Tag: Comic Books

Andy Mangels’ Hollywood Heroes from May 1993

Andy Mangels’ Hollywood Heroes was a news column that appeared in the pages of Wizard: The Guide to Comics magazine, and Hero Illustrated in the early 90’s. I thought it would be fun to look back at the news he was covering for that time period, since we are almost 26 years removed from it, and can analyze it a little bit. His news is in italics, and my comments follow in bold.

“The big news this month is that ABC recently put in an order for a two hour Superman pilot film called Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Andy speculates that this will be a more relationship based show than previous incarnations due to the title.”

Well, he was right about that. He seemed a little surprised that Perry White has been cast as a black man.

MANTIS

“In other superhero pilots news, he mentions that The Resurrector has been ordered. I don’t remember that one. But he then goes on to mention that Fox has ordered a 2 hour pilot from director Sam Raimi called Mantis, about a chemist who is crippled in the L.A. riots develops an exo-skeleton and a power pack that gives him super-human powers.”

That one I do remember, and it was a pretty swank show, even though it only lasted one season.

“HBO is working on a small-screen werewolf movie to air sometime this year.”

It was untitled at that point. Does anyone remember what this was and if it ever made it to air?

“Swamp Thing on USA Network is winding down it’s run with it’s last 5 new episodes.”

That was such a good show too. It’s one that would probably do well with a reboot these days.

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M.A.S.K. Insert From 1986

Earlier this week I was thumbing through some 80’s comics books looking at the classic ads when I came across this absolute gem. At first I thought it was just a short comic story insert featuring M.A.S.K., but then I found that immediately following the short, four page comic, was a few pages of M.A.S.K. merchandise! As soon as I saw it, I knew I wasn’t the only one who would be interested in all this cool stuff, so here in it’s complete glory is the complete 12-page insert! And probably the coolest, yet weirdest, part about all this is the fact they were giving away an actual Chevy Camaro. When you think that the majority…the VAST majority…of people who would see this were kids, it makes the giveaway kind of a head scratcher. But anyway, don’t let that ruin your fun! Enjoy looking through this awesome insert from 1986.

MASK

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Retro Comic Book Ads #2

Old comic books often act as a time capsule. They’re full of advertisements of products from long ago, and can tell us a lot about the culture of the time in which they were printed. Some of those products are still with us, while others are not. I often like to crack open the pages of a long forgotten comic book and just browse the advertisements found inside with which to take a trip back in time to another era. Let’s open one of those time capsules here today and see what we find….

The “time capsule” for this trip back in time is a copy of Iceman #1, from Marvel Comics in 1984. It was the first issue of his first mini-series, and I imagine this mini-series was created to capitalize on the character’s popularity from the Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends cartoon.

The first ad we come across is a real eye opener. It’s for the Mario Bothers home video game for the Atari 2600 system. It’s hard to think of a Mario game being on any system besides one from Nintendo, but this is from before Nintendo was launched in the USA and Mario took over the video gaming world. This version of the game for Atari was an arcade port to the home system.

Unless they switched bibs, it’s Luigi who is really featured in this ad instead of Mario, which seems really weird to me.

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The Beginning of My Comic Book Fandom in the 90’s

Ever since I was young, I’ve enjoyed comic books. Although I’ve never been a hardcore comics buyer or reader, I have dabbled in them from time to time, and my collection has expanded and retracted a lot through the years.

In the beginning, my older brother had a large collection of comic books that were kept under a table on our carport in the house I grew up in. During the summer months, I would pull out random issues and read through them. In his large pile of comics, there was Justice League America, Unknown Soldier, Sgt. Rock, Fantastic Four, Batman, Incredible Hulk, Mad Magazine, and Cracked.

Rainy days were whiled away kicked back on a sofa we had on the carport, watching and listening to it rain and reading issue after issue. Since they were kept on the carport, they ended up drawing moisture and thus any monetary value they had vanished. But that didn’t matter to me. What mattered was the content inside.

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