HEY, EVERYBODY! I'M IN BACK ISSUE MAGAZINE!

I've been a comic book fan for as long as I have been able to read, and probably even before that jus' lookin' at the pitchurs. Matter of fact, between Scholastic Book Services (thank you Sepulveda Elementary when the L.A. Unified School District was still functional as an educational institution) and the comic adventures of Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and Jimmy Olsen (and, yes, Lois Lane, too!), and later Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Thor, that's exactly how I learned to read after breezing through the Dick and Jane series.

I became such an adept reader that it was noticed by my elementary school teacher, who quickly put me to work tutoting other kids in my class who were lagging behind. Looking back at such a seemingly inconsequential event, I have now realized how HUGE of an accomplishment it was to be able to read so well as such an early age.

Being able to pick up the reading bug so soon also enabled me to easily read the text and captions of the first monster magazines I ever saw. Since then, it would be hard to fathom how many comics and magazine pages that I have introduced to my gray matter.

So far as comics go, I still read a few regularly, but I'm much more interested in the history of comics, especially from around the time that I was a kid. You see, when I was reading comics I had no idea that "Silver" and "Bronze"-age history was being made.

The publishers of the TwoMorrows imprint have lavished upon fandom some of the best comic magazines about comics that I've ever had the pleasure to read. Atop the heap is Roy Thomas' ALTER EGO, which not too long ago celebrated its hundreth issue.

A close runner-up is BACK ISSUE. Subtitled "The Retro Comics Experience", issue #52 was a special horror/mystery in the comics during the Bronze age issue and featured stories on many of the comics titles that are both well-known and a little more esoteric. I covered this Fall 2011 issue in a previous post.

I liked the issue so much, that I wrote them a letter to say so. I also added a bit of clarification to a section that talked about the Shock! TV package.

Well, sure enough, they've published my letter in their latest issue (#56), and it's a special AVENGERS issue, to boot!

Here is the contents and a few sample pages from BACK ISSUE #56. If you enjoy comics and comics history, I strongly recommend you check out these TwoMorrows guys!

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!!!