Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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Once more, the past has caught up with us.
But isn't it time we caught up with the past?
I don't know what that means, either, but it sounds like it means something, and that's all that matters.
Except she is. So, he doesn't achieve anything, apart from convincing everyone around him that he's gone mad.
Which he probably has.
I believe the Punisher is also in this tale but is in jail.
Back on Earth, Betty Ross meets Bereet, for the first time, and pleads with her to save Rick Jones who's brilliantly zapped himself with a load of Gamma rays.
Iron Man's battling a super-intelligent teenager who has no social skills but does have a telepathic mother.
It's another odd tale. One in which Iron Man doesn't seem to have any great reluctance to let people see him without his mask on.
And, this time, he's unbeatable!
Until Spidey decides to make himself a new costume from rubber.
Alternatively, he could have just thrown a bucket of water over the villain, like I'm going to keep suggesting until he finally does it.
Can the Phoenix really be back from the dead?
No, it can't. It's just Kitty Pryde using Nightcrawler's image-generating thingy to terrorise hostile Shi'Ars who own the spaceship they're on.
I don't recall what his plan is but it can only cause trouble for the members of our favourite super-team.
Fortunately, the pair don't have to fight alone, thanks to the help of a friendly snake goddess.
However, as far as I can remember, it turns out Moonie's the one who's been using her mental powers to compel them to have a war, in the first place.
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24 comments:
A pedant writes:
Rocket Raccoon made his debut in Marvel Preview, Steve, in 'The Sword in the Star', a back-up feature that started in whatever number it was that kicked off with Star-Lord's first appearance.
There you go - another 21st century Guardians of the Galaxy connection (although I don't think they actually appeared in the same issue).
As ever in this period, choosing a cover of the month is tricky... Gil Kane, John Byrne and Frank Miller are generally the contenders, but they're all coasting a bit here really, so I'm going to go for Peter Parker #66.
Theres something not quite right about the figures - in particular it doesn't make any sense perspective-wise that Electro has one leg bent - but its nice to see a journeyman artist like Ed Hannigan (for apparently it was he) making the effort to be eye catching.
-sean
Well, Charlie would go with the FF as the fav cover.
And Spidey, due to the depiction of Spidey, as the worst. W.t.h. is going on with Spidey... Is his depiction as nothing but bone and tendon a function of the story?
I shall go with the X-Men as my cover of the month, purely because it's got Phoenix on it. It's got to be said it's not a vintage crop.
The two Spider-man covers are just odd !
Admittedly a fair bit of the credit for making that Peter Parker cover stand out should probably go to whoever did the lettering, e84ever.
Steve, tbh by this point X-Men was not a comic that I kept a look out for anyway, but a cover featuring the return of Dark Phoenix would definitely have put me off picking it up.
-sean
Sean! No love for the latest Gil Kane CONAN cover? Ehhh, yeah, me neither (tho it ain’t bad).
Oh, and you’re absolutely right about that MARVEL PREVIEW being Rocket Racoon’s !!!FIRST APPEARANCE!!! — but apparently, a character’s first appearance in a COLOR comic is cause for dealers to jack up prices too. My copy of MARVEL SPOTLIGHT 6 (a Star-Lord story by Moench and Sutton) is a bit weathered, so I checked to see if I could get a better copy on eBay and was kinda startled to see it going for as much as $1500 (CGC slabbed), and multiple sellers touting it as a !!!FIRST APPEARANCE!!! — cheapest was around $20 for a G-VG copy. Guess my ‘well loved’ copy will have to do.
Charlie — Yeah, that FF cover is my fave of this batch too. Genuinely eye-catching.
That PETER PARKER cover is nice too. Couple years after this, Hannigan had a string of really nicely designed BATMAN and DETECTIVE covers at DC .
Steve, could this possibly be the first time Marvel pulled that cheap ‘Dark Phoenix Is BACK!! (Ha ha, not really)’ fake out? I seem to remember them pulling that trick fairly often back in the day…
b.t.
Sure enough, I just checked eBay, and all the dopey dealers are claiming HULK 261 as ‘ROCKET RACOON FIRST COMIC APPEARANCE’ and charging scalper’s prices. What a racket.
b.t.
I'm sure Daredevil thought it might be an idea to dig up Elektra, but I'm pretty sure enough time would have passed for her to become what I once heard a police sergeant call a "soup job."
Still, each to their own....
Last Saturday night BBC Radio 4 had an interesting documentary about the 25th anniversary of the album 'OK Computer' by Radiohead. Did anyone buy the album? I know the song 'No Surprises' but that's about it.
Yeah b.t, the Conan cover isn't bad, but Gil was definitely phoning it in by this point.
It actually looks like it was drawn at a smaller size, but that can't be right can it? Aren't all the covers drawn on Marvel boards with the cut-off points all marked out? So I assume he was working very quickly, with a sharpie. Which he's good enough to get away with, but he was capable of much better.
Everyone's a critic, eh?
The magazine thing is weird.
When I first started reading comics for big people (I hesitate to call us "mature readers"!) they were magazines - Heavy Metal, Eclipse, Epic, Warrens, and so on - and in '82 that still looked like the future, with Warrior #1 early in the year and the first Love & Rockets at the end.
But with the rise of the direct market within a year or so most became small colour comics, or - in the case of Epic - a line of comics.
I never understood that - why did people supposedly into comics want smaller pages, generally with sh*tty colour?
Its the collector mentality to want all your comics in the same format I guess... but the irony is 'golden age' comics are a larger size (arent they? - I don't have any, but thats my understanding) so the most collectable ones aren't actually proper floppies.
These comic fans are crazy.
-sean
What I don't get is, if floppies are all wanted in the same standard comic book format, why do so many seem to be on that glossy, shiny paper?
I hate that.
_sean
They are indeed, e84ever. Especially the Amazing Spider-Man one.
Bt, I think it is the first Phoenix fakeout.
Colin, I don't think I have anything like enough willpower to ever be able to sit through the whole of a Radiohead album.
Steve, I have to admit ( rather shame-facedly ) that I've sat through OK Computer a few times. It's not that bad really and Paranoid Android is still for me the best thing the band ever did. Of course, that was in the days when they still thought things like tunes and choruses were a good idea.
As for the covers, I'll vote for the Peter Parker - there were some fun experiments with layouts and logos in that comic for a while which made it stand out from the herd.
Not to be a downer, but if anyone's interested the Comic Journal has done a couple of good write ups recently -
www.tcj.com/neal-adams-1941-2022/
www.tcj.com/george-perez-1954-2022/
-sean
Steve, what do you think of the new Doctor Who? Rwanda is certainly getting a lot of news coverage at the moment! Ncuti Gatwa isn't just the first black actor in the role, he was born in 1992 so he'll also be the first Doctor born after the original run ended in 1989.
I'll cast my vote for the Peter Parker cover. Ed Hannigan had a great design sense. He also did some fine interiors for the title.
Have never heard "OK Computer " but have certainly heard much about it. Guess I'd better give it a listen...
Sean- regarding formats, I personally enjoy a variety. Anything from mini promo comics to giant Treasury Editions. But then I'm kind of weird.
Same here Red, you weirdo. Did you read the original Raw in the 80s? A big treasury-size mag... but with a little Maus mini comic insert inside. Best format ever (;
A pedant writes (slight return):
Surely Jo Martin was the first black actor to play the Doctor?
A shame she wasn't in it long term, as she was the best one in the revived Dr Who so far, at least from what I've seen.
Not that I'm much of a regular viewer. But I might watch out for the new one more, as Russell T Davies is overseeing it again and he's a safe pair of hands.
On the possible negative side though, Russell T Davies is overseeing it again and he's a safe pair of hands...
-sean
Sean- yes, I did read Raw ! Not in the raw, however. And yes it introduced me to Maus, which later touched me like no other graphic story ever has. What is it they say about good things in small packages?
B Smith-
I found that issue of Daredevil a bit disturbing, maybe you did too.
Digging up dead ex-girlfriends is not normal. I don't care if they were ninjas.
For quite a while Marvel played around with the notion of Matt Murdoch being irrational (or basically $#!% nuts, like in the Born Again arc) but I suspect by now they've brought him back into the fold of your average Marvel superhero, which is to say, having some mildly psychotic tendencies.
Maybe "mildly psychotic" is a contradiction in terms.
M.P.
Colin, I've got to admit I've never seen Ncuti in anything and had never heard of him before he was cast. I'm sure he'll be fine. I tend to take the view that pretty much any actor can play the Doctor, as long as they're written right.
Steve, I don't care much who plays Who, whatever ethnic group or gender, but they should have some kinda U.K. accent.
Usually, aliens speak with a crisp British accent. If they came out of their spaceship sounding like they just came outta Alabama or, say, Boston (or the Dakotas, God help us) I would be worried.
M.P.
MP, like Steve I'd never heard of Ncuti Gatwa before he was cast as the Doctor but according to Wikipedia he was born in Rwanda and grew up in Scotland from the age of two so I have no idea what accent he'll be using in his new role.
Personally Colin, I have no problem with a Scottish Dr Who. After all, its the twenty first century - even Northerners can be renegade time lords these days.
-sean
Ncuti Gatwa is, of course, the fourth Scottish actor to play the Doctor, after McCoy, Tennant and Capaldi. He's certainly an interesting choice for the part and, yeah, I'm intrigued to see what accent he'll use. He was great in Sex Education ( still on Netflix, I think ), playing a very upbeat, brash character with a hidden sadness - a bit like a certain Time Lord :-)
My daughter was an extra on the show so met Ncuti ( as well as Asa Butterfield and the goddess Gillian Anderson ) - she says he's a "lovely boy", even though he's three years older than her... ;-)
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