Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
In these times of social distancing, I think we can safely say there was one record that was ahead of its time.
And that was Don't Stand So Close to Me by the Police which smashed straight in at Number One on the UK singles chart exactly 40 years ago this week.
Not to be outdone by that band was David Bowie who, simultaneously, smashed straight in at Number One on the UK album chart, with his latest platter that mattered Scary Monsters and Super Creeps.
Clearly, Bowie and the Police were in no mood to mess around, but what about the output of Marvel UK in that seven-day period? Was it, too, in battling form?
The Human Torch and Thor team up when the Lava Men try to steal the latter's hammer and use it as a power source.
Ms Marvel's still battling the Vision, and not making a very good job of it.
We're still finding out what would have happened if Spider-Man had stopped the burglar who went on to kill Uncle Ben.
And Morbius is still doing whatever Morbius is doing, in a tale drawn by Paul Gulacy.
We also get more of the comedy adventures of Man-Spider, as related by rascally Roy Thomas in his little-known guise of The Watcher.
Despite having found a friendly little town to live in, Bruce Banner's about to be dragged into the Silver Surfer's latest bid to flee the planet Earth.
Spider-Woman's still being beset by nightmarish hallucinations.
And the She-Hulk's battling a giant metal snake that's been draining the oil tanks at Roxxon's refinery.
Most importantly of all, we have the chance to win 30 Kodak cameras, even though 30 cameras would be quite heavy to carry.
We start his run with Death in the Family which sees the demise of Skar and, I think, Grok.
And possibly Hawk.
It seems a strange place to start the reprints with, as I can't remember Marvel UK having published any of the stories between Herb Trimpe's run and this tale, but I could be wrong.
In the main strip, Luke and friends manage to escape the empire, after his less-than-triumphant confrontation with his father.
Monsters of the Cosmos gives us a Lee/Lieber/Kirby yarn in which an astronaut, upon landing on Mars, is forced to take an evil plant back to Earth with him.
Happily for us all, he thwarts the plant's schemes, by blowing the ship up.
Finally, this week's tale of the Watcher gives us a Lee/Lieber tale in which an evil plant from outer space lands on Earth, its mind set on conquest, only for it to be eaten by a crow.
I can't help but feel those last two tales are a little too similar to be appearing side-by-side in the same issue.
Posts
42 comments:
Well - a lot to get through! In reverse order:
'Forces in Combat' # 20:
I'm now convinced Paul Neary is just having a laugh. Last week, in 'Second Chance', Frank Charlesworth met Captain Mannering (like Mainwaring, from 'Dad's Army'). This week, we discover, in 'Fury of the Commandos', that the Australian spotter's name is...wait for it...Rolfe Harrison! It's highly unlikely an American writer would insert that gag - Neary must have altered the original name of the Australian spotter!
The 30 Kodak cameras are Kodak Brownies - a new version - "compact, sturdy and smart" - the competition is a spot the difference.
Those dogs tracking ROM are telepathic tracker dogs - not the Nazgul-like ones with the Vision's disruption powers (unless they transform next issue). I'm reminded in this ROM story that Clairton was where ROM's adventures often happened. Clairton is, to Brandy Clark & Steve Jackson, what Citrusville is to Richard Rory! The story ends with ROM, Brandy, & Steve, hunkered down in an old house. Next week the Dire Wraiths spring a trap - do the dogs transform?
In Machine Man, Baron Brimstone wins round one. Machine Man is let off with a warning. When Gears Garvin repairs MM, we learn he has a refractory coating - Iron Man should have a copyright on refractory coatings! Baron Brimstone then summons all the bosses of the underworld & declares himself boss of bosses (why do villains always do this?) Brimstone's goons/heavies, Hammer Harrison & Snake Marston, beat up any bosses who object! Rip off of the Enforcers, in early Spidey?
Kull's page count's higher this week. Kull finds Atlantis in ruins, but the minstrel tells him Atlantis might not be what it is. Lorkar, the beast man, whips them up a vulture stew - then Kull wakes from a dream, to be greeted by a mysterious woman.
It's the Golem's origin, and he's awoken by a dying archaeologist's tear, to avenge his death! Moon Knight's (2nd) origin had a dying archaeologist, too!
Sergeant Mike's Combat file is the usual guff. In 'Second Chance', Frank Charlesworth is still at Dunkirk, where death gives him the task of showing Captain Mannering's (not Mainwaring's) son, Keith, that war isn't as glamorous as he thinks it is.
The back cover's advertising a London Comics/sci-fi convention, with big-name guests!
Part 2:
'Spider-man & Hulk Weekly' # 394 is so-so, this week. The Silver Surfer defeats the Hulk, simply by permanently (so it seems)changing the Hulk back to Bruce Banner, with one cosmic bolt. She-Hulk's fighting a giant silver serpent, like a metal reject from 'Tremors', or Frank Herbert's 'Dune'. The Silver Serpent's operated by a mobster, seeking to corner the oil market. In Spidey, Belladonna's another mysterious female, like the Black Cat. Who's betting she's actually Debra, Peter's lab-mate, or is she just a red herring? Roger Stern, get some new material for your act - we had all this with Felicia Hardy! Spider-woman's still having hallucination - how long can this go on for?
'Team-up' # 3 - Steve was a bit hazy about Morbius. Well, there's a rabbi who pretends he wants to cure Morbius, but he's actually a baddie, who hypnotizes Morbius to kill his assistant. I can't quite place the artist, but the art's not as good as Paul Gullacy, last week. Jack of Hearts is good, introducing the assassin, Jonathan Hemlock (who's also a crack horticulturalist!) Hemlock even offers Jack a glass of wine, before trying to kill him (like Lupinar did with Moon Knight!) In 'Fantastic Four', in the artic, a giant, mile-high crystalline tower erupts from the pole! Didn't something like this already happen in Gerry Conway's Thor? (Was it either the Tana Nile story, or Mercurio the 4-D Man? I forget.) Well, that's aliens for you! In 1980, I'd already read this week's Ms.Marvel story, in the X-mas Grandreams UK Marvel Superheroes annual. Anyway, the Vision learns Ms.Marvel can survive his disruption technique - although she was knocked out for a while (The Vision was more surprised when he tried it on Wonder-man, and it didn't work.) In Thor & the Human Torch, it's a Mole-man story without a single mention of Tyrannus - not even one! The What-if's story has characters with very large eyes - so it's Pat Broderick art. I think I need a break! You probably need a break, too, reading this!
Phillip
hallucinations!
arctic!
Must make the effort to proof read what I've written!
Phillip
Wow Steve - you made multiple hits to the old memory this time round.
Not only do I fondly recall Killraven from the old Amazing Adventures US monthly and the somewhat peculiar approach to reprints in Star Wars Weekly... but they were also the subject of my very first comment on your fine blog. F*** me, that was ages ago!
I don't recall exactly how I knew Killraven was in Star Wars, but I grabbed a couple of issues for the same reason I got Marvel Superheroes - Neal Adams reprints. Are you certain they started with Death In The Family? Because Star Wars definitely reprinted the AA #18 (which I'd read before as the opening to the senses shattering Apeslayer epic).
The way I remember it is that they jumped straight from that to Death...
But I suppose its possible it could have been the other way round, and they started with #34 and then flashbacked to #18; either way, as you say, its a strange approach.
-sean
The Golem was a figure from Jewish folklore, a being made from inanimate matter. Probably the best known - at least before Len Wein and John Buscema's version for Marvel - was the sixteenth century Golem of Prague, created by the local rabbi to protect the community from the pogroms of the emperor Rudolf 11.
Of course long before Marvel's Golem it was a source for numerous characters created by the immigrant and first generation Jewish writers and artists who dominated US comics back in the day, and frequently drew on myths from the old country.
-sean
I don't know much about Australian gags or Golems...
But I do know there is something odd about Thor smiling while Spidey is crawling through his legs.
What would really be funny is if Spidey had buzz saw blades like Gladiator and he severed Thor's achilles while horsing around.
Phillip, once again you deserve a medal for your endeavours. Thanks for all that magnificent info.
Yes, Thor did come up against a giant crystal. It was holding Sif and Karnilla captive, and Thor and Mercurio had to team up to thwart it.
I wonder who'd win a fight between the 4-D man and 3-D Man? I assume the 4-D man would, as he's got an extra D.
Of course, since 1971, the 4-D man is now known as the 1.67p man, and 3-D Man is now known as 1.25p Man.
Sean, I can confirm that the Adams Killraven intro is reprinted by Empire Strikes Back Weekly the week after A Death in the Family finishes, just to add extra confusion in the minds of its readers.
Charlie, it is indeed a strange cover image.
The Torch/Thor was good pairing for the Marvel Team-Up book. Unfortunately all I remember about the story was the Lava Man, who fought Thor back in Journey Into Mystery then befriended him in Avengers #5, died and turned into ashes while trying to issue a warning in the beginning of the book. I think he had a real name.
Having knowledge of the character shook me a bit witnessing his death. Seems like Marvel was quite the killing field during that time period in the 70's. Gwen Stacy, a guy who attempted to be Cap during the Nomad period, Warlock (his first one, heh), the original Viper, the Eel, and that's just off the top of my head.
KD - what about Namor??? His queen, then his dad, then if you read those issues of Subby, he usually slaughters a few sea creatures in each one...
I was just re-reading them a few months ago and quite surprised at the brutality and murder.
The House of Ideas in indeed! Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. (That was on our shirts at paratrooper school, lol.)
Yeah, oh my brother. You can add Lady Dorma, Jarella, the large people that exploded from the submarine in Hulk's book, the human-bombs that took out Vision in Avengers, etc, etc.
Marvel's hero books had more death & destruction than their so-called horror titles.
Werewolf By Night could've been read to 1st graders.
As cool as the 3-D Man is, Steve, I agree the 4-D man has a definite edge. He's fought Thor and Captain Marvel. The 3-D man was some kind of astronaut who got trapped in two dimensions until his brother focused his vision on some 3-D glasses, making him 3-dimensional again with the power of... three normal humans, I guess, and a very cool outfit.
You gotta like the guy, people our age remember 3-D glasses used in movies and posters. It was a minor craze. As a kid I had a 3-D poster of King Kong on my wall from Dynamite Magazine.
I wish I still had it. Even without the "glasses" (if you wanna call 'em that), it still looked trippy.
The 4-D Man makes no sense at all. "He comes from a world of four dimensions!"
Well, so does everybody else, pal. But he was weird, and that counts for a lot in comics.
It was a Gerry Conway deal.
M.P.
If the Marvel Team-Up weekly had been launched in 1975 it would have been terrific no doubt, but the 1980 version just looks cheap and horrible. How standards had fallen in a mere five years...sigh.
The first e-book I ever bought (in 2013) was a novel called "The Golem And The Jinni" by Helen Wecker.
Colin, you're right. A comic like Team-Up would have been great in landscape format.
MP, I think my only experience of 3-D (apart from Viewmasters) has been watching one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.
KD and Charlie, I did like a good comic book death. I still remember with fondness the death of George Stacy, and also Johnny and Sue Storm's dad.
Steve, I don't think you've enjoyed all the 3-D experience has to offer.
You didn't see Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn? (1983)
The theater handed out free 3-D glasses for that one.
It was sorta like if Mad Max the Road Warrior had a budget of around four thousand dollars.
But as advertised, there were chunks of metal flying at you.
K.D., I hadn't thought about it, but yeah, the Werewolf by Night never seemed to kill anybody. It was a weird comic, even for the '70's. I suspect a lotta dope smoking went into the writing, such as it was. Take Dr. Glitternight for example.
M.P.
Steve- I think George Stacy's death affected me more than even Gwen's did. At the time I was just 9 years old, and that story really shook me. The last page reveal of Stacy knowing Peter's identity? Staggering.
As for 3D- it was a fun, if brief, fad in the 50's (before my time) and again in the 80's. Saw some Western 3D film called "Comin' At Ya" about 1980. Extremely forgettable film but fun visuals. And I had a couple terrific 3D comics- a Mighty Mouse from 1956 and a cool indie called "AV in 3D ". AV as in Aardark/Vanaheim. But it was always a little disappointing that the 3D Man never appeared in a 3D comic. Alas...
THE 3-D Man was pretty cool in a retro sort of way. Marvel even came up with a sort of proto-Avengers team with the 3-D Man, Venus (based on the comic book character from '50's Marvel, not the Roman goddess and I'm not gonna even attempt to explain it here) a robot guy and a gorilla guy, i.e., a talking gorilla.
Oh, and Marvel Boy, who came from Uranus.
(ahem)
Between busting Skrulls, Commies and probably trade unions, they had their hands full.
M.P.
MP - no comic book publisher ever went broke over estimating the appeal of talking gorillas to young boys.
I finally understand the cover to Team Up.
Torch and Spidey are racing to see who can be the first to pass through Thor's legs. Just good ole fun.
Spidey wins and Thor has a congratulatory smile on his face.
Torch has a congratulatory smile as well, but again, being the immature Torch, has to fire a blast at someone / something that will inadvertently start a war with the Inhumans?
The robot guy and the gorilla guy were, respectively, the Human Robot and Gorilla-Man, M.P.
Thats not too hard to remember is it?
(Didn't those 50s Avengers come up in the comments here only a week or two ago?)
Steve, I looked up Star Wars Weekly and - hard as it is to believe there was no longer enough of an audience to support the comic - it seems like the force was no longer with Marvel UK after next month. Maybe they lost the license for the UK? That, or Marvel UK were so useless they couldn't even make money out of Star Wars back when Empire Strikes Back was on release.
Either way, thats one less comic for you to remember and write about every week.
Anyhow, maybe that explains the odd approach to Killraven? It was an obvious choice for back-up strip, and if the writing was on the wall for SWW by the time they got round to it, maybe they just decided to reprint the best of the stories? Which would be the one from Amazing Adventures #34, obviously.
Not that theres much point in trying to understand Marvel UK editorial logic...
-sean
Sean, Philip, and Steve and...? You three have such mastery of this material, surely there is some kind of brexit-proof business you can come up with?
Talk show?
Comic Cons?
Charlie, no business is Brexit-proof. Brexit is a black hole that will ultimately suck in the entire universe.
Sean, as far as I'm aware, The Empire Strikes Back Weekly vanished because it was replaced by The Empire Strikes Back Monthly.
MP, I've never even heard of Metalstorm.
Red, the Stacy family really didn't have any luck, did they?
Yeah, MP, for a werewolf comic WBN was pretty tame. I don't even know if the villianess that got turned into stone in issue #1 can be considered a death.
Speaking of the villains, you're exactly right. Outside of Moon Knight & Morbius, the guys that Jack fought were pretty lame.
Though I appreciate the dramatic effect of death in a comic story, Steve, it almost seemed like we were getting one a month for awhile. We definitely did with the Elf in Defenders, then years later with the intro of Scourge.
Yes,Sean, we discussed the 50's Avengers recently.
In an issue of Dynamite magazine I got a cool 3-D poster of King Kong. It inspired me to make my own. It worked really well. Just black & white drawings, outlining them with blue & red markers. It was pretty simple and effective.
One summer a local television station ran a batch of 3-D movies, and there were a number of shops that gave away the glasses.
They broadcast Creature From The Black Lagoon, it's sequel, The Mask, Robot Monster, and a safari film. We thought that was alot of fun. Didn't take much to entertain us kids back then.
Charlie - As regards some project, how about scanning all the interior pages of my comics (not just the covers) onto the internet, thus preserving them for all posterity? That's a project for you, Charlie! ;)
M.P. - I read 'They Crawl (scuttle?) by Night'. The funniest bit was at the end, when Mike was more concerned about finding the doctors,so he could prove he is right, rather than be cured by them! We can all relate to that!
Sean - I've got maybe 6 or 7 Killravens, & a Killraven graphic novel, but I haven't got Amazing Adventures # 34. I remember, characters often referred back to some big event which wasn't fully explained, or made sense - that must have been it!
Blood-baths in early to mid 70s Marvel? Steve Englehart's Captain America certainly had a few. As well as the Eel, etc, mentioned earlier, Englehart literally had Solarr frying members of the public/civilians, in the street - that was heavy stuff. Incidentally,the Swordsman's death in the Avengers had Englehart's dabs all over it, too! But didn't the Swordsman return as a ghost/spirit?
By the end of the 70s, this stuff happened less often, but you still had Captain America using his shield to decapitate Baron Blood; in Spectacular Spider-man, Carrion killed the Darter; and, most disturbing of all, Dr.Doom killed his own son (but I think he was a clone, or something, so maybe the editors thought it didn't count - just like killing a vampire doesn't count!)
In some ways, I think Sal & Englehart's Captain America is slightly overrated - albeit I liked that Captain America gained moderate super strength. After all, why take a super soldier formula, if it doesn't make you any stronger than a peak athlete? But, in effect, Captain America's super strength underlined why Spidey can beat Daredevil, Cap, or the Black Panther - Spidey's got their agility, & more!
Also, in Englehart's run, Steve Rogers states he weighs 190lbs. Now, I'm 6ft 1" & of thin build, and I weigh just under 14 stone. How can I weigh more than "the world's greatest fighting machine?" (That curry - a couple of weeks ago! Hee, hee!) Maybe, in the 1970s, people all ate a lot less, so 190lbs seemed like a higher figure!
Phillip
There was an Empire Strikes Back monthly?
Well, well - you learn something every day.
I suppose it makes sense that the economic case for Dr Who going monthly should also apply to Star Wars. As those two had been their most popular titles, you have to wonder why Marvel UK were still bothering with the weeklies at all at this point.
Charlie, don't worry about my business - the Irish are going to be the only people with free movement in both the UK and the EU after Brexit, so we're going to be quids in and do well out of it. And we're finally getting a border in the Irish Sea!
Not really sure what the Brits get out of all this Brexit malarkey...
I thought the latest government admission that theres going to be a border separating Kent, "the garden of England" (soon to be one big lorry park) from the rest of the country was pretty funny. Well done Nigel.
-sean
Phillip, now I think about it, not much ever really happened in Killraven, so I don't think you really missed anything.
For people who were supposed to be trying to liberate the Earth Killraven and his Freepersons spent nearly all their time wandering around doing very little apart from encountering weird mutant monsters, and mucking about in abandoned virtual reality entertainment complexes.
I don't know why the Martians ever bothered sending anyone after them.
-sean
Holy Moley! I actually own Amazing Adventure 34. I am 99% sure it is still in the long box, after having purchased off the spinner, lo those many decades ago!
I just remember being freaked out about the dude with one eye. I probably thought it was combo eye/orifice and, well, we know what young men think about orifices.
I did buy a smattering of Killraven though. Initially I was turned off by the costume with the naked thighs and high boots. It just didn't seem like the kind of comic you'd want your mates to see you reading.
Lastly, I will always remember the scene in Killrave / AA where they have the white man-slave licking the boots clean of the martian.
The House of Ideas had some "kink" going on, that's for sure...
The thigh boots were definitely a major fashion faux pas Charlie, especially in the earlier Killraven stories when he also had the hotpants/lederhosen thing going on - even Sean Connery couldn't pull that off (uh, so to speak), in Zardoz.
-sean
Phillip, I thought the Eel bought it, by the Gladiator, in an issue of Ghost Rider.
As far as Killraven goes, since Amazing Adventures was bi-monthly, I was able to have a pretty solid on that title.
In the issues after Trimpe, the Martians ate humans.
Since they were off-world, would that be considered cannibalism, or just a nasty snack habit.
We hadn't had cannibalism in this blog for awhile. Responses?
Time for one of Steve's Atlas reviews maybe?
Being a veggie I'm no expert, but surely to qualify as cannibals Martians would have to eat other Martians?
-sean
That's what I thought. Didn't make it any less shocking, though.
The boot licking was worse to me than the cannibalism... I mean we all gotta eat. But making someone lick your boots clean? That's very nazi-esque.
But I recall the art was hell, often enough, on Amazing Adventures? And I recall Neal Adams doin some stuff in AA that, to me, was nearly unrecognizable?
(But I dare not Google to see this blog has demonstrated time and again what I remember, and reality, are often quite different, lol.)
Sean, when I saw Zardoz, I thought of Connery, "That guy must have a big set of balls, dressing up like that for a film."
Not a lot of guys could pull that off. I'm not sure that he pulled it off. I'm not sure Freddie Mercury could've pulled that off.
Phil, I'm glad you dig Wolverton. I myself have found out about a lotta cool stuff I didn't know about hanging around here. It's like hanging around in a coffee shop (or a tavern more likely) just shooting the $#!t with guys about stuff we like.
I'm not familiar with P. Craig Russel's Killraven, but maybe I'll check that out.
I'm a huge fan of his Elric stuff. It's sorta hard-wired into my brain as the definitive version. I'm re-reading a couple of Moorcock's paperbacks and I'm surprised by how much I enjoy them. I gotta hunt down some more of his stuff.
That guy played on stage with Blue Oyster Cult and even co-wrote a few songs with 'em.
You can't get no cooler than that!
...I wonder if Elric might not have been part of the inspiration for Starlin's Warlock. There are similarities.
M.P.
MP, I'm a big fan of Zardoz. Dimensional travel, surrealism, blatant violence, giant floating stone head that spits guns, and Sean Connery in a red diaper. What's not to love?
M.P. - I'm re-reading Elric, too! I was just re-reading 'Stormbringer', last night! Yes, Elric's similarities with Warlock have often struck me, too. Stormbringer steals souls - so does Warlock's gem. The scene in which Warlock re-animates an opponent to interrogate him, is similar to the Elric scene, at the start of 'Stormbringer', in which Elric brings a demon back from the dead, to interrogate it, about the abduction of Zarozinia. Pip is a bit like Moonglum, etc. There are even more similarities between Elric & Roy Thomas's Black Knight stories! Moorcock isn't possessive about Elric - he feels he himself borrowed from other characters (e.g. Zenith, the albino), to create him. Yeah, M.P. - hanging out here is like that tavern, where Warlock & Pip were having a flagon of ale!
Killdumpster - as regards the Eel - you're right, I'm mixing things up. My apologies to 'Stainless' Steve Englehart - his body count is no higher than anybody else's. I've now got an element of doubt as to whether Englehart wrote that Avengers story in which the Swordsman died. That's the problem with what you think you remember - as Charlie says - it often isn't accurate.
Killdumpster & Charlie - Billy, in Starlin & Alcala's Hulk story, 'Feeding Billy', was a cannibal.
Killraven's crazy get-up seemed to work on Volcana!
Phillip
Still not having read "Feeding Billy" yet (I'm on it Phillip, honest) the only cannibals I recall from old Marvel comics were in Deathlok, although you never really got to see them as the futuristic dystopian New York of the 1990s always seemed deserted. Which does make you wonder who they ate.
And then there was the somewhat racist Savage Sword of Conan issue which had the geezers with the sharp pointy teeth.
-sean
Sean - as regards Marvel's cannibals - the Wendigo is an another one. I think I know exactly which Conan you mean. Weren't all those cannibals, with the sharp pointy teeth, gathered around some kind of pool?
Phillip
I don't recall a pool Phillip but that may be my recollection at fault (although it wouldn't surprise me if there was more than one dodgy Conan story about cannibals).
Its the one where Marvel pulled the old Neal Adams bait-and-switch they were keen on in the 70s, getting him to draw a few pages with the rest finished off by someone else from his layouts. Like the first Killraven in AA #18.
-sean
Just looked it up (hey, its a quiet Sunday afternoon)
"Shadows In Zamboula", from SSOC #14
An actual Robert E Howard story apparently, which probably explains why its iffy.
-sean
Sean - Thanks for the subtle reminder for my less-than-perfect memory!
I just googled AA 18 and that's the one I was looking at not so long ago and trying to figure out why I only saw a few pages of Neal Adam's art when he got top billing! The rest was a real hash. And that's where that naked thighs and thigh-high boots made the premiere on Killraven I assume?
(omg... I almost typed killdumpster there. KD - you don't have thigh-high boots do you?)
Sean - I've also looked up the Conan stories (my social diary being so busy ;) ). The story I was thinking of, is SSOC # 22, 'The Pool of the Black One'. Yours,in contrast, is the one with that weird strangulation contest between Conan & the villain. Possibly, the reason I confused your choice with mine, is the racist connotations both stories share. My choice, however, has the pointy toothed villains' leader playing something like Picard's flute, but with more pipes to it! To be honest, mine might not have had cannibals; it's possibly just the pointy teeth suggested it to me!
Phillip
Post a Comment