None whatsoever.
And that can only mean one thing.
That it's time for me to yet again discover what Marvel's less high-profile comics were up to, four decades ago.
It does seem a strange thing to see the good doctor coming up against Death-Stalker who, despite his attitude, wasn't, as far as I'm aware, an actual supernatural character.
It also feels strange to see Nighthawk there. Somehow, you always felt like Strange's solo appearances and his Defenders adventures happened in parallel universes to each other, with no prospect of a cross-over.
You also can't help but suspect that a foe who'd repeatedly met defeat at the hands of Daredevil might not be wise to tangle with a full-blown master of the mystic arts.
It's the battle we all wanted to see; Godzilla vs Bigfoot vs Red Ronin, in the Grand Canyon.
I do love the expression on Red Ronin's face. That look of, "What am I even doing here?"
For a moment, I got over-excited and thought Machine Man was up against Thanos.
Sadly, he seems to be up against a villain called Ten-For who, whatever his merits, will, I suspect, never be the main antagonist in a series of Marvel movies.
Marvel gives us its adaptation of Steven Spielberg's classic tale of alien abduction and potato sculpting.
I must come clean and admit the only reason I've included this cover is because I remember reading the X-Men's encounter with the Living Monolith in the pages of an Alan Class reprint, and the Liv Mon, as I know him, therefore, gives me warm, fuzzy nostalgic feelings.
Thanks the meddlesome machinations of the Krylorians, we get the first ever appearance of the Avengers, months before their official debut
Despite what's on the cover, no Hulks were harmed during the making of this comic.
I'm also pretty sure the tale takes place in somewhere like Paris or Munich, not the aurora tickled wasteland that the cover depicts.
I don't have a clue what's going on but it's always good to see a dinosaur being swung around by the tail.
At last, after defeats by the Hulk, Thor, Avengers, Daredevil and Spider-Man, the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime find their true level.
Fighting Howard the Duck.
If they lose this one, there really is no hope for them.
I don't have a clue what goes on in this issue but if it features Tigra fighting woolly mammoths, it has to be at least worth a look.
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10 comments:
Good gosh... I couldn't be enticed to spend a pfennig on any of this!
That being said I did read a couple Devil Dinosaurs 1 an 2 that were reprinted for $1 each last year to celebrate Kirby's 100th. I would have been more fulfilled buying a dozen day-old doughnuts.
Hey do you guys use the same "police talk" in the U.K. like here in USA? E.g., 10-4 means "roger."
Ringmaster yet again!!! Ummm.,. That's all I can think to say... they got their share of comic covers! Is there a www site that would report how many covers they were on and a relative ranking? Which villains had the most cover appearances?
Charlie, I don't know of any site that would tell you how many covers the Circus of Crime got.
I've never heard anyone in Britain say, "10-4," but it is a phrase that's known to people of my generation because of movies like Convoy and the song of the same name.
I remember most of these....
the best was the Marvel team-up, with Claremont and Byrne near their best, followed by a beautiful Shanna strip ( pun intended) by gerber and DeZuniga in Rampaging Hulk. Kirby's Machine Man is also good, and often overlooked.
Spirit of '64
I remember that Shanna story. It was certainly determined to make as much use as possible of the black and white magazines' more. "Mature," status.
10-4 Big Buddy! Watch out for the "Bear in the Air!" LOL!
I was crazy about the Liv Mon story- I hadn't seen him since I'd lost his Neal Adams X-appearance when I was a little boy. I say "lost"- I mean as a result of my mum's occasional comics purges.
My recollection is of buying that MTU in Strathaven but not sure if the school summer term had finished- I think not. Also had the Tigra issue- I bought anything with Tigra. I can't THINK why. The villain was one of the High Evo's ( as I call him) feline New Men, IIRC.
I think my only experience of Tigra was when she turned up for a spell in The Fantastic Four. Needless to say, I was infuriated every time they referred to her as a, "Were-woman." I did always feel like writing a letter to Marvel and pointing out that, "Were," didn't mean what they seemed to think it did. I was very pedantic in those days.
The modern Ringmaster and his cronies started out by taking on the Hulk, and went on to clash with Spider-Man, the Avengers, Thor, Daredevil, and now, although it will take a couple of more issues to happen, they get smacked by Howard the Duck. Not sure if they've ever lived it down even 40 years later.
I do feel they should have given up on crime and concentrated on just being a circus. They would probably have made as much money and it would have been less injurious to both their health and their pride.
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