Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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With Britain hit by a heatwave, there's only one thing for it.
And that's to take refuge in the coolest books Marvel Comics had to offer, way back in 1980.
Red Ronin's gone on the rampage and Ms Marvel's still pregnant.
These two facts are unrelated.
But can our heroes bring down a robot designed to stop Godzilla himself?
And will Carol Danvers ever be able to work out who the father of her child is?
But we're not baffled, because we know it was Machinesmith wot dun it.
And now he's decided to set Dragon Man on the star-spangled superman.
Could our hero finally be out of his depth?
Except it turns out they're not hostile. They're just trying to get their spaceship working, so they can leave, and are totally oblivious to the risk they're posing to the locals.
It all ends happily when the FF help them launch their spaceship, thanks to Reed Richards having more scientific know-how than they do.
How, exactly, does Reed Richards have more scientific know-how than aliens from outer space?
So, of course, he ropes in Bruce Banner to help him do the deed.
Needless to say, it's a terrible idea, the Surfer goes on the rampage and then has to return to Earth to save Bruce's life, after the scientist falls off the back of his surfboard.
And it could all have been avoided if the Surfer had anything that resembles foresight.
On the lookout for a box office boost, he hires Spider-Man as his stage assistant but, when the show gets terrible reviews, the malevolent mesmerist can't resist setting out to kill the critics.
And, of course, Spidey sets out to stop him.
There's also a magic ring involved but I struggle to recall in what way.
Not so hooray; her planet-destroying antics have attracted the attention of three galactic empires who want her dead.
If I remember right, a saboteur has struck at an oil rig, requiring the attention of both Tony Stark and Iron Man.
Meanwhile, a friend of Tony Stark's girlfriend has now been beaten close to death.
What can it all mean - and how are these events interconnected?
Frankly, I don't have a clue but I'm sure we're going to find out.
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13 comments:
Another mixed bag of Marvel magic. The Avengers is winding down though we did not know it at the time. Xmen was at an all time high but little did we know the Byrne era had less than a year to go. Ironman was a 7 out of 10 with artwork that was simply superb(Romita Jr and especially Bob Layton). FF was lost and would remain so until Byrne arrived and Thor had nice artwork but a convaluted storyline which I never actually finished(a critic who did not sample the product! Perhaps I should have read the entire saga.... I did read everything else) Hulk was entering a poor era for me and Conan and I had parted company around #55(1975) so I guess it was the same story being endlessly repeated, repeated, etc. Amazing Spiderman was also entering a poor period though Peter Parker was improving. But I have saved the best till last Cap #247-255(and the Gene Colan inventory story in #256) were simply some of the best Marvel comics ever! Great post keep up the good work and stay well.
FF #221 was by John Byrne, wasn't it?
Sorry FF follower, couldn't resist - I know what you mean, as he wasn't working on the book regularly, and it was a dull era for the World's Greatest Comic Magazine. Kinda surprising Bill Sienkiewicz and Doug Moench did such a poor job, but I suppose it just goes to show how even the best creative teams aren't good enough if they don't have a feel for the material.
Which I reckon is what Byrne and Stern bought to Captain America - hard to put your finger on exactly what they bought to Cap that was new, but a bit of enthusiasm from the creators is really all you need to reinvigorate a character.
-sean
Any comic with Dragon Man in it is a good comic.
I have spoken!
...about that issue, I've always been intrigued by the Machinesmith. Here's a guy who used to be a guy and now is a robot, after having his consciousness downloaded into said robot.
Depending on which storyline you're reading, He's either in despair or he's perfectly okay with it. The grass is always greener.
I guess you'd be swapping one set of problems for another.
Still, having the power of say, a T-800 Terminator is tempting. There are a lot of people I'd enjoy casually tossing down hallways or through glass windows.
M.P.
Good luck with downloading your consciousness into a robot M.P.
As makeovers go, it seems a bit drastic to me.
Btw, Machinesmith didn't used to be just any old guy - he was previously Daredevil villain Starr Saxon. Not a lot of people know that.
-sean
I didn't. I hadda look him up. The story is, when he was a kid in NYC he found a broken Doombot in a subway tunnel, and found his life's calling.
Am I the only guy who thinks "Starr Saxon" sounds like the name of a high-end stripper?
Sean, if there are gonna be any M.P.-bots in the future these scientists are gonna hafta speed up research and production, 'cause I ain't getting any younger.
A world without me is a world I wouldn't wanna live in.
Er, ...something to that effect.
M.P.
Sean and MP, I didn't know that either. Clearly, Victor needs to be more careful with his Doombots.
Sean, Byrne was indeed the artist on that FF story.
FFF, that X-Men issue is definitely, by far, the cream of the above crop for me too.
We're into a truly terrible ASM run now. I just took a quick look and so many of these stories end really abruptly at the end of the fight. It isn't just that I expect to see a bit of soap opera with support characters to bookmark the story. It's the abruptness. You turn the page expecting there to be more but it just stops.
Say what you will about the varying inner content, this was a great month for covers. And I agree with FFF on the Byrne/Stern Cap run, every issue was a treasure.
-F.B.
Thanks for the correction, indeed FF #220 and #221 were by Byrne. I believe it was a story that was linked to some advertising campaign/giveaway from Marvel... but I could be wrong! What I meant of course was that Byrne was a year away from reinvigorating the title. On reflection there was a back up story in FF#238 in which Ben regressed to his original lumpy look from 1961.This back-was inked by Joe Sinnot and I would have preferred him to ink Byrnes entire run which I thought would have elevated it to equal status with his run on the Xmen!Great post and well done to all.
If I've got the details straight, ASM would get a lot better in a couple years with the creative team of Stern and Romita jr. I remember picking up the Dr. Hyde issue and was hooked.
It seemed to me that Marvel as a whole was pretty uneven (a few good titles, mostly crap) in the '80's, while D.C., again, as a whole, got a lot better. They kinda had to, there was nowhere to go but up.
This is just my general impression, though, and I am in no way prepared to defend it.
At least not without a couple more beers under my belt.
M.P.
Thats right, DC were doing better in the early 80s, in part because they picked up on people who Marvel foolishly let go - like Gene Colan doing Batman - and imported immigrant labour like Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons to steal American creators jobs.
And, as you say, they didn't have another direction to go in. (Agreeing with M.P. - whatever next?)
On the other hand though, they did also put out stuff like Crisis on Infinite Earths.
I caught an episode of the tv version last night. Yikes!
-sean
Yes, Sean agreeing with me about anything is surely the first step on the road to madness.
You're right, there was a considerable exodus of talent from Marvel to D.C. I've read guys like Colan blaming it on Shooter or Marvel's corporate policies, but I think it also had something to do with D.C. becoming more experimental in the artistic sense. You mentioned them getting Alan Moore, for example. They had to change.
I would have to disagree with you about the Crisis. I thought it was entertaining, sometimes in an almost Wagnerian fashion, but also a necessary reset. The D.C Universe had fifty years of baggage, and they needed to clean that up. A kid could pick up a comic without having to know which Earth it was taking place on, or what happened with a character in a different comic thirty years ago. They rarely mentioned the Crisis: you could ignore the whole thing like it never happened. When you read one of those stories, like Byrne's Superman, you were on the ground floor of a new universe with new versions of old characters.
Both Marvel and D.C have tried to do this several times since then, usually with piss-poor results.
M.P.
Well M.P., comics have as much continuity baggage as the writers give them - if you need to be up on a lot of the details to follow a story then they're doing it wrong.
Really, if continuity was a problem Crisis wasn't going to change that - DC would still have fifty years behind them after it anyway - what they needed to do was get the writers to lay off referencing old stuff for a while.
Big Events have pisspoor results because they're basically glorified editorial memos - instead of producing rubbish like Doomsday Clock about how the DC universe became too dark under the influence of Watchmen, why not just tell the writers to lighten up a bit?
-sean
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