An INSIDE LOOK at a Bronze Age favorite…
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I dug Dynamite magazine as a kid. My older sister Paula was the one who first got a subscription through Scholastic at school but I latched right onto it, especially since they used to run features on superheroes’ origins. (That might be how I initially encountered the Fantastic Four, as it happens.)
Anyway, Dynamite — created by future DC publisher Jenette Kahn — was such a success that the folks over at Marvel decided to glom onto the idea with Pizzazz, a similarly groovy general-interest entertainment mag but one with, of course, a focus on the House of Ideas.
Well, Pizzazz gets the spotlight in the upcoming Back Issue #110, which features an inside look at the colorful house organ. It’s part of the issue’s “Make Mine Marvel” theme looking at some of the more offbeat aspects of the publisher in the Bronze Age:
Here’s the table of contents:
The issue is due in comics shops 1/16 but is also available directly through publisher TwoMorrows (click here).
To whet your appetite, though, here’s writer Dewey Cassell’s piece on Pizzazz, which I’ve chosen for our usual EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT from editor Michael Eury’s always-excellent magazine:
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MORE by Dewey Cassell
— Why MIKE GRELL Was Happy to Work on LEGION — and Even Happier to Leave It. Click here.
— MIKE GRELL Reveals the Secrets of THE LONGBOW HUNTERS. Click here.
January 14, 2019
I remember finding the second issue of Pizzazz on the magazine rack at Eckerd Drugs when I was ten. I had probably seen the premiere issue, but the racks were absolutely plastered with Star Wars covers and I might have overlooked it. The skateboarding Spidey cover grabbed me though. I talked my Mom into letting me subscribe and I savored every issue. When the editorial shift to more humor came along, it became even more interesting to me. I may not have always got the jokes and references in Mad Magazine, but Pizzazz was right on target for me. When it was cancelled I switched to Crazy Magazine, but I’ve always wondered what directions it would have taken going into the 1980s.