Ken Aldred

171 to 182 Young Avengers 1st series, 1 to 12 Really good series. Nice art from Jim Cheung. Well thought out twists on the characters' identities, powers, and how they fit into Avengers history and classic Marvel storylines. Occasionally choppy story progression, particularly noticeable in the last issue.

Miles Morales is quite a strong character, as is Kamala Khan, and Black Panther's sister, Shuri.

Fair point. Although I wonder what the standard bearer for the future would be, due to the increasing popularity of the vegetarian option?

Yup. When I read ‘char’ and ‘standard bearer’, at first glance the only choice I could think of, for its electric eco-friendliness and great design, was the Tesla Model 3.

Yup. A creative genius.

I really like covers with background star fields. Always look very cool to me.

Kamala Khan / Ms Marvel

I agree. They didn't really offer much new. Green Lantern started out with a different angle, but once he joins the Corps it's a little same-old.

That looks like a nice selection of comics. A pair of Neal Adams stories, Wrightson's Swamp Thing 7.

More a winter and Christmas product here in the UK. I remember being very confused as a kid when I bought an imported American Marvel annual for the first time by mail order, as it wasn't an oversized hardcover.

Summers in England during the mid seventies were blisteringly hot, well, by our standards. 1977 always stands out to me as a turning point, when I became a serious collector, and started looking for comics in other places besides the newsstand, and was so eager that I’d actually pay more than cover price for a back issue. So, I sent away for my first mail order catalogue from a company called Fantasy Unlimited, which was where I got my first Silver Age comic, FF 20. Mainly, I bought more recent runs from that time, like Eternals. Definitely an exciting summer of discovery. Summer 1978, the family went on a holiday to Germany, and, when we got back, a parcel was waiting for me from that same mail order company, containing a run of Savage Sword of Conan 1 to 10 in beautiful condition; a great holiday together with great comics. Summer 1981, I recall lugging a heavy, tiring, Weird Science EC Library set back from London : no idea why I did this as I probably could’ve found one closer to home. Anyway, I was absolutely blown away by these comics, and they remain among my all-time favourites to this day. The last really memorable summer was another very hot one, in 1989, just after my university finals, feeling quite burned out and reading a lot of comics. I found a very cheap copy of the Watchmen slipcase edition and thought it was just incredible, though now I’m much more critical about the squid ending. A very different, but, strangely, equally memorable comic from that summer was Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman, which I thought was bizarre and absolutely hilarious, one of the funniest I'd ever read, although that might’ve been a low-grade psychotic break due to exam stress; who can say?

- Far above anything else I'd place the science-fiction titles, Weird Science, Weird Fantasy and the merged Weird Science-Fantasy. My favourite genre, so admittedly biased that way: a patchy beginning, but then just great stories throughout, a fantastic range of artists; Kurtzman, Feldstein, Wood, Kamen, Orlando, Williamson, Frazetta, Severin / Elder. - Then, I'd place Kurtzman's brilliantly-written war comics, Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, and EC's social commentary platform, Shock SuspenStories. Quality throughout. - Tales From the Crypt, Haunt of Fear, Vault of Horror. Again, classic material; Ingels, Craig, Davis, a great mix of gothic, walking dead, psychological, and ironic, often gory, twist endings. But, I'm more a science-fiction than horror fan. - Crime Suspenstories - Mad and Panic. Lots of great art, but of its time with dated references, and it's not really my kind of humour because I always feel it's just trying too hard.

You'd like Tales From The Crypt. Crime SuspenStories is good too, for me as I like Craig and Krigstein's art in particular, but best read slowly though, as if you try to binge read it can start to get a little samey feeling.

My EC Library sets have been well-read over 30+ years and are not in perfect condition.

It's confusing at times. I've always considered the shrink wrap to be a similar idea to a CGC slab, and not opened an Omnibus or Archive hardcover which has been protected that way, for the same reason you just don't crack open a slab and read the contents.

Great article. I wonder if his taped-and-rebuilt comics had any influence on certain dealers who had the opinion that 'tape, if carefully applied, is not considered a defect' ?

As per the question in the thread title, Jack Kirby only had two hands, and so it’s likely that he could only work on a maximum of two comics simultaneously at any one time. And that’s assuming he was ambidextrous.

His style did look very different and worth following because it seemed to have a lot of potential. Unfortunately, very quickly, by the time you get to the very earliest issues of X-Force, it was clearly repetitive, empty, laden with swipes and technically very flawed, and that’s the point at which I lost interest and didn’t return because there was never much improvement in its basic foundation. Stagnant, and very different to the evolution of superior artists from that time such as Jim Lee. A bit like pop music; you can have artists that are technically inferior but succeed for a short while because they use the right style in the right place at the right time, until the fickle public bore and move on. Luck rather than a Faustian pact.

The style he shifted to in the mid-60s, the looser, more exaggerated style, might have been done to make the workload a bit easier? Compare the later Captain America stories in Tales of Suspense to the more detailed art and more realistic figure work in the earlier issues. Just a thought.

Yup. That's what I was thinking as well.

Any preference as to which team? Silver Age original? Days of Future Past line-up?

Solomon Grundy (1), Vandal Savage or Sportsmaster (2) Kav didn't specify which Age, so I went Golden.

Dark Phoenix and Cassandra Nova are also strong contenders.

Also first appearance of Cletus Kasady.

Although Alex Summers appeared in X-Men 54, his first appearance as Havok was in issue 58, a comic book I bought while on holiday in the Isle of Man in 1974. You could still find a lot of Silver Age comics turning up in paper shops over here in the mid 70s.