Echoes from the Satellite

It was a crisp Saturday evening in April 1975 when my older brother Steve and I stopped at The Book Nook store and I made my way to the comic book section, where I spotted one that immediately stood out. A group of super-heroes were bursting through the cover, tearing it open and charging straight at me. I was a sucker for group books and this one featured heroes I didn't recognize, although I recognized the team name: X-Men. It was Giant-Size X-Men #1, and it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. I had been reading comics, and specifically Marvel comics, for about four years at that point, and I knew of the X-Men, although only from reprints and the occasional guest appearance. But other than Wolverine, who had recently appeared in The Hulk, and Cyclops, these characters were unknown to me. From the start, I found myself gravitating to them like no other super-hero comic. I always liked team books the best. I suppose it had to do with all the character interactio...

Earlier this week I saw a tweet by @deanetts about the 70s era Marvel Comics character Killraven (featured in the title Amazing Adventures ) and it got me thinking about that series. As a 70s kid (a Bronze Age Baby, as I was once called), I have an unabashed love of Marvel's output from 1970 to about 1977. That's the sweet spot of comics for me. As a SF fan, I was always excited to see SF elements worked into super-hero fare, but books with straight up science fiction premises were a real treat. I came late to Killraven. Going back through my collection, I can tell the difference between the issues I picked up off the stands and the ones I bought as back issues (I bet most of you can do this too). It looks like I started reading the series with issue 29, which, since it started with issue 18, was a fair way into the run.  But I recall that it wasn't too hard to understand what was going on. The series took H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and imagined that the ...