Friday, November 20, 2015

1970's Flashback: Giant-Size

1974 and 1975 saw Marvel Comics introduce their popular Giant-Size format where for $.35 (soon $.50) fans were treated to 52 pages of pure magic from the House of Ideas. Often these annual-sized volumes were filled with reprints, but many ran original stories expanded to take full advantage of the extra story pages. A small handful presented new characters and concepts, such as the retconned WWII team-up of The Invaders featuring Captain America and his sidekick Bucky, the original Human Torch and his partner Toro, and the Sub-Mariner. Another revealed the story behind the transformation of Greer Nelson, formerly known as The Cat, into her more familiar role as Tigra. I seem to recall one that revamped the old x-Men team into something all-new and all-different as well? There were several standalone one-shots focusing on a single hero like Thor, the Hulk, or Power Man and a select few ran for several issues such as those starring Conan, the Avengers or the Man-Thing. If you happen to find affordable copies at conventions in great shape, my suggestion is to snap them up and enjoy much more bang for your buck!

2 comments:

Darci said...

Hi Chuck,
Giant-Size Creatures immediately turned into Giant-Size Werewolf, which lasted another 4 issues (making it the second longest-lasting of these books, after Spider-Man). There was indeed a Giant-Size X-Men, where the old team had to be rescued by a new team. Its second issue was all reprints.
Thanks!

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