http://www.mrbrklyn.com/comics.html
Comics and the History of Comics
I was lucky enough that despite being deprived and largely orphaned as a child that I grew up with access to the newspaper stand, Carvel ice cream, and the Spaldeen. At the age of 12 or so, I was hustling the Canarsie Courier at the L train station at Rockaway Parkway. On Wednesday's they sold papers to the local kids for a nickle and we then hustled them for a dime. I would sneak into the station and ride the train up to New Lots Avenue and hustle them on the train ride back to Rockaway Parkway (which was the terminal station). Across the street there was a newspaper stand on the corner of Glenwood Road and Rockaway Parkway. I picked up my first four comics from that newspaper stand with a Jerky counter in the back. Among these books was Action 453, Superman 292, The Flash 236 and the Fantastic Four 164.
More books quickly followed. Quickly a collection grew and before long Jerry Kanowitz opened one of the first comic book shops, on Foster Avenue and Rockaway Parkway, specializing in back issues. These were the heady days of comic collecting and Jerry has FF#1, Avengers#1, Showcase#4 etc on display all the time. He had relationships within the industry, and was a real insider. He had the largest collection of back issues I had ever seen and we read everything in his bins. And he was a very warm fellow, with love in heart. They don't make people like Jerry any longer
I had the pleasure of going to Midtown Comics to pick up a copy of the new Fantastic Four reboot. Incredibly, the FF has not been published in almost 5 years because of a dispute of movie rights with Fox. It is frankly hard to understand, but the powers to be at Marvel killed the franchise and now it being return with much fanfare, with nearly 30 variant covers and FF covers on other books. It is Marvel marketing gone mad.
I got into a conversation with a couple and asked the man to name what he thought was the 10 best comic runs. He threw it back at me and I put together a list, only to find that it might be hard to get that list to only 10 runs. I've thought of this before and have written it up, but I think it deservers a permanent spot on my website, so here it is. The 20 best comic runs/or creations.