Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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History. It's everywhere you look.
Let's find some.
And, of course, this leads to him having to fight the rest of the Avengers.
Some days, you just can't catch a break.
But the other competitors aren't so lucky and fall foul of all manner of death traps, menaces, monsters and cheaters.
And they're taking the entire city of Attilan with them!
As far as I'm aware, no one bothered to ask the Watcher's permission before doing any of this.
Or been to Earth!
Or even knows Rick Jones!
Somehow, by means I don't know, this ties in with the return of Amphibion, Night-Crawler and Torgo who've been sent to Earth to recruit the comic's star on behalf of the princess he once rescued from the Galaxy-Master.
I have no doubt Tony Stark's alter-ego will emerge triumphant.
Needless to say, Thor soon puts a stop to that devilish plan.
And one of them is the Kingpin's amnesiac wife!
Above ground, it's Foggy who's got problems because Kingie's decided it's time to pay Elektra to bump off the pesky lawyer.
And, this time, she's got the Brood with her.
Not that anyone, at this stage, knows who the Brood are.
For that matter, I'm not sure if the X-Men have encountered Deathbird before, either.
Anyway, it can only be trouble for the mighty mutants who've just discovered Lilandra's been kidnapped. And for Scott who must still come to terms with the fact he's no longer an orphan.
As if that's not bad enough, it looks like Colossus has bit the bullet.
Blimey. They're going to need a strong cup of tea after all that malarkey.
And it can only mean trouble for Batman Spider-Man, as she goes on a spree of stealing from the mob.
Spidey does his best to moralise the pair into showing restraint but totally fails on that front.
While I'm still here, I shall comment that my vote for, "Cover of the Month," definitely goes to the Spider-Man, Cloak and Dagger one.
ReplyDeleteSteve, I have to agree with you that the Spider-Man cloak and dagger cover is a winner! I don’t know why but the concept for the cover seems to really remind me of Carmen Infantino.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as I look at the fantastic four cover with black bolt, all I can think of is what a difference between the way black bolt is shown here versus how Jack Kirby portrayed him in those earlier fantastic four covers. There’s really nothing in that fantastic four cover that just slaps me upside the head and go wow!
ReplyDeleteCarmine Infantino, Charlie...? The more obvious conceptual influence on that Peter Parker cover would seem to me to have been Will Eisner. Or, given his increasing popularity back then, quite possibly Frank Miller.
ReplyDeleteSteve, never mind the Watcher - he doesn't interfere anyway - what about the Alpha Primitives? No-one asked them if they wanted to move to the moon in FF #240.
Its a really good comic, but the reveal that freeing the Alphas back in #132 had been "a noble experiment and a failure" - "misguided altruism" on the part of the Inhumans - did spoil it for me a bit.
I appreciate the Alphas were fictional beings genetically engineered to be slaves so its easily arguable that doesn't represent a general ethical/political position, and Roy Thomas' earlier story was flawed for using them as some kind of post-civil rights metaphor for that very reason, but all the same...
Given what had been established previously, that part of the story needed to be more than just an afterthought tossed off in a few panels near the end.
Especially if Byrne was trying to make some sort of point about kneejerk liberalism (which he actually did quite effectively later in FF #247, the one about Doom's return to Latveria).
-sean
Fair enough Sean! Clearly reminiscent of Eisner.
ReplyDeleteAlso hope they found a hole just the right size and shape on the moon to lower Attilan into, otherwise their cups, crockery and cutlery would be forever sliding off the table...most inconvenient!
ReplyDeleteMy Cover of the Month is based on personal nostalgia rather than artistic merit- the Avengers.
ReplyDeleteThat issue is either the first or second Avengers conic I ever owned- a friend at primary school swapped it to me for some comic of mine, and I thought it was one of the best things I ever read. I still think it's a great, dramatic and emotional issue.
I listened to a podcast a while back which discussed the issue and pretty much slated it, but to me it's still wonderful.
Nice Gil Kane cover on that Conan issue too- I find myself appreciating Kane's art more and more as I get older. I still remember a Conan issue I read where Kane draws Conan being thrown off a boat, swimming underneath it and climbing back up on the other side, and I swear the art actually seemed to move like a cartoon as I stared at the page! Very very few artists could draw movement like GK could.
I’ll jump on the band-wagon — the SPECTACULAR SPIDEY 64 cover is a winner. I remember buying it at the comic shop back in the day, during a period when I was buying very few Marvels or DCs (out of this week’s Steve Selections, I bought this and DD 180 only). But that cover was a real attention-getter — it did exactly what covers are supposed to do, which was to get me to pick it up and flip through it. Surprise, surprise, the interior art was pretty nice too. I’d never been overly impressed by Hannigan’s art in his previous few appearances, but I made it a point to be on the lookout for more of his stuff after this.
ReplyDeleteOh, and besides reminding me of Eisner, I also see some Steranko influence in it as well. Notice how even the logo has been rendered ‘Extra-Creepy’, a neat touch.
What about ‘Worst Cover of the Week’? Lots of competition here. That Hulk cover is a mess, and the Thor and Iron Man covers are pretty weak. The FF cover is a real ‘Swing and a Miss’ for Byrne. I think the concept is ambitious as hell but he kinda outsmarted himself — he picked just about the only camera angle possible to illustrate the action, and it STILL doesn’t have the ‘Wow Factor’ he intends it to have. Everyone is facing away from the viewer, the city itself is ugly and doesn’t even really look like a city and the ‘fish-eye’ forced perspective doesn’t help. The scale of it all doesn’t feel feel authentic. So it just ends up looking like Black Bolt is levitating a scale model of the Watts Towers made out of fruit-cake or something.
Why in the world is Tigra in this issue of X-Men? I don’t think I’ve ever read this issue — maybe there’s some logical, not-completely-random reason for her to be there….
b.t.
Bt, if I remember right, the X-Men visit the Avengers Mansion, hoping to recruit some reinforcements but Tigra's the only Avenger present.
ReplyDeleteDave, Gil certainly knew how to keep a story moving.
B, that's a very good point.
Charlie and Sean, thanks for your comments too.
Dave, I was down on the A-list Marvels by this point, which - apart from Miller's work on Daredevil, and (most of) John Byrne's FF - I thought had been in decline for a good few years, but its nice to know a comic like the Avengers could still turn a kid's head and grab their interest like that.
ReplyDeleteEr, not to sound patronizing or anything.
And I agree about that Conan cover, which is the best here. The Peter Parker one isn't really well executed enough to match the concept imo - the figures look too large for the buildings (Cloak and Dagger in particular, compared to Spidey).
I know, I am such a moaner...
-sean
I was reading a lotta Marvel comics during this period (why? I don't know) and Conan had clearly jumped the shark by this point. How is that possible, in a comic set in the Hyborian Age? I dunno, but they did it. The stories weren't realistic even for Hyboria.
ReplyDeleteThey were just crankin' 'em out. The writing was lousy and I don't think Gil Kane was the right guy for that comic. I don't think he was trying very hard.
That Daredevil comic was the first issue of that title I ever bought. It was kinda startling. I'd only seen Daredevil in Marvel Team-Up, and this was nothing like that. I had no idea who Frank Miller was, or what he was trying to do, there. I didn't know from film noir. But it was one of those comics that you're not sure about, but it sticks in your head, and you go back and look at it again. And again.
Alligators in the sewers. A kingdom of sewer people. Sheesh.
I thought the art was pretty rough, but if it had been slick, it probably wouldn't have worked.
M.P.
Sean- not patronising at all, I know what you mean. There was a TV series when I was growing up called Rentaghost which I absolutely adored- I used to spend hours at school desperate to get home to see this amazing supernatural comedy drama. Had the chance to see an episode a couple of years back and realised how awful it actually was- age gives us all different perspectives on things!
ReplyDelete