In all fairness, the earlier working title was "The Monkey and the Bear with the Big Barrel Full of Water for Cheap Lemonade".

Another great cover by Nick Cardy. Clever and creative - and just some great artwork!

Beautiful cover artwork here: Bet the inside art sucks.

Man, if only more movie poster artists drew comic books back then. Or better yet, painted them!



Superman boos Cap!

Where the hell is Speedy? Probably shooting up horse and nodding off rather than helping his friends, I bet.

Silver Age and Bronze Age Teen Titans pre-Wolfman don't seem to have many fans. Even with characters like Dick and Wally around, those issues don't draw nearly the same attention as other DC books of the time.

When this came out in 1973, my adolescent little mind figured that this would be worth BIG BUCKS in the future. So I bought ten copies (quite the investment for kid at that time!). I sold the last one a few years ago. I'm not as rich as I had expected back in '73, but I made a decent profit on them.

What did you get for them? I just looked it up and it said value was around the $150 range.

So, anyone here buy in to Crystar at all? I had a couple of the action figures because they looked kind of cool, but I was too balls deep into Star Wars at the tie to care about much else in the toy arena. At the time it seemed they really tried to push this character, but it went nowhere.

Widespread comic fandom/collecting was fairly new back then, but I've read that many people speculated on this issue and bought multiple copies when it came out, so you were not alone.

None for me, this was a little after my time, they came out when I was in my early teens. The neatest bit of trivia around that comic is that Glenn Danzig swiped a horned skull image from one Michael Golden's covers for the series, and used it in the logos of his Samhain and Danzig bands. It's an iconic image for him, but he totally stole it.

Of all things, I loved Crystar because his toy had the novelty of being crystal-like and having a removable helmet. I was easy to please as a kid, give me a helmet or weapons storage and I was in. I also liked sword and sorcery type books that went off the beaten (superhero) path like Warlord and Amethyst. As a side note they just released a Marvel Legends toy of Crystar (and soon will have one of Rom).

As for the pre Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans, I dunno I thought the original team of sidekicks was a bit boring so I welcomed the variety that Starfire, Cyborg, Changeling, Raven etc. brought (the Perez art helped a lot). I think it's similar for X-men where the original five were fine but expanding that roster and getting Cockrum, then Byrne on board really garnered my interest in X-men.

Funny you mentioned ROM today. I noticed one of the comics I had of it when I was a kid when I was looking for a cover to post today.

I didn't have much ROM stuff but I always thought this cover kicked ass...and was one of the few I had.

I never had the action figure (sometimes I consider picking up a vintage boxed one) but I was a regular reader of the ROM comic when I was a kid, I really liked it.

I was the same way, the more accessories an action figure came with, the better, sometimes that helped me make my decision when I was picking one out at the store.

I picked up the first issue of Crystar because of the spectacular painted cover (much better than the Marvel Age preview thingy), and the final issue which featured Alpha Flight, a comic I loved, and also a cool cover by Michael Golden. Like many back then, I suspect, I assumed Crystar was a spinoff from the toy line and only learned later that the whole thing was a Marvel creation. I didn’t buy any other issues of it as by then I was mainly following specific artists, but it was a #1 of something new and I would sometimes try those out. I picked up Amethyst #1 for the same reason, probably, plus a few others of that era, most of which likely never went up in value.

Crystar must have been remembered though, as I saw an action figure of him at a Toys R Us up here (‘memba those? ) earlier this year, in a line of boxed Marvel toys.

Another obscure, short-lived series that this brought to mind was U.S. 1, which was based on an electric slot car racing set (!). As the son of a truck driver who passed down a lifetime love of and tolerance for long-distance driving, I naturally picked up a few issues of that. Again, I didn’t finish it as the writing and art inside were pretty average and by artists whose styles I wasn’t fond of (Herb Trimpe, Frank Springer, even late-period Ditko on the final issue, which sent the character into outer space), but the series from #2 onward was blessed with some spectacular covers by Bill Sienkewicz (#2) and Michael Golden (the rest), many of them beautifully painted.











While I recall the original being somewhat tongue-in-cheek about its silly premise, I though it was truly clever when John Byrne (a personal favorite) revived the character – in outer space, where the original series left him – in a couple of issues of his Sensational She-Hulk revival. I’ve read that U.S. 1 made subsequent appearances in various Marvel comics throughout the ensuing decades, including in a Deadpool comic, but those were beyond my time in the hobby.







Whenever I remember this comic, I’m also reminded of another, similarly short lived toy-based tie-in comic from Marvel during the same era as U.S. 1, Team America, which I believe was based on a line of motorcycle toys with those friction ‘motors’ you started by pulling a plastic zip line through a slot, or maybe launched them from a base of some kind that revved them up? Not sure if these characters ever went beyond the original comic.

Holy shit. I 100% forgot about and now totally remember US 1 and Team America. Fuck yeah!

Those comics are a blast from the past! I too was surprised to learn that Crystar was a Marvel created comic character first, then a toy line. I had no idea that U.S. 1 was a part of the MU and appeared in other comics, cool. And for Team America, they were indeed friction engine motorcycles, created by Ideal, who made the original similar Evel Knievel toys, and the toy line even included Cap himself. More here from Plaid Stallions, a website run by a very good friend of mine and is awesome, check it out for all kinds of 70s and 80s greatness.

https://plaidstallions.com/reboot/19...promo-catalog/

That's probably the Near-Mint value, which none of mine were. Back in the 1970s we didn't have bags and boards, so comics got banged around more than needed. But mine went from $25 to $45, so not too bad overall.

The only issue of Crystar I have is the one that has the first appearance of Danzig!

That's a lotta ass on the cover for a kid's comic

That's fantasy for you (thanks Frazetta!)

I loved US 1 and Team America (mostly for the matching but slightly different uniforms). Team America did show up again but had to be renamed the Thunderiders (same with Rom where all the Spaceknights came back but Rom and whatever else belonged to the license). It's kind of amazing to me how integrated Marvel made the licensed characters in with their universe (which caused some licensing problems later: Rom, Micronauts, Shogun Warriors, Godzilla, even the first Transformers miniseries. At least we're finally getting omniboo of most of them.

DC did it too, with stuff like He-man crossing over with Superman, but not to that extent I think. Though there is Atari Force...

Something for the furries, although it's no Omaha the Cat Dancer.

That's for sure. That's the cover I was talking about regarding the Danzig art swipe.

I’ve checked this site out many times over the years – quick references always turn into deep dives – and I even picked up one of his books a few years back called Knock Offs about dodgy off-brand action figures. I’d imagine his house must be packed to the rafters with pop culture ephemera.

Also, glad to see U.S. 1 and Team America struck a chord with some folks! I still find it interesting that among all of the toy tie-ins of that era, U.S. 1 was (possibly) the only one not based on some kind of character or action figure IP, but instead a slot car set. Those were pretty common back then, but generally lacked characters per se. I’m curious what it was beyond the logo that made Marvel see it as viable. Perhaps it was creating their own characters to populate it which they could then presumably keep the rights to? Back then I figured there was probably one or two U.S. 1 sets, but apparently there were many, which probably appealed to Marvel in the sense that they could match ‘personalities’ to all sorts of vehicles, not unlike Transformers or Mask or G.I. Joe. The latter even got its own U.S. 1 set, so I’m surprised they didn’t cross over in the comics.

Yeah, both of his books are great and he also publishes a really cool toy magazine. I've been to his house a bunch of times, he has the best vintage toy collection (mostly 70s and 80s) that I've ever seen in person (but not "packed to the rafters", it's all quite well organized and displayed). He has some mind blowingly rare stuff, some of which I am quite jealous about and he won't sell to me.

I've been watching Lost in Space reruns on MeTV and decided to look up some of the Innovation comics that Bill Mumy wrote that continued the series...