Sunday 26 June 2016

June 26th, 1976 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

As mentioned in my previous post, thanks to strangeness beyond compare, this week of 1976 saw Super Spider-Man With The Super-Heroes bearing a Saturday date instead of the Wednesday date that Marvel UK's other mags bore. Was this a cunning marketing ploy? Was this a total cock-up? Was it the work of Dr Doom?

Who can know?

All we can know is that, thanks to that fact, this is going to be a very short post.

Super Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes #176

It's that noticeably odd Spider-Tale in which Mary Jane witnesses a murder and our hero comes up against a man pretending to be the Vulture.

It's a tale packed with logic holes and people not acting quite as they would be expected to in such circumstances.

I seem to remember that, not much later than this tale, we also got  a story in which the wall-crawler meets an impostor pretending to be Mysterio.

We can only conclude that writer Gerry Conway had a thing for fake super-villains.

3 comments:

dangermash aka The Artistic Actuary said...

I think that cover gives a clue to the third and most famous Conway attempt at replacing a classic super villain, Steve.

Steve W. said...

It does indeed, dangermash. He was clearly obsessed with it.

Anonymous said...

i can't think of a super-villain in the whole Marvel firmament who hasn't been imitated or impersonated at one point or another. Pretty standard and hackneyed plot device. Even Doc Doom had some punk kid in an armored suit impersonating him, and Thanos had a couple of rogue clones running around. There was even a Lady Stiltman. Is nothing sacred?
As for me, my attempts at impersonating Dracula when I was five years old are regarded as an amusing story at family get-togethers and has made me the subject of mirth. Despite jumping off chairs with a towel fastened around my neck with a safety-pin, I fooled no one.
I no longer attend those gatherings, as the small amount of dignity I retain has become precious to me.
M.P.