it first ran in 2006. I stopped collecting in the late 90's and started again a few years back. So Amazon selling the hardback collection half price was an excellent opportunity to catch up. Having just finished reading it i can say it definitely lives up to everything i have heard about it. Firstly, the basic plot premise of superheroes split by a superhuman registration act allows for some really good character work. This is only helped by the fact that Millar obviously loves all these characters as much as us the readers do. As much as you don't want too see old friendships divided, the opportunity to see Marvels big guns going head to head is too good to miss. The quality of Steve McNivens artwork is amazing and easily an equal for the writing. All good crossovers feature colossal fight scenes and McNiven handles these beautifully.

This is as much fun as the original Secret Wars.  I will definitely be giving this a second reading, and soon. If your a comic fan and haven't read this then it is definitely worth a look. If your a Marvel fan seeing all your favourite heroes go toe to toe is a fanboys dream come true.

Next, Siege!

P.S. the hardcover is damn sexy and has lots of extra content other than the main story.