Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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As far as I'm aware, the late Beatle George Harrison only ever wrote one UK Number One single.
And that was My Sweet Lord.
However, this week in 1980, you could have been forgiven for thinking otherwise, as a song which sounded suspiciously like Harrison's Taxman hit the very top of the British hit parade.
That song was called Start and it was by The Jam.
Despite its blatant plagiarism, it is quite difficult to dislike.
Then again, that could be appropriate as, despite My Sweet Lord's blatant plagiarism, that is also a difficult song to dislike.
Over on the UK album chart, Roxy Music were still Number One with their LP Flesh and Blood.
Bruce Banner seems to be having some kind of nervous breakdown and thinks he's the Hulk being chased by a deadly female.
The X-Men find themselves in trouble with a neighbouring government when Weapon Alpha shows up to try and reclaim Wolverine for the Canadian taxpayer.
I've no idea what Luke Cage is up to and still have no recollection of him ever having even appeared in this book.
Amongst all the other features, such as a re-tread of The Dominators and The Invasion of Time, we get an article profiling the show's first producer Verity Lambert.
And so are the Avengers.
Some people have no sense of romance.
The original X-Men are still battling the Living Monolith - but the Sentinels are waiting in the wings.
And the Champions have to defeat the Griffin before they can hope to rescue the Black Widow from Titanium Man.
The Hulk's still converting the Living Colossus into the Dead Colossus.
Spider-Woman's in a scrap with Brother Grimm.
Most intriguingly, we get a reprint of the elderly tale Heaven is a Very Small Place in which the Hulk stumbles across an idyllic town where no one's hostile towards him, only for it to turn out to be a mirage.
And the She-Hulk's own father's trying to kill her with a laser cannon - one that's about to explode at any moment!
Just what the denizens of the Battlestar Galactica are up to, I couldn't say.
I doubt it'll be as exciting as battling Psycho-Man, though.
It looks to me like Dracula's still lost his magic powers and is still in Transylvania, trying to get them back, while his former servants turn against him.
It looks to me like Dracula's still lost his magic powers and is still in Transylvania, trying to get them back, while his former servants turn against him.
Bearing in mind that's a tale from right at the end of Tomb of Dracula's original run, it would seem the long-term future of this book is in some jeopardy.
OK, so maybe that wasn't as exciting a revelation as the makers had, no doubt, hoped it'd be.
Then again, given Conan's track record, I suspect it's even worse news for the Red Tower.
And just who is that mysterious onlooker with the comedy English accent?
And can he possibly rescue them?
Am I right in thinking that, in reply to Leia's declaration of love, he's much more vocal in this adaptation than he is in the movie version?
Monsters of the Cosmos gives us the tale of Magneto - but not the X-Men villain.
This one's a Lee/Lieber/Kirby tale of a man picked for an experimental space flight when he can't get work elsewhere because of his huge size.
I'm not sure huge size is a positive in an astronaut, given the need to get the rocket off the ground.
Gullivar Jones is still, no doubt, out to rescue his girlfriend from the local bully.
And, in this week's tale of the Watcher, a man steals a time machine, in order to discover and profit from the secrets of the future...
...only to be arrested, when he gets there, for stealing a time machine.
Frantic's still going.
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37 comments:
Steve - In 'Forces in Combat' # 17, the mysterious silhouetted onlooker is Australian, not English! The caption tells us he's an 'Australian spotter' - this, despite the story's writer
not knowing the difference between comedy English & comedy Australian, making him sound like a cockney ('Blimey'/'Bloke'/'ruddy'.) Still, the artist considerately provides the reader with an extra visual clue with him wearing a silhouette of a stereotypical Aussie hat (minus the corks!) The writer could have at least made the Australian spotter say "cobber" or "Sheila" once!
Phillip
Steve - I meant to say "comedy cockney" - like Dick Van Dyke, in Mary Poppins! I've just checked Rampage # 27 - the Luke Cage story is the one in which Cage is hired by Dr.Doom, and fights a lot of Doom's robots.
Phillip
Thanks Phillip.
Personally, I think Marvel should have given him a boomerang in one hand and a kangaroo as his travelling companion, just to make it doubly clear where he was from.
To Americans, aren't comedy English and comedy Australian pretty much the same thing?
Mind you, who can blame them, when well known Oz joker Tony Abbott looks like become Brexit advisor for Boris Johnson? The pair of them seem pretty interchangeable to me too!
Luke Cage is hired by Dr Doom, who then skips out on payment. He stiffed Luke for (I think) $200.
I wonder if that kind of thing happened regularly. Was an AIM cheque reliable? Did Hydra always pay up on time at the end of the month?
If I worked was a super-villain henchperson I'd want my money upfront, in advance. Cash.
-sean
become = becoming
Duh.
-sean
Wait - this is the Cage story with Doom, like issue #8 or so? But he was still a "Hero for Hire" not a "Power Man" at that time. So, I am curious, if you gents lived on reprints, did you ever know Luke as a Hero for Hire?
Speaking of Luke, it seemed odd to see him and Jessica Jones doing the horizontal bop in her Marvel TV series on Netflix. I mean, all those years of reading comics and I never imagined to characters engaged in that. Well, maybe I imagined me and Natasha when I was a young lad, lol... but that was it.
So was Barry Humphries humor Aussie?
When me and me brother saw Dame Edna in London in 87, we hadn't a clue we were laughing at Aussie humor.
That Perez Avengers cover is extremely awesome! Interesting to see it colored differently, especially Wanda's outfit.
I still get the chills listening to "My Sweet Lord". Not familiar with that Jam song, though. Another trip to YouTube land is looming. I can always count on you fine UK folk to inspire a search for new (or old 'new' music.
Speaking of which, I attended a record show this past weekend. Picked up several cds, at very reasonable prices. One of them was a disc from "Mojo" magazine, apparently a giveaway to subscribers. It was a compilation disc of fantastic movie themes. This is the second "Mojo disc" I've acquired and have LOVED them both. Is this magazine still published and do they still give out discs? Phenomenal track selection, I'm looking for more on ebay. Again, thanks to the UK for so much musical goodness...
Cds? C'mon Redartz, it was Record Store Day on Saturday, delayed from April.
Anyone else get anything? I picked up the awesome Sun Ra "Egypt '71" set (although given my post-lockdown finances I should probably try to flip it on Ebay given what it seems to be going for already).
Mojo always seems to have the Beatles or Rolling Stones on the cover - it looks a bit too fixated on the usual suspects from fifty years ago for my tastes (its not like they cover comics!) - but I think it still comes out.Although theres cutbacks in publishing just now, so who can be sure which magazines will survive into 2021?
-sean
Sean and Steve, until Crocodile Dundee showed up, I'm not sure most Americans (at least those who didn't serve in the Pacific in W.W.2) were completely aware of a continent called Australia.
Well, there was that kangaroo that Sylvester the Cat thought was a giant mouse.
I know from my reading it's an incredible place, home of the oldest extant culture on Earth, but I have a problem with spiders that can kill you just by looking at you.
Also, you can, theoretically, get eaten by a crocodile which in turn gets devoured by a shark, or vice versa.
Nope. I won't even set foot in Florida.
M.P.
MP -
Wait... didn't we have the "Fosters! Australian for Beer!" TV commercials before Croc Dundee? Me thinks we did, and that's how we discovered Australia.
Of course we also learned that "Fosters" was Australian for piss. But that's a tangential discussion.
Charlie, the Fosters commercials (I admit, it's a hearty brew, and that is one big can) came around much later.
Like decades later. Like the Outback Steakhouse.
And there are no end to great Australian bands (ACDC, Midnight Oil, Men at Work) but I fail to perceive God's purpose in creating spiders with enough venom to kill a cow, which also have the propensity to hide in peoples shoes whilst they are sleeping.
No, this is a biological laboratory of things that are usually killed by an Ice Age, such as marsupials and Angus Young.
M.P.
There has only been one fatal spider bite in Australian in more than forty years, and anti-venoms have been around far longer. I regularly get red back spiders in my yard and you'd literally have to stick your finger in their mouth to get bitten. I'm pretty sure the US black widow is as venomous as the red back (they are distant cousins). I've never encountered a funnel-web, which I believe are far more aggressive, but I've also been to the US several times and never been shot. I may just be lucky. Of course the top ten most venomous snakes are all found in Australia, plus a whole range of sea creatures best avoided.
Aussie humour is ok if a little slow and shouty. Muriel's Wedding, Kath and Kim (TV series) and The Castle are good examples and probably easily sourced.
Can't add much to the comics this week because I only had the Fantastic Four pocket book, at the time, and that was just for the Kirby reprints. Not their finest period.
DW
Waitaminnit. DW, are you Australian? or English?
Either way, I apologize for my ignorance. I was speaking in jest. And yes, most foreigners who visit the U.S. do not die in a hail of gunfire.
Generally, you have to know the right people to get shot here. Generally.
...I liked Murriel's wedding too! I'm a romantic.
M.P.
Sean - the funniest thing about that Luke Cage story, is that (in a soliloquy) Cage refers to Doom as a "son of a witch" ! It must have been too much for Marvel UK's sensitive readers to handle "son of a bitch" !
M.P. & Charlie - Didn't Spidey have an opponent called the Kangaroo? Marvel US's first introduction to Australia?
To go off topic - slightly - the Spidey story with Jameson's son's space capsule being out of control as it returned to Earth (Steve's featured Marvel Digest Pocket Book) must be one of the least scientifically accurate Marvel stories ever. Didn't Spidey go up in a plane, then jump out onto Jameson Jr's capsule, as it plummeted back down to Earth? (My memory's a bit hazy.) The only less scientifically accurate story is that Spider-man team up in which Hercules dragged Manhattan island, as if it were floating on the surface of the water. I suppose the Silver Surfer's soliloquies in space aren't accurate either, as sound can't travel in a vacuum.
Phillip
MP
I grew up in England and emigrated to Australia in my mid-mid-twenties (actually I intended to stay a couple years and am still here after twenty five years). Technically I'm now a dual citizen.
I realise you were joking and didn't mean to come across all preachy. You're terrible Muriel ;-)
Cheers
DW
Friday. It is national Fish n Chip Day today in the UK.
Charlie has indeed had F&C wrapped up in newsprint to go as he recalls in the mid 80s. But would they ever wrap it up in comics? (Trying to stay relevant.)
Charlie, sadly, fish and chip shops are no longer allowed to wrap their goods in newspaper anymore, for hygiene reasons, so the comics of Britain are now safe from the threat of a greasy ending.
Then again, I don't remember comics ever being used in the past, either.
My memory is that, in the pages of Marvel UK, Luke Cage was known as both Hero for Hire and Power-Man.
Charlie - As regards 'Hero for Hire' or 'Power-Man' - I'd packed Rampage # 27 snugly back away in its box, in the garage, last night - before you asked the question! But I've got it back out now - so here goes! I've checked, and the title is definitely 'Luke Cage Hero for Hire.' There's no mention of Power Man, whatsoever.
However, the first time I ever saw Luke Cage was in the UK Avengers Annual 1978 (Cage's battle with Moses Magnum), and, in that, Cage was definitely called Power Man. The next time I read a Luke Cage story was in The Complete Fantastic Four # 37 (Cage vs the Thing) - and, again, he was called Power Man.
So...Steve is correct - both names were used.
Phillip
Phil, I'm somewhat surprised that all the astronauts who visited the Moon didn't come back as werewolves, like J. Jonah Jameson's son. It makes sense, don't it? Buzz Aldrin sorta became a werewolf.
It is a little known fact that all the monkeys they sent into space came back super-intelligent. I swear I've seen that concept three or four times.
Something should be said about the Psycho-Man, who appears above fighting the Micronauts.
Now, there was a cool villain. What was his deal? Why, he had two deals: one was he was a master of manipulating emotions, the second was he was the despot of a sub-atomic world.
You've could basically have had two distinct villains there.
Him and that weird sci-fi accordion of his, which, like all accordions in this universe, is designed to inflict psychic pain.
M.P.
M.P. - Buzz may be a werewolf - but he doesn't have a sword & harness/outfit (as far as I know), so he has less sense of style than Jameson's son. In purely scientific terms, extra terrestrial style brushes off on you, in spite of yourself.
Super-intelligent monkeys? What about the German Shepherds, who were highly advanced aliens, visiting planet Earth? Don't they deserve a mention, too?
Like Psycho-Man, Man Wolf is also two characters for the price of one. A sword & sorcery/Conan werewolf - with sci-fi thrown, for good measure! Who needs realism, when you get all that - plus George Perez?
Phillip
thrown in!
Phillip
This month's 'Rampage' was the end of an era because it was the final issue to feature the Hulk on the cover. That means it was also the final issue with a painted cover - the painted covers on Rampage and Conan made those monthlies look rather classy.
The Hulk was replaced by the X-Men as Rampage's cover stars.
Fun fact: the Apollo missions dumped all their toilet waste onto the surface of the moon before heading back to Earth. We can only hope wandering intelligent space microbes haven’t merged with the astronauts’ poop to create some kind of Nigel Kneale-type horror just waiting for us to return.
One imagines The Watcher isn’t too happy about it, either.
- b.t.
C’mon, that’s a Lee/Kirby TALES TO ASTONISH story waiting to happen :
“I Got A Whiff of TUURDD, The Symbiotic Spore-Stool From Outer Space!”
- b.t.
And was that REALLY the best photo of Buck and Twiki that Universal TV had on hand to send to the sci-fi fan mags? Or did the Publicity team just hate Gil Gerard for some reason?
I’ll shut up now.
- b.t.
Oh no Phillip, you mentioned Man-Wolf! The sword-and-sorcery version of the character isn't too popular round these parts. As I recall, M.P. is into werewolves, Conan and space stories, but for some reason not a werewolf Conan in space. Logic would tell you thats three times better, but apparently its too far fetched or something.
Next he'll be complaining about the Red Ghost and the super apes (who surely deserve a mention at this point too).
-sean
Does anyone need a particular reason to hate Gil Gerard? Isn't it enough that he was in Buck Rogers? Still, it could have been worse b.t. - at least they didn't put David Soul on that Starburst cover
Steve, I expect fish and chips in newspaper will be back when the bureaucrats Brussells don't run the UK any more next year. Isn't that kind of thing the whole point of Brexit?
-sean
*bureaucrats IN Brussells
Duh.
-sean
Sean - Thanks for the heads up! I'd no idea M.P. hates Man-Wolf so much. Open mouth, insert foot.
As regards Red Ghost and the Super Apes, this blog is long overdue for a discussion of apes in Marvel. Apes, as a topic, seems to come up all the time.
Did anyone else read Gorilla Adventure, by Willard Price, when they were a kid?
Phillip
I can't believe George Harrison, top billing in today's blog, didn't get mentioned?
FWIW his sister lives her in Illinois. He did come to visit her around 1964. Hence, Illinois being famous.
My only concern about Brexit is its impact on Steve Does Comics!
As long as SDC is here, I won't worry about customs rules and financial rules and all that!
Though, I do live in Chicago so that might make a difference too.
Don't worry Charlie - in spite of the jackbooted bureaucrats of Brussels, SteveDoesComics has been around for ten years now without reviewing a single (non-Anglo) European comic. So I can't see Brexit having much impact on the world's pluckiest comic blog.
-sean
Anyone who has seen monkeys and apes in a zoo knows their favorite projectile to hurl by hand. So if I were the Red Ghost, taking the super-apes out for a walk, I’d steer well clear of those Apollo landing modules.
Charlie — my personal favorite George Harrison tune is the ebullient “What Is Life”. It’s plagiarism-free too, near as I can tell.
- b.t.
What Is Life does bear a noticeable resemblance to Keep On Running by the Spencer Davis Group.
(Snort!)
B.T., you made me laugh out loud there.
Yeah, I can see the Watcher getting mad about astronauts dumping their poop in his backyard.
And those damn Super-Apes probably made a mess as well. No doubt that stuff was flying all over the place, in low gravity, too.
Right now he's probably thinking, "I shoulda get Galactus eat those %@!#&*%$*!*@#ers."
M.P.
Apes who got super-intelligent after travelling in space have appeared, to my knowledge, in two cartoons (one of them the Simpsons) and in Grant Morrison's very weird comic, The Filth.
A coincidence? Perhaps. But as Carl Jung and Sting have suggested, coincidence might merely be our way of attempting to explain similar occurrences which may have a deeper, cosmic connection. Either way, we're not gonna get the truth from the government about those space monkeys!
I would also hasten to assure all that I have no grudge against Man-Wolf or the Red Ghost and his Super Apes. I have always respected these characters, and to suggest otherwise is a smear on my good name.
Good day, sirs!
M.P.
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