Alter Ego # 194 July 2025 (magazine review)
This July issue of ‘Alter Ego’ covers editor Roy Thomas’ 60 years comicbook career. Part of me does feel it odd that the host is praising his own work but he is letting others do it. Even so, this issue has sold out but you can still find copies if you look around or get a digital copy.
John Cimino manages Roy’s convention appearances amongst other things but is also a fan. His choice of the top twelve stories Roy wrote at Marvel covers the expected stories and several of them are multi-parters. I’ll have been surprised if this list hadn’t contained the Thomas/Adams ‘The X-Men’ sentinel story of the Kree-Skrull War in ‘The Avengers’.
Now here’s something that needed Roy Thomas to edit down from a couple hours on a popcast being interviewed by Alex Grand. Basically, he removed things that he’s covered elsewhere and where to find them. Other than that, the interview covers his career and how work can dry up when he reached 60. Then he ghosted the Spider-Man newspaper strip for Stan Lee for 18 years and it got cancelled after the Man died. Roy also has an autobiography coming out in 2026 so he’s bound to go into more details there.
There’s the second of the interviews between Thomas and Stan Lee about the Spidey newspaper strip and other topics on a fortnightly basis as the scripts are looked over before being used. There is some insight here and I defy anyone not to read Stan Lee’s replies in his voice.
As with the cover picture, Roy Thomas explains how he was part of Wolverine’s origin at Marvel, feeling there was a need for a Canadian super-hero to help foreign sales when he was editor-in-chief for two years, which later extended to the X-Men revival. John Romita, Sr. created the character design and then Len Wein and Herb Trimpe used him in The Incredible Hulk # 180-182. The problems with copyright and what is shown in film and TV credits with comicbook characters is always complicated because of who started them and how they were evolved by others. Team books are especially complicated if characters are drawn in from other titles. I’ve commented about this with the TV version of the Doom Patrol and although more than half the team are Grant Morrison characters, he never got a screen credit. Marvel Studios at least is doing the right thing and something for Warner’s to catch up with.
Michael T. Gilbert’s ‘Mr. Monster’ shows the American newspapers comicbook inserts didn’t start with Eisner’s ‘The Spirit’ in 1940’, but 3 years earlier with ‘The Clock’. Where else would you get information like this but in a TwoMorrows publication.
It’s about time, TwoMorrows considers a reprint. Get if you can
GF Willmetts
December 2025
(pub: TwoMorrows Publishing. 82 page illustrated magazine. Price: $10.95 (US). ISSN: 1932-6890. Direct from them, you can get it digitally for $ 4.99 (US))
check out websites: www.TwoMorrows.com and https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_55&products_id=1818&zenid=fa2banofrv2pcm64bf93b7pth4
