WHEN I WAS GROWING UP IN THE 1960s , my pre-teen years were almost entirely consumed by comics. In the first half of that magical decade, while so much around me was changing, all I could see was the DC comics of Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz, along with the Beatles and certain favoured tv shows like My Favorite Martian , The Munsters and Space Patrol . As an eight year old, this was the sort of thing that held my rapt attention - DC comics and Ray Walston as My Favourite Martian. Life was much simpler then. In the second half of the Sixties, I'd discover Stan Lee's Marvel Comics, The Monkees and Steed and Mrs Peel in The Avengers . While it was a great time to be growing up, there were also plenty of disadvantages to being a kid. Chief among these was the prevailing attitude that comics were stupid. Once I got to about ten, I discovered Marvel Comics, the Monkees and, a little later, Emma Peel. For a lad at a tough South London primary school, it didn't pay to be d...
THIS TIME, I've asked my old friend and former 2000AD colleague Kid Robson to contribute a guest entry for this blog. We both share a love of early Marvels, especially those written by Stan Lee, and as The Kid had mentioned Droom in one of his earlier comments on this blog, it seemed natural to ask him to offer a few words about Dr Droom and his spiritual successor Dr Strange. Thank you, Kid ... "Twas Steve's idea..." said Stan Lee about Dr. Strange in a letter to Jerry Bails in 1963. However, it's interesting to ponder just what gave Steve the idea to do a strip about a 'Master of Black Magic' (later changed to 'Mystic Arts') in the first place. The origin of Dr Strange wasn't revealed until the character's fourth appearance, in Strange Tales 115 (Jul 1963) - he hadn't appeared in Strange Tales 112 and 113 . It has been speculated that this episode was drawn much later in the series run - perhaps the ninth story, as it's markedly...