All I can do is seek refuge in the days of four decades past, when every summer was scorching and every winter produced ten foot of snow.
The Collector's back.
Other than that, I can say nothing of the contents of this comic.
I do, however, suspect the acquisitive alien's out to capture the Avengers and add them to his collection, seeing as that's what he does every time he shows up. You do wonder if he ever thinks of getting another hobby.
Apparently, Conan, Belit and Zula have to battle deadly snake creatures, in order to escape from catacombs.
You would have thought Conan would have learned to avoid catacombs by now. It never goes well when he enters any.
I'm reliably informed that, in this issue, Thoth Amon becomes Neftha's adviser.
Frankly, I don't have a clue what that last sentence means as I don't have a clue who Neftha is.
That aside, I was under the impression that Thoth Amon is long dead by Conan's time and is a character from the far earlier Kull stories.
Or is that Thulsa Doom I'm thinking of? I always get them mixed up.
Someone called Argyle Fist puts in an appearance in this issue.
I don't have a clue who that is but he sounds like someone you wouldn't want to meet.
The Tarantula also puts in an appearance. You wouldn't want to meet him either but, given that he's basically just a man with pointy shoes, I suspect the good Captain won't have much difficulty in putting a stop to him.
Hooray! Reed Richards finally gets his super-powers back!
I do believe this is thanks to him making a journey into space.
For some reason, the Red Ghost is also on board. I don't think his apes show up - which is a source of great disappointment to me, as they were always the interesting ones in that partnership.
I genuinely have no idea what happens in this issue. It is nice, though, to see the Hulk frequenting a place of learning.
I'm pretty sure I've never read this one but the Unicorn's back and, no doubt, that means we're in for all kinds of excitement.
This is it! The story we all demanded! It's the Rocket Racer vs the Big Wheel!
Obviously, someone at Marvel decided readers might not be happy with a story that features a terrible super-villain, so they decided to make up for it by making it feature two terrible super-villains.
I can't even remember why the Big Wheel's so desperate to kill the Rocket Racer. Maybe he just has good taste when it comes to Fashion.
The Scorpion's back and convinced he can't remove his costume anymore. Apparently, this leads him to try and kill J Jonah Jameson.
I've always had a soft spot for the Scorpion. He's always seemed nastier than the average villain.
I do believe that, in this one, Harris Hobbs manages to take a TV crew to Asgard and they get there just in time to see Loki initiate the start of Ragnarok by getting Balder killed.
Isn't this the story that leads to an alternative version of Thor showing up?
Magneto's back, and giving the X-Men a good kicking.
The main thing I remember from this story is that it reveals that Magneto has a weird, robotic housekeeper.
I can only assume staff are difficult to find when you're a megalomaniac super-villain, hell-bent on humanity's destruction.
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14 comments:
It's hard to recruit any sort of staff, Steve, when home is inside a volcano in Antarctica.
And maybe it's my age but these comics from 40 years ago are nowhere near as exciting looking as those from 50 years ago. It's not surprising how popular the new X-Men became when you look at whatother Marvel comics they were up against.
I do feel that most of Marvel's comics were past their peak by this point.
I remember the Hulk story from MWOM, can't be long till it crops up in your weekly review Steve.
Oddly I picked up a French version of this story a few years later. No idea why, I can't speak a word of it.
Dangermash... man you are spot on. Comparing "50 years ago" to "40 years ago" is startling. But for the cover featuring Scorpion, nothing really got my ya yas out.
It wasn't just Marvel in decline at this point Steve - I believe an August 1978 cover date marked the final issue of a number of DC titles as their infamous implosion began.
-sean
Yeah, I always felt Marvel kind of peaked in '77 with the closing of Starlin's Warlock/Thanos saga. I was never an X-men guy, and there wasn't much else going on.
Daredevil, F.F. and the Amazing Spider-Man were interesting in the early '80's, I guess.
But the weird, chaotic magic of the early '70's was gone, and replaced by Shooter and this antiseptic, corporate vibe.
Welcome to Reagan's America.
M.P.
Funnily enough though, M.P., to be fair to Shooter* Marvel comics did improve a lot in the first half of the '80s - for example, as you pointed out, theres Daredevil and the FF, not to mention (sorry, I'm not big on Spidey) Thor and the better stuff from the Epic imprint (Marshall Law!).
*Normally I'm not the type to be fair to Shooter at all - if it helps I'd say it was the direct market that revived the comic biz as a whole, and DC did better comics than Marvel. I mean, Shooter forced out the mighty Gene Colan - which meant DC could snap him up for Batman and Night Force - and also ignored the people who'd worked on new stuff for Marvel UK, so Moore, Bolland, Gibbons and that lot went to the competition.
-sean
I think Avengers was still strong up until the 180s and there were some good tales after that. This is the period of the start of the over exposure of Spider man but before the Wolverine overkill we have now.
And I love that Spiderman cover with Scorpion.
I've never read any of Robert E. Howard's original Kull stories but I know that Thulsa Doom was a Kull villain and Thoth-Amon was a Conan villain.
But Conan "villain" would be an incorrect description as Thoth-Amon never met Conan in the R.E.H. stories (he appeared in one and is mentioned in another two) and he seemed largely unaware of - and indifferent to - Conan's existence. It was the Marvel stories that turned Thoth-Amon into Conan's arch-nemesis.
Did rocket racer have rocket powered roller skates, anyone?
I am asking because I was just reading Iron Man 81(?) last night from 1975 and he suddenly pops out roller skates! He also pops out buzz saw blades on his wrists! He also used a fake image projector to create multiple images!
But was there a roller skate fad at Marvel in the mid 70s???
Don't worry, Timothy, you're not alone. I find myself watching foreign language videos on YouTube, without being able to understand a word that's being said in them.
Sean, thanks for pointing out that the DC Implosion coincided with these issues. It hadn't occurred to me.
Ant Master, I do feel the Avengers maintained their creative vigour well after most of their Silver Age Marvel contemporaries had lost theirs.
Thanks for the Thoth-Amon/Thulsa Doom info, Colin. I genuinely always get them mixed up with each other.
Charlie, as far as I'm aware, the Rocket Racer never had roller skates, just a skateboard. I think I remember Iron Man's roller skates first being introduced in the early days of Don Heck's first run on the strip, way back in the 1960s. I think he used the multiple image projector in his first ever appearance, explaining it as being done with transistor-powered mirrors. Exactly how a transistor-powered mirror works was, sadly, never explained.
Charlie, I'm not really much up on Spiderman, but didn't Rocket Racer have a skateboard?
I think the craze for roller skates arrived at Marvel a bit later than the mid-70s - there was the Blue Streak, one of the SHIELD super-agents from Captain America in '78, and Dazzler. Ha - they didn't even have disco in the Marvel universe until the early 80s!
Iron Man, and Machine Man , had retractable wheels - does that really count? Iron Man really count...?
Theres also Skateman - he's not a Marvel character, but its always fun to have a chuckle at some of Neal Adams' crazier career moves.
www.majorspoilers.com/2010/04/25/retro-review-skateman-1-november-1983/
Now, if its skateboards you're really interested in, theres Captain America and the Falcon at it in the mid-70s in Kirby's brilliant Madbomb storyline. Classic!
Steve, blame the first Conan flick for the Thulsa Doom mix up - its all John Milius and Oliver Stone's fault.
-sean
PS Apologies Steve - somehow I misread that bit of your comment where you already pointed out Rocket Racer had a skateboard...
Just noticed that a flipped and redrawn version of that PPSSM cover was on what I consider the last 'real' issue of Spider-Man Weekly in the UK, #310.
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