Summer of '76! Grooviest Covers of All Time: A Marvel-ous Summer

What it is, Groove-ophiles! Today we begin a week-long look back at the sensational Summer of 1976! It was the Bicentennial, baby, but it was, oh, so much more! The Summer Olympics were dominated by Nadia-mania. Legionnaire's Disease and Swine Flu gave us quite a scare. Happy Days, Match Game, and Kotter ruled the boob tube (with Family Feud and the Gong Show making their debuts). "Afternoon Delight", "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight", "Silly Love Songs", and "More, More, More" burned up the radio waves. At the box office The Omen shocked, the Outlaw Josie Wales rocked, and Silent Movie...well, it wasn't as good as Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein. Cher, Burt Reynolds, and Liz Taylor used up all the ink in the tabloids. And Marvel Comics gave in to yet another bout of inflation and raised their cover-prices to thirty cents--just in time for the summer! Were they worth the extra nickel? Gaze at the following gaggle of compelling covers and you tell me, baby!

Notice the debuts of both Nova and Phoenix occurred during that scintillating summer! I remember getting Captain America's Bicentennial Battles and Nova #1 the day school went out. What a way to start the summer! Superheroes were definitely dominating, with most of the horror line gone and only a couple sword and sorcery mags left standing in their bloody sandals. All of their western mags (which had long before gone to reprints) ended that summer--right when Young Groove was getting into them thanks to a local station showing classic westerns late Friday nights. At least DC still had Jonah Hex. And speaking of DC, we'll check out their line-up tomorrow. See ya then!

Famous First Fridays: Neal Adams' Detective Comics Debut

When we think of Neal Adams and the Groovy Age, our thoughts usually turn to The Batman, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, or Deadman. But, what about the Elongated Man? Sound crazy? Not so, Groove-ophiles! Y'see, the same month Neal took over the artistic chores of his first regular super-hero strip Deadman (in Strange Adventures beginning with issue 206), Neal's other "first" super-hero work turned up in Detective Comics #369 (September 1967) on, you guessed it, the Elongated Man back-up strip. That's right, before the Spectre, Batman, Green Lantern, and Green Arrow, Neal's super-hero debut was split between the aforementioned Deadman story and the focus of today's post, the Elongated Man in "Legend of the Lovers' Lantern!", written by Gardner Fox. T'was Neal's only Elongated Man tale, btw, making it even more special. So now when some smarty-pants fanboy mentions Neal's Detective debut was on "Secret of the Waiting Graves" in 'Tec #395 (October 1969), you can show off that you're the smartest fan in the room!

Making a Splash: Mike Grell's Warlord Part Two

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! Today we're gonna look at the rest of the all-Mike Grell splashes from Warlord issues  8-14 (May 1977-May 1978). (We looked at issues 1-7 here, remember?) During this run, Travis Morgan (aka The Warlord) trades in his super-heroic leather outfit for the skimpiest fur loincloth in the history of loincloths, but Grell makes it work okay. Iron Mike was firing on all cylinders with these splashes, baby! Dig 'em!

Joe Rubenstein did a fine job of inking ish 15, then Vinnie Colletta finished out the Groovy Age as inker with issues 16-40. Colletta's inks weren't bad over Grell's pencils, but they were certainly different. We'll look at those issues in the future if enough of you ask for it. It's up to you, Groove-ophiles!

Black and White Wednesday: "The Capistrano Jewels" by Will Eisner

By popular demand, here's Will Eisner's original tale for the second ish of Kitchen Sink's underground Spirit mag from the fall of '73. Would this four pager rate an "adults only" tag in today's comicbook market?