Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
Time, once more, for me to leap from my trampoline of Time and faceplant myself into the rocks of Nostalgia.
Now, he's trying to get the gang to bring him the ultimate peace he reckons only they can deliver.
When I say he teams up with them, this may be an exaggeration, as I don't remember them doing much at all to justify their presence.
Basically, it's a mashup of She and Doctor Who's The Three Doctors - but without She or three Doctors.
Not to mention Rick Jones zapping himself with Gamma rays in a brainless attempt to turn himself into a super-hero.
Unfortunately for the hunter, his girlfriend insists on helping him win the fight, which does not do any good at all to the villain's state of mind.
Hooray, Thor's up against the Stone Men from Saturn!
Oh.
It turns out he isn't.
They're just the Easter Island heads who, sadly, don't turn out to be his old foes and don't put up any kind of a fight; being, as they are, temporarily animated by Loki.
However, there is an old foe returning, as Fafnir the talking dragon decides to get his revenge on Thor, for past defeats, and claim an island on Earth as his new kingdom.
But are even they enough to ensure the X-Men can defeat Deathbird and her Brood allies?
Elsewhere, Colossus makes a full recovery from last issue's death, thanks to alien technology.
Will Daredevil be able to resist the urge to drop the villain from a great height?
No. He won't.
And that's bad news for Bullseye.
Apart from doing regular robberies.
It all ends with a disappointed Spider-Man and a seemingly drowned Black Cat.
But is everything as it seems?
Suddenly hit by a teleport beam, Iron Man finds himself on an alien spaceship and having to save its computer from a gang of hostile spores.
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13 comments:
Daredevil I gets my vote for the best cover, though I’m not quite sure how much I like the faded daredevil in the background.
Spider-Man gets my vote for the most underachieving cover. Kraven was such a classic villain for Spidey, not sure what they’re thinking of but that depiction of Kraven on the cover though
So I gets my vote for the most “intellectually curious “cover. It’s not often that we see that Easter island statues on the cover of a marvel comic, is it.
Its not often you have much to say in favour of Gil Kane covers either Charlie.
Not a good month for covers yet again, Steve. Recently in this feature the Conans have been the most appealing but while #133 is probably the best drawing here (bearing in mind theres not that much competition) its too Gil-on-autopilot even for me.
So I'll go for Daredevil #181 as cover of the month too, because... well, its Daredevil #181. Its not often you get a comic as good as that. In fact, I'd say it was a game changer, a leap forward even by the standard Miller had set so far.
I remember getting Daredevil #181 at the same time as JLA #200 - which included Brian Bolland's first work on Batman for DC - so I reckon this month could serve as a useful marker for the start of "the eighties" in American comics.
-sean
Daredevil #181 notwithstanding, I kinda prefer the '70's.
At least where Marvel is concerned. With the exception of a few titles or random issues here and there, it wasn't great.
But Sean's reference to Bolland showing up in JLA (!) reminds me that over at D.C., at least, they were lookin' to flip the script, and start taking risks. Try something, anything.
Not that Bolland was a risk, per se, but Moore was!
M.P.
I dunno Sean, I think the Kane Conan is once again, the best cover of the bunch. That particular issue of DD is special indeed, but I think the cover itself ain’t so hot. Even back in the day, I thought it was functional at best.
But hey, at least it’s better than the two Spider-Man covers and that wretched Hulk cover. Those three are dire.
b.t.
Just X-men and Daredevil again for me, this month, but both were great. Daredevil #181 obviously a classic and I agree that Miller raised there bar again with this one. They teased the death of one of the characters and actually followed through, well for six months anyway.
X-men #156 started the brood storyline that ran to #167 and was, for me, the last really solid X-men storyline (admittedly I gave the title away with #200). Cockrum's art suited the space opera elements and Claremont turned off the auto pilot for these issues, and saved Carol Danvers from that creepy Avengers story.
DW
There's an Easter Island statue in the British Museum so did it get animated along with its' brethren despite being thousands of miles away? Chile recently returned a statue to Easter Island and now there's pressure on Britain to do the same. The British Museum is going to be rather empty if they end up giving back the Easter Island statue, the Elgin Marbles, the Benin Bronzes, all the Egyptian sarcophagi and everything else!
I had this month's issue of Conan The Barbarian so I can reveal that when Conan reaches the top of the crystal mountain intent on rescuing the princess he discovers that she's just a skeleton. Other than that bombshell I can't recall a single thing about the story.
Don't forget Stonehenge, Colin - the British should return that too.
-sean
Charlie, Bt and Sean, my vote for best cover goes to Thor, as that's the one that would have been most likely to get me to hand over my money.
Charlie, Kraven's depicted like that on the cover because, in the story, he shoots Spidey with a dart carrying a hallucinogenic substance which makes our hero start to imagine things.
Colin, I think it turns out the "evil witch" is actually the rightful queen who was replaced in the king's affections by the now-defunct princess.
DW and MP, thanks for your comments too.
And thanks to everyone who ever comments on this site. It's always appreciated. :)
DW, yes, Elektra did come back within the year but Miller clearly intended Daredevil #190 as an ending - a resolution to the whole story - so I don't think it was really an example of typical return-from-comic-book-death syndrome.
Actually, you could say he was playing on that, as once the Hand plot to resurrect Elektra came up the reader couldn't be certain whether she really would stay dead.
He was good at keeping us guessing, which is no easy trick in superhero comics.
-sean
Of course Elektra did come back as a regular ongoing character eventually, which Miller was pissed off about as apparently Marvel promised him that wouldn't happen.
That seems a bit naive on his part, but I guess its not that unreasonable to think a publisher would want to keep one of its best selling creatives happy.
-sean
About that Thor comic up there, I read somewhere that Kirby came up with the Stone Men from Saturn because he was fascinated by the Easter Island statues.
He used 'em as an inspiration several times; what was it, Challengers of the Unknown and one of the early Marvel monster mags?
Something like that.
The weird thing is, those statues do have bodies under the ground.
They're disproportionately small compared to the heads, but if they all of a sudden decided to climb outta the ground and spread mayhem and terror, who's gonna stop 'em?
Not me, that's for sure.
M.P.
Sean
I suspect MIller's standing at Marvel was somewhat impacted by producing Dark Knight for DC (and possibly Ronin to a lesser extent). That's a lot of moolah to their direct competitor.
I agree that his whole run is a single story and so the Elektra resurrection was likely planned all along. I was a bit let down by the Elektra lives graphic novel in that it didn't really move the story forward. That said, it looked gorgeous and did feature a brilliant Bullseye cameo, with the final desperate sucking of orange juice. Fortunately I stopped reading Marvel comics before Elektra was re-introduced by other creators, and so the intended finale still holds true.
DW
DW, a few years ago at Thought Bubble I picked up the first issue of a mid-90s Elektra comic after noticing that it was written by Peter Milligan. I like his work with Brendan McCarthy, and even have a soft spot for Bad Company in the progs, so as the fella on the table was practically giving it away... maybe it was worth checking out?
It was of course as bad as you'd expect a mid-90s Elektra comic to be (she worked as a dancer, in between fighting crime).
In retrospect, I have no idea what I was thinking.
-sean
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