Remember those fabulous sixties? The marches, the be-ins, the draft-card burnings and best of all...the Avengers.

At the risk of sounding uncannily like grumpy Grampy Bull, you kids today and your Avengers. You got New Avengers and Mighty Avengers and Dark Avengers and Initiative Avengers and Secret Avengers and Cobalt Avengers and 100-Calorie Pack Avengers and Bikini Avengers and Chocolate Avengers...well, now, that last one sounds pretty good to me, and some of my readers might really enjoy the one before that.

My point, though—and I do have one—is that in my day, we had Avengers and only Avengers, and that was the way we liked it! before the franchise got so bloomin' popular that it required seventeen or eighteen monthly comics books, miniseries, one-shots, Official Handbooks to the Avengers Universii, and heavily annotated extremely unofficial webguides to all fifty states worth of Avengers plus Avengers Puerto Rico...well, before all that there was simply one comic book, The Avengers, which has always been one of my favorite comic books of all time, and right behind the FF, my second favorite superhero team. Who can resist the team antics of Dr. Druid, Gilgamesh, Sersi, Rage, Firestar and Jarvis? Not me, that's who!

Like all my favorite comic books, there's a solid handful of creator teams on the book that have truly made The Avengers the world's mightiest heroes, to this little stuffed bull, at least. I love the David Michelinie/John Byrne/George Perez eras, and the wacky and wild Steve Englehart era, and there's the Kurt Busiek/George Perez "Heroes Return" relaunch, all of which have a special place in my little red satin heart. I loves me the period just post issue #16 when the team really started to take off, and the Roger Stern/John Buscema issues of the mid-1980s got me back interested in the book after a long period of distinterest. And oh my golly, I simply stand up and cheer when I read the Avengers: The Crossing-era books. Oh wait, that's the wrong word. Stand up and jeer, I mean.

But by far my fave era of The Avengers is the last couple years of the 1960s, starting round about issue #50 and running through the early #70s, where Roy Thomas and John Buscema introduced the world to the Marvel Universe's first crying robot, Yellowjacket (and his amazing treehouse), and brought The Black Panther Black Leopard Panther into the fold of the World's Mightiest. This is the era I mostly collected in the 1980s reprint issues of Marvel Triple Action, a title which might have made no logical sense by the time Shooter and Company just threw up their hands and said, "Let's just reprint Avengers in the thing"...but for me, a copy of MTA always meant as much excitement and thrills as three regular Marvel Comics. I collected a large number of reprints from this period, missing a few issues here and there, but enough to make up my decision very early on in my comic book-collectin' career: them's good comics.

I could spend several dozen columns going over each ish of this magnificent run by Messrs Thomas, Buscema, and many other fantabulous Marvel creators, but instead let's have a fun and rapid romp through those golden coupla years by peeking in on each issue's coming next issue blurbs. They're works of art in and of themselves, aren't they? Starting with Avengers #50 (March 1968) and zooming right onto the end of the Age of Aquarius, December '69's #71, here, in order, are the cliffhanger teasers that made sure you would eagerly fork over your twelve cents each and every month of the Woodstock years. Why, this run is so classic, I bet you can even name the issues each story blurb belongs to!
























By the time the sixties are rolling to a close, Neil Armstrong's starting work building our first moon hotel, Nixon's getting into practice by stealing candy from babies, and the Beatles are hitting each other with folding chairs. But the sixties Avengers are going out on a high note, with the conclusion of a mega-issue story that somehow guest-starred the Invaders and later gave rise to Roy Thomas's supposition that a villain would take off Namor's trunks and replace them with another pair, just to have those green trunks. (Yeah, I'm sure that's why he did it.) So there's no "next issue" blurb at the end of #71 as we say goodbye to the Screamin' Sixties, but rather as Marvel starts to head into its second sensation decade, Roy and John bring the whole cast onto stage to jubilantly announce those two words, that, whenever they've been spoken with urgency and purpose, signal great events: Avengers Assemble!:




Ah, those were the days, my friends. We thought they'd never end.

More Avengers "Next Issue" blurbs here!

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 92

Panel from Marvel Two-in-One #24 (January 1983), script by Bill Mantlo and Jim Shooter, breakdowns by Sal Buscema, finishes and inks by Pablo Marcos Pablo Marcos, colors by George Roussos, letters by Irving Watanabe

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 91

Panel from Fantastic Four (1998 series) #61 (November 2002), script by Mark Waid, pencils by Mike Wieringo, inks by Karl Kesel, colors by Paul Mounts, letters by Richard Starkings and Albert Deschesne

Today in Comics Bully History, April 1, 2009: The return of...EVIL BULLY!

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 90

Panel from Fantastic Four #42 (September 1965), script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Vince Colletta, letters by Sam Rosen

Happy birthday to my bestest pal

People let me tell you 'bout my best friend
He's a warm hearted human who'll love me till the end
People let me tell you 'bout my best friend
He's a non-bull, got some pull, of love and joy his heart is full



People let me tell you 'bout him he's such fun now
Whether we're talkin' man to man or whether we're talking guy to cow
'Coz he's my best friend
Yes he's my best friend

Happy birthday to my pal John!

(Also, happy birthday too to my friend Benjamin Birdie, who's a real good draw-er and has excellent taste in birthdays!)

Arroooo from You: Googum presents Scud, the Disposable Assassin #11

It's a good thing that werewolves are immortal (or am I thinking of elephants? I often get them confused). Because at least one of them has been waitin' a heckuva long time for his moment in the spotlight...er, I mean moonlight. Almost a whole month ago Googum over at Random Happenstance sent me a link to a post looking in on one of his favorite comics of yesteryear, Scud The Disposable Assassin! You can check out all the arrooooin' goodness by clicking right here!

Gosh, I gotta check out the Scud collections...I've never read it, but how can you turn down a comic so wild and weird and arroooo-punctuated, as well! And you oughta check out the rest of Random Happenstance, fulla funny and incisive comics and pop culture commentary. Especially don't miss Googum's ongoing epic action-figure filled fumetti "Timing" (now in it's thirty-ninth part and goin' strong with the laffs an the action and the Kurt Wagner and Wade Wilson babysitting excitement)!

Mister Googum, thank you for the arroooo and double thanks for bein' so patient for me to link to it! That's why I'm awarding you the much-coveted Waiting for Bullot Bull-Prize! It's in the mail and it'll be in your happy hands in six to eighty-three weeks!

If my long delay in posting the newest entry of Arroooo from You, the internet's hottest meme, hasn't dissuaded you from joining in, you too can arroooo! Just email me a panel or panels featuring the sound effect arroooo (or a similar sound effect) scanned from any comic book we haven't covered here yet. Make sure you tell me what comic book it comes from, and email your scans to this address:

Or, you can post it on your own blog and send me a link so I can link back and properly credit you for your arroooo!

So, be back here in September of October 2011 for the next eagerly-awaited and not-at-all-delayed installment of arroooo!

Bullypen Bulletins

Bonjour and bonzai Bully-boosters, and belcome...I mean welcome back to the flurry and the frenzy of Comics Oughta Be Fun. Let's get caught up post-haste with some Bits of Bully Business shall we?

ITEM! Letters, I get letters! A few weeks ago I wrote about the missing colorist credits in 1960s Marvels and lamented that we didn't have a definite record of who provided the Thing with his orange, the Hulk with his green, and Daredevil with his yellow red. Over at his blog, Mister Mark Evanier kindly answered the question: it was usually or at least often Stan Goldberg, and the reason he didn't get a credit was because the process left the coloring until after the inking...and the credits...were done! What I didn't get a chance to mention at the time was that Eric Houston, author of the upcoming book The Comic Book Podcast Companion, checked in with Kirby expert John Morrow, publisher of The Jack Kirby Collector and gave me an authoritative confirmation: "His answer: Stan Goldberg colored most of the early [FF] issues." Now that's what Mama Bull always taught me—get a second confirmation! Thanks, Eric 'n' John! Consider yourself the recipients of a four-color Bull-Prize!

ITEM! Or should I say "FLASH!"? We here at C.O.B.F. spend an awful lotta time checkin' out the cool, clever, and creative competition, and tip our nose ring in jealousy at the ones that are not only fun but which make this little stuffed bull muse "I wish I'd thought of that!" That's the green flash of respect and envy I get when I check out one of my favorite new comics blogs, Dateline: Silver Age: "Headlines ripped from the pages of comics' great metropolitan newspapers!" Editor-in-chiefed by the Two Daves (Lartrigue and Thiel), D:SA reproduces those peculiar and preposterous papers with howling headlines a-plenty! Catch up on the antics of Batman, bank robbers, and The Sensational New Character Find of 2079, the Crime Clown! Who says newspapers are a dying breed? All they gotta do is put more stories about intelligent apes in 120-point type on the front page. Head on over there and—as they say—read all about it!

ITEM! Speaking of howlin', our crack staff of crackpots has been knee-deep in submissions for Arroooo from You...the werewolf meme the entire internet is ga-ga for! But when those lazy slackers in our mailroom fell behind in processing our arrooos because of all those three ice-cream-soda lunches on their business expenses, there's only one thing we can do: apologize! Especially to gracious and gorgeous Googum over at Random Happenstance who shot us an arroooo several weeks ago that we still haven't linked too! We're sorry, Big G, and we'll put that right tonight just after the ring of the midnight bell, okay? Who says this isn't the Boisterous Bully Age of Abject Apologies!?!

ITEM! Remember when I wrote about Scorchin' Johnny Storm makin' googly-eyes at his pal Ben's gal, the lovely Sue Storm impersonator Alicia Masters? Why, sure, we all do! Well, get ready to squeeze your peepers tight so they don't poop outta your skull, because our crack research team here at C.O.B.F. (which consists of Shelly the Little Otter Puppet and my kid sister Marshall the Tiny Stuffed Cow lying around reading old comics) have discovered an even earlier precursor to that John Byrne tale of Johnny 'n' 'Licia, sittin' in a tree. How early? How about...pre Beatles' first appearance in America?:






Panels from Strange Tales #116 (January 1964), script by Stan Lee, pencils by Dick Ayers, inks by George Roussos, colors by Stan Goldberg, letters by Ray Holloway

Oh, those boys. Will they never learn?!?

ITEM! I know what you're saying. "That Bully is sure one lazy bovine! He started two projects and hasn't finished them yet! Oh when, oh when, will we ever see 'A Wodehouse a Week' and 'Love Actually In (Sorta) Real Time' continue?" Gulp! To which I can only say, as did Cosby's co-star in I Spy when he introduced himself at the auditions for the Super Mario Brothers movie: Mea Culpa! Both projects got sidelined by that ol' devil called life, but this is my solemn Bully-promise: you'll definitely see both start up again soon and definitely finish off (this year)! And if I don't, I'll eat The Five Thousand Hats of Jack Kirby! And that's a good-hooves promise from the good bull at C.O.B.F.!

ITEM! Speaking of mislaid missives, here's another long-delayed post from the Bully Mailbag that's been rattling around waiting for a chance to give credit where credit is due! Back right after I posted about the fabulous Jack Kirby Photocollages, Jaunty Jim Engel emailed me to share a Kirby Kollage he and Chuck Fiala did for their 1982 Kitchen Sink fumetti comic Fandom Confidential. Let's let Jim tell the tale:

We did a special story just for the collection where Chuck & I visited John Byrne's house. He was then "the man" at Marvel & on the FF. He actually appeared in it (to be gleefully ridiculed by us). I designed the back cover parody/homage & did the photo collage & Byrne did the framing art. Thought you might enjoy it!

I sure did, Jim! And with Jim's kind permission, so can you!:

(Click picture to Dark Horse-size)

Way cool! Thanks for sharing, Jim—we who gaze into the Negative Zone in awe and wonder salute you! And, speaking of the bearded one...

ITEM! Are you man enough for John Byrne Month over at our Saturday "Separated at Birth" feature? Well, you better, because of the best of J.B.'s homages, tributes and parody covers are comin' up, every Saturday in April! Put on your 2D glasses, clip and save 'em all! Prepare yourself...for Separated at Byrne-th Month! And may the Byrne Robotics discussion board forgive me!

ITEM!: Speaking of clipping and saving...


Until next time, Bully Batallions, keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the comics! And remember above all else the material that makes great box packing to cushion your fragile shipments across country:

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 89

from X-Men: The Hidden Years #8 (Marvel, July 2000), script, pencils and letters by John Byrne, inks by Tom Palmer and Joe Sinnott, colors by Greg Wright