Author Archives: Phil

About Phil

With 40 years of experience in comic reading, collecting and reviewing, English Professor Phil Mateer has an encyclopedic mind for comics. Feel free to ask Phil about storylines, characters, artists or for that matter, any comic book trivia. He will post your questions and answers on the AABC blog. His knowledge is unparalleled! He is also our warehouse manager, so if you are looking for that hard to find comic book, ask Phil!

It Came From the Back Room #26

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Phil

Standard recap: I’m slowly going through AABC’s one-million-plus back-issue room, restocking the boxes on the sales floor and pulling stuff to sell as discount/overstock/special items. I’m going through the alphabet backwards (don’t ask), and at my speed, this amounts to a two-year project. This week, we’re looking at a couple of DC bargains from the end of the letter “H,” and some indy titles from the beginning of the letter “G” : Hellblazer Alan Moore’s occult trickster, who first appeared in Swamp Thing looking almost exactly like Sting (the Police lead singer of the early ’80s, not the easy-listening jazz … Continue reading →

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Gene Colan Art Exhibit

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Phil

Here are the five Colan pages being displayed at the store this week, through Saturday — and at the July 4 sale! — and, no, none of them are being sold….: This is from Tomb of Dracula #9, page 10; inks by Vince Colletta and words by Marv Wolfman. Evan Dorkin said last week that Colan’s art was like “dreams on paper,” and this is a good example: the hand-drawn panel borders radiating from the center; the use of … is it whiteout?… to indicate fog; the bottom image of Dracula on the ground in the shadows, weak but still … Continue reading →

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Phil’s Reviews: Stuff I Bought #199

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Phil

Ultimate Spider-Man #160 — Writer: Brian Michael Bendis;  Pencils: Mark Bagley; Inkers: Andy Lanning with Andrew Hennessy This comes in a bag, but considering the title it’s probably not a spoiler to say that, yes, there’s a death scene with the main character (of course, there was one in Superman #75, too, and we all know how that turned out, so…). Bendis and Bagley, who’ve worked on the title for eleven years (straight, for Bendis) do a good job with it; it’s an affecting end to the story, and one true to the themes that the book has covered since … Continue reading →

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It Came From the Back Room #25

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Phil

After I wrote this — but before I posted it — we got the news that Gene Colan died on Thursday, at the age of 84. His comics career spanned almost 70 years, and he was certainly well-established at Marvel when the ten-year-old me, 45 years ago, was awestruck at his work on Daredevil and the Iron Man stories in Tales of Suspense. Add in his Dr. Strange work, his Captain America, his work on two of the best comics of the ’70s — Tomb of Dracula and Howard the Duck — his ’80s work on Batman and indie books, … Continue reading →

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Phil’s Reviews: Stuff I Bought #198

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Phil

15 Love #1 (of 3) — Writer: Andi Watson;  Art: Tommy Ohtsuka As the title implies, this is a comic about tennis — and, as hinted by the artist’s last name, it’s done in a very straight-ahead, clean manga style. Watson’s a dependably quirky and entertaining writer, very good at getting the small nooks and crannies of everyday life right, and this tale of a young female protagonist who’s good at tennis, but not good enough — and the rumpled coach who tries to help her — is a comfortably familiar story that’s capable of going off in unexpected directions. … Continue reading →

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