Happy New Year! Famous Firsts featuring Len Wein with Gene Colan and Gil Kane

Happy New Year, Groove-ophiles! Here's wishing you the happiest of holidays and may 2013 be the best year ever! Let's kick the New Year off right with a Famous First featuring one of the all-time greats...

Swamp Thing! Wolverine! Storm! Colossus! Nightcrawler! The Human Target! A lot of folks know those famous names. Millions of comicbook fans love 'em. We also love the work of the guy who wrote and co-created 'em, Lively Len Wein! Whether we saw his name in the credits of an ish of Spidey, Batman, Justice League, or Marvel Team-Up, we knew we were in for a good comic! Len started in fandom, sold a script (which he co-wrote with his pal from fandom Marv Wolfman) to DC for an ish of Teen Titans (#18, to be exact; Ol' Groove's gonna have'ta lay that one on ya one of these fine days...), but his first solo scripting jobs came within weeks of each other on the newstands: "The Moving Finger Writhes..!" in Marvel's Tower of Shadows #3 (October 1969) and a framing sequence for DC Special #6 (November/December 1969) called "Behold the Wild Frontier". As first stories go, these twin tales don't set the world on fire, but they are blessed with awesome art by Gene Colan and Gil Kane! Enjoy!

Cover art by Neal Adams

Art by Gil Kane and Vinnie Colletta

Random Reads: "The Secret of the Spanish Blade" by Haney and Elias

Check it out, Groove-ophiles! Here's another hard-to-find Three Musketeers story from DC and the Groovy Age! "The Secret of the Spanish Blade" by Bob Haney and Golden Age Great Lee Elias was first presented in DC Special #26 (May 1976). Dig it!

If You Blinked You Missed: DC's Three Musketeers

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! In the mid-70s, Alexandre Dumas' Three Musketeers made quite a comeback into pop-culture's consciousness. Thanks to two successful flicks (the first courtesy the Salkind's production company--future producers of the Christopher Reeve Superman films, both directed by Richard Lester, director of Superman II--okay, and Superman III), someone at DC decided that it would be a good idea to bring Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (with d'Artagnon in tow, natch) to four color life in the pages of their reprint mag, DC Special.

The first Musketeers tale appeared in DC Special #22 (March 1976) and was written by Denny O'Neil with art by Jorge Moliterni. "A Monster Met on the Road to Calais" was lively fun, doing a great job of whetting fandom's appetite for more Musketeers. Check it out!

The Musketeers appeared three more issues (DC Special #'s 23-25, May-September 1976), all three drawn by Golden and Silver Age great Lee Elias. Ish 23 was written by Bob Haney, while the final two appearances were scribed by longtime DC editor Murray Boltinoff. If ya'd like a peek at 'em, Groove-ophiles, just give a whistle! (And many thanks to HACSA and Grundy for the superb scans!)