HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO MARVEL’S ASSISTANT EDITOR’S MONTH!

I’ve celebrated this festival of fun, which happened in January 1984, many times on this site. Marvel’s editors all went to comic-con and left their books in the hands of the dreaded assistants. In some cases, all you got was a little stamp on the cover. In others, like The Amazing Spider-Man #248, you got “The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man,” a short story that has gone down in history as one of the best Spidey comics of all time.

And you got Hembeck illustrating Spidey vs. The Fly in Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man #86; the classic new “villain” Goody Two Shoes in The Thing #7; and, of course, the issue of Alpha Flight that pissed everyone off because John Byrne put Snowbird in a snow stores.

Yes, that’s right, literally just white panels with word balloons.

I thought I’d pay tribute this year with a focus on Dazzler #30, because it gave us everything. First, above, we saw Ralph Macchio heading to San Diego, fearing the worst for his comic…

Then we see his assistant screaming for red word balloons and wild corner boxes, getting interrupted by his boss and his enthusiasm fading…

But his rant about the cornerbox? It still came true…

It’s sad that Marvel rarely gets this silly anymore, because it made for an “event” that people (nerds like me) still pay tribute to thirty years later.

Christ I’m old.

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