Phantom's not good enough for my Granddaughter.

The Phantom was both a daily comic strip and a weekly Sunday strip. The Sunday strips were originally presented in glorious full colour. But they also get printed in black and white. The strip I wanna look at today is from 1955, and it's called A Proper Husband.

The Phantom comic strips had two driving forces for drama back in the day. There were the adventure plots that the Phantom was involved in. Fighting pirates -- that sort of thing. But there was also his romance with Diana Palmer. In fact the romance with Diana was often front and centre as the spur that got him INTO adventures and strips quite often barely had the Phantom in it, for weeks on end, as we followed Diana.

So let's do that. Let's follow Diana for a few weeks, waiting for the Phantom to show up.

Hooo boy. I can already tell this is gunna be good!

80-Pagecast 22: Rising like a Pheonix

This fortnight we reflect upon comics such as Deadpool Gauntlet, Superior Spider-man (again), Superior Foes (again), Afterlife with Archie (smell), Revolutionary War (UK flashback), Dark Cybertron & Transformers breaking news, Young Avengers (joyously gay), Harley Quinn (girl Deadpool), and 7 Billion Needles (read right to left). Then ramble on some about our favorite & most hated comicbook character resurrections.

80-Pagecast 21: 2013: A Year That Happened

The Year of the Snake is ending, it was filled with Spider-mans anyway. The Year of the Horse is coming, but Dark Horse won't have Star Wars much longer. We look back at what we read and saw in the last year. The good. The bad. Take them both and there you have this episode. Plus we talk about the Windblade kerfuffle because we are massive Transformers fans.

80-Pagecast 20: The Island of Misfit Comics

How long will Superman wait for Gadot? Will Amazing Spider-man 2 turn Manhattan into the island of the Sinister Six? All this and more as we talk about those odd little forgotten comics we like to read and wish would get more love. Also we yammer on and get sidetracked about Transformers: Robots in Disguise & More than Meets the Eye in Cyber Monda--- err DARK CYBERTRON, Amazing Spider-man 700.1, and Godzilla: Rules of the Earth.

Atom vs. a bird.

So... I started trying to experience more DC comics through back issues sometime last year. One of the reasons for this is that I have some credit at my local comic book store for back issues... which means they don't really cost me anything.

But why in the world did I pick up issues of Power of the Atom? Shrinking is a terrible power for a super hero! Oh well... at least there was this amusing scene in issue 4:

It's in two parts. The exciting conclusion comes after a few more thoughts I have on the idea of Ray Palmer.

Something must happen--!

I just love this panel. Time was, Frew Comics would edit out the continuity text in their reprints of Phantom comic strips. In the 1990s things changed and they started trying to print all Phantom comics as completely as possible. I'm so glad they decided to.

--Andrew S.
(I really love that panel.)

80-Pagecast 19: These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things

After some news we reviews Afterlife with Archie, the Transformers Dark Cybertron mess, the Superior Spider-man Annual, and Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe. Then we give thanks to the comicbook creators we are thankful for this gobbly-wobbly holiday season. Wibbly-wobbly. And support our friend's Kickstarter project for Bio-Mechanical Ordnance Gestalt toys if you could.

80-Pagecast 18: Creepy Elves

Spoilers! We all watched Thor; Dark World and spoil the heck out of it as this week's main topic. After our usual run down of comics news, like Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, and some blind guy are getting tv shows! Plus we read Captain Marvel #17, Transformers: Dark Cybertron #1, and Superior Spider-man #20.

The Beano has changed 1) Modern art styles.

 The Beano is a thing I love. It's a British comic book, an anthology of gag strips. I have Beanos from nearly every single decade of its existence except the 1930s and 1940s. Yup, that's right, the Beano started in 1938 making it one of the longest-running comic books in the world!

Especially since DC cancelled Action Comics and Detective comics and restarted them, relatively recently.

Obviously with such a long lifespan the Beano has changed a lot over the years. Still it's maintained a strong continuity with the old comics slotting in very well with even the most modern comics. At some other time I might pull out some of my collection and do a thorough through-time with one of the characters. But today I wanna target something specific from one of my recent issues of the book.

80-Pagecast 17: Halloween Theme

Two more days till Halloween. Enjoy this 80-Pagecast. Yes kids you too can listen to us talk about Venom #42, Uncanny X-men #13, Wolverine & the X-men #37, and Mighty Avengers #2. That's right our three horrific hosts talk about the fun and the frightening from Hellboy & The Wolves of Saint August; to Junji Ito's tales of Uzumaki, The Enigma of Amigara Falls & Mimi's Ghost Stories; all the way back to The Tomb of Dracula.