10/18/09:
ASKPHIL:
Hey Prof! I am a longtime customer at AABC(about 15 years!) and was wondering how little information you actually need to identify a comic. I am trying to track down a few of the first comics I ever read, so they would have been from sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s. Lets start with the most difficult. It was a story in which wolverine saved a drowning kid. Even when he pulled him from the water, the kid was dying so he gave him a blood transfusion to save his life right there on the dock. I know its not a lot of information, but it is all I can remember. If you can crack that nut it would be much appreciated! Thanks! ~Elvis
The Professor actually bestirred himself to do research on this question (i.e., he Googled various combinations of “Wolverine,” “transfusion,” “kid” and “drowning”), and searched his memory, too, but nothing came up; there are just too many Wolverine stories out there. If it was in the late/’80s/early ’90s, it was probably by Claremont, and likely had Wolverine calling someone “bub” and saying his “best I am…” line, but if it was in Marvel Comics Presents, or an annual, or a guest appearance, then all bets are off. Therefore, let’s throw it open to out Generous Readers: can anyone hazard a guess as to which comic Elvis is seeking?
10/23/09
ASKPHIL:
Why was there a photograph on the cover of the Amazing Spiderman issue #262?
Well, why not? For the uninitiated, this book has an actual photo of a guy who looks quite a bit like Peter Parker, dressed in a Spidey costume but with the mask off, and he seems to have been caught by the photographer in the act of changing into or from his secret identity (the grainy tabloid quality of the photo makes it easier to pull off the illusion that’s he’s the “real” Spider-Man). Marvel occasionally experimented with this sort of thing; there’s a late Marvel Team-Up with a drawn Captain America and Spidey against an NYC photo, and as far back as the Lee/Kirby FF and Thor the King was using photo collages for his cosmic vistas (the Professor seems to recall a Spider-Woman cover that used the real-person-in-costume bit, too). This kind of thing never seems to lead anywhere, though; comics are comics, and fans don’t want fumettis; they want the “reality” of the penciled-and-inked fantasy world, and “real” photos of actual people, with their not-quite-right-looking “real” costumes, just seem to intrude on that.
