Clothes Maketh the Man.

As I roam the streets of Sheffield, people say to me, "Steve, with your trilby, string vest, purple loon-pants and Clarks Wayfinders, you're a man who knows how to dress well. Not only that but, with your Clarks Wayfinders on, you need never fear getting lost - nor not being able to identify small woodland creatures you encounter. But, if you had to walk around dressed as a super-hero, which one would it be?"

Well, I think I can safely say you should never ever wear anything Killraven would - unless you want to look like a 1970s' sci-fi porn star....

... and not in a good way.

But, on the issue of what one should wear? Well, I've always had a liking for boots that turn down at the top, in the style of Captain America and Conan.

Then again, I've always been fascinated by Batman's gloves with the bendy spikes sticking out of them.

Iron Man's armour'd make me feel safe from the threat of flying bullets and give me the impunity to become as totally evil as I seek to be. But I can't help feeling it must be a bit claustrophobic in there and, looking at that mask, he must only be able to see things that're directly in front of him.

There's no way I'd choose a cape, as that'd be ostentatious - and a threat to life and limb if I tried to use a revolving door whilst wearing one.

The Fantastic Four's togs always looked too much like overalls for my liking.

Let's face it, the Hulk's purple trousers aren't a costume. They're just purple trousers.

So, in the end, I think I'm going to have to go for The Flash's outfit. Not only does it have little wings on it and lightning bolts to signify the dynamism that's rightfully mine but it's also my favourite colour - red. On top of that, it cunningly conceals itself inside a ring.

Rings are indisputably a good thing. Just ask the Mandarin.

And that's why, if forced to spend the rest of my days in Spandex, it's the costume of The Flash that I shall be wearing.

Either that or Adam Warlock's.

But, Reader; what super-hero outfit would you wear if forced to?

Your favourite non-Conan-related warrior woman of all time - Poll Results!

Thanks to events of the other day, we all know just who's the greatest Conan-related warrior woman of all time. But that still leaves us with one loose end that I'm sure's haunted us all our lives. Just who is the greatest non-Conan-related warrior woman of them all?

As you'd expect from such a battle-hungry bunch, it was a hard-fought poll - and much blood was no doubt spilled - but at last we have our answers.

Joint fifth, with one vote each, were Boudicca, Xena, River Tam, Elektra, Hu San-Niang, Red Fox, Raven and Mad Max 2's Warrior Woman.

Joint third, with two votes each, were Thundra and Dr Who's Leela.

Second, with three votes, was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

But the runaway winner, with a mighty nine votes, was my own personal favourite, Marvel Comics' Valkyrie, proving that not always knowing who you are needs be no obstacle to seeing off your rivals.

So, well done to Babs and Samantha and the Enchantress and any other people she's managed to be over the years, thanks to everyone who voted, and commiserations to all those warriors who didn't quite make the grade.

Your favourite Conan-related warrior woman of all time - Poll Results!

Reader, has this anonymous layabout been voted
greatest warrior woman of all time? Only Steve
Does Comics can tell you.

"Crom!" have I declared many times, in the heat of battle, "It ofttimes seems there are none the world loves more than a warrior woman."

And it seems I was right because the results are in from our poll to find your favourite Conan-related battling bombshell of all time and, with a massive twenty nine votes, it may well be the most popular poll we've ever run.

So, with no further ado, let's get on with it.

Joint fifth, with one vote each, are Zenobia and Zuma. Clearly if you want to ride high in the Warrior Woman Stakes, it doesn't pay to have a name beginning with Z.

In joint third, with four votes, are Valeria and Generic Cover Girl #1. It's a great triumph for Generic Cover Girl #1 - putting, as she has, all other generic cover girls well and truly in their place. But no doubt Robert E Howard's very own Valeria will be disappointed to do no better than a woman who doesn't even have a name.

In second place, with nine votes, was Red Sonja. Frankly, I wouldn't want to be around her when she finds out she didn't win.

But at Number One, to the surprise of no one but me, it's Bêlit who just pipped Sonja at the post by gaining a massive ten votes. I suspect that Bêlit probably can't count, so, in all likelihood, she'll probably never be aware of her achievement. On top of that, she's been dead for 10,000 years and probably doesn't even have an Internet Service Provider.

Regardless, well done to Bêlit, commiserations to all other fighting females, and thank you, loyal reader, for voting.

Who's your favourite non-Conan warrior woman?

Mere days ago, I asked you for your favourite Conan-related warrior woman - and the poll that sprang from it's now up. However, some of you nominated warrior women who were not of the Conan canon.

In order to keep the poll simple and unconfused, I only added nominations to it that were from Conan's universe. But, because I don't want people to feel their other nominations went to waste, I'm going to launch another poll, dedicated to non-Conan battlers. Because even I have to admit sometimes that there's more to life than comics, the nominations can be from any art form and any genre - as long as it's not Conan.

As we all know, Britain has a proud tradition of warrior women. Who of us, in primary school, didn't thrill to tales of Queen Boudicca/Boadicea giving the Romans a good thrashing with her ninja skills and chain mail bikini? And, of course, we also have good old Britannia, ready to stab people with her trident at the drop of a hat.

But there're other warrior women too. Who can forget Xena - or her arch-enemy Callisto? There's Wonder Woman, She-Ra, that woman in Battle Beyond the Stars, Kate Bush in that video with the cello; and, no doubt, a thousand others I've neglected to mention.

Still, despite this, I'm inevitably going to nominate The Defenders' Valkyrie, as I like her hair.

But don't let this high level of thinking intimidate you. Feel free to nominate your own favourite.

Needless to say, in a couple of days from now, I'll gather together your nominations - and the left-over ones from the previous post - and put them in a poll.

And then, at last, the world can decided just who is the world's favourite warrior woman.

Fantastic Four #45. The Inhumans make their debut: Part 2!

It's time to shake ourselves from our subterranean hideouts because I'm flinging myself head-first into part two of my favourite Fantastic Four tale of them all, as the FF finally get to meet the rest of the Inhumans.

Having survived the collapse of the building they were stood on at the end of last issue, our heroes manage to capture Dragon Man by the simple ploy of no longer trying to fight him, instead letting Sue use her feminine charms to keep him in line.

While the others try to work out what to do with the brute, the Torch goes for a walk, meets a mysterious girl called Crystal - who has superpowers - and is taken by her to an underground lair where he meets her family, who include Gorgon and Medusa.

Gorgon's none too pleased to see him and, with the aid of an Inhuman called Triton, tries to kill him but the Torch escapes and, signalled by him, the rest of the team descend on the site to deal with his would-be assassins.

But that's when the issue's great no-frills climax gives us the last-panel sight of a man known only as Black Bolt smashing through a brick wall to confront them. Now they're in for it!

Perhaps what's best about the issue is that, although it's packed with incident, including the resolution of last issue's cliffhanger, the scenes with Dragon Man, the introduction, one at a time, of the Inhumans, and even the first appearance of the group's flying motorbike, the tale doesn't neglect to fit in the all-important human drama, with the Thing ruminating woefully on how similar he is to Dragon Man, while the Torch fails to get a date with Dorrie Evans and suddenly finds himself someone new to lust after in the shape of Crystal.

The tale's still hopelessly confused and confusing in its portrayal of the Inhumans. It's still not clear whether they're good guys or bad guys, what their motives are or why Medusa - whose clearly now a prisoner of the others - was running from Gorgon.

It's interesting that, at this stage, it's still Medusa who seems most worried about the Torch's well-being while Crystal expresses no concern at all when the others try to kill him. Could it be that, even at this stage, the plan was for Medusa to become Johnny Storm's new love interest rather than her sister? That had certainly been hinted at the last time Medusa'd appeared as a member of the Frightful Four and it's questionable whether the plan had yet been changed.

Just as with last issue, the fact that none of its events make sense when subjected to any kind of scrutiny doesn't matter because the thing bowls along at a pace that stops you asking any awkward questions, and there're some nice subtle touches to the tale too, such as the way Jack Kirby blacks out the Torch's face at times in his early scenes with Crystal, in order to capture a sense of how threatening his presence is to her.

And how can you not love a comic that features the Invisible Girl tucking the sleeping Dragon Man into his bed?

Warrior Women - who's your favourite?

First of all I'd like to say thanks to Pat of Silver Age Comics and Paul D Brazil of You Would Say That, Wouldn't You? for giving this site a plug on their own blogs - although Pat has libelled Booksteve terribly by making out he's to blame for this site. Paul currently has a short story crime anthology out, that he's edited, in aid of the Children 1st charity.

But that's the present. And, because I hang around with intellectuals, I know that any history professor'll tell you the past is a far more exciting place to be.

That professor'll no doubt reveal that the past was a world of muscle-men in loin cloths, monsters, demons and sorcerers. It was a land of helpless wenches, duplicitous princesses and narked-off witches.

It's also a world of warrior women.

That leads me onto today's topic of debate. I think we all love a good warrior woman but that raises the issue of just who was the best of Conan's various fighting females?

I was going to launch a poll straight off but quickly realised there'd no doubt be someone I'd missed off. And so I'll do my usual thing of throwing it out to you the reader to give your opinions before I launch that poll.

Off the top of my head, I can think of three main warrior women from the Conan-verse: Bêlit, Red Sonja and Valeria. Speaking personally, I was never a fan of Bêlit, finding her a bit annoying, especially in her insistence on being in issue after issue after issue. I also worried that all that fur had to itch. Plus she ended up dead in the original Robert E Howard tales, which was the kind of downer you don't really need from your heroines.

But when it comes to Valeria and Red Sonja I've always been genuinely torn. I encountered Red Sonja first but I've always suspected that, whatever the origins of her name, Roy Thomas based Red Sonja very strongly on Valeria. Valeria also gets brownie points for having been in Barry Smith's masterpiece Red Nails. Then again, The Sonj was in Bazzer's last story in the monthly Conan the Barbarian mag, which was pretty classic-tastic too. Valeria always seemed a bit more mentally stable to me than Sonja but, then again, I suspect Sonja'd flatten her in a fight.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the matter. But what about you? Conan's warrior women - who's your favourite?

Fantastic Four #44. At last - The Inhumans!

As I roam the deserted tenement blocks of Sheffield, that're earmarked for clearance, strange young women sitting on bits of rubble often ask me, "Steve, what's your favourite ever Fantastic Four story? Is it that one with Galactus, or that one where Dr Doom steals the Silver Surfer's powers?"

And I say, "No. It's the one where the FF first meet the Inhumans."

"Then you're like us!" They say. "Come with me to our underground lair where I can introduce you to my bizarre family and their paranoid ways!"

I say, "Thanks, luv, but I get enough of that at home."

That aside, it's all true. The first Inhumans story is indeed my favourite Fantastic Four tale of. And it all kicks off with the magnificent issue #44, surely as random and meaningless a comic as there's ever been.

Foolishly unexcited by Reed Richard's invention of the dishwasher, the Human Torch sets off in his sports car, looking for some action but gets more than he bargained for as he's hijacked by Medusa - still in her villainous phase.

Gun in hand, she forces him to help her flee a mysterious figure called Gorgon who likes kicking things. While the Torch and Medusa are chin-wagging, they bump into Dragon Man - freshly revived after his last appearance, and up for doing a King Kong with Medusa.

It all leads to a rooftop confrontation, involving the FF, Medusa, Gorgon and the Dragon Man, before Dragon Man abducts Sue, Gorgon abducts Medusa, and everyone else finds themselves trapped in a collapsing building.

There really is no rhyme or reason to this tale, it's carried along on a lunatic energy that sees ideas and actions flung into the pot for no purpose you can see. When Dragon Man suddenly appears by bursting out of the ground, you do wonder by what process this story was planned, and have to conclude it probably wasn't planned at all. Jack Kirby probably just made it up as he went along.

This feeling's especially strong if you've read later instalments. Given what we know about what happens in those, nothing that Medusa or Gorgon do or say in this issue makes any sense at all.

But who cares? What we're seeing is a strip approaching the peak of its creativity, one that means all sense and logic become irrelevant. It's pure escapism and it's great.

Dr Strange's all-time greatest foe - Poll Results!

A wise man once said there's nothing in this life quite as magical as magic. He then went on to say there's nothing quite so circular as circles, and nothing quite so blue as blue. What a sage and a wit he was.

Reader, that sage was me. And that's why I took his advice and now make a point of arriving everywhere by hanging from a flying umbrella while trilling that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

But all this talk of magic can mean just one thing.

That it's time to announce the thrillsome-tastic results of our poll to discover just who is Dr Strange's greatest ever foe.

Many as the Moons of Munnopor were the votes, and many were the recipients:

Joint fifth, with one vote each, were Dracula and Nightmare.

Fourth, with three votes, was Baron Mordo.

Third, with four votes, was, "Marvel Editors."

Second, in what I see as a turn-up for the books, was Silver Dagger, with five votes.

But, to perhaps no one's surprise at all, the winner, with a walloping twelve votes, was that inflammable fiend of  infamy the Dread Dormammu. So, congratulations to the master of the Dark Dimension, and let's hope his success doesn't go to his head.

As always, thanks to all who voted - and commiserations to all those villains who failed to make the grade.

Leaving the Circle.

Holey Moley! Can it be that I actually have a hit on my hands?

Before I've even told anyone it exists, my latest story on Amazon's Kindle Store's already started selling!

How that happens, I don't have a clue, but thank God it does. Perhaps one day my dream of not having to fight off the local foxes to get all my meals from my neighbours' wheelie-bins can come true.

And there was me thinking my decision not to call it Nightmare Horror Citadel of Doom, Death Terror, Argh! might turn out to be a mistake.

Anyway, it's true. It's here, Leaving the Circle. It's 1934, and an entity from Other Realms discovers there might be more lurking beneath the snows of, "The Roof of the World," than first meets the eye. But, now it has that information, what's it going to do with it?

Leaving the Circle can be downloaded at the following places (and remember, you don't need a Kindle-machine-thingy to download it or any of my other legendary tales. It can be downloaded straight to your computer):
Amazon.com. Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Italy, Amazon Spain.

Cover image credit: Fitz Roy 2 by Prissantenbar (Public Domain), fiddled-about-with a fair bit by me. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Thanks for your time and tolerance ~ Steve.

Fifty years ago today - January 1962.

It seems like only days ago I was blathering on about it being 1972. And now here I am claiming it's 1962. Clearly a new and strange madness has claimed me.

Fortunately, it's a madness that means I now have a chance to see what our favourite Marvel heroes were up to exactly fifty years ago.

The answer is, "not much," as most of them were still no more than a gleam in the eye of the various people who claim to have created them. But, even that long ago, there were two Marvel comics that brought us the antics of super-powered cavortionists.

It's always seemed a strange cover to me. That window's far too close to the floor. Why's there no furniture? And why does that house have twenty foot high bright yellow walls? But who cares about that? What matters is that Fantastic Four #2 gives us all the Skrulls we could ever need, in the first FF tale I ever read.

Isn't this the story where Reed Richards defeats the would-be invaders by convincing them that comic book panels are photos of real-life monsters that inhabit the Earth - basically using the conceit that, to comic book characters, drawings look like photos? Why, it's positively metafictional before the word was even coined.

It's easy to forget that Marvel's second Silver Age venture into the realms of super-hero-dom featured not the Hulk nor Thor but the mighty Ant-Man.

Of course he wasn't called Ant-Man in that debut tale and had yet to get his costume, let alone the wondrous Wasp but, still, already Henry Pym had gained the power to shrink and be menaced by things that were no kind of threat to anyone else.

I'm sure, from what I can remember, that, at the end of the tale, he vows never again to meddle with such things that man was never meant to meddle with. Oh, Henry Pym, if only you'd known...

Incredible Hulk #2 - the Terrible Toad Men!

As I roam the streets of Sheffield, people often say to me, "Steve, why are you roaming the streets of Sheffield with giant magnets strapped to the sides of your head?"

And I say, "Poltroon! Know you not that magnets are the mightiest weapon known to man? Why, if I had just one more fridge magnet glued to my forehead, humanity itself would face extinction."

And it's true!

If you don't believe me, just take a look at Incredible Hulk #2, in which the treacherous Toad Men from somewhere or other decide to use their mastery of magnetism to invade the Earth.

As they explain, with their magnets they can suck the water from the oceans and make people's feet stick to the pavement. Who ever thought feet and water could be so magnetic?

But that's not the only trick because, ignoring the fact that the moon has no magnetic core, with their magnets they have the power to yank it out of Earth's orbit. Clearly they get their laws of magnetism from the same place as Magneto.

I must make a confession. This is the first Hulk story I ever read, way back in the pages of Mighty World of Marvel #4. In fact I only read the second half at that time, as I'd missed the first three issues, but just one glance at the opening image - Bruce Banner stood in the wreckage of a crashed alien spaceship - was enough to hook me. I didn't care that the Toad Men were silly villains. Let's face it, the Skrulls - also in that issue - were even sillier and that didn't stop them becoming arguably Marvel's main alien menace to humanity over the years.

Revelations about the unexpected power of magnetism aside, the thing that's always stood out for me about this tale is it's drawn by Marvel's two defining Silver Age artists, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and I've always loved the combination on this tale, with Ditko laying his moodier style over Kirby's dynamism.

Still, the problems of the early Hulk comics leap out at you. The first being that the Hulk's a bad guy and as much a threat to humanity as the Toad Men. He at one point muses on the possibility of using the Toad Men's weapons to destroy all mankind. Then, that plan scuppered, he sets out to kill Betty Ross and Rick Jones. It's only him turning back to Bruce Banner as the sun comes up that stops him.

That transformation highlights the other problem the strip had; the fact that Bruce Banner only used to change into the Hulk when it was dark. On paper it seems a great idea, adding a sense of nocturnal menace and tragedy to the proceedings but it proves to be an unwieldy conceit that manages to make the Hulk ultimately irrelevant to the tale, as he plays no part at all in the Toad Men's demise. There's also the fact that, once the Hulk's irrelevant rampagings are over, there's only space left in the mag for Bruce Banner to defeat the Toad Men with ridiculous ease.

But perhaps what most strikes you is that the whole story feels like a B movie, combining 1950s alien invasion flicks with The Wolfman and Frankenstein.

This probably all makes the story sound terrible and, in theory, it possibly is. But, one, it was the first Hulk story I ever read, so I'm bound to have a fondness for it and, two, I'm a fan of 1950s invasion flicks and Universal horror movies, so its mood is always going to appeal to me.

In the end, I don't suppose anyone reading it'd be shocked to be told the title was cancelled within a few issues of this one but it has a charm to it that those of us who love the corny and hoary can't resist and it is oddly enjoyable to speculate just how the comic would've developed had the early concept of the Hulk never been ditched.

Dr Strange's all time greatest foe.

By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth and the Flipping Fiends of Fomething-or-other. Our dauntless quest to find the greatest super-villain of them all brings us to that magical master of mystery Dr Strange.

As we all know, the good doctor once had a battle with the bottle but then went on to face even deadlier foes. There was the Dread Dormammu, the Naughty Nightmare, Bothersome Baron Mordo, the Fiddlesticky Faceless Ones, the Sinister Satannish, Umar the Unspeakable and those two hypnotised blokes who beat him up in that Steve Ditko story where he teamed up with Spider-Man.

Those two blokes aside, it's fair to say that, thanks to their mystical bent, most of Dr Strange's foes have been a little more stylish than the run-of-the-mill villain. So, of all the foes Dr Strange has ever come up against, who's been your favourite?

Personally, I've always had a soft spot for Nightmare, possibly because he was the first Dr Strange villain I ever encountered, but also because I too have been known to have had the odd nightmare in my time and can therefore claim that Nightmare is the only foe of any super-hero that I've ever encountered. Needless to say, my mastery of the Eye of Agamotto has kept me safe every time.

But, in the end, it's not my opinion that counts. It's yours. So, give me your favourites and, as always, in a couple of days from now I'll put them in a poll - and at last the world can answer the question; "Just who is Dr Strange's greatest ever foe?"

Forty years ago today - January 1972.

Suffering Shad! No sooner have I finally learned to write "2011" on things, than I've suddenly got to start writing "2012"  on them instead. How can I possibly get round such a startling circumstance?

Simple.

I'll just write "1972" on everything from now on. That way I'll never be out of date.

1972 was a big year for me. It was the year I started reading American comics and it was the year Mighty World of Marvel hit the newsagents of this sceptred isle. Does all this specialness mean a change in circumstance for our Marvel heroes as they enter 1972, leading to an era of peace and goodwill to all?

Somehow I have a suspicion it doesn't.

Writer Roy Thomas is still on his King Kong trip as Spidey and Ka-Zar tangle with Kraven the Hunter and Gog the space monster.

The Fantastic Four find themselves up against not only Steve Does Comics favourite - Diablo - but also their old team-mate Crystal.

On top of that, the Thing gets to visit another version of Earth, where he finds revoltin' developments haven't been quite the same as they are round our way.

The Kree/Skrull War rumbles on as Neal Adams and Roy Thomas drag the Inhumans into it.

I think this is the one where we get to see how Maximus went mad.

Captain America comes up against Hydra and it doesn't seem to be a happy new year for Sharon Carter who looks like she's out to keep up with Lady Dorma and beat Gwen Stacy to an early grave.

Women. They can be so competitive!

It's unlucky for some, as Conan the Barbarian #13 sees the Cimmerian Clobberer up against a Spider-God.

Spider-God, Spider-God, does whatever a spider... er...

It's that rarity, a Daredevil story from this era that I actually remember.

If I'm right, poor old Natasha's, accused of bumping off some super-villain or other. Was it the Scorpion or Mr Hyde or was it both?

Whatever the truth of the matter, I suspect that, as so often in my own life, exploding robots might've been involved.

The Hulk thwarts the Leader's Invasion of the Body Snatchers plot.

I think this is the one with the back-up tale where the Hulk finds himself in a town that's just a mirage, and thus proves a Hulk story can be great without him doing any smashing.

I do sometimes wonder if I should just pretend Iron Man doesn't exist, as he has yet another issue I recall not one thing about.

That aside, I do love the way Gil Kane's drawn Iron Man on the cover.

Like a much-pressed moderator on the Asgard Forum, Thor's still having trouble with the trolls.

My razor sharp wits tell me he's about to launch into that epic quest to find the Well at the Edge of the World.

Verily, I love this era of Thor.