Thursday, March 24, 2016

Even More Marvel M-Ad-ness: Marvel, 1973...the Most Supernatural Year of All?

Dig it, Groove-ophiles! Ol' Groove has been digging through a big ol' bunch'a Marvel mags from 1973, and I've excavated some very cool full-page house ads. As you'll see, Marvel was really pushing their supernatural mags (both color and black and white), since (thanks to all the hoopla surrounding movies like The Exorcist) the supernatural was a huge trend at that time. And the art! Barry (Windsor-) Smith, Jim Steranko, Gil Kane, Jim Starlin, and more! Check 'em out!











8 comments:

  1. Ah, yes, when the dreaded Comics Code Authority loosened their hold on content, and horror and terror reigned in the spinner racks once more. Hey man, it was the early seventies. I caught the spooky vibe even in Kindergarten.
    M.P.

    ReplyDelete
  2. God, that brought back memories. Dracula Lives was a very important book during my boyhood. Wow....

    ReplyDelete
  3. The B&W horror mags were a passion of mine, along with Tomb Of Dracula and Giant Size Dracula. When Marvel began doing Planet Of The Apes magazine they were unstoppable.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow, the Valley of the Worm, my first impact with the dark, "lovecraftian" side of R. Howard... that hairy, faceless piper.
    I had some unpleasant dreams, James Allison style.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yeah, forget superheroes - when I was a horrible little scrote in the mid 70s the best comics coming out of Marvel were the horror and fantasy titles.
    Barry Smith, Mike Ploog, the Colan and Palmer Tomb of Dracula Dracula (which look looked a lot better in the Marvel UK reprints at a larger size in black and white)... amazing work.
    Haven't seen that Valley of the Worm cover before, but its a real cracker - Gil Kane was the perfect artist for that kind of thing.
    Enjoyed this a lot - as ever, thanks for posting, Mr Groove.

    -sean

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hah! You're right. We also had cool, larger B/W Drac mid-seventies reprints in Italy. :)

      Delete
    2. And also, here at least, it meant that the mid-70s FF and Thor was by Kirby and Lee :)

      -sean

      Delete
  6. I loved all the Marvel supernatural titles, especially Tomb of Dracula, Tales of the Zombie and The Living Mummy. Unfortunately, once the horror trend had run its course the titles began dropping away, little by little.

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin
Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


Note to "The Man": All images are presumed copyright by the respective copyright holders and are presented here as fair use under applicable laws, man! If you hold the copyright to a work I've posted and would like me to remove it, just drop me an e-mail and it's gone, baby, gone.


All other commentary and insanity copyright GroovyAge, Ltd.

As for the rest of ya, the purpose of this blog is to (re)introduce you to the great comics of the 1970s. If you like what you see, do what I do--go to a comics shop, bookstore, e-Bay or whatever and BUY YOUR OWN!