Pages

Sunday, 6 November 2022

The Marvel Lucky Bag - November 1972.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon
***

Who doesn't love a good musical?

Me.

Unless it's Annie.

However, if I did like musicals, I'm sure I'd have been delighted with November 1972 because it was a month which unleashed not one but two major musicals.

Admittedly, when I say, "major," I've only ever heard of one of them.

Those two movies were 1776 and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

It has to be said that one of those films has a subject matter that seems to lend itself less well to the musical genre than the other. However, as I've never seen 1776, I cannot attest to that film's artistic success or failure.

Maybe it features Alex Harvey's Boston Tea Party.

I like to think it does. I suspect it doesn't.

Other notable films to escape from Hollywood's backlots, that month, were Daughters of Satan, Asylum and The Mechanic. I do believe I've seen all three of them, though I struggle to decide which is best.

The Cat #1

Marvel's lurch into trying to get girls to read their comics smashes us in the face when the Cat makes her senses-shattering debut.

For reasons I can't remember, Greer Nelson agrees to take part in an experiment - and emerges from it with the powers of a cat.

However, all is not as it seems and it turns out the experiment's benefactor Mal Donalbain wants her to use her powers to commit robberies on his behalf.

Greer's not having any of that nonsense and soon disposes of the bounder before setting off to carve a new life for herself as a genuine super-heroine.

It's not a great comic but I have to say that Marie Severin/Wally Wood cover makes it worth buying.

Chamber of Chills #1

Hooray! A new horror comic hits our spinner racks!

And, to my surprise, only one of its tales is a reprint.

In our first adventure, travellers encounter a man who's human at night but becomes a wolf by day.

In our second adventure, a sadistic prison warden faces an inmate uprising and attempts to flee downstairs. But can he survive the deadly fumes contained within the building's execution chamber?

In our third and final tale, a construction accident kills a passer-by but, before he dies, he dreams of performing heroic deeds.

That last one sounds a bit rubbish.

Marvel Premiere #5, Dr Strange

Stephen Strange is still going through his prolonged venture into the world of Lovecraftian horror but still escapes the threat of being sacrificed to Sligguth.

Only to discover the slumbering evil of Shuma-Gorath!

He thinks he's got problems? While all this is going on, the Ancient One gets carried away by the Shadowmen of sunken Kaa-U.

Spoof #2

Marvel's Brand new humour mag's back, and supplies us with yarns entitled Tales from the CreepTarz an' The Apes! and Brawl in the Family. It all sounds like cracking stuff.

Night Nurse #1

It's not just issue #1 of The Cat that's giving us female action, this month; as Night Nurse too makes its debut. Sadly, like that other book, it's doomed to survive for just four issues.

Linda Carter, Georgia Jenkins, and Christine Palmer are all studying to be nurses but Linda's boyfriend will only marry her if she renounces her medical ambitions.

Needless to say, when the city's power goes out and Georgia's brother tries to hold the hospital's generator hostage, Linda realises that becoming a nurse means more to her than marriage ever could.

I'm starting to get a feeling this could be a comic to rival the power and majesty of DC's Lady Cop.

And that's not a thing I ever say lightly.

Sub-Mariner #55

My memories of this one are vague. I suspect that Subby encounters a giant sea monster that's awoken from wherever it's been for centuries.

It is also a speaking sea monster, which means it does an awful lot of boasting about how unbeatable it is.

In a shocking twist, it turns out not to be unbeatable.

16 comments:

  1. Wasn't that Wally Wood Cat cover the one where he drew our heroine naked and the artwork had to be, er, touched up by the production team for publication? The tyke!

    ReplyDelete
  2. He did? What a cheeky scampster.

    Then again, he did have a track record when it came to depictions of nudity.

    ReplyDelete
  3. One guickly notices that Torg is squeezing helicopters like a teenager attacking zits in front of a mirror.

    This quickly brings to mind that we never saw Luke Cage Hero for Hire #3 featured in these hallowed pages because that cover featured Mace smashing a helicopter with his... mace!

    Will December feature Luke Cage Hero for Hire #4? Such stunning art by Billy Graham Jr must see the light of day!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Charlie says he loves his Good n Plenty and also All in the Family.

    If France had a Pantheon for American TV shows, surely All in the Family would be buried there with Sanford and Son serving as Sergeant at Arms!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Not sure if ole Wally Wood was lubed up when he drew Cat #1 but it does bear a remarkable conceptual resemblance to Luke Cage Hero for Hire #1.

    Wally excelled on EC's Science Fiction titles and was basically o-tay when it came to men / women in tights?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Supposedly for DC Wally Wood drew Power Girl's tits bigger and bigger, to see how long it would take his editor to notice and tell him to stop. I think the DC implosion took her and All-Star out first.

    Wood seems to have been well cynical about the comic book biz by this point, and who could blame him? Yet he doesn't seem to have been able to become a hack - his inks on a book like the Cat and his other 70s superhero stuff are still pretty impressive.

    www.tcj.com/notes-toward-a-future-understanding-of-wally-wood/

    -sean

    ReplyDelete
  7. *Oops, corrected link -
    www.tcj/notes-towards-a-future-understanding-of-wally-wood/

    ReplyDelete
  8. Aargh, wrong again.
    www.tcj.com/notes-towards-a-future-understanding-of-wally-wood/

    Ok, thats definitely right. Hey, its an interesting piece if you're into his work. It really gets to the paradox of comic book artists in that era - what is it that makes some artists put the effort in despite the fairly low pay and lack of recognition, and what are we responding to?

    -sean

    ReplyDelete
  9. Night Nurse is alright, Steve. I actually think it has the edge over Lady Cop as the three nurses form a supportive bond with each other, which is a fairly unusual approach to female comic characters at this time, especially for Marvel.
    The story even passes the Bechdel test in places, and - spoiler alert - Linda has a bit of back bone and dumps the idiot boyfriend.

    The stuff about the local rebel yoof threatening to bomb the hospital's generator during a power cut is a bit off though, and does let the comic down a bit towards the end.

    -sean

    ReplyDelete
  10. Obviously I can see how Night Nurse would be aimed at girls but The Cat is just a superhero who happens to be female as far as I'm concerned. Does that mean She-Hulk, Spiderwoman and Ms. Marvel were "for girls" too because I bought all of those and it never even crossed my mind they were meant for girls.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Didn't Marvel shoehorn Linda Carter (Night Nurse) into an issue of Marvel Knights Daredevil where she helps DD or Iron Fist?

    ReplyDelete
  12. A few years ago, Marvel reprinted all four issues of NIGHT NURSE under one cover, and y’know….it ain’t bad.

    I think that story about Wood making all the lady figures nude in THE CAT #1 is true. I believe the production artist who had to do the touch-ups was Marie Severin herself.

    b.t.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I think that Night Nurse reprint book came out around the time Bendis used the character in Daredevil, that Paul mentioned. Although I don't think there was really that much of a relationship to the original series.

    Win Mortimer who drew all four issues was an old school DC artist who worked mainly on their mystery and romance comics by the start of the 70s, so it has that look to it thats quite different to the usual Marvel style. Not bad at all.

    -sean

    ReplyDelete
  14. Sean -I'm really digging that link to Wally Wood. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Per usual, Charlie reconds the Sub Mariners by Everett!!!

    ReplyDelete
  16. I'm well aware that the Doc Strange arc by Gardner Fox (of all people) in Marvel Premiere was a pretty blatant, uh, "borrowing" of Lovecraft, but I still enjoyed it for the sheer weirdness.
    M.P. is a cat who can dig weird. And Lovecraft himself had no problems with other writers using his style or concepts; heck, he was downright generous in that regard.
    Fox's run culminated in issue #8, "The Doom That Bloomed on Kathulos!" drawn by a young and spunky Judo Jim Starlin. Strange is abducted by an alien, malevolent plant entity with a human head, for some reason.
    How can you not wanna read that comic, I ask you. I'm not made of stone.

    I've been rereading some classic Lovecraft stories lately. They cheer me up during this nightmarish political season.
    Seriously, how much damage could Yog-Sothoth do at this point?
    Next election cycle, why be content with a lesser evil?

    M.P.

    ReplyDelete