However, the pair had clearly peaked too quickly because, just one week later, they were deposed by Bobby Gentry's I'll Never Fall in Love Again, possibly the earliest Number One I can remember seeing on Top of the Pops.
But that too was soon dislodged, this time by the Archies' Sugar Sugar. It does seem odd that Britain should grant a Number One to a non-existent band from a comic the vast majority of the public must have never even heard of.
Clearly, there was no shortage of churn on the singles chart but things were nothing like that volatile on the album chart because the whole month was totally dominated by just one LP, the Beatles' Abbey Road, a platter so dominant that it's still at Number One on the UK album chart, even as I type these words.
Hold on, it's been at Number One for fifty years? What madness is this?
This is it! The big one! The one where Captain Marvel has to endure the fate reserved for all Marvel heroes and is compelled to adopt Rick Jones as a sidekick!
And, weirdly, he does it willingly.
It's a tale of caves, glowing figures on wind-swept moors and alien technology in abandoned caves.
Actually, it sounds quite good when I put it like that.
Hot on the heels of the launch of last month's Tower of Shadows, Marvel produces a remarkably similar comic that's also designed to chill our bones and tingle our spines.
A somewhat odd tale in which Mephisto hires a villain to do his fighting for him - and then spends the entire fight attempting to join in while trying to pretend he's not there.
I don't have a clue why Mephisto bothered recruiting the Ghost in the first place, nor why he tries to keep his presence a secret from the Surfer.
Anyway, needless to say, the Diabolical troublemaker doesn't get what he wants.
But why on Earth is the Surfer shooting the platform, on that cover and just how is the Ghost managing to miss his target, from all of two feet away?
Aliens try to steal the Earth's water but they haven't counted on the power of Namor and Triton to mess things up for them.
Still, the bad guys get their revenge when they remove Subby's ability to breathe in water.
Hot on the heels of the launch of last month's My Love, Marvel produces a virtually identical comic in which young women who look like Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy get to sob their way through yet more tales of self-inflicted woe and heartbreak.
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32 comments:
What! No review of Millie the Model!
This is an outrage!
Just kidding! Well done Steve!
CM # 17: Obviously the uniform sucks and only a dumb-as-rocks-man-toy like Rick Jones would wander into a cave and try on alien bracelets and then start hanging out with a Kree after giving it up to Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers and the Avengers and Bruce Wayne. There! Anything to say about CM 17 has been said! Can we have a moratorium on discussing it please? Please?
Silver Surfer, just like Amazing Spider-Man is 100% fighting cover to cover this month. But whereas I miss the soap opera element of Spider-Man's supporting cast, it must have been refreshing for an issue of Silver Surfer to not include the usual six pages of moping about the unfairness of life.
Fortunately anyone missing out on Spidey's soap opera quotient could pick up Our Love Story and read We Dare Not Marry, in which a teenage girl finds happiness copping off with her ...er teacher.
Nice one, Stan.
Yay! Its Captain Marvel #17, "And a Child Shall Lead You!" How Roy Thomas is that story title?
And who could possibly tire of the sinewy, clawed hands, up the nostril Gil action of Rick Jones - ktang! - bonding with Marvel's space-faring hero?
-sean
Actually, now I think about it, didn't Captain Marvel #17 crossover with the much discussed (on this blog) Captain America/Red Skull Cosmic Cube body swap epic? Isn't that why Rick stopped being Bucky, because "Cap" didn't want him hanging around anymore?
CM #17 really is a classic for the ages...
-sean
You've got me thinking now Sean. Should I have not bothered with Spider-Man and just read romance comics if the soap opera element was so important to me?
And then I think about ASM #30, #87, #99, maybe #18 that were more about Peter Parker than Spider-Man and I think, no, I need the fights as well as the soap opera. There was the odd 100% fight or 100% soap issue but these were big outliers and Amazing Spider-Man got the mix right over time.
Also, I've got ASM #1-500 in pdf form and I'm pretty sure Rick Jones doesn’tt appear in any of them.
Captain America #118, page 12... Rick is literally shedding a tear in the last panel because Cap (Skull) dissed him. Rick says, "So long Avenger... maybe we'll get together some day just for laughs, but don't hold your breath waiting."
And then at the bottom of the panel is a Stan 'blurb" "Note: For the surprise of the season (!)see what fate has in store for our dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks boy-toy in Captain Marvel #17!"
Honestly, Gene the Dean doesn't really draw a Rick who looks like Rick. His head is a like a big, bulky block... with a tear.
But this issue's letter pages are a wild ride! Seriously! A bunch of PhD's arguing about Cap and the meaning of patriotism. Course the USA was well on its way to killing 1,000,000 men, women, and children in Vietnam and Lt. Calley was perhaps starting to dominate the news cycles for murdering 300 women and children and of course there was Charlie Manson. Ahhh... the good ole days.
Am I remembering correctly that the Sub-Mariner splash page had Marie caricaturing half the Marvel bullpen?
Thats an interesting point, dangermash.
We wouldn't have read romance comics as kids because they were for girls, but of course they were definitely part of the mix of the Marvel superhero stuff - Jack Kirby (with Joe Simon) invented the genre, and John Romita mostly did that kind of thing before Spidey - so as long as there was some fighting too...
I reckon the soapy aspect of the Marvel comics became more significant past the age of 10 or 11, which is probably why X-Men became more popular from around the end of the 70s (as the average age of readers started to rise), Chris Claremont being a master of soap opera writing.
-sean
Ah, American patriotism - have you ever read Legion of Charlies, uh... Charlies?
www.comixjoint.com/legionofcharlies-1st.html
-sean
Patriotism seems to me to be rather like Communism or witchcraft.
I've heard people talk about it but I've never seen it actually practiced.
M.P.
UK Gents - As long as were talking about Spidey being a "love story / soap opera" we were curious if Spidey 95, in London, holds a special place in your hearts?
It is worth noting that seemingly half the issue is dedicated to Pete and Gwen's relationship since she moved to London and he follows here there.
Some thoughts Charlie and I had. We note Spidey is fighting terrorists. Is it fair to say the UK had numerous no-go zones back then as well? (Just kidding!!!)
Also, it must be noted that it is Joe Robertson who comes up with the geech for Petey to go to London. But, after the recent bloggings about "token" heroes (white men being replaced by other ethnicities or genders) did folks ever complain 50 years ago about "token" Joe Robertson? Not to mention Joe makes white Jonah appear as a relatively more ignorant jag bag than perhaps if Joe was white?
Charlie, my reaction to that Spidey story was the same as it always was when Marvel heroes visited Britain, which was annoyance that the place depicted bore no resemblance to Britain. As for no-go areas, I do believe there were places in Northern Ireland that were off-limits to people, dependent on their politics and religion.
D.D, I'm afraid I can shed no light on the splash page of that Subby issue.
Sean, that issue of Captain America did indeed lead straight into the then-current issue of Captain Marvel.
ASM #95 doesn't hold a special place for me Charlie. I find it a bit weird. It's clear that Stan and John had never been to London. Too many geographical inaccuracies. Not just on the cover but there's also how Spider-Man heads straight from the airport Into town when, in reality, it was maybe 25 miles away (City Airport is closer but probably wasn't around back then). And there's all that web swinging which just isn’t possible in London where the buildings aren’t as tall as they are in New York. And he swings past Gwen's apartment? Unless her British relatives are super rich they're going to live out in the sticks rather than in the West End or City, which gives him about 1000 square miles of residential area to search. Just like with Captain Britain, nobody really had a clue about the U.K.
Mind you, they made a better hash of the U.K. than they did of Eastern Europe in all those Doctor Doom stories.
Is that issue of Sub-Mariner what started Namor's black costume phase? I seem to recall he had to wear that costume to breathe on land, or in water, or something. I though it was a vast improvement over the green speedos, anyway.
The black costume came along four or five years later. Subby had to wear it because exposure to nerve gas had robbed him of his ability to breathe on land. That storyline involved Triton too. I suspect that wasn't coincidence. Presumably it was a case of Marvel writers recycling plot ideas.
I agree. I always had a liking for that costume too.
Thanks.
And I'm glad I'm not alone in my affinity for the black duds.
The greatest ever switch to black duds has to be the one in Amazing Spider-Man, surely?
And I'm talking issue 86 before anybody tells me that the switch happened in Secret Wars.
Wasn't Namor's post-green speedo costume actually blue?
I realize Charlie in his great and unmatched wisdom was joking about no go areas, but thats (more or less) right about the north Irish six counties Steve. Most notably, the early 70s was the era of Free Derry, where you would literally have to pass a checkpoint to enter part of the city.
Back then terrorism was very fashionable in London - besides the Irish, you also had angry hippies, Carlos the Jackal, Black September and MI5 - which is probably why it was part of the story. You can imagine Stan's thought process: Spidey is in London, so thats Big Ben, Tower Bridge, red double decker buses, terrorists...
Charlies, even though apparently racism didn't exist before anti-racists started going on about it, I expect people did complain about Joe Robertson. They just didn't have the internet to let everyone else know about it.
-sean
The costume was blue but I've always assumed it was meant to be black, in the same way that Superman's hair is blue but is meant to be black.
dangermash, I had to look that up, and I guess you are referring to the Black Widow's new costume. Yes, that was a major upgrade.
Steve, not only is Superman's blue hair black, but the original X-Men costumes were meant to be black & yellow, as was Nova's costume.
Superman didn't actually have blue hair?
Thanks for clearing that up for me Steve - I always wondered why no one figured out he was Clark Kent, the only other geezer in Metropolis with blue hair.
That still doesn't explain how no-one recognized him with glasses on though.
-sean
Maybe Superman did have blue hair, but nobody had the guts to give him any crap about it.
Would you wanna piss him off?
M.P. (My wisdom is even greater and more unsurpassed)
OK - Charlie (the other one) "gives!" Why couldn't comics presumably print black hair or black uniforms.
Charlie, not me this time but the other one, never liked Subby's new "black with arm fins" uniform.
Once Bill Everett drew that handful of issues, just prior to his death, he defined Subby's look forever (just like only Jack Cole was ever really able to draw Plas, and CC Beck Cpt Marvel).
Bill was so creative, yet still carrying that touch of the Golden Age, 30 years later. I am grateful he was able to draw those few last issues of Subby.
So after the Everett issues, the black uniform (and Heck for art) just hurt.
But it takes great wisdom to appreciate the work of the masters and not succumb to the folly of the modern trends.
Make Mine Mozart!
Finally, let's start prepping for the World Conker Championships this Sunday!
Sean - Charlie had forgotten about that age of terrorism when the USA would look askance and wonder "are those people crazy?"
You know you're in trouble when the USA wonders if you're crazy, Charlies.
Did you know that Bill Everett was a descendant of William Blake?
-sean
Sean - do you know what the Roman General Plautius said when he beat the "British" 2000 years ago?
"I came!"
"I saw!"
"I conkered!"
ROTF LOL!!!
Further to the colour of Supeman's hair, I always thought 'Blue is blacker then black' would have been a great name for an indie pop single by an 80's synth group that never quite made it. Now that comics are official hip, 'Sky-riders of the Space Ways' would be a fab name for that group.
I read that Captain Marvel story in the 1978 Mighty World of Marvel annual. I was somewhat impressed with the Billy Batson/Shazam analogy, without realising this was the same character that had appeared as the back-up in early Planet of the Apes. I think it was the hair...
DW
'Blue is blacker THAN black'.
DW
I now live in a country in which the President of the United States has become a cartoon supervillain.
M.P.
As a kid I loved that issue but only realised years later that Tower Bridge was not beside the House of Parliament,poetic licence I suppose.I think this was the last issue of single self contained stories that had been forced on the bullpen by the publisher,Martin Goodman.The previous year had some great stories like the Kingpin trilogy #83-85 and the Doc Ock trilogy #88-90 but some single issues were average like #80(Chameleon,#81(Kangeroo!)87,91(Bullet),#92(Iceman),#93(Prowler),#94 (Beetle).Just to clarify I loved them all at the time but looking back there was a big gap in the quality and this led into Stans last year on the title which showed he had run out of ideas and Thomas and Conway were a breath of fresh air.Just my opinion of course though the artwork never dipped.Similar to the last year of the FF with the artwork still maintaining its look but the stories dropping dramatically!(Having said that they were all masterpieces compared to whats on offer today!
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