Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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However, there were no such concerns in 1970, and so it was that this month of that year saw the Isle of Wight Festival attract 600,000 people to East Afton Farm. Wikipedia tells me it was the largest festival of all time but it's Wikipedia, so I can't guarantee it's true.
The Lethal Legion, otherwise known as, "That bunch of losers who can't get anywhere on their own," unveil their plot to destroy the world's mightest super-team.
My memories of this one are a little vague but I do believe Stilt-Man gatecrashes some sort of TV show that Daredevil and Karen Page are appearing on, and the Stunt-Master's mixed up in it all, somehow.
The Mafia decides to invade the Baxter Building, put the Fantastic Four in crates and sling them in the river.
Bruce Banner decides to recruit an old science friend to help him escape his Gamma Ray curse.
The Controller's back, in a tale I've no recollection of whatsoever.
Peter Parker gets the flu and the resulting fever prompts him to turn up at Gwen's 18th birthday party and tell the guests that he's Spider-Man.
What I can guarantee is the artists present included Jimi Hendrix, the Who, the Doors, Chicago, Richie Havens, John Sebastian, Joan Baez, Ten Years After, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, the Moody Blues and Jethro Tull.
One man who wasn't present was England national football team captain Bobby Moore. He was in Colombia, under arrest, accused of stealing a bracelet during World Cup preparations.
Happily, he was soon cleared of the charges which were claimed, by some, to be a blatant attempt to sabotage the England team's chances.
To be honest, I can't recall what the plot is but I'm sure it'll be infinitely diabolical.
Is this the story in which the Grim Reaper first discovers the Vision is his, "Brother?"
Except Marvel can't bring itself to call them that and, instead, they're referred to as Satan's Angels which I'm sure will keep the Hell's Angels' lawyers happy.
Do the Hell's Angels have lawyers? That doesn't seem a very Hell's Angels thing to have.
Except, of course, the same Marvel legal titan who gave us, "Satan's Angels," also gives us, "The Maggia."
I do believe this is Jack Kirby's last full FF tale.
Needless to say, it all goes wrong and, instead, our hero finds himself being chased around the country by the Hulk, after the experiment manages to split them into two separate beings.
But I have always liked the villain. He has a nasty streak that appeals to me.
Fortunately, once he's regained his senses, he has the initiative to get Hobie Brown to appear, dressed as Spider-Man, to convince everyone Peter can't really be the web-slinger.
This subterfuge seems to fool everyone present but is Captain Stacey really taken in...?
Neal Adams draws his first-ever Thor cover but the innards are still the work of Jack Kirby, as Loki body-swaps with his nemesis.
I say he body-swaps but, as far as I can remember, in this segment, it's just depicted as a face-swap.
However, in the later, Neal Adams drawn installments of this tale, it seems to be a full body-swap.
But I do have to say that's not the greatest cover Neal has ever done.
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29 comments:
Many thanks to all for this post,great work.Once again a very mixed bag but as I have bored you before,loved every single issue in 1970 and life was great.All contain happy memories but time has changed my opinions as it probably does to everyone.The Avengers is 10 out of 10,Thomas and Big John,it was never better!Fantastic Four was Jacks penultimate issue(not counting #108)and it showed that the end was nigh with a totally forgetable issue(Art was still great though)Thor #179 has 4 pages inked by John Verporten within an issue inked by Vince Colletta;care to guess which pages!The cover was drawn by Adams but was bastardised (Am I allowed to say that)by 3 or 4 others including Marie Severin,John Romita and others(I think).Great story and artwork but it looked like a watered down Marvel version of Neal Adams DC work.Spiderman was an average issue as opposed to a great issue,which the following Doc Ock storyline would be.Hulk was an issue I did read,I read them all and for once I cannot remember too much about it;Ironman #28 was somewhat bland and I thought the Controller was the Melter on the cover!DD was all over the place with storylines changing at the drop of a hat and this issue follows that trend but the artwork is amazing,well worth the admission price.Cap was in a similar quandry with Stan seeming lost for a cohesive direction.Curiously enough I always thought that Captain America issue was based on Easy Rider with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda on motorbikes with Jack Nicholson as the lawyer who hung out with them!Again the Gene Colan artwork saved the lacklustre stories.If I was scoring the comics as art vs Story,The art wins every time with the only 2 stories above average being Thor and Avengers.Only my opinion though the Hulk issue contained the interesting premise of split personalities which would provide complex stories in the future.Great Post,many thanks.Keep up the good work friends.
Great job Steve!
1) Is that the Swordsman on the Avengers cover on the left?
2) Why doesn't Grim Reaper have that sickle for a hand on Avengers like he did around Avenges 102 or so?
3) That Cap was the 2nd comic I ever bought for myself (SPidey 86 being the first). But at 8-9 years old, Spidey 86 was a bit too involved for my brain and thus I did not bother with 87, apparently, to see if he was losing his Spidey powers.
4) Steve - you are spot on about Satan's Six and the Maggia vs. Hells Angels and the Maffia. This 9 year old was confused by all that until about a year or so ago when I started reading your SDC and realized it was deliberately changed! Thank you for enlightening me Steve and the gang!
Lethal Legion should be renamed George-of-the-Jungle Chin club (or Roger Ramjet, lol)!
Steve - why did you remove the Amazon linkage? I was gong to buy something!
Charlie, I removed the Amazon link because they've recently slashed their commission rate to virtually zero, making it, pretty much, free advertising for them. I feel, as a matter of principle, that I, therefore, should play my part in standing up to multi-national corporations and deny them that advertising.
It is indeed the Swordsman on the left.
I'm not sure it was ever clarified as to whether the Grim Reaper had a scythe instead of a hand or whether he was just holding it with his (hidden) hand.
Thanks, FFF. I'm going to guess it was the last four pages of that Thor story that John Verpoorten inked?
Of this month's stories, I would say the Avengers one is my favourite but it wasn't a particularly strong month.
I'd have thought lawyers would be a very Hells Angels thing to have Steve, as they would be for anyone (allegedly) engaged in activities of questionable legality. Although possibly lawyers might not be the main worry for someone who got on their wrong side.
Captain America goes all Easy Rider (minus the coke smuggling and dropping acid) in #128, as he - or possibly Stan Lee - try to show the kids he isn't a square. Whether thats successful or not is open to question, but Cap does stop Satan's Angels from wrecking a hippy music festival.
Btw, the wiki says the Isle of Wight in 1970 was the largest festival at that time, which sounds about right.
But I think a few years later in the Guinness book of Records gave it to Summer Jam at Watkins Glen in '73, where somehow they got 600,000 people (maybe their count was considered more reliable?) to turn up for... the Allmans and the Grateful Dead!
The 70s, eh?
-sean
Do people who live on the Isle of Wight have opinions about those on the Isle of Mann and vice versa? Do you main-landers have any opinion about the two? Juicy sterotypes?
I dated a girl from one of the two islands for a while, we had met in Belgium I think she said that had a big motorcycle race or something. But this was in the late 1980s. Help?
PS These days I believe the Donauinselfest in Austria is considered to be the largest music festival, claiming it gets three million visitors. But they only allow a fraction of that number on site at any one time, so... its a questionable record imo.
-sean
Yeah, that Adams Thor cover is odd. Not exactly a ‘bad’ cover, it’s just kinda ‘meh’. As if there were so many people were involved, it ended up being ‘neither fish nor fowl’. GCD says it’s pencilled by Neal, inked by Verpooten, with revisions by John Romita. But it looks even weirder than that. As Fantastic Four follower says above, it looks like Marie Severin had something to do with it too. My guess is she did the original cover sketch at the very least — composition-wise, it feels very much like her work, and she was doing rough cover layouts for most of Marvel’s books around that time.
- b.t.
Had a few issues from this post, Steve.
The Avengers, the Thor, and of course the DD. Any time there's a Stiltman appearance on the spinner/magazine rack that was always a first-grab. My dimes, nickels, and pennies only went so far.
While I was a avid fan/reader of the Fantastic Four, seeing Crystal on the cover was usually a no-buy turnoff.
I knew she was Johnny's Inhuman girlfriend, but it felt like she was breaking into my favorite team. Kinda like a superpowered Yoko Ono.
In those early issues, she was cute & sweet though. There would be no way anyone would know later on what a promiscuous home-wrecker that writer's would have her become.
As far Grim Reaper's Lethal Legion, I thought it was a good idea fore him to form a team. Even if he had a cool name, a costume that got better after that awful multi-color thing, and decent motive to fight the Avengers, he always seemed to be outclassed when he took on the the team by himself.
Yes he'd have intricate plans and tricks, but his only power is a glorified super-Swiss army knife!!!
As far as the Hell's Angels, they are actually a more-or-less legal corporation. Been for years. They even have Board of Directors.
"Lo, the Lethal Legion!"
Yes, lo indeed. This is a fine pack of comics from this month, Steve. I love that Buscema cover on the Avengers comic. A whole lotta ugly. Look at the teeth on them guys. They must have a helluva dental plan.
I've always dug supervillain teams, like the Lethal Legion (who came up with that, it's great) or the Masters of Evil, the Injustice Society or the Secret Society of Supervillains. When they hold scheduled meetings, it's always interesting. Can you imagine being the caterer or the janitor?
I used to be a janitor and it was pretty boring, but I bet being one in the headquarters of the Legion of Doom would be a blast. Especially when somebody steals somebody else's clearly-marked lunch outta the fridge in the breakroom.
I used to occasionally help myself to a few office supplies, like a pen or some push-pins, but in their super-secret lair in the swamp I bet I could maybe sneak out a freeze gun or a death ray device.
One would have to be careful, running the risk of being disintegrated by Lex Luthor or maybe eaten by Gorilla Grodd.
What was I talking about again? My mind wanders.
M.P.
Nicking office supplies? Clearly you're a super-villain in the making M.P.
-sean
I've always thought so. I was also going to talk about Stilt-Man showing up here, Sean, but I got a little off track.
M.P.
Easily done M.P. - I was going to mention Stilt-Man and forgot too.
But what can you really say about a villain who thinks disguising himself as the Stunt-Master is a clever idea?
-sean
Why the heck would he do that?!? I haven't read that particular story and maybe it's best I didn't.
Steve, you mentioned the Controller as being one of your favorite villains, and I would concur. He's one of those villains who are full-on evil. My introduction to the character was in the pages of Captain Marvel. Starlin wrote him as a lackey of Thanos, although their relationship wasn't exactly a happy one.
The Controller derived physical power from people he had enslaved with his, ah, "slave disks."
He pissed off Thanos by having rallies of these people shouting his praises. Thanos warned him that his "insane ego-boosting" was a threat to security, and threatened dire consequences if he failed him.
"Insane ego-boosting" rallies...does that remind us of anyone?
M.P.
Isle of Wight Festival; man, what a lineup. Imagine what that admission would run today...
I did like that issue of Amazing Spider-Man. The party scene when Pete makes his big reveal was pretty fun. And boy, Gwen got feisty when MJ questioned Peter's faculties!
Did anyone else wonder why Tony Stark's face didn't also melt, if half his shell head is apparently melting?
Not sure why, but whenever I iron clothes I get this image in my head of the iron burning my face. I have not idea why but now I am wondering if it is due to Iron Man covers?
Can't believe there are no remarks about old Stilty!
Red, I never read that Spidey issue, as a youth. I first encountered it via the Essential Spider-Man books. The thing that struck me was that Jim Mooney's art didn't quite look like it normally did. I don't know what it was but he seemed to be testing out a slightly different style from his usual.
MP, I think that is also where I first met the Controller.
Sean, is that what he does? I had some vague recollection of him strapping his stilts to the sides of a motorbike and pretending they were rockets but wasn't sure if that was just a false memory.
KD, a board of directors? My faith in the Hell's Angels is permanently shattered.
BT and FFF, I agree. It does look like Marie Severin had a hand in it too.
Charlie, it's the Isle of Man that has the big motorbike race.
I'm not aware of the Isle of Man and Isle of Wight having any great rivalry. As far as I'm aware, they're very difference places. One being in the south, and a part of England. The other being in the north and being its own little country, in a way that no one can quite make sense of.
As I'm sure you're aware, The Isle of Man has tailless cats, a road upon which things are reputed to roll uphill and, supposedly, fairies under every bush.
I cannot offer any info about the Isle of Wight, as I've never been there.
Yeah, Stilt-Man disguises himself as Stunt-Master, and secretly attaches stilts to the bike Steve. I didn't recall how that was supposed to work, as he crashed the bike before getting very far, so thanks for the rocket info. Assuming we're discussing the same story of course (why would anyone pretend to be Stunt-Master more than once?)
Re the Isle of Man: the Tynwald may claim to be the oldest continuous parliament in the world, but the island's so called independence is really just a loophole to enable an offshore tax haven.
If they're not de facto part of the UK why did PM Boris Johnson take up the cause of Manx kipper smokers against the tyrants of Brussels?
-sean
Wow!
Steve - I just saw the movie "Eurovision" with WIll Farrell. I think it's Iceland that has fairies. not one of your isles. You may not know this but the Vikings made a deal with Merlin back in the day... he could have Stonehenge and they got the Fairies.
I really had trouble with Stunt Master and his fight with DD earlier. I mean, how could anyone believe he could ride his motorcycle up the railings to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Silly...
Kipper smokers? What the hell is a kipper and who smokes it? Is it like tobacco or weed?
Apologies for going off on a tangent and confusing you with a bit of a red herring there Charlie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kipper
-sean
Charlie, I believe that both Iceland and the Isle of Man have serious infestations of little people.
A Kipper is a smoked herring. That is, it is exposed to smoke in order to preserve it.
Oops. Sean beat me to it.
Sean and Steve - thank you for that important clarification!
I was thinking that kippers were like the dried banana skins folks were smoking back in the 60s, and immortalized by Donovan in "Mellow Yellow!"
And what is it about "red" herrings??? They are an anomaly in the herring world like albino tigers?
Well, kippers are like banana skins in the sense that Mellow Yellow wasn't about either, Charlie. Pretty sure the subject of the song came up here before.
Albino tigers do sound like a possible red herring though.
-sean
Sean - I thought the consensus from this venerable crew was Mellow Yellow was about something?
Also, Donovan seemed to have the inside knowledge on Atlantis and thus Stonehenge?
Ummm.... is there any truth to dwarf-size people living on Isle of Man or Iceland? Or is it just word of mouth?
Charlie, are you talking about elves or leprechauns?
According to the fossil record, they both went extinct or were absorbed by Homo Sapiens around the same time as the Neandertals.
Occasionally you see somebody with a little elf or leprechaun DNA in them. Like Mickey Rooney or Bjork, for example.
M.P.
Steve, don't you remember that Spidey story from Spider-Man Comics Weekly? Getting Hobie Brown to dress as up Spider-Man was ridiculous - how did he fit the mask over his huge afro?
Sean, you're absolutely right about the tax-dodging Isle Of Man - and the same goes for the Channel Islands.
Colin, I didn't have that particular issue of SMCW, though I did have the one before and the one after.
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