Favourite Comics: Thrilling Adventure Stories #2

During the 1970’s comic book newcomers Atlas/Seaboard stormed on to the spinner racks with no less than 23 colour comic titles and 5 black and white "adult-orientated" mags. Despite the many problems the company faced they did produce some decent books with arguably their best title being the black and white anthology magazine “Thrilling Adventure Stories” (TAS), in particular issue 2 of that title. While the first issue of TAS was a good attempt the title exploded with its second and sadly final issue with some wonderful strips by the top writers and artists of the day all wrapped up in the above wonderful Neal Adams cover. Below are a few pages from what I consider to be one of the best black and white magazines of the 1970’s and beyond.

Above: The splash page from perhaps the most famous of all the stories in this issue by the legendary "Manhunter" team of Archie Goodman and Walt Simonson (which I may shown more of later)

Above: The magazines only returning character from TAS #1 "Kromag" by Gabriel Levy with art by Jack Sparling. Although Sparling wasn't one of the top hot comic artists at this time, this was a pretty decent strip.

Above: 2 pages from the John Albano and Russ Heath tale "Tough Cop" - Heath at this time never failed to produce anything less than jaw dropping art.

Above: 2 pages from "Town Tamer" by Steve Mitchell and the wonderful John Severin. Second page image from Comic Art Collectors ( I deleted my image in error after scanning and I'm too lazy to scan it again lol ).

Above: "A job well done" by Rick Meyer and Alex Toth. This was a pretty grim and gritty tale even for the 1970's expertly drawn by Toth who added some nice touches including not using word ballons.

Above: The cover to the first issue of "Thrilling Adventure Stories" by Ernie Colon.

This issue wasn't quite the end of TAS as in 2021 a third issue (of sorts) of "Thrlling Adventure Stories" was published featuring text stories of Targitt 2021/ Man Hunter and Bog Beast by Jeff Rovin, John Albano and Richard Meyers. Cover image from Amazon.

Favourite comics: Detective Comics #443 -Batman & Manhunter

Detective Comics in 1973/1974 was an excellent 100 page title featuring some wonderful new stories alongside many classics from the golden and silver ages by some of comics greatest artists and writers. However it was with issue 437 that (for myself at least) the comic went into another gear when it featured a brand new character called “Manhunter” written by Archie Goodwin with art by relative new comer (and future comic legend) Walter Simonson. The excitement of this storyline came to a climax with the above issue #443 (cover by Jim Aparo.)

The Manhunter character seemed to appear out of nowhere in issue 437 (cover by Jim Aparo) and it was an instant fan favourite. The strip itself appeared in 8 page segmentsand was always the last story in each issue until the final Manhunter tale when the character appeared on the cover with Batman as the main feature, it was fanboy heaven.

Manhunter told the tale of Paul Kirk a man raised from the dead by a secret organisation of super scientists called the “Council” intent on controlling mankind. The Council give Kirk healing abilities, martial arts training and a natty 1970’s glam rock style costume and sent him out as an operative for their cause. In order to test his loyalty to the Council Kirk is tasked with killing an Interpol agent, which he refused to do. As a result the Council clone him and send the clones to kill him. Realising that the Council are corrupt Kirk sets out to kill the clones and destroy the Council.

At the end of the story Paul Kirk, Manhunter destorys the Council but in doing so he sacrifices his own life. The Goodwin/Simonson Manhunter series has been collected several times and is worth picking up if you havent read this 1970's classic series.