Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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September 1970 saw the release of two famous movies.
The first was Five Easy Pieces and the second was Tora! Tora! Tora!
I've seen them both.
I can remember little about either but am willing to acknowledge them as classics, despite that.
What I do remember is Tears of a Clown by Smokey Robinson.
And that's a good thing because it started that month at Number One on the UK singles chart.
Soon, however, it was deposed by Freda Payne's Band of Gold which spent the rest of September at the summit.
Over on the UK album chart, the month kicked off with Creedence Clearwater Revival's Cosmo's Factory on top before being usurped by the Rolling Stones' Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out. That, in turn, lost pole position to Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water, an LP which had already experienced several spells at Number One.
Unless I miss my ever-loving guess, the Inhumans are still convinced the Fantastic Four have fired a deadly missile at their home - and decide to take the battle to the Baxter Building.
I'm sure everyone quickly realises their mistake and they all end up friends again.
And that the Inhumans finally realise Maximus is behind it all, what with him always being behind everything.
I don't know what happens in the Black Widow tale but I do know Hawkeye and the original Red Guardian appear, so I'm assuming it's an issue replete with flashbacks.
But, hold on, what's this? At exactly the same time the Inhumans are in New York, fighting the Fantastic Four, they're also in the Great Refuge, fighting the Silver Surfer?
It's the sort of paradox to drive a man mad.
And a surfer.
And it does drive him mad, because, by the end of the tale, he's vowing to destroy humanity.
It's all part of the great new direction Jack Kirby wants to take the strip in.
Except, Jolly Jack will soon be gone and, by the Surfer's next appearance, Norrin's forgotten all about it and is back to being a good guy again.
It's the fight that had to happen. The crown prince of Atlantis must battle the self-declared prince of power.
It's all down to our protagonist being hypnotised by a servant of Zeus.
Happily, Subby soon breaks free of the spell and the heroes unite to fight a bunch of giant monsters that are now terrorising a Greek village.
Apparently, this tale follows-on from events in Ka-Zar #1, which doesn't seem like the most obvious crossover in the world.
Thanks to Lee, Lieber and Kirby, the world must fend off the challenge of Titano the monster that time forgot!
We also get an Allyn Brodsky/Barry Smith/Herb Trimpe 7-page epic called The Scream of Things.
And, as if that wasn't enough, we get the Wally Wood tale Of Swords and Sorcery.
All in all, it sounds like a varied issue.
It's starting to look now like Marvel's returning to its roots as a giant monster company.
We kick off with I Spent Midnight with the Monster on Bald Mountain in which a sculptor creates two statues, one good and one evil. Unfortunately, lightning hits the evil statue and it comes to life.
I'm guessing the sculptor fixes it all by getting lightning to hit the good statue, so it can come to life and fight the evil one.
After that, we get I Dared Defy the Floating Head. I can't help feeling this issue doesn't feature stories with the greatest titles ever.
It would appear a giant floating head turns up in New York, claiming to be part of an alien invasion but it all turns out to be a hoax staged as part of an attempt to loot the city.
Next, we get I Am the Man Without a Face in which a bigot discovers the hood he dons when he sets out to harass gypsies cannot be removed - ever!
And we finish off with He Waits For Us in the Glacier whose sleeping alien wakes and looks forward to humanity wiping itself out with nuclear weapons, so he and his race can take over the Earth.
I think there's a lesson there for us all.
Taboo's back!
And, this time, he's stopped by members of his own race who view him as a deranged criminal rather than their advance scout for interplanetary invasion.
Next, we get The Strange Magic of Master Khan in which pirates who steal a sorcerer's ship find themselves shrunk and trapped in bottles.
In We Met in the Swamp, a hermit helps a bunch of aliens, in return for a chestful of treasure but ends up with just a chestful of air, as that's what the aliens view as precious.
And, finally, I Lived a Ghost Story sees a prospective buyer's attempts to spend a night in a haunted house thwarted, to the relief of the estate agent who is, himself, one of the building's resident ghosts.
A great selection of comics as this is where it all began for me with Amazing Adventures #2 which I bought because of the FF appearance. Loved comics with guest stars as I felt I was getting a bonus... and I still do! Preferred the Buscema Silver Surfer so the fact that Kirby(or Trimpe as promised) never actually took over the series did not seem a great loss to me as there were so many other titles to choose from, fickle youth that I was. Submariner was a title I bought when I had deevoured all the big titles, FF, Avengers, Spiderman etc. Never a big fan of spooky books, DC did them better! However loved the cover of Where creatures roam #2... It seemed to be advertised in every comic that month. It worked from a sales point of view as If I see it I will but it! Great post!
ReplyDeleteAh, ‘Band Of Gold’, a.k.a. ‘My Man Couldn’t Get It Up On Our Wedding Night’. The song’s Wikipedia page seems to suggest there might be more than one interpretation of the lyrics, but I dunno! Anyhow, it’s a fab R&B pop song — I dig it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, how COULD the Inhumans be tangling with the FF and the Surfer in two separate books, at practically the same time? That much Fightin’ Fury in the span of just thirty short days? Wouldn’t surprise me if the conflicting continuity conundrum keeps Roy Thomas up at night, all these decades later.
That SUBBY cover is a good example of what we were discussing last week. At a glance the figures look a lot like John Buscema’s flamboyantly-posed muscle men — but look closely, the faces aren’t quite right, the fists look a little ‘flat’, etc. It’s little brother Sal doing a pretty darn good imitation.
- b.t.
Bt, I must confess I've never listened to the words of Band of Gold. I shall listen to it more closely the next time it appears on my radio.
ReplyDeleteFFf, I do find that final issue of Silver Surfer to be far too melodramatic for my tastes. Everyone in it's so desperate for a fight.
Then again, I suppose it's better than the Surfer's usual moping.
Steve, I haven't seen "Five Easy Pieces" but did see "Tora, Tora, Tora". My Dad was a big history buff, especially in regards to WWII. He made a point to take us all to the theater to see it. Perhaps the first non-Disney movie I ever saw.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for showcasing all those 'horror' books! I've gotten the bug for them over the past year or so, picking up an occasional copy at the lcs. Actually, I'm watching a couple on ebay right now; albeit older books- some Atlas "Mystery Tales". Some excellent covers to be found. On the 70's era versions, it was great that Marvel tried some new stories for awhile before going back to all reprints. But as FFF said, DC was tops in that genre...
Speaking of Marvel’s Horror Anthologies—
ReplyDeleteIIRC, 1970 was the year when Marvel was finally able to get out of their distribution deal with DC, freeing them up to to find a distributor that didn’t severely limit the number of books they could publish every month. And then Stan Lee and Martin Goodman apparently made a deliberate move to bury DC, by flooding the spinner racks and newsstands with an explosion of new Marvel product. Dr. Strange, Nick Fury, Cap, Iron Man, Hulk and Subby all got their own individual titles and they added two NEW ‘split books’, ASTONISHING TALES and AMAZING ADVENTURES. Plus two Romance Books and two Horror anthologies with all-new material, new Western and War titles and scads of reprint books.
The crazy thing about the Romance and Horror books was that Stan decided that his Top Artists would be drawing strips for those titles in addition to their regular monthly Superhero assignments. For a few months, they kind of pulled it off — Romita, Buscema, Colan and Heck drew some dynamic and utterly gorgeous Romance comics, while Neal Adams, Jim Steranko and young Barry Smith and Berni Wrightson joined them on the Horror books. Either the sales figures weren’t good enough to justify the costs of generating new content or the artists simply couldn’t handle the additional workload — or BOTH — whatever the reason, the Romance and Horror titles became almost exclusively reprint books within a year.
- b.t.
Think 1968 was the year that basically every major Marvel hero was given their own individual title but certainly in 1970/71 Marvel flooded the Market with an incredible amount of books especially Jack Kirby reprints to counter his move to DC.I think Marvel had more Kirby books published in 1970,71 and 72 than DC which sounds crazy but it's true!
ReplyDeletePoint of order for 50 years ago?
ReplyDeleteMarvel dominated the "monster / creature" comics.
DC dominated the "horror" comics.
I have zero DC monster comics in my long boxes whilst I do have a bunch of the Marvel monster titles shown above. At some point Marvel pulled out of the horror genre? Was DC ever in the monster genre?
I know DC liked Gorillas, because we all know kids loved gorillas, and perhaps that was DC's nod in the direction of monsters?
FFF — Ah, yes, ‘68 was the year Marvel’s big market expansion kicked off, right. Silly me.
ReplyDeleteAnd Charlie — fair point about ‘Horror’ vs ‘Monster’ books. Marvel did have the two short-lived Horror anthologies, TOWER OF SHADOWS and CHAMBER OF DARKNESS and they tried again a few years later with CHAMBER OF CHILLS and JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, but they didn’t survive long as ‘original’ Horror anthologies either before going all-reprint. DC (and even Charlton) totally kicked their ass on that front.
Only ‘Monster’ book from DC that I can recall was one issue of DC SPECIAL subtitled ‘Beware, The MONSTERS Are Coming’ with Neal Adams’ trio of Little Snoopers being menaced by a gargoyle on the cover.
- b.t.
The funny thing about the Silver Surfer was that for his great statement as a writer Stan Lee chose to use the one Marvel character that it was publicly known for sure was created solely by Jack Kirby. Oh the irony.
ReplyDeleteWhich is a polite way of putting it really. Note that while Kirby might have had a great new direction for the Surfer with #18 - the "fallen angel" he viewed the character as from the start - he's still only credited inside as the artist.
The next month Kirby finally got the writer as well as artist credit on a full comic - the October cover dated Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #133!
-sean
ReplyDeleteSean:
I have a lot of respect and admiration for Stan. I think the Kirby and Ditko Partisans sometimes go a little overboard with their disdain and dismissal of his contributions. But he absolutely had those proverbial ‘Feet Of Clay’, no question. Putting it mildly.
And yeah, Stan’s co-opting of Jack’s ‘Immaculate Conceived’ child had to have felt like spit on his cheek to Kirby. And the WAY Stan twisted the character for his Great Work— egad! SO. MUCH. WHINING. SILVER SURFER 6 was one of my absolute favorite single issues when I was a kid, but I can barely stand to look at it now. As much as I worship Big John, all of that over-wrought Emo posturing, like the poor guy is constantly ‘playing to the cheap seats‘ .... it’s all beautifully drawn, but It Is To Cringe..
I like to think of that last splash page of the last ish of SURFER as Kirby himself letting out all of his bottled-up Stan Rage: ‘F*** OFF, STAN! F*** ALL THE WAY OFF!’
- b.t.
Red, a lot of material from those old Mystery Tales books turned up in Britain, reprinted in Alan Class comics which had even worse production values than Charlton comics but no summer holiday would have been complete without them.
ReplyDeleteI have to wonder if Marvel tried to bury DC in 1970... They were already publishing 19-20 titles monthly rolling into in 1969. (List below).
ReplyDeleteAnd a bunch would disappear soon enough... I mean, even if you put product out, if no one is buying it, you're losing money? It is a viable strategy that Marvel could be a "loss leader" to get market share, but I never had the impression Marvel was rolling in the dough, they seemed fairly cost conscious?
And if you did smack DC in the huevos, wouldn't their creators possibly wander over to Archie or Harvey, who controlled that entire 2nd spinner rack, and possibly launch their super hero lines again?
I'm not saying that Marvel didn't do this, I have no idea. Just musing aloud...
Amazing Spider-Man
Avengers
Captain Marvel
Captain Savage
Daredevil
Doctor Strange
Fantastic Four
Incredible Hulk
Iron Man
Marvel Superheroes
Marvel Tales
Mille the Model
Nick Fury
Not Brand Echh
Rawhide Kid
Sgt Fury
Silver Surfer
Sub-Mariner
Thor
X-Men
Charlie, I read somewhere that because Martin Goodman was looking to sell the company, he launched as many titles as he possibly could, to give potential buyers the impression Marvel was more successful than it actually was. He didn't really care, at that point, whether the comics were selling or not.
ReplyDeleteMarvel's strategy since they broke free of their distribution deal with DC has generally been to put out as many comics as possible, to crowd out the competition. As to whether thats really been viable... well, Star Wars apparently saved them from bankruptcy in the late 70s, and they filed for chapter 11 in '96, so its debatable.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is the Goodman publishing wheeze which is generally given credit for putting them ahead of DC was the one month switch to a longer format in late '71 - the 15c to 25c price rise - and then back again (to 20c).
But I suspect that just sped up the inevitable, as Marvel comics tended to be more appealing to kids back then.
-sean
HI Gents,
ReplyDeleteYou know, having lived through the $.25 month, 39 years ago, I can't say it meant anything one way or the other, to a kid?
The only thing I remember in particular was DC's incomprehensible logo of "Don't take less, only $.25." I mean, it just did not make sense as in. "Great, I need to take more money??? W.t.f..."
But I then seemed to think it led (in my mind, the linkage was there) to the blossoming of the DC 100-Page super spectacular Giants! Which then seemed to make economic sense!
Steve - you eve consider doing a review of one of those big 'uns from DC??? LOL.
b.t., there are a number of ways to interpret Stan Lee's alighting on the Silver Surfer as an artistic vehicle, and while theres no way to really know - hey, we weren't there - its hard to see how any of them reflect well on him.
ReplyDeleteIn a way, the weirdest aspect of it to me is that having decided to do a Great Work, Lee didn't seem to put much effort in, approaching the Surfer just like any of his other Marvels of the period. I've always assumed it was one of his weaker ones because for all John Buscema's chops he just wasn't the kind of creative artist - like Kirby or Ditko - that the classic "Marvel method" really needed.
But maybe the Surfer's endless whining really was Lee's idea of being philosophical and literary? After all, a decade later the Surfer was the same in Epic #1.
(And don't get me started on the book with Moebius)
-sean