It's a finger.
What's it doing?
It's beckoning me to follow it into the dark passageways of Recall and look at what our favourite Marvel heroes were up to in the books that bear the cover date of this month in 1979.
Conan turns into Ka-Zar and teams up with a lion, in order to rescue Bêlit from her evil captors.
While he's doing that, she's trying to get her fellow female prisoners to rise up against their oppressors.
Conan, meanwhile, fights an electric eel and beats up a leopard.
If I remember right, I think Cap falls out with SHIELD and does some vacuuming.
Meanwhile, The Corporation are still up to no good and some bad guy or other is doing the Hate-Monger thing and getting a crowd of people, including Sharon Carter, to want to kill foreigners.
Hooray! Gene Colan gets to draw Death-Stalker - the villain he was born to draw - as Daredevil wakes from his coma, to help the Avengers take on the fedora-wearing heel.
Romantics will be pleased to know it all leads to him getting back together with the Black Widow.
Sadly, determined party-poopers the Ani-Men are out to kidnap Matt Murdock.
Three of the FF go off to help some aliens fight the Skrulls. Why do I get the feeling there's more going on with that than meets the eye?
Meanwhile, left behind, the Torch goes to college and finds himself a target of a mystery villain.
That villain is The Monocle!
Who would have thought we'd ever get to see him again?
No one. That's who.
I've no idea what happens in this one but I gather that SHIELD are involved.
Is it me or is that a genuinely terrible cover?
Tony Stark's happily getting himself drunk when his plane's hit by a flying tank.
It turns out it was thrown by the Sub-Mariner - and the inevitable fight breaks out.
But Starky's got more problems than he realises because it turns out Peter Cushing's sabotaging his armour, by remote control.
At least, he looks like Peter Cushing.
Therefore, in my head, he's Peter Cushing.
Professor Smythe's gained control of the Man-Wolf's mind and is using him to try and kill JJJ.
Needless to say, Spidey's not going to stand for that. And doesn't.
Needless to say, JJJ shows no gratitude to him at any point in the story.
Apparently, in this issue, Carrion trashes Peter Parker's apartment.
What a bounder. You can see why he's viewed as being one of Spidey's greatest foes.
Wasn't Carrion the clone of Professor Warren, or am I thinking of someone else?
Moses Magnum is still trying to destroy Japan, for some reason I can't recall.
With a grim inevitability, the X-Men are having more trouble stopping him than they really should have. This is, after all, a man who was stopped by Luke Cage. No disrespect to Luke but he's not the X-Men.
It's the big one. Henry Peter Gyrich shows up and, on behalf of the US government, decides to cut the Avengers' roster to a more manageable size.
Obviously, this doesn't go down well with our heroes.
Not so obviously, they go along with it, like a bunch of Muppets.
Can't they spot a bad guy when they see one?
The Space Phantom recruits Thor's help to save his own people.
Inevitably, it all turns out to be a trick.
What the trick is and how Thor gets out of it, I don't remember.
I'm sure it's highly dramatic though.
STOP PRESS! In response to a comments section request from FB, I'm adding a couple of panels from Iron Man #120, which features a villain who's clearly Peter Cushing and a pollution-happy military officer who seems to be Stan Lee.
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21 comments:
I don't remember a UK reprint of that Hulk cover, that must say something because they were pretty desperate for cover art.
Not that I'm particularly in favour of the security state Steve, but Avengers have top clearance and all sorts of things like that despite no-one even knowing who they are - why wouldn't the American govt want some say?
Its amazing that didn't happen earlier, and the team would be crazy not to go along with Gyrich, who didn't seem that unreasonable to me. Like, Thor is from Asgard, but he wasn't even asked to show his green card.
Did the Guardians of the Galaxy even have valid passports? Seems unlikely.
-sean
PS Although, now I think about it, wasn't Gyrich supposedly based on Jim Shooter?
Maybe you were right after all Steve...
-sean
Yeah, it's not completely outta line for the govt. to be concerned, with these space guys running around. Who knows what weird diseases they might have?
On another note, I also dug the Death-stalker, who was scarier than most. He even gave the Ghost Rider some trouble. Colan was the man, when it came to drawing Daredevil. The shadows and mood...real noir stuff. Like on Doc Strange and Dracula.
And I still consider his rendition of Stilt-man to be the definitive version.
M.P.
The next artist on Daredevil was always going to be a disappointment after Colan M.P...
-sean
I feel Miller's take on Stilt-Man left something to be desired.
M.P.
To be fair M.P., Miller's Daredevil is noted more for other things.
Perhaps if he'd done a ninja Stilt-Man...
-sean
Rather than Ka-Zar, I think Conan is meant to be Amra, Lord Of The Lions. The original Amra (a Hyborian-Age Tarzan rip-off) was killed in a fight with Conan and Conan assumed the title of Amra.
In Robert E. Howard's "The Hour Of The Dragon" Conan is hailed as "Amra" by enslaved black oarsmen who remember him as their captain when they were pirates many years before. According to Roy Thomas these black slaves are Belit's former crew which meant he could work Amra into a story with Conan and Belit - and he could explain why the slaves refer to Conan as Amra (which R.E.H. doesn't explain - the Tarzan rip-off was Marvel's idea). It's a good effort but Belit is never mentioned at all in "Hour Of The Dragon" which suggests these black slaves are not her former crew and Conan wasn't called Amra during his time with Belit.
Colin, thanks for all the Conan/Amra info. I feel suitably educated.
Sean and MP, I have read very little of Frank Miller's work on Daredevil. I gather it all gets a bit dark and gritty.
When it comes to Gyrich and his team-shrinking policy, I would have thought the American government would be glad to have the aid of as many super-heroes available as possible. What if a menace shows up who it's going to take ten Avengers to beat and there are only seven available?
Tim, I don't recall that cover ever being used by Marvel UK either.
If I remember correctly, that issue of X-Men is the one where Banshee blows out his vocal chords and has to retire. If not, it is coming soon. Moses Magnum was a fun villian, he probably got sick of Sunfire's Japanese Supremecist complex and figured he would tank the whole island to shut him up. Or probably not. Lol I do remember reading these via Classic X-Men reprints. It was a golden era for the X-Men IMHO.
~FB
Steve, any chance we can see a panel of "Peter Cushing"?
~F.B.
Miller's Daredevil does get a bit dark and gritty Steve, but to be fair it was before that became a tedious cliche.
Its worth a read, especially the run he did with David Mazzucchelli (with the best will in the world, the actual drawing itself wasn't Miller's strong point).
-sean
Moses Magnum was a great name for a villain.
-sean
FB, I've added a panel featuring "Peter Cushing" to the bottom of the post - and also a special bonus panel from the same Iron Man issue.
At the risk of getting boring I must add one more thing about Conan/Amra.
Robert E. Howard's "Queen Of The Black Coast" ends with the death of Belit and her entire crew (except Conan obviously) but in Marvel's version some of Belit's crew left her ship before the events of Conan #100 and so avoided the fate of the rest. Roy Thomas thus explains how some of Belit's former crew survived to recognize Conan/Amra years later. But Roy Thomas had to invent this scenario in order to make events in "Hour Of The Dragon" fit with "Queen Of The Black Coast" which R.E.H. had clearly never intended. Robert E. Howard didn't write his Conan stories chronologically and trying to place them in chronological order is actually quite difficult and sometimes makes no sense at all. According to R.E.H. Conan led a ship of black pirates on two separate occasions - once alongside Belit and once as Amra but Marvel decided to conflate the two.
Moses Magnum would be a good name for a prophylactic.
M.P.
Holey moley, I'm calling him Peter Cushing too. I guess Peter Cushing and/or Christopher Lee really were in everything in the 70... Ah, those Hammer movies... :)
~F.B.
The villain in Iron Man #120 may have Cushing's forehead & thin face, but the nose is all wrong.
The only ones of these I bought on the newsstand (in the USA) were the X-Men and Avengers. And yes, Gyrich is definitely a bad guy. I always hated that dude. But I guess that was the point.
Death Stalker was a cool villain..deserves a resurrection.
D, I didn't have any of these issues. 1979 was definitely when my American comics reading started to go into decline.
Kevin, I agree. For me, he was definitely the most interesting villain introduced in Daredevil during my youth.
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