1181 Durfee Avenue: 1983-1986

Tropics of Meta

Between the fourth and sixth grades, you are seized by three deep and compulsive obsessions:

            Marvel comic books (all things Daredevil and X-Men and Spiderman).

BMX bicycles (yours: a second-hand Mongoose, unwieldy and spray-painted black after you stripped the frame down to its bare chrome-moly tubing).

And video games.

Your parents find all three activities doubtful.  Comic books are allowed since they get you reading something else besides MAD magazine and therefore seem remotely educational.  And when you’re on your bicycle, you’re out of the house, out of your parents’ way, and doing something sort of athletic, even if the extent of this athletic activity is you and your friends racing up and down Parkway Avenue, seeing whose tires can leave the longest skid, and assembling ramps from plywood scraps.  (One day, your friends will shove a few extra bricks under one of these ramps, raising it higher than…

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Badass 1970s-Style Batman Posters

An Attempt to Explain the Utterly Inexplicable San Diego Comic-Con

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

The Stupid Test

— Jackson Williams.

Top Ten Spider-Man Battles (Part II)

Longbox Graveyard

Longbox Graveyard #95

(Last month, Mark Ginocchio of Chasing Amazing began his survey of Spider-Man’s top battles by spotlighting confrontations with Mysterio, Thanos, and more. This month, Mark counts down the final five entries on his Top Ten List! And now … heeeeere’s Mark!)

We’ve now reached the second half of my top 10 favorite Spider-Man battles of all-time. The first half of this list consists primarily of Silver and Bronze Age altercations that are right in Longbox Graveyard’s wheelhouse. Well, the second of these lists will definitely contain some old-time classics. But, I’m also about to push some of you out of your comfort zone and introduce some scenes from comics that – gasp – occurred over the last 20 years during the much reviled “Copper” or “Chromium” Age.

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You Might Also Like: Top 10 Spider-Man Battles (Part I)

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5. Spider-Man vs

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Top Ten Spider-Man Battles (Part I)

Longbox Graveyard

Longbox Graveyard #92

(EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s never too late for a first! Longbox Graveyard may be ninety-two issues old but this week sees our very first guest column. Mark Ginocchio is author of the Chasing Amazing blog, where he recounts his quest to own every issue of Amazing Spider-Man and — most importantly — reflects on what each of those issues has meant to him throughout his life. Chasing Amazing is a unique and heartfelt blog and bound to be of interest to readers of Longbox Graveyard — check it out! Fan as I am of his work, it didn’t take me long to jump on Mark’s offer to provide guest content for Longbox Graveyard. In this week’s article, Mark begins his countdown of his Top Ten Spider-Man battles! Take it away, Mark!)

Spider-Man (a somewhat neglected superhero here at the Longbox Graveyard) has…

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7 Bitter Fandom Rivalries From Across Pop Culture

— J.W.

Best Frenemies Forever

This is excellent. Well done. — J.W.

Longbox Graveyard

Longbox Graveyard #105

By now, you all should be familiar with the musings of Mark Ginocchio, the creator of the Spider-Man focused Chasing Amazing blog and the author of past posts on Longbox Graevyard such as his retrospective on Marvel’s Secret Wars mini-series and his two-part post on Spider-Man’s greatest battles. This week, Mark is writing about his two favorite Silver Age teenage superheroes – one of which is of course, the Amazing Spider-Man, but the other is the Fantastic Four’s Johnny Storm/Human Torch. Take it away Mark:

During the Silver Age of Marvel comics, one of the more fascinating relationships featured two characters from different titles. Spider-Man and Human Torch, Peter Parker and Johnny Storm respectively, were Marvel’s flagship teenage superheroes. But rather than team together to create crazy pubescent hijinks a la Archie and Jughead, Spidey and Torch started out as bitter, heated rivals before finally…

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