Monthly Archive:: January 2012

When you write  a few times each week about comic book characters, you frequently find yourself debating heroes and villains because they are the most basic and essential ingredients in a good superhero story. Having a superhero without a good group of supervillains to thwart and overcome would be

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Despite growing up a mere 40-minute train away from New York City in the suburbs of Long Island, I never really grew to know and love the “Big Apple” until I was in college. Interestingly enough, it was also during this time in my life that my interest in

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While the dissolution of Peter’s marriage with Mary Jane gets all the headlines when fans gripe about ASM’s status quo upheaval at the onset of 2008’s Brand New Day storyline, I was always equally perturbed by the fact that this scene, from Amazing Spider-Man #533, was also erased from

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Since the very first issue of Amazing Spider-Man, it’s been established how important it is for Spidey’s civilian identity – teenage wallflower/science geek Peter Parker – to remain a secret. The consequences of his secret identity being outed were painted as incredibly severe – the Green Goblin/Norman Osborn was

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While I’m undoubtedly a Spider-Man fan and enthusiast, my introduction to the Marvel universe and eventually Amazing Spider-Man comic books came through Marvel’s Secret War series in the mid-1980s. For those unfamiliar with Secret Wars, it was a 12-issue mega-crossover that starred pretty much every character who mattered in

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Given that the Vulture was the prime antagonist in ASM’s #674 and 675 (which are sadly, the last two issues I’ve received from Marvel’s subscription service – come on guys, how hard is it for you to put a comic book in the mail in less than a month?),

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For those of you who have been following my monotonous griping over the fact that Marvel is using the Spider-Man character on too many superhero teams, you’ll note that one of my biggest complaints is that in the context of Jonathan Hickman’s FF/Fantastic Four and Brian Michael Bendis’ Avengers/New

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If you’re buying comic books as a collector, you can’t get lazy. Because if I learned anything in my 20+ years of collecting, it’s that if you slack for even one second, that’s when you end up with a less than satisfactory purchase. At least that’s the case behind

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A pair of dueling columns on the web site Bleeding Cool recently explored the idea of how politics may be negatively impacting comic book sales (which continue to spiral downward). While I could dismiss the whole argument by saying it has nothing to do with “Liberal” and “Conservative” but

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The 1990’s Clone Saga was a dark time for my comic book fandom, a true test of my will and tolerance for nonsensical writing and the “can you top this” attitude that accompanied the industry’s boom and bust during the same time period. That’s why the mere mention of

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