COMIC BOOK COVER GALLERY: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, Part 3: Issues acquired new in the '60s and early '70s

A little earlier than originally planned: Today's Comic Book Cover Gallery presents the third piece of a four-part retrospective of The Brave And The Bold. Part 1 reviewed B & Bs I acquired as back issues, Part 2 covered [HAR!] coverless issues reunited with their long-lost fronts, and this week and next week address issues I acquired new.

My first issue of B & B was the Batman-Hawkman free-for-all pictured above: The Brave And The Bold # 70 (February-March 1967). It was (with World's Finest Comics # 164 and the Archie Comics/Radio Comics superhero book Mighty Comics # 43) one of three new comics I discovered at home, presumably in late '66, presumably purchased by my Dad or by one of my older siblings. 

I don't think I personally plucked an issue of B & B off a spinner rack or display shelf until The Brave And The Bold # 78 (June-July 1968). Many, many more would follow, enough MORE! that it seemed best to split this into two separate posts. 

Across the four parts of this Brave And Bold cover gallery, we'll be sticking exclusively to the '60s-'80s era of acquisition I've established for these galleries. The selections include books I bought new, back issues I acquired after the fact (but within the timeline), and B-stock contraband originally purchased without their covers. These aren't actual photos of comics in my collection; most images are courtesy of the Grand Comics Database, which is grand indeed. But I did have each and every one of 'em at some point in time.

NEXT WEEK: The epic conclusion! B & B seeing you!

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider a visit to CC's Tip Jar. You can also become a Boppin' booster on my Patreon page.

I compiled a various-artists tribute album called Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and it's pretty damned good; you can read about it here and order it here. My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. You can read about our history here.

TV EYE: Another updated list of TV series I've seen in their entirety

Above image by Tyrone Biljan, courtesy of 13thdimension.com

In 2021, I posted a list of TV series that I've seen in their entirety, every episode. This is another update of that list, still missing a number of shows my memory can't retrieve, but adding some recent completions. The list also includes current series that I've watched in their entirety to date, with either the promise or the hope of additional episodes coming soon. Those series are marked with an asterisk.

I like TV shows. This is an attempt to list every TV series I've ever watched in its entirety, from Season 1 Episode 1 through the blowout finale. It includes mini-series, broadcast series, cable series, and streaming series without discrimination. And it includes some series I saw piecemeal, as long as I'm sure I saw all of the episodes in whatever sequence I got to them. Some I saw on first run, others I watched after the fact. It is a woefully incomplete list--because, y'know, memory--but it's a start. I'll come back here to add more series as I remember them.

The Adventures Of Superman

Angel

Arrow

Batman

*The Bear

Being Erica

Billy Joel: And So It Goes

Bionic Woman [2007 series]

Birds Of Prey

Black Lightning

The Bob Newhart Show

Bosom Buddies

The Bronx Is Burning

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Bunheads

The Crazy Ones

Daisy Jones & The Six

Daredevil

*Daredevil: Born Again

The Defenders [Marvel Comics series]

The Dick Van Dyke Show

Echo

Ellery Queen

The Event

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier

Firefly

Firefly Lane

The Flash [1990-1991 series]

The Flash [2014-2023 series]

Flashforward [2009-2010 series]

Freaks And Geeks

Friends

Get Back

Gilligan's Island

Gilmore Girls

Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life

Glee

Go On

The Good Place

Gotham

Gotham Knights

The Green Hornet

Hawkeye

Heroes

Heroes Reborn

High Fidelity

The History Of The Sitcom

Inhumans

Iron Fist

It Was A Very Good Year

Jessica Jones

Ken Burns: Country Music

Krypton

Loki

Luke Cage

M*A*S*H

Mad Men

*A Man On The Inside

Marvel's Agent Carter

The Marvelous Mrs. Maise

The Munsters

The New WKRP In Cincinnati

The Newsroom

No Ordinary Family

*Nobody Wants This

Our World

Pan Am

Peacemaker

The Penguin

Pistol

Police Squad!

Poker Face

Powerless

Pushing Daisies

Quantum Leap [1989-1993 series]

Quantum Leap [2022-2024 series]

Quarry

The Queen's Gambit

Reaper

Ringer

*Ripple

Schmigadoon!

Secret Invasion

She-Hulk: Attorney At Law

Sherlock

Smallville

Smash

Square Pegs

St. Elsewhere

Star Trek

Stargirl

**The Steven Banks Show

Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip

Supergirl

Superman And Lois

Taylor Swift: The End Of An Era

*Ted Lasso

This Is Us

Timeless

Unorthodox

V [2009-2011 series]

Veronica Mars

The Village

WandaVision

We'll Get By

The West Wing

WKRP In Cincinnati

The Wonder Years [1988-1993 series]

The Wonder Years [2021-2023 series]

Younger

The Z-Suite

Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist

If I forgot any series you think I must have seen from start to finish, I welcome attempts to jog my stubborn memory.

There is one series cited with a double-asterisk: The 1994 PBS comedy series The Steven Banks Show. I saw all of the broadcast episodes, but there were additional episodes completed but never aired. Haven't seen those, so...double-asterisk. (Some previous versions of this list also asterisked NBC's 2017 DC Comics sitcom Powerless, but I have now seen all of its episodes, including the three that were never broadcast. I also found the series' unaired original pilot on YouTube; the pilot was very different from the later pilot and series, and I wish the show had followed its original direction.)

This list arbitrarily excludes animated shows, only because I didn't want to rack my brain to identify which cartoon series qualified; the cartoon list would include things like The Flintstones, Batman: The Animated Series (and the subsequent related Superman and Justice League series that were part of that B:TAS universe), and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Among live-action shows, Arrested Development and Twin Peaks would have been listed on the basis of their original network TV runs, but both have since been revived, and I haven't seen any of the latter-day episodes. (On the other hand, I have seen the continuation of Veronica Mars, and I wish there were more episodes to come.)

Among current series, I'm very much looking forward to new episodes of Daredevil: Born Again, Nobody Wants This, A Man On The Inside, and (especially!) Ted Lasso, as continuations of all four have already been announced. I'm hoping we'll hear that the Netflix series Ripple will also be returning. The only other current show I'm watching is The Bear; I'm three episodes shy of completing its first four seasons, but I'm listing it here because, y'know, close enough. I'll be caught up with The Bear shortly, and primed 'n' ready for its fifth and final season. 

(I'm way late to the Ted Lasso party; I'd heard the hype and enthusiasm of the show's fans, but never had any real interest in investigating it. My wife and I wound up watching its pilot episode on a whim, loved it immediately, and obsessively watched all three seasons over the course of the next week or two. Ted Lasso now challenges The Good Place for the title of my all-time favorite series. Believe!)

I own home video copies of just a handful of complete TV series. I have The Monkees on DVD and on Blu-ray, Batman on Blu-ray (and I proposed a Batman-Monkees comic-book mashup here), Shindig! on an unauthorized set of DVD-Rs (and I really need to go back and finish watching those), homemade VHS copies of The Green Hornet, and Police Squad!, and, if we count non-physical media, the 2011-2012 series Pan Am on iTunes. I may write about Pan Am some day; the timing of its original network run coincided with some emotional turmoil in my life, and the idea of jetting off to Europe seemed mighty appealing to me. The pilot episode of Pan Am would serve as part of the climax in the first chapter of a long-gestating memoir I call Spain, a piece which, frankly, I doubt I'll ever have the will to write.

There are still a lot of older TV series that should probably be on this list. It's likely that I've seen every episode of Get Smart, The Beverly Hillbillies, F Troop, The Odd Couple, The Andy Griffith Show, Hec Ramsey, Switch, When Things Were Rotten, and a big ol' bunch of others, but my reasonable doubt is sufficient for me to omit them from this list. There are some other older shows--The Guns Of Will Sonnett, the 1960s Tarzan, Disney's Zorro--I'd like the opportunity to re-visit, but for now, I don't think I've seen all of those episodes.

Yet. But Zorro is on Disney +. I thought I would've watched all of those by now--damn the real words and its unreasonable demands on my time!--but I have seen all of the first season, and I'm digging the second and final season. Then I'll try to track down the four subsequent one-hour specials. They're not technically part of the Zorro series, I guess...

...But I still wanna see 'em.

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider a visit to CC's Tip Jar. You can also become a Boppin' booster on my Patreon page.

I compiled a various-artists tribute album called Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and it's pretty damned good; you can read about it here and order it here. My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. You can read about our history here.

THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! Tavares, "It Only Takes A Minute"

Drawn from a previous post, this is not part of my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1).

An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!

TAVARES: It Only Takes A Minute

Written by Dennis Lambert and Brian potter

Produced by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter

Single from the album In The City, Capitol Records, 1975

"It Only Takes A Minute" was a # 10 hit for Tavares in 1975, the soul group's biggest pop hit. I'd like to say that I forgot how simply sublime this track is, but frankly I don't think I ever fully appreciated it in the first place. For me, as a teenage AM Top 40 listener, Tavares was just another sound on the radio, not, like, repulsive or something, but not particularly noteworthy. I don't know what the hell kind of crap I had muffling my ears when I was 15, but whatever it was, I'm happy it finally flushed out somewhere along the way. Sure, I was aware of "It Only Takes A Minute," "Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel" (Billboard # 15), and "More Than A Woman" (a mere # 32, but omnipresent because of its connection to Saturday Night Fever), but they didn't mean anything to me.

It was the late great Dick Clark who got the ball rolling in my belated discovery of Tavares. In (I think?) the '90s, VH1 was running selected, edited archival episodes of American Bandstand, and one such episode included Tavares lip-syncing their 1975 cover of the Edgar Winter Group's "Free Ride." I always liked EWG's original, and I'd never before heard Tavares's take on it, but that cover instantly became the definitive version for me. I bought a Tavares best-of CD just to get that song, and didn't even bother listening to the rest of the collection.

At some subsequent point, I pulled The Best Of Tavares out on a whim. And "It Only Takes A Minute" hit me, as it shoulda hit me--repeatedly!--when I was 15. Man, something sure shoulda hit me when I was 15. What an amazing track. What took me so long to realize it? IT'S ONLY SUPPOSED TO TAKE A MINUTE...!

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider a visit to CC's Tip Jar. You can also become a Boppin' booster on my Patreon page.

I compiled a various-artists tribute album called Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and it's pretty damned good; you can read about it here and order it here. My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. You can read about our history here.

COMIC BOOK COVER GALLERY: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, Part 2: Reuniting covers with coverless issues acquired in the '60s, '70s, and '80s

Continuing a four-part Comic Book Cover Gallery celebration of the long-running DC Comics title The Brave And The Bold. Part 1 gathered covers from B & Bs I picked up as back issues, and Parts 3 and 4 will spotlight issues I acquired when they were fresh and new. Meanwhile, this week's gallery turns its attention to issues of B & B I originally acquired without their covers.

It used to be very common to see coverless comics for sale at various stores. Here's an excerpt of something I wrote on that subject (discussing my 1966 acquisition of cover-compromised copy of a Superboy 80-Page Giant:

"...A brief history of comic book distribution before the rise of the direct market: For the first several decades of comic book publishing, comics (like other magazines) were sold to vendors on a returnable basis. Unsold comic books could be returned by the vendor, and then by the distributor, for full credit from the publisher. To save time, tumult, and money, distributors were not required to return the entire, intact book for credit; they were allowed to return just the cover, or even just the top part of the cover (i.e., the book's title), and the distributor was then expected to destroy the coverless comic books that remained.

"It was, of course, a system rife with abuse. Were any of these stripped comic books, magazines, or pulp paperbacks ever destroyed? One presumes there must have been some honest soul somewhere in this chain, I guess. But thousands and thousands of coverless and 3/4-coverless publications were re-sold, illegally, at deep discounts. A 12-cent new comic book became, say, a five-cent or eight-cent coverless comic book, a windfall profit of which the publisher received bupkis.

"At six years old (and for a long time thereafter), I had no idea that I was purchasing illegal contraband. I just knew I was getting more comics...."

My first coverless B & B was the Batman and Green Arrow team-up reunited with its original cover up top. The rest of the gallery is listed in order of publication. 

Across the four parts of this Brave And Bold cover gallery, we'll be sticking exclusively to the '60s-'80s era of acquisition I've established for these galleries. The selections include books I bought new, back issues I acquired after the fact (but within the timeline), and B-stock contraband originally purchased without their covers. These aren't actual photos of comics in my collection; most images are courtesy of the Grand Comics Database, which is grand indeed. But I did have each and every one of 'em at some point in time.

B & B seeing you!

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider a visit to CC's Tip Jar. You can also become a Boppin' booster on my Patreon page.

I compiled a various-artists tribute album called Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and it's pretty damned good; you can read about it here and order it here. My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. You can read about our history here.