Comics Scene #2 / 13
Comics Scene vol. 2 #2 (February 1988) occupies a notable niche in comics journalism history as the magazine that ran a preview of Amazing Spider-Man #300 — the full debut of Venom (Eddie Brock bonded with the alien symbiote) — before that landmark issue reached newsstands. Because Comics Scene was distributed through drugstores and grocery outlets rather than the direct market, this preview reached a broad mainstream readership at precisely the moment Venom was about to become one of Marvel's most consequential new characters of the decade. The same issue simultaneously served the DC fan community with 'Thirty Years in the 30th Century,' Patrick Daniel O'Neill's retrospective on the Legion of Super-Heroes at the 30-year mark of their existence, documenting the team's sprawling history at a pivotal post-Crisis transitional moment for the property.
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Comics Scene was a Starlog Group publication — a sibling title to the genre-press landmarks Starlog and Fangoria — whose second volume launched in 1987 and ran 56 issues through early 1996, beginning on a bi-monthly schedule before transitioning to monthly. Issue #2 of that second volume arrived February 1988, squarely in the middle of the Copper Age boom, when the direct market was exploding but general-audience comics journalism still traveled the newsstand. The magazine's editorial DNA centered on comics properties crossing into film and television, but issues like this one demonstrated that it could also carry substantive comics-history journalism, placing Legion lore alongside up-to-the-minute Marvel previews in the same package.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published February 1988 as issue #2 of Comics Scene volume 2 by Starlog Communications (also credited as Starlog Group Inc.).
- Contains a preview of Amazing Spider-Man #300 (May 1988), featuring Venom — the full debut of Eddie Brock bonded with the alien symbiote — appearing in print ahead of that issue's newsstand arrival.
- Contains 'Thirty Years in the 30th Century,' a Legion of Super-Heroes history article by Patrick Daniel O'Neill, covering the team's entire publishing history from Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958) onward.
- The Legion article's subject matter spans virtually the entire Legion roster — founders Cosmic Boy (Rokk Krinn), Saturn Girl (Imra Ardeen), and Lightning Lad (Garth Ranzz), the Legion of Substitute Heroes, the Fatal Five, and supporting figures like Paul Levitz — reflecting the team's 30-year breadth at the time of publication.
- Additional content appears to cover classic pulp and adventure comics properties, with characters indexed including Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, Ming, Dr. Zarkov, The Phantom (Kit Walker), The Shadow (Lamont Cranston), Doc Savage, and GrimJack — consistent with Comics Scene's core editorial focus on comics-to-media adaptations.
- Distributed via the newsstand system (drugstores, grocery stores) rather than exclusively through the direct/specialty market, giving it wider general-audience reach than most comics publications of the era.
- Comics Scene volume 2 was a bi-monthly title at launch in 1987, making this February 1988 issue an early entry in the run before the magazine shifted to monthly frequency later in its life.
- The indexed character 'Agent Spider-Man' alongside Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson, and Eddie Brock situates the Venom preview in the specific narrative context of Amazing Spider-Man #300, where Spider-Man confronts Venom for the first time in his new red-and-blue costume.
Cast · 40 characters
Full credits
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
D. G. Chichester and Margaret Clark explain the Shadow Line Saga.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).