Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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What's that? A place where nobody dared to go?
The love that we came to know?
It can only be that magical place mankind knows as Xanadu.
Surely, Kublai Khan never suspected, when he established his summer capital in Inner Mongolia, that, 700 years later, it'd be a Disco sensation.
But it was!
And, in this week in 1980, Olivia Newton-John and ELO proved it, as their record of that very name reached the top of the British hit parade, giving the band their first and last UK chart-topper.
I'll happily declare that, for me, it's a song whose appeal has only been enhanced by the passing years, and still makes me wonder if I should condescend to try watching the movie it came from.
It's bad news in the Baxter Building where the Wizard, Electro, Sandman and Trapster are in the process of sneaking up on Reed Richards, without warning.
What hope is there for our stretchy super-doer?
Spider-Man. That's what hope.
And what hope for the other stars of this week's comic?
Beats me. I don't even know what threats they're facing.
After that, there's a three-page feature on spaceships that have appeared in the show.
There's also a single-page article about Doctor Who actors who've appeared in Star Wars.
The only one I can think of, off the top of my head, is Michael Sheard who turned up in a zillion episodes, as about a zillion different characters, and who ended up being strangled to death by the power of Darth Vader's brain.
We get a Lee/Ditko tale reprinted from Strange Tales #90, in which an ageless scientist remains on Earth - after everyone else has left - in order to repopulate it, with a woman.
The mind-boggling twist is that their names are Adam and Eve!
And we finish off with more from the Daleks' strip.
Don't ask me what happens in it but it's written by David Whitaker, which practically makes it canon, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm assuming the support is Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos, as it's their strip.
Unfortunately, they're not in time to prevent Bull getting hit by a bullet. Is it curtains for the man?
And just how rocky are things going to get for Rocky?
2,000 weeks into Marvel's adaptation of the movie, and Luke's still on Hoth, still fighting those robot camels.
Elsewhere, an exciting new strip makes its Gil Kanetastic debut.
And that's Gullivar Jones: Warrior of Mars.
But, hold on a minute, he was in Marvel UK's Planet of the Apes comic, years ago. What a swizz.
But it is weird how I've no recollection of him ever having been in this comic.
Meanwhile, under the book's Monsters of the Cosmos banner, we get Part One of a thing called Clete which is reprinted from Unkown Worlds of Science Fiction #1.
And we finish off with I Come From the Shadow World, a Lee/Ditko offering in which a malevolent silhouette arrives on Earth, out to do some spying in preparation for invasion.
He is, of course, destroyed by someone turning the lights on.
But is he a member of the race of shadow creatures which once turned up in a Herb Trimpe drawn Hulk tale?
The keen-eyed reader will have noticed a certain absence.
It's true. Poor old Man-Wolf has lost his place in the book.
Will he ever get it back?
Only time will tell.
Posts
28 comments:
Steve, The record warehouse I worked at had PALLETS of the Xanadu soundtrack on vinyl, here in the states. They barely moved.
We shipped them back after 6 months. It was packing the cut-out bins later.
I only saw the first ten minutes of the movie on tv, at the behest of my girlfriend's niece and nephews that we were babysitting.
Thank Whomever-Is-Holy that I talked them into watching Excalibur.
Steve, I've always liked that song too! I like ELO.
I did try to watch the movie once a few years back when it was on cable, and I think I lasted about three minutes.
Excalibur, on the other hand, is a classic. It's one of those movies I watch once a year or two. I can pretty much recite the dialogue at this point. Wagner's "Death of Siegfried" get's me every time.
And Helen Mirren. I'll say no more.
M.P.
MP, it's a very very long time since I saw Excalibur and my memories of it are very fuzzy.
KD, I suppose it is quite difficult to sell a soundtrack album to a movie no one's seen. Thinking about it, I wonder if the Bee Gees' Sgt Pepper soundtrack album suffered the same fate?
The first Dr. Who fan fiction I ever completed was called Dragon's Claw. It was basically a rip-off of You Only Live Twice and those X-Men stories set in Japan. This Dave Gibbons strip was a lot better. Sontarans!
My first ever Marvel comic was Planet Of The Apes No.5 which featured Gullivar Jones, Warrior Of Mars (he appeared in POTA #2-7) but I too don't remember him in Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back Weekly. Nor do I recall this Star Wars cover so maybe I'd abandoned the comic by this point.
Public Safety Announcement:
Just curious if the UK chaps are familiar with "cut out" albums?
Basically a record album would have small (1/2 inch by 1/8 inch?)rectangular notch cut out of the album.
IN Charlie's experience this indicated that the album had a defect (usually warped) and if you bought it, it could not be returned.
Wasn't aware of KD's experience that it reflected albums that weren't selling, which I assume were then sold with a no-return policy?
Charlie still has Jefferson Airplanes Greatest Hits album cut out, he thinks.
I'm totally unfamiliar with that practice, Charlie. Was the rectangle cut out of a place that would make the record unplayable or was it just cut out of the bit where the label was?
Colin, I think I was still reading The Empire Strikes Back Weekly at this time but the fact that none of the back-up strips rings any bells for me does make me have my doubts.
Do you still have that piece of fan-fiction, Dougie?
HI Steve,
The rectangle was out of only the cover, basically near the corner, so as not to damage the record.
Then, you would buy the record on the cheap, with no return possible. Not a bad deal to discover a new piece of music / group.
Rather than watch Xanadu Steve, you could always read the Marvel adaptation instead (being a comic it doesn't have any sound, which in this case is a definite plus).
www.onlyolivia.com/visual/xanadu/marvel/index.html
Gullivar Jones wasn't unusual in getting a second British reprint in Star Wars after appearing in POTA - off the top of my head, Man Gods From Beyond The Stars and War Toy appeared in both.
Even Apeslayer turned up in Star Wars, only renamed Killraven and with apes changed to martians.
Wasn't Peter Cushing a Dr Who, and in Star Wars?
-sean
"Behold the sword Excalibur, sword of kings! Forged before the dawn of time!"
I think I read somewhere some believe the model for Arthur was a Celtic or Romano-British warlord in Cornwall or Wales somewhere, who fought the Saxons during the English dark ages, after the Roman state in Britain slowly fell apart or was absorbed by the natives. The Roman Empire in the west collapsed in the fifth century, although the eastern half would linger for a thousand years.
Charlie, great minds think alike. I've got Jefferson Starship's greatest hits on CD, including the Airplane hits and NOT including anything from the abomination known simply as Starship.
M.P.
M.P. Oh my brother!
I actually saw "Starship" around 1980 at Purdue. Grace Slick was singing away! Then between songs some crazy-ass college kid through a roll of toilet paper at the stage (remember this is pre-corona).
The roll hit her in the head.
She gracefully (heh, heh) picked up the roll, wiped her blue-jeaned ass with it, and threw it back at the crown.
She was a class act! I fell hard for ole Grace, just like I would for Ginger Rogers 35 years later when I was watching her in Top Hat with Fred Astaire.
I was practicing math on the FF cover.
I count 8 characters but don't see a Trapster. We should assume the old Paste Pot is Spidey?
What issue of the FF was this again? I think I asked this a few weeks ago but I been drinking booze every night since Monday, and I normally only drink like once a month, and I can't remember much right now.
I suspect a vet like M.P. understands my state of mind? Sober on a Friday night b/c I been boozing all week?
The sword of kings? C'mon M.P., strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Excalibur was ok - especially when you consider its by the same director as Zardoz and Exorcist 2: The Heretic - but Monty Python & the Holy Grail is much better...
-sean
Sean, if a strange naked woman in a pond offered me a sword, I would take it, just on general principals. Damn the consequences.
A couple years ago, an eight-year-old Swedish girl found a 1500-year-old Viking sword on the shore of a lake.
By all rights, she should be Queen of Sweden, and all should bow down. Screw democracy.
The Queen in the North!
M.P.
Steve, I have all my Dr Who fanfic in a cupboard. All hand-written, between 1982 and 1983, on lined A4 paper. All influenced by whatever was on tv or whatever I was reading at the time!
Aside from Japan, there were stories about Burke and Hare, probably because of The Body Snatcher in the last horror double bill of 1981. One that mashed up Splinter of the Mind's Eye with Dr. Skuba from OMAC and one with the St Valentine's Day Massacre. The Dreaming by Kate Bush and 1977's The Last Wave influenced the Australian one. The last one that wasn't finished and about Cornish wreckers is clearly Doomwatch the movie meets A Pair of Blue Eyes.
MP talking about Arthurian legend reminds me again that one tradition has Merlin born in what is now the West End of Glasgow. The Dark Ages language of the area south of the Firth of Forth was Cumbric (or Brythonic), which is related to Welsh. You still hear it in Glasgow street names like Baldovan or Balshagray.
Isn't there a theory that King Arthur was based on a Roman soldier called Arturus or something...
British readers of Steve Does Comics might recall the TV series "Arthur Of The Britons" from the '70s. Oliver Tobias played Arthur who was portrayed as more like a tribal chief than a king and everybody lived in mud huts, including him. It was a far more realistic image of what post-Roman Britain would have looked like.
My father couldn't stand Monty Python but I persuaded him to watch Monty Python & The Holy Grail when it was broadcast on TV and he chuckled all the way through it :D
Colin and MP, I think Arthur's supposed to have been an amalgam of a number of 5th and 6th Century tribal leaders who fought the Angles and Saxons, including one who was, I think, the last Ancient Briton known to have had a Roman name.
I remember Arthur of the Britons. It was OK but a bit too grounded in reality for my liking.
Dougie, I too have heard Merlin was originally a Scottish character who got drafted into the King Arthur myth.
Charlie, the Trapster's cunning attack on the Baxter Building occurred in Spectacular Spider-Man #42 and Fantastic Four #218.
Sean, I am always impressed that Marvel used to do comic book adaptations of musicals, a policy that made no sense at all. Then again, they did a comic about the career of the Beatles, without any music. That must have been a thrilling read.
I do remember Man Gods From Beyond the Stars and War Toy turning up in Star Wars Weekly. I don't recall Killraven turnng up in it.
You're right. Peter Cushing was in both the Doctor Who and Star Wars universes.
The possible historical origins of Arthur are a bit irrelevant to the Excalibur flick really, as it totally went for all the classic knights in shining armour and grail myth stuff.
Which was probably the best approach to the subject, at least if that King Arthur film with Clive Owen and Keira Knightly that came out a while back is anything to go by.
That played down all the legends, and had Arthur as a fifth century Romano-Briton fighting the Saxons... yet still managed to be historically ridiculous, without much entertainment value to make up for it.
-sean
Hello Gents,
OK I don't know squat about Arthur other than some story about pulling a sword out of a stone?
BUT I know in my travels of France over the past 30 years that there is a tale about Lancelot du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake), Arthur's greatest Knight of the Round Table, who betrayed Arthur by taking his wife Guinevere to France?
Does this lend any credence to the existence of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table?
(Not to be confused with Roland who was Charlemagne's greatest knight who got whacked in the Pyrenees about 1,000 years ago by Saracens or marauders, providing the rear-guard support to Charlie as he withdrew from Spain back to France.)
Many of the elements of the Arthur legend were put together in a narrative in Le Morte d'Arthur, a book supposedly written by a knight named Thomas Malory in the 15th century.
If so, it seems an unlikely source for a such a work, because Malory was a real criminal-type element and a thieving bastard, and he did hard time for it.
Then again, it does make a sense in a way...
I've actually read it. It's pretty crazy.
I could never get through The Once and Future King, however.
Lord how I did try. It made my head hurt.
M.P.
I'm pretty sober this evening. Maybe I'll try Le Morte d'Artur.
Malory based his work on stories - chivalric and courtly romances - that had been doing the rounds in various forms in western Europe for a while. Charlie may be interested to know that the French poet Chretien de Troyes wrote down some of that stuff earlier -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelot,_the_Knight_of_the_Cart
I think he was the first writer to mention the Grail.
Although obviously Monty Python were definitive...
-sean
Sean! It's 3 AM in the UK! Are you up "partying" or just can't sleep or working or...?
I'm checking out your link re: Chretien de Troyes!
So it seems Lancelot is keen on riding horses to death, lol.
And then he meets a dwarf driving a cart? Though beneath his dignity he agrees to ride in the dwarf-driving cart since the dwarf knows to where Guinevere has been kidnapped! (Shrewd thinking Lance!)
I dig it!
Though I think The Song of Roland has enough heroics, chivalry, and sword play to satisfy anyone... it just doesn't have any ladies. But I'm not sure I dig Lance's infidelity with Guinevere so... maybe I'll just stick to Roland's sword play.
Charlie, it's not the name of a drink!
(kidding)
I too am relatively sober, but the night is young. Sean, that's interesting to me, that Malory drew upon French sources for the book. As well as incorporating Welsh legends about a madman living in the woods. Ancient people often believed that the insane were touched by the gods, and apparently some of my countrymen still do.
It's basically throwing a lot of disparate stories and characters together in one enormous epic.
Sort of like Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Except here, you get Crisis in Dark Age Europe. Everybody shows up, or at least gets a cameo. Like the Lady of the Lake, for example.
M.P.
I think after the past 4 years, I am well prepared should we return to the Dark Ages M.P. YOu too buddy?
I'm hoping for the best, Charlie.
As a teenager I was wishing the world would end, figuring somehow I would come out on top.
Now that I'm middle-aged, I'm against Armageddon, because I need my sleep and my prescriptions would be unfilled.
I hafta keep an eye on my cholesterol level...
M.P.
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