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Spider-Man’s Bottom 10 Bronze Age Bums
Once again, guest blogger Mark Ginocchio of Chasing Amazing provides much-needed Spider-Man content for Longbox Graveyard … this time with an in-depth look as some of Spider-Man’s most maligned foes! Take it away, Mark!
I know Paul O’Connor, the founder of Longbox Graveyard is probably sick and tired of me telling this story, but one of the first LBG articles I ever read was a “top 10” list of Paul’s favorite Marvel characters and I was absolutely floored that Spider-Man did not make the list. When I confronted Paul about it via social media (probably Twitter), he told me about how he grew up reading comic books during the Bronze Age era and that he was never all that impressed with the Spider-Man comics that were released during this era. I thought long and hard about his opinion, when I realized, he was absolutely right.
Amazing Spider-Man #121 … the death of the Silver Age, and definitely NOT a part of the Bottom 10!
Granted, some comic book historians credit a Spider-Man comic book, Amazing Spider-Man #121, aka “The Death of Gwen Stacy,” for marking the end of the Silver Age and the beginning of the grittier Bronze Age (though for the purposes of this article, I looked at all issues post-Stan Lee, starting with ASM #101). Beyond Gwen’s death, there were a few good/important stories during this time: the first appearance of the Punisher; the “original Clone Saga” which was infinitely more succinct and well-crafted than the mid-90s debacle; and some really interesting character moments for supporting cast members like Mary Jane Watson, Flash Thompson, Harry Osborn, J. Jonah and his future wife (now deceased) Marla Jameson. But otherwise, the 70s/early 80s were a dark period quality-wise for the Wall Crawler, only rivaled by the trash trove of Spidey stories from the “Chromium” Age in the 90s.
And yet, one piece of awfulness stood out to me more than anything else from Spidey’s Bronze Age run. I was recently re-reading these comics in hopes of getting some fun storylines to mock and I immediately realized that the wave of new villains introduced for Spider-Man to fight during this era were enough for a dedicated post. That’s when I decided it was absolutely necessary to rank the (not) top 10 of these Bronze Age “bums” in order of horrid to comically absurd. My totally subjective criteria includes such factors as physical weakness of the character, awfulness of his origin story, ability to alarm the fashion police, and overall (lack of) impact on Spider-Man/Marvel comics history.
On with the list!
10. Green Goblin III (Dr. Bart Hamilton) – Key Bronze Age Battle: Amazing Spider-Man #174-180
Thought I’d start the list with a classic villain portrayed in a less than classic fashion. Dr. Bart Hamilton was Harry Osborn’s shrink who worked with Harry after he went crackers and tried to kill everyone Peter Parker held dear as the second Green Goblin. So naturally, while psychoanalyzing Harry, Hamilton, who has no supervillain background whatsoever, decides he wants to be king of the criminal underworld and assume the identity as the third Green Goblin. For some reason, this origin story just stretches the limits of plausibility for me, even by comic book standards. How does a professional psychiatrist just randomly DECIDE to become a supervillain? Bonus points for the fact that Hamilton is a total pushover, even with all of the Goblin’s weapons at his disposal. And once Spider-Man realizes he’s not fighting his long-time friend Harry, the good doctor goes down without much of a fight.
9. Cyclone – Key Bronze Age Battle: ASM #143-144
Peter/Spider-Man goes to Paris for Daily Bugle business and runs into a spandex wearing Frenchman who hates America because they didn’t buy his cyclone-producing technology while he was on the payroll for NATO. So he implements the technology into his costume and chooses to get back at America by kidnapping a loud-mouthed newspaper publisher. And in case you didn’t know he was a villain, let’s play into xenophobic stereotypes and have him call Americans stupid pigs another three dozen times. Yeah nationalism! Spider-Man is able to defeat Cyclone by pointing a bigger fan back in his direction. I’m sure there’s a joke there, but I’ll let you, dear readers, figure it out for me. While you do, I’m going to sit here and enjoy some “Murican wine and freedom fries.
8. Grizzly – Key Bronze Age Battle: ASM #139-140
This guy is as big as a bear. So let’s put him in a giant bear suit! He’s the original walking carpet (sorry Chewie)!!! If the costume choice wasn’t bad enough, his origin story ups the ante. A disgraced wrestler (Maxwell Markham) who has a vendetta against J. Jonah Jameson and the Bugle for some nasty editorials they wrote about his time in the squared circle. So basically this character is Andre the Giant if he became a supervillain, dressed up like a bear, and the New York Daily News wrote editorials about that time he ripped off Hulk Hogan’s cross, joined up with Bobby the Brain Heenan, and challenged Hogan at Wrestlemania III.
7. Gibbon – Key Bronze Age Battle: ASM #110-111
Tired of being made fun of for looking like a monkey, Martin Blank embraces his “beast within” by becoming the ape-like Gibbon. How this criminal persona helps with Martin’s self-esteem issues is beyond me. But the character is treated like a joke from the word “go,” and even the once-bullied Spider-Man laughs off the Gibbon’s criminal plans. Kraven the Hunter tries to mold Blank into his personal Spidey killing machine, but since this was years before Kraven became a legitimate supervillain who buried Spider-Man alive and assumed his identity, you can imagine how his partnership with the Gibbon went. Years later, Gibbon and Grizzly (#8) started a short-lived crime-fighting partnership (complete with the duo driving around in a “Grizzly Mobile”). It makes you wonder if these guys have some kind local watering hole they meet-up at and compare their tales of infamy.
6. Mindworm – Key Bronze Age Battle (Amazing Spider-Man #138
Mind control as a supervillain power is certainly nothing new, but Mindworm is a sad case study in taking a familiar science-fiction device and ruining it by creating a laughably awful-looking character who is impossible to take seriously as a threat. I guess Gerry Conway and Ross Andru dressed this mutant in a bathing suit because he lived in Rockaway Beach (near Flash Thompson), but beyond the costume, there’s also the mousey face and big forehead that scream “comic relief” rather than the next Victor Von Doom. Bonus shame points for the fact that Mindworm is eventually reduced to a drunken, disheveled mess who’s killed by street thugs in a later issue of Spectacular Spider-Man.
5. Hypno Hustler – Key Bronze Age Battle: Spectacular Spider-Man #24
I imagine this will be a controversial choice as the Hustler has become a cult favorite in recent years, especially after his appearances in Avenging Spider-Man #12 and #13 last year. It doesn’t change the fact that his first big Bronze Age appearance and battle with Spider-Man is a cringe-worthy affair (and I haven’t even mentioned Peter Parker dressing in a rented white “disco” suit). While it’s never explicitly said, it’s implied that the Hustler is a lousy musician who’s found a second calling as a white polyester-clad, petty criminal who hypnotizes his audience through the aid of his back-up band, the Mercy Killers in order to rob them. To give him a little bit of extra “juice”, the Hustler’s creators, Bill Mantlo and Frank Springer, provide him with dancing shoes that emit knockout gas and knives. Disco forever baby!! The Hustler is subdued when Spider-Man knocks off his protective earphones, thereby subjecting the villain to the hypnotic tones of his own back-up band. Granted, the Hustler is not designed to be a serious adversary for Spider-Man, but just because he’s a funny villain, doesn’t mean he’s still not a bum.
4. Stegron the Dinosaur Man – Key Bronze Age Battle: ASM #165-166
It’s hard to keep a straight face when you have to follow anybody’s name with “the Dinosaur Man.” Stegron was one of two “Lizard 2.0” characters considered for this list (the other being the Iguana), but there’s something about a guy injecting himself full of dinosaur DNA (and perhaps inspiring one of the biggest novels/motion pictures of the 1990s) and becoming a half-man, half-stegosaurus creature. The silliness is turned up to 11 when in an issue of ASM Stegron uses a re-animator gun to breathe life into a bunch of dinosaur fossils on display at the Museum of Natural History (thusly ruining one of my favorite exhibits in New York City). More importantly, Stegron is a perfect case study into what makes a good villain: the Lizard is a sympathetic character since he is the good-natured family man Curt Connors in human form. His reptilian affliction was caused by a failed attempt to regenerate his lost arm. Stegron’s motivation is world domination via the control of extinct animals. That’s dumb.
3. Swarm – Key Bronze Age Battle: Spectacular Spider-Man #36-37
Actual conversation I had with my wife while explaining Swarm: “So he’s a semi-dead Nazi…” Wife: “That’s always a good start.” Me: “Who’s actually a skeleton composed entirely of bees.” Wife: “….”
I admit that a long time ago I got over the self-conscious embarrassment I would sometimes feel when it was inevitably revealed that I was a huge comic book geek. But it’s characters like Swarm, aka Frtiz Von Meyer, the skeleton-man who controls killer bees after he grabbed a queen bee and embedded it in his brain, who make the wonderful world of superhero comic books a little difficult to defend sometimes. Beyond Swarm’s just overall general absurdity, there’s also a lot about the character that is scientifically implausible (most notably, how does a guy composed of thousands of individual bees able to “fly?”). He’s not exclusively a Spider-Man villain and actually made his grand debut against the “Champions” super-team, but his Bronze Age match-up with the Wall Crawler is crazy enough that I have to throw him on this list. Besides, I really wanted to capture that very genuine reaction from my wife.
2. Spider-Mobile – Key Bronze Age Battle: ASM #160
Shortly after the “Death of Gwen Stacy,” the forces that be at Marvel thought they would lighten the tone of Spidey’s comics by introducing the Spider-Mobile: Spider-Man’s very own vehicle that was clearly a satirical knockoff of the comic book world’s most famous automotive, the Batmobile. Giving credit where it’s due, Marvel very slowly laid the groundwork for the Spider Mobile, first having the “inventors” approach Spidey about putting his name on their product, then having Spider-Man (with help of the Human Torch) build it himself, and then finally having stories where the practicality of such a vehicle is openly questioned and mocked. When Mysterio II (another consideration for this list) creates an illusion of an alleyway and Spider-Man drives his new car into the river, we are under the impression that the Spider-Mobile is dead and buried. If only the whole saga ended there, we could call it a funny, albeit beaten into the ground story that I’m sure was born from a Marvel bullpen joke run amok. But the saga wasn’t over. The Spider-Mobile was revived by none other than the “Terrible” Tinkerer, a mad scientist who first appeared in ASM #2 before going on a very lengthy hiatus. And this time, the Herbie was fully loaded. The Spider Mobile had been repurposed as a pseudo-Spider Slayer, out for Webhead’s blood, leading to perhaps the greatest title of a Spider-Man comic ever: “My Killer, the Car!” Who knew after nearly three years worth of stories the big payoff for the Spider-Mobile was going to be the fact that it wanted to MURDER Spider-Man?
1. Big Wheel – Key Bronze Age Battle: ASM #183
Jackson Weele was having a bad couple of weeks. He was embezzling from his company and he hired a villain, the Rocket Racer, to steal some money for him to pay off his debts. Unfortunately, the Racer thought Weele was a bit of a joke, and continually disrespected him by calling him “Big Wheel.” So Weele did what any other person who was down on his luck and facing prison time would do. He made lemonade out of lemons. He visited the Tinkerer (him again!) and asked him to make him a device that could crush anything in its path – a gigantic metallic circle. You might even call it a “big wheel.” Finally, the world would stop disrespecting Jackson Weele. But this story ends as sadly as it started. You see, what Weele didn’t understand was with “great big powerful metallic wheels, comes the responsibility to learn how to operate them.” While barreling down a city street, Weele misses his targets, Spider-Man and Rocket Racer, and ends up in the drink. And just like that, it’s exit stage left Mr. Weele. Spider-Man even tries to save him, but Weele is presumed dead. He would get revived in 2006 in an issue of Spider-Man Unlimited, and the Wheel itself is currently being operated by the villain Overdrive in Superior Spider-Man #1 and Superior Foes of Spider-Man. But I think Weele’s story has much more honorable ending in ASM #183. He came, he saw, he rolled and failed. It’s the comic book equivalent of Luke Skywalker accidentally hitting the ejector button instead of the “fire” button when he had one clean shot to take out the Death Star. Actually, that would be pretty funny.
Well that wraps up my bottom 10 Spider-Man Bronze Age bums!
Thanks, Mark, for another terrific guest blog! Be sure to visit Mark at his home on the web — Chasing Amazing — where Mark chronicles his one-man attempt to collect every single issue of Amazing Spider-Man!
IN TWO WEEKS: #110 The Power And The Prize!
LONGBOX GRAVEYARD TOP TEN LISTS
- Top Ten Instagram Superheroes
- Top Ten Superhero Lairs
- Top Ten Manliest Superheroes
- Top Ten Longbox Graveyard Articles (Year One!)
- Superhero Music Top Ten
- Top Single Issue Stories
- Top 1o Loves of Peter Parker (Part 1)
- Top 10 Loves of Peter Parker (Part 2)
- Top Ten Marvel Comics Characters
- Top Ten DC Comics Characters
- Top Ten Spider-Man Battles (Part I)
- Top Ten Spider-Man Battles (Part II)
- Top Ten Captain America Villains
- Spider-Man’s Bottom 10 Bronze Age Bums
- Top Ten Superhero Spoonerisms
- Top 5 Captain America Graphic Novels You Can Actually Buy (Sometimes), Read, And Enjoy!
Longbox Soapbox (Fall 2012)
This seventy-eighth weekly installment of Longbox Graveyard marks this blog’s eighteen month anniversary … so it is time for another Longbox Soapbox, where I blog about this blog — it’s past, present, and future!
Statistics & Hits
In last summer’s edition of Longbox Soapbox it certainly seemed Longbox Graveyard was on the march. The blog had seen twelve straight months of growth and with several new initiatives on the horizon there was every reason to believe that trend would continue.
Alas … what I hoped would be a base camp for the assault on comic book Everest instead proved to be my peak month, as daily hits have declined by about twelve percent these last six months. I suppose there is optimism in that the rate of decline has been shallower than the steep march to my Elvis Month of May 2012, but however you slice it, I have fewer hits at Longbox Graveyard today than I did six months ago.
I can only guess why this might be so. Summer doldrums? Some mysterious shift in the blog’s Google profile? Are my old readers are getting churned out now that Longbox Graveyard is no longer such a novel thing? Maybe it is just down to topic selection these past six months — aside from my very successful Amazing Spider-Man column, this last run has seen articles on more obscure books like Tomb of Dracula, Killraven, Judge Dredd, and Master of Kung Fu (twice!) I suppose I could lift my numbers by writing about Batman, the X-Men, and Spider-Man all the time but my interests lay elsewhere and I have come to accept that not every topic at Longbox Graveyard will be of interest to all.
linkbait: Naked Batman
Whatever the reason, readership is down, and I’d be lying if I said it was anything but discouraging. Not discouraging enough to abandon the blog (which will always be a vanity project no matter how many hits I draw), but enough to find me frustrated at times, and wondering if there’s some obvious-to-everyone-else bit of SEO magic that I am overlooking for the blog. The good news is November was my best month since the benchmark month of May 2012, so maybe Longbox Graveyard has recovered from its slide and will start to build bigger readership numbers again. I have also received some very encouraging feedback recently from readers and listeners that make it easier to accept a dip in my numbers.
Super Tuesday, Dollar Box & The Longbox Graveyard Podcast
One of the reasons my readership decline is disappointing is that my previous growth was largely organic, while these past six months have seen me creating additional material here and at other blogs for the express purpose of driving traffic back to Longbox Graveyard. One such initiative was Super Tuesday — my series of brief blogs looking at comic book ads from the Bronze Age — which was intended to lift traffic on the blog’s slowest day of the week. The feature did result in slight gains on Tuesdays, but they were more than washed away by general declines on every other day of the week, and as I think the features have been weak overall, I’m scuttling Super Tuesday as a regular feature, effective immediately, though I may still publish them from time to time. (I didn’t publish a Super Tuesday yesterday. Did you notice? Neither did I.)
so long, Super Tuesday
Two higher-profile initiatives will continue. Both my Dollar Box column at StashMyComics.com and my Longbox Graveyard Podcast at We Talk Comics were just getting off the ground when I wrote the last Longbox Soapbox — six months on and I can first start to evaluate them.
Here are statistics showing traffic referrals to Longbox Graveyard:
WordPress won’t let me show just the last six month’s worth of data, so these numbers are for all-time, but from this chart you can see my work at StashMyComics has yielded only a dozen or so hits per month, while We Talk Comics is well down the list at two dozen hits, total. Neither project is doing much for Longbox Graveyard, and they are distracting me from my core work here at the blog … but I am finding both of those commitments intrinsically rewarding, and so I intend to continue them for at least another six months (or as long as my hosts will have me, whichever comes first!).
Podcasting has been an especially interesting experience, and is something I never would have done if Mo Kristiansen at We Talk Comics hadn’t convinced me to do it. I consider the podcast supplemental to the blog, and as a verbal form I have used the podcast to editorialize and talk about comics history and theory more than anything else — subjects that might be too much work to develop in writing here at Longbox Graveyard, and also subjects that would be of limited visual appeal. I like podcasting — most of the time — and a few shows have been especially rewarding, such as when my son Miles and I discussed Frank Miller’s Holy Terror. While the podcast has been of no real value to Longbox Graveyard, I think I have developed a small and separate audience for that particular project. From the latest numbers it looks like each podcast gets downloaded about 500 times when it goes live, with lifetime downloads topping out over a little less than twice that number (so far). I intend to follow this particular path wherever it might lead.
Other Media
I’ve continued to maintain my Pinterest boards, and while my followers over there have swelled to six hundred or so, from the chart above you can see these are another siloed group of users who do not come over to Longbox Graveyard in appreciable numbers. At this point I am happy to keep the boards going but I’ve all but conceded in my one-geek-war against handbags and hairstyles on Pinterest.
Doctor Strange, from my Pinerest gallery of Third Eye Black Light posters
Twitter remains a strong channel for me, and I do have fun carrying on conversations over there — it’s a way for me to have daily contact with the Longbox Graveyard experience, even if the blog only publishes once a week. I have 1700 followers on Twitter, and my Klout hovers around 60 (for what little that is worth). Twitter has proven the third-largest driver of traffic to the blog, though it only generates about a hundred hits per month. I’ve been using Hootsuite to monitor Twitter, and also to pre-schedule my weekly rotation of headlines, promoting the week’s new blog every day, along with pointers to older posts on the blog posted by Hootsuite at times the system ensures me are calculated for maximum exposure based on my follower’s habits. I apologize if these messages are tiresome or repetitious for my long-time readers but I do have anecdotal evidence that this promotion helps keep my past work alive, particularly for new readers, and it’s always a kick when a Twitter discussion springs up about something I wrote months and months ago.
Longbox Graveyard on Instagram
My greatest new media effort has been with Instagram, which I outlined in a blog post a couple weeks ago. I’ve leveraged that channel up to nearly six hundred followers, and near as I can tell it’s delivered zero traffic to Longbox Graveyard, but I am having fun posting images over there, and I’ve struck up a correspondence with a number of readers that seem unique to that service. As with Pinterest and the podcast, Instagram may be telling me that the Longbox Graveyard “brand” is going to be a distributed presence, rather than a single, growing blog with lots of little feeder channels.
I continue to post to Facebook and Google+, but may give up on them before long. Google+ is a ghost town (though it does seem to help my search ranking a bit), and while Facebook has driven its share of hits, I think most of that traffic comes from my personal page, rather than the dedicated “Mole Mann” identity I set up to support Longbox Graveyard.
The Accumulation & Comic Sales
I’ve arrived at kind of a truce with my comic book Accumulation. Things are better organized, comic book-wise, than they have ever been, but the rest of my hobby area in the garage has gone to Hell, leading me to think it is time to bite the bullet and embark on a concerted effort to build-out a “man cave” that might better showcase my crap and make me feel better about the stuff I’ve got.
kind of a dump in the garage right now
I am just about ready to grant an amnesty to all of my comics and stop trying to sell or give them away. I had a little bit of success in moving bulk boxes of comics over the summer, but there are still way more books here than I can sell in any reasonable length of time, and eBay remains a gigantic waste of time and money when it comes to selling my comics. I have the Accumulation curated down to just about what I want it to be, but I still have about a dozen longboxes worth of books without a home … so I may look into donating them, or leaving them on a curb somewhere, or (maybe) widening my collection and just keeping them after all. Dunno.
Reading
I’m still pretty much reading comics and nothing more, though my reading has shifted a bit from back issues and Marvel digital titles to graphic novel collections. Regular business travel takes me up to Los Angeles a couple times a month, and I’ve made it a little ritual to drop by the House of Secrets comic shop in Burbank and pick up something new each time. Thanks to this initiative I’ve been reading many of DC’s New 52 trade paperbacks, as well as other newish collections like Ed Brubaker’s crime comics collections (Criminal and Incognito), and even flavor-of-the-month books like Saga. I’m still not buying single issues but these past six months I think I’ve purchased and read more contemporary stuff than I have have back issues from the Bronze and Silver Age that has been the focus of Longbox Graveyard. It’s worth noting that I’ve purchased very few Marvel trade paperbacks as I can instead read that back catalog digitally — I’ve binged on the rebooted Guardians of the Galaxy, the Bendis and Brubaker runs of Daredevil, and even some old Thomas/Trimpe Hulks in digital form, which has saved me hundreds of dollars over trying to purchase those same stories in printed collections.
Rocket Raccoon, from the rebooted Guardians of the Galaxy
The Boys
My lads steadfastly refuse to become comic book readers — I think they are lost causes, and I need to come to grips with it. Miles did meet me half way with Holy Terror, and I did read Walking Dead at his suggestion, but if or when I read Sin City, I will have exhausted his particular interest in comics (several targeted collections I’ve left in his room have met with utter indifference). Jack went to the San Diego Comic Fest with me but I think his geek interests are more on the television and movie sides of the spectrum — the comics bug just isn’t biting him.
Jack at Comic Fest
While my attempts to home-grow comics fans have come to ruin, I have connected with a couple guys through work. My sometimes-collaborator Chris Ulm has gotten a contact high off of Longbox Graveyard and is reading comics more frequently than before (though he never really gave them up). He and I have been going through the New 52 together and will hash it all out in my December podcast. I’ve also got a commuting buddy for those L.A. trips and House of Secrets visits, who has proven a captive audience for my comic book rants; we’ve also shared a couple graphic novel recommendations together, and he’s happy to try new stuff, so I benefit from the odd title he picks off the rack at the shop then leaves on my desk when he is done with it. I have more books than I can read and people to share them with and so I can’t complain.
Finances
The blog is still a dead loss — of course it has never been a money-making venture, but duty requires that I report advertising revenue is in the ones of dollars per month, and my donate button might as well be the G-spot for all that people can find it. I had an internet casino contact me about putting a banner on my front page but they only wanted to pay ninety bucks a year and I didn’t think it was a good fit. I host a banner for my pals at StashMyComics.com that along with my Dollar Box plugs drives maybe thirty-odd clicks a month to their site (which I see now is a bit more than I get in return, hmm …), but that is all gratis and in exchange for clicks from their site.
are ads distracting you?
I will probably keep the WordPress video ads running for another six months or so, just so I can get to my hundred dollars credit and cash out. They’re pretty ugly and they do slow down my page load. I also occurs to me that those ads have been running during this period of declining readership and that there might be a relationship. My feeling on ads is that if you live next to a river, you might as well put some lines in the water, but if they are negatively impacting your opinion of Longbox Graveyard, I will give them the heave-ho.
This seems a good subject for my poll!
Community
While my hits are down I think my comments are up, or at least holding steady, so it might be that my community is solid or even growing while my drive-by hits are waning. Your thoughtful comments are treasure to me and are always welcome at the blog. I try to reply to every one of them, or at least give them a thumb’s-up. I like the “permanent record” nature of threaded comment boards and I like seeing discussions flower here but I find I have better luck engaging readers in more real-time environments like Twitter or even Instagram. Still, the comments field is there for you and I hope you feel welcome to use it, even for older posts which haven’t seen much activity for awhile.
And as has become the tradition with these Longbox Soapbox posts, if you are reading this column, please post in comments, even if just to let me know you are lurking out there!
The Future
And so I come to that part of the blog where I declare if I will continue Longbox Graveyard or not. I have gotten this far by signing six month contracts with myself — knowing that I cannot quit during the contract, but that I can walk away when the contract is complete has kept me on track so far, and sustained this blog through a few discouraging and busy patches these past six months when it might otherwise have lapsed into inactivity. While I have seriously considered shutting down the blog or transitioning to bi-weekly publication, I am going to step up and commit to another six months of weekly publication. Partly this is because I feel I have unfinished work here. Partly it is because it would give me a kick to publish an Issue #100 of Longbox Graveyard (scheduled for May 2013). Largely it is because my gut is telling me not to keep going, which means I surely should.
thought about it …
So I will continue to publish here on Wednesdays, as fate will allow, and I will post up monthly podcasts and Dollar Boxes, too, and there may be some other surprise appearances along the way. Expect a few format tweaks here, and a departure from my strict attempt to alternate reviews with other types of columns every-other week. I hope you will continue to support Longbox Graveyard, and tell your friends about the blog to improve my readership (and lift my spirits!). Mentioning the blog in your own social channels — Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc. — all help with the virality and discoverability of my blog, so if you find a post you like, don’t shrink from tapping that blizzard of buttons in the “Share This” bar at the bottom of the column to recommend me to the wider world of the world wide web. Mentioning Longbox Graveyard in online comic book message boards or other communities is also very helpful.
That’s it! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you back here next Wednesday for your regularly-scheduled Longbox Graveyard! Don’t forget to post your mandatory-every-six-months comment below. And please accept my sincere appreciation for supporting Longbox Graveyard, my podcast, and all my crazy comic book hobby endeavors on the web!
NEXT WEDNESDAY: #79 Out Of The Holocaust … A Hero!
dangvozden
Paul O'Connor
Kris (not Chris)
markginocchio
miloapama
Dean Compton
Moya
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