Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort‘s web site, The Tom Brevoort Experience, is filled with fascinating stuff that celebrates the very best of, largely, US comics.
Picking out favourite issues across decades of US comics publishing, Tom highlights themes, creators and indeed individual comics downthetubes fans may be familiar with, such as, recently, Superman #400, released in 1984.
Edited by Julie Schwartz the special issue was written by Elliot S. Maggin, and features individual chapters and many pin-ups drawn by many artists not necessarily known for their work on Superman, including Will Eisner, Michael Kaluta, Frank Miller, Marshall Rogers and Jim Steranko.
The item was enough to send me scurrying out on the web to find some of the original art from the issue, quickly locating these examples by Brian Bolland and Eisner.
For Marvel fans, Tom’s website will be definitely of interest not only for items on Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and characters such as the Fantastic Four and more, but for items rarely highlighted, such as a rare fanzine tribute to Kirby by Italian creator Leonardo Ortolani which Brevoort has had auto-translated.
Also featured are some examples of an unused Spider-Man newspaper strip proposal in the 1960s, as part of a retro review of Marvel Tales #81, a comic published in 1978, which ran included coloured up examples of the test, probably worked up in 1968.
Tom relates how, back in the 1960s, a decade before the then-current Spider-Man newspaper strip, Stan Lee and John Romita had worked up two or three weeks’ worth of samples in an attempt to convince a newspaper syndicate to run the web-slinger as a seven-day syndicated strip, “a missed opportunity for sure.”
Here’s a daily and a Sunday page by Stan Lee and John Romita, as reprinted in Marvel Tales #81 back in 1978.
Tom Brevoort is an American comic book editor, known for his work for Marvel Comics, where he has overseen titles such as New Avengers, Civil War and Fantastic Four. He became Executive Editor in 2007, and in January 2011 was promoted to Senior Vice President of Publishing. He holds both titles as of 2011.
Tom also offers some perceptive reviews of the Doctor Who TV series on the site, and his take on Blake’s 7, “perhaps the most nihilistic television series ever made”, as he describes it.
There are also posts on anime shows such as Battleship Yamato and Star Blazers, but as a celebration of great American comics, Tom’s site is a real treasure trove.
Well worth a look!
• Check out The Tom Brevoort Experience at tombrevoort.com
• Follow Tom Brevoort on Twitter @TomBrevoort
With thanks to Stephen Marchant of London’s Cartoon Museum for highlighting this
John Freeman
The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Star Trek Explorer (previously known as Star Trek Magazine) and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War and “Dan Dare”. He’s the writer of "Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies" for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Features, Links, US Comics
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