Black and White Wednesday: "The Killer" by Will Eisner

Ol' Groove is ever so thankful that James Warren and the gang published The Spirit Magazine during the Groovy Age. Oh, how I loved that mag! As much as Teen Groove loved the Groovy Age comics, I knew without a single doubt that Will Eisner was an important, timeless creator whose work was made to savor and study. What a genius he was to come up with the storytelling device he used in "The Killer," published in The Spirit Magazine #1 (January 1974)!

Groovy Christmases Past: 1975

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays galore, Groove-ophiles! Well, today we're looking back at 1975. Kid Groove and family have moved once again, this time to Knox County where my mom grew up (don't worry, it's the last big move--I actually live just over a mile from where we moved to in the spring of 1975). When we first moved, there was nowhere that sold comics in the whole county. Believe, me, I looked. If I wanted comics, I had to wait for a visit to Harlan County and the ever-faithful Mack's. Fortunately, after a few months, a Convenient store went up that (thank heavens!) sold comics. Soon, a local grocery store got a spinner rack full of beautiful comics, and the bigger town we grocery shopped at most every Saturday got a bookstore, and the shopping center that housed the bookstore had a Roses and a drugstore that started selling comics. Whew! That crisis was over. So I had nearly a half-dozen places to buy comics, and I'd have to go to all of 'em to get everything I wanted. But it was fun, the hunt made the comics I got seem even sweeter when I peeled back the pages. And oh, did Kid Groove get some goodies in December 1975...

 DC had some pretty cool debuts in December 1975, huh?

 The infamous two issue fill in (an unpublished Giant Size Avengers issue edited to two regular issues) that signaled the shake-up to come in the Avengers creative team...

 Man, those Doug Moench-scribed super-length Doc Savage graphic novel-ettes were solid b&w comicbook gold!

 The most highly anticipated December debut (at least by Young Groove)!

 See ya tomorrow for the Christmas Spirit of '76!

Groovy Christmases Past: 1974

Ho, ho, ho and Happy Holidays to you, Groove-ophiles! Well, it's December 1974. Earlier in the year my family had pulled up stakes in Fairfield, Ohio and moved back to Dear Ol' Dad's birthplace of Harlan County, Kentucky. While it was a bit of a culture shock, we were surrounded by family and I made a lot of good friends in the little town of Loyall. But the thing that really made it "home" to Kid Groove was my beloved Mack's Family Center--a Walmart before most of us had ever heard of a Walmart if you will: a grocery store complete with a built in Ben Franklin's (we called 'em Dime Stores back then) and the greatest book/magazine/newspaper section I'd ever seen. It sported two ginormous magazine racks, three paperback spinner racks, and (best of all) two loaded-down comicbook spinner racks. They got everything! I never missed an issue of any favorite comic, plus I got my first exposure to Warren's Spirit reprints which REALLY knocked me out! Yep, great memories and great comics were found in that huge corner of the best store ever!

 Mike Grell helped make the LSH continue to be awesome!

 Super Sons, Vigilante, and some truly far-out Silver Age reprints!

 Our Pal Sal Buscema inked by Joe Staton on a the origins of Mantis and Vision written by Steve Englehart! Whoo!

 A stellar story in Steve Englehart's stellar CA&F run. So long, Nomad, welcome back Cap!

 The beginnings of Steve Gerber and Sal Buscema's massive Headmen/Nebulon storyline starts here, baby!

 Kid Groove actually wrote an LOC on this ish. I loved it a lot more than I do now, but still, it's a fun ish.

 This spectacular ish (my first) made a life-long Eisner/Spirit fan of moi!

Atlas/Seaboard is represented!

The Grooviest Covers of All Time: The Spirit by Will Eisner and Ken Kelly

Dig it, Groove-ophiles! Ol' Groove loves, I tell ya, loooves Will Eisner's The Spirit. I fell in love with both Eisner's genius and Denny Colt's adventures via Warren's b&w reprint mag that ran sixteen issues from January 1974 to August 1976 (yeah, Kitchen Sink quickly took over publishing the mag, and we'll get to those later, don't ya worry). Most every cover of the Warren series was a masterpiece, but my favorites are those done by Eisner himself in partnership with fantasy/album cover painter extraordinaire Ken Kelly, issues 4-11. Why? Take a look and then you can tell me why, baby!

Black and White Wednesday: "The Winnah!" by Eisner w/Feiffer

Whaddya say we truck on back to the Golden Age via the Groovy Age today, Groove-ophiles? This one is a wonderful trip down Memory Lane for Ol' Groove. One of those cold, rainy days just before Christmas back in 1974. A little extra spending money made for a very interesting trip to book section of my beloved Mac's super-store. Yers trooley, mind you, was raised by parents who grew up in the 40s/50s and who had cut their teeth on comicbooks and radio shows. Hearing about the Golden Age of those two media was always a favorite pastime, and any time Young Groove got the chance to actually get his hands on any three-dimensional, real-life forms of those memories, said nostalgic stuff was seized upon with relish. So, on this day of days, I found the second volume of Pyramid's The Shadow reprint series (The Black Master--the first Shadow pb I ever saw--oh, those Jim Steranko covers!) and the sixth (again, the first I'd seen) ish of Warren's b&w Will Eisner's The Spirit reprint series. I don't remember much else about that day except a visit to my maternal grandparents and hearing Neil Sedaka's "Laughter In the Rain" on the car radio...

Being 11 years old, it took Young Groove a while to make it through that Shadow novel, but I devoured that issue of The Spirit right away. (The only Spirit story I'd ever read, up to that point, was the one reprinted in Jules Feiffer's Great Comic Book Heroes, but Ol' Groove doth digress...). That moody cover, perfectly setting up the first story in the ish ("Showdown" featuring a great battle-in-the-dark between The Spirit and his arch nemesis The Octopus) is still an all-time favorite cover (kudos to penciler Eisner and painter Ken Kelly). All the stories in that ish were cool: "The Wedding" and the "Job" being a romantic two-parter featuring supporting characters, "The Lamp", "Glob", "Wild Rice", "Taxes and the Spirit" (stories about a genii, a caveman, a kidnapped-rich-girl-turned moll--right in tune with the then ongoing Patty Hearst saga in the news, and tax collectors). You can see right there that this comic was very, very different than the usual reams of super-heroes and monsters. But my favorite story of the issue (and yes, it's still my fave) is "The Winnah!" by Will Eisner himself (aided and abetted by a young Jules Feiffer--hey, the guy who wrote the book that turned me on to The Spirit--whoa!). "The Winnah!" is the story of two brothers, boxers, the older one worshipped by the younger one, and neither of them very good at making life-choices. It was like watching a classic movie on paper--and the kicker? The Spirit isn't even in the story! He's only mentioned on the last page...

Man, does Ol' Groove ever LOVE The Spirit!