Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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There was only one game in town, this month in 1983.
And that was a thing called Return of the Jedi.
How we loved that unforgettable combination of slugs, bikinis, mayhem and teddy bears.
And, with the deaths of Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, it wrapped up the Star Wars saga forever, meaning we'd never need another movie from that franchise, ever again.
But you know what we would need?
Comics.
Especially not overly popular ones...
I don't have a clue who Barney White is.
I like to think he's the husband of Betty White, meaning we have a triptych of famous Barneys and Bettys, made up of the Rubbles, the Hills and, now, the Whites.
Hold on. Didn't he already have his own comic?
And wasn't that also called Kull the Conqueror?
And wasn't there an issue of it published last month?
I don't have a clue what's going on with that but I do know our Antediluvian action man finds himself in rocky waters and up against the Eye of the Tigress.
But which film's Octopussy? Is that the one with the Russian general who steals an atom bomb and plans to use it?
The one in which our hero must dress up as a clown, in order to save the world?
It would appear to be faithful to the version first given us in Thor's mag, all those years ago, even including artwork by Jack Kirby, although with new panels supplied by John Byrne.
You guessed it; I don't have the Scoobiest who Crystar is, or what use a warrior made of crystal would be to anyone.
According to the Grand Comics Database, this is what happens:
Zardeth delivers a prophecy to the kingdom of Crystallium, which leads to a split between the princes Crystar and Moltar.
To save Cystar from death, a wizard sends him into the Prisma-Crystal, where he emerges as a warrior of crystal.
To save Moltar from the magical crystal rain, Zardeth sends him into lava, where he emerges as a man of hardened lava.
The transformed pair, thus, begin to battle for the right to rule!
All I can say is it's brought to us by Al Milgrom and Herb Trimpe and its tale inside is called U.S.1, Comin' at Ya!
Also, that its central character goes by the unlikely handle Ulysses Solomon Archer.
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16 comments:
Definitely the one where Bond dresses as a clown. I know this because there's a scene at the start of the Film where a clown crashes through a patio door at a cocktail party clutching a Faberge egg like the one on the comic cover.
And apparently in that FF Annual all the residents of some village have become pseudo skrulls after drinking the milk of the cows that a bunch of skrulls were hypnotised into back in FF #2. I thought those skrulls had escaped the hypnosis back in the Kree Skrulls war somewhere around Avengers 90–100 but I could well be wrong.
The Skrulls interbred with other cows in the herd, dangermash, so the dodgy milk was still a thing even after that Avengers story.
Not sure how something like that could be contained once it was in the cow and human gene pool - even if you accept the Marvel sliding time scale, it was still a good few years since the events of FF #2 - but it was a diverting enough story. Better than that boring Negative Zone stuff going on at the same time in the regular FF, that's for sure.
Which is unfortunate, as the Skrull milk story was yet another Byrne riff on the old Lee/Kirby era. He did that kind of thing very well, but what the series really needed by this point was something new. But instead we were soon going to get more Galactus.
Hence Super-Villain Classics #1 I suppose, reprinting Thor #s168 and 169. With added John Byrne improvements. The nerve of that guy, eh?
-sean
Just checked, Steve, and Kull the Conqueror #2 was in the Lucky Bag for March, not last month. But your basic implication holds - back then it was a bit weird to be relaunching a comic so soon.
I notice the previous two Kull issues had a cover price of $2.00, whereas this #1 here is $1.25, for the same number of pages. Which makes me suspect that despite appearances (eg the wraparound cover) this new series isn't a direct market title; my guess would be that sales on Kull were better than expected, so they relaunched as a new title with more general distribution.
-sean
That would make sense Sean. As for Byrne, his art work doesn't grab me but I do like what I've seen and heard of those Lee/Kirby riffs. Introducing Aunt Petunia, stuff like that.
A few weeks ago there was a play on Radio 4 about Roger Moore's first wife, a Welsh singer called Dorothy Squires (played by Ruth Madoc of Hi-De-Hi fame). Squires died in 1998 and Roger Moore later paid for a blue plaque to be put on the house where she grew up.
FUN FACT: my father was two days older than Roger Moore.
I didn't go to see Return Of The Jedi but I did buy the paperback novelisation. I was in the Lower 6th Form at the time and I remember reading the novel in the 6th Form common room.
Wasnt Barney White the FF’s mailman?
Charlie
Charlie struggles with the notion that people drank milk from cows that were the offspring of skrulls and normal cows and this became skrulls? Could those village people not also have become cows too?
Not sure why but the kids joke about “dont drink the water because you know what fish do in it!” comes to mind!
Of course if some of the skrulls in FF2 became female cows they would have to have been inseminated by bulls. Heh heh. Not sure why Charlie finds that a good fate for a skrull!
I had stop buying comics by '83 but decades later acquired the Byrne FF run thru the Omnibus'.
Annual #17 was a fun and entertaining story, as was much of his run. His 5 years on the title are by many, considered 2nd only to the Lee/Kirby run. As for Byrne art? Well, I'll defend most of that to my last breath :-)
Yeah, I like Byrne's art too, KR (although around this point of his FF run he was starting to cut too many corners for my taste).
Charlie, Willie Lumpkin was the FF's mailman, no? I've actually read that annual, and even so have no idea who Barney White was.
-sean
Colin -
I got the ROTJ novelisation as well, though I was a good bit younger.
It was written by James Kahn who’d written the Poltergeist novelisation the year before which I’d actually enjoyed. It had been clearly based on earlier script drafts of the movie and had some extremely odd scenes that hadn’t made it to the screen.
I was not young enough, it turns out, to still enjoy the ‘last’ Star Wars film. I was actually bored by ROTJ in 1983. I’d moved on from SW without knowing it (though it never took a firm hold on me the way it did with most kids my age).
Killraven and Sean- add me to the list of those 'feeling the Byrne' (apologies to Senator Bernie). His run on Fantastic Four was incredible, some excellent stories and some truly gorgeous artwork (check out the story with the Black Panther and the Romans; staggering visuals). Really should get that Omnibus.
That FF Annual was pretty good, the milk thing was rather weird but entertaining.
Sean and other Kull-curious pals:
This latest KULL THE CONQUEROR #1 was published on plain old newsprint instead of bright white Baxter paper, which would help account for the price reduction — and may even have been a factor in Marvel’s reasoning for re-starting the numbering. Although really, any excuse to slap a #1 on the cover…
Back then, the higher-end printing materials was a big deal. Remember when DC had a whole line of comics that were published under the “New Format” umbrella — THE SPECTRE, MARTIAN MANHUNTER, FLASH GORDON and THE PHANTOM, etc. Basically Baxter paper again, but slightly thinner so the books could be priced a bit cheaper. Marvel had some version of that too, though I don’t remember if they actually labelled it as such. Byrne’s SHE-HULK switched over to “Bargain Priced Baxter” paper in the middle of his run, IIRC.
b.t.
I bought that issue of Kull recently at a car boot sale for £1. I wasn't aware that this series was published having really cut back on comics by 1983 but it's a nice book with some decent John Buscema art. I may try to track a few others down if they are all by big John. Those few Baxter paper books were really over egged. I though the paper didn't show the art of well ( especially Neal Adams art, possibly as he had it really coloured ...poorly imho) too shiny
The colour in the (Baxter paper) Kull #2 did not show off John Bolton's artwork well imo, Paul.
b.t., So the price drop was down to the paper quality then? Ok that makes sense.
Especially as looking up the series it seems that a few issues later there was a further drop to £1.00, so - as the comics code seal started appearing on the cover - I'm going to assume that involved a switch to more general distribution. And yet funnily enough, they didn't relaunch again with a new #1 - go figure, eh?
-sean
McScotty, Big John pencilled the majority of that run of KULL. 1 and 2 are pretty nice — they look as though he was doing full pencils instead of mere layout breakdowns, and the inkers seemed inspired to mimic his own inking style as well. My favorites in that run are 3, 5 and 6, inked and colored by Klaus Janson. The run is also graced with a series of excellent covers by Mike Golden, Bill Sienkewicz and Barry Smith.
b.t.
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