Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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September 1973 holds the distinction of being the only month I've ever covered in this feature where I've never heard of a single movie released in it
Thus it is that we got movies bearing such deathless names as From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, I Escaped from Devil's Island, The Pyx, The Spook Who Sat by the Door and Harry in Your Pocket.
Classics all, I'm sure.
And does so in style, with a dramatic cover by Barry Smith.
Not so stylishly, the insides are made up of nothing but reprints. In this case, Bazzer's versions of Lair of the Beast-Men and The Tower of the Elephant.
Sadly, it too is composed of reprints.
In the first tale, as the cover makes clear, we're re-exposed to the wedding of Reed and Sue.
And, in the second, we're given the return of the original Human Torch, as the Mad Thinker restores the android to life, purely for the purpose of attacking the modern Human Torch.
Having said there are no reprints, it turns out this issue's back-up tale is a 1950s reprint starring Lorna the Jungle Girl.
I've a feeling it all involves an attempt by the Leader to regain the use of his paralysed body. And, of course, at least one of the villains is cheating.
And I think we've all guessed that it reprints Spectacular Spider-Man #2 in which Norman Osborn regains his memory and sets out to destroy his old foe, with the aid of hallucinogenic pumpkins.
Needless to say, he fails in his aims, and another dose of amnesia arrives just in time to save our hero from an embarrassing predicament.
But who can guess the startling secret of Klaatu?
And I don't mean that he recorded the original version of Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.
But will he get the chance, with Johnny Blaze critically injured while trying to smash through a police roadblock?
It would appear this tale also features the first-ever appearance of Daimon Hellstrom, AKA the Son of Satan. A man who would never be critically injured by trying to smash through a police roadblock.
In yet more Yellow Submarine inspired shenanigans, our hero tries to liberate Zephyrland from its music-banned torment, by fighting its evil tyrant Virago.
Except she kicks his butt.
So much for that plan.
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24 comments:
Holy Moley! Just when I thought I was about at the end of buying marvel comics, I look up above and see that I bought at least five of these issues, including the $.35 annuals.
And, the reason I bought all three was the covers. All superb in their own right!!!
In this fanboy’s opinion, that Conan cover belongs in the pantheon of all-time great covers!
This Conan and Ghost Rider - only ones I ever bought!
CH
The original The Day the Earth Stood Still's big robot Gort's visor & beam looked like the inspiration for Cyclops. This green Gort looks nothing like the original. Maybe Marvel changed him, so readers didn't put two & two together!
Rich Buckler's got at least 2 covers, this month.
Namor sounds like Kevin Bacon's character, in Footloose. Doesn't Virago realize Shanna's already got dibs on "She-devil" !
That Hulk vs Thing rings a bell from Hulk Marvel Treasury Edition. Not terrific, the outcome being fudged (as usual.)
Phillip
I suppose Red Sonja ("She-devil with a sword") could take issue with both of them!
Phillip
Charlie, I had none of this month's Marvel books. I had several of DC's offerings but, for some reason, The GCD's images aren't currently loading for me. So, it looks like I'm going to have to wait until tomorrow to discover just how many I had.
Phillip, I suspect the lack of resemblance to the movie Gort was because Marvel had only bought the rights to adapt the original short story and not the movie.
Seconding Charlie's praise for that Conan Annual cover. A real standout, and I also dramatically illustrated (literally) how Barry's style had evolved over a few short years.
Those other two Annuals featured some great tales, the Spider-Man story I'd had in it's original presentation. Both had sharp covers by Romita, although the original painted version is tops imho...
Steve - your remark inspired me to look at Mikes Amazing World of Comics.
I had to take a peak at "June 1973" and - wow! - it reminded me of last weeks "open mic" question about which comics you chose when you needed a fix and you couldn't find your first choices!
We were going on vacation and I needed something to do in the back seat of that station wagon besides trying to break apart crayons that had melted together for my younger siblings!
What a great month it was for that predicament! Ole Charlie bagged:
- Boy Commandos #1
- Jonah Hex (like the only one I ever bought)
- Marvel Triple Action #13 with that venerable Sword Man cover!
- Marvel Tales "Her Name is Medusa!"
I agree that the Conan annual has a terrific cover but the contents are pretty good too. Obviously "The Tower Of The Elephant" is one of Robert E Howard's most famous Conan stories but I'm more familiar with the John Buscema/Alfredo Alcala version than the Barry Smith version. And "The Lair Of The Beast-Men" was my first ever encounter with Conan in Marvel UK's Savage Sword Of Conan weekly #2 in March 1975. Conan gets captured by the Beast-Men and is taken to their underground city where he starts an uprising among the human slaves so the plot is basically Planet Of The Apes meets Spartacus - except that Conan's uprising succeeds unlike poor old Spartacus and nobody says "I'm Conan!" "No, I'M Conan!"
I'm Conan, and so's my wife, Colin!
Steve, I have seen The Spook Who Sat By The Door. It was a low budget 'blaxploitation' flick about a black CIA agent (the play on words in the title was surely intentional) who - twist! - is actually a militant infiltrator, and uses what he learns about guerilla warfare techniques to recruit rebel yoof to the cause, and starts the revolution.
Tbh, the film is a bit clunky even by the standards of 1973, but all the same its a fairly uncompromising and astute take on post-68 black nationalism in Amerikkka - and with a soundtrack by Mwandishi Herbie Hancock! - making it kinda cool anyway. I believe it was filmed in Gary, Indiana, which some round these parts might find interesting.
So, Jungle Action #6 and Strange Tales #169... Interesting that two series which - unusually - both featured a black cast with no white characters should have begun the same month.
Its easy to have a dig at Dauntless Don McGregor, but his work on 'Panther's Rage' was more thought ful and stands up better than Len Wein's on Brother Voodoo, with its "de sound o' de drum"-type dialogue.
To be clear, I don't have a problem with trying to convey accents, but at least put a bit of effort into doing it properly - maybe try to find out how people actually speak in Haiti? But that was the general problem with Brother Voodoo, that there wasn't much substance to it, like Wein had maybe looked up an introductory paragraph on 'voodoo' in an encyclopedia (or probably just seen Live and Let Die) and winged it.
Not that I really noticed as a kid - back then I thought the couple issues I had were great. But it was Gene Colan's fantastic artwork that really sold the concept (a lot better than that Romita cover).
-sean
Wasn't the startling secret of Klaatu that they were really the Beatles, Steve?
-sean
Sean, I do always wonder how people convinced themselves that Klaatu were the Beatles. Every single member of the Beatles had a distinctive voice, and none of the voices on that Klaatu album sound anything like them.
Thanks for the Spook Who Sat By The Door info. I did wonder if there was intended to be some kind of racial subtext to the title.
Colin and Red, I do feel it's a shame that, by this point, Marvel's annuals were only giving us reprints, compared to the earlier annuals giving us new and special tales, such as the wedding of Reed and Sue, and Spidey's first battle with the Sinister Six.
Charlie, I've just checked with the Grand Comics Database and it turns out I had nine of DC's comics that bore that month's cover date. So, in my case, it's a victory of 9-0 for DC versus Marvel.
I also had two Charlton comics from that month.
People can convince themselves of the most bizarre things, Steve, no matter how far fetched. Surely living in modern Britain you must be aware of that?
I mean, today is the anniversary of Liz Truss becoming prime minister!
Yep - not a dream, not a hoax! - that really happened (although personally I supported the lettuce).
-sean
On the day Liz Truss became Prime-Minister I left a comment over at The Guardian saying that Boris was merely the warm-up act and now the genuine clowns had taken the stage but even I never imagined that Truss would crash the economy and resign after just 7 weeks in office!
And nobody realised that Liz Windsor would snuff it two days after Truss became PM either!
This may be heresey around these parts, but I prefer the Brother Voodoo, GHOST RIDER and MARVEL FEATURE covers to Barry’s CONAN ANNUAL. I know most fans are blown away by his art from this period (“Wow, lookit all those little details!”) but I just don’t find it all that striking. It would probably help if everything below the waterline had been colored in various shades of the same color — otherwise, that is the most crystal clear pond water I’ve ever seen, especially immediately after a bloody battle.
b.t.
Charlie - I suggest you consult Crivens:
https://kidr77.blogspot.com/2023/09/copyright-d.html
Phillip
Bt, it always bothers me that, on that Conan cover, there's no water diffraction evident. Shouldn't that make his feet appear to be to one side of where they actually are?
You mean refraction, Steve, not diffraction. It should make the bit of his leg that's under water look about 2/3rds as long as it really is. Just like a swimming pool looks 2/3rds as deep as it really is. All to do with how the speed of light in water is 2/3rds of the speed of light in air, making the refractive index of water 1.5
You're close re the feet. They would look a bit higher but not moved to the side and this would make the bottom bits of his legs look like they were bent outwards slightly.
Diffraction is to do with shining light through thin parallel slits and getting a stripy pattern on a wall behind it as the two semicircles of light radiating out from the slits interfere with each other, cancelling each other out in some places but being in perfect phase and doubling up in others.
Oh, and I agree with b.t. The water's needing a bit of colour to it. A bit of sky colour reflected in the4 would work for me.
I like a bit of heresy, b.t., and that's a good point about fans being easily impressed by superficial detail and rendering.
That King-Size Conan is still easily the best cover here though.
Funnily enough I recall Roy Thomas mentioning in an interview once that he first realized Barry Smith was an exceptional artist when he noticed an early(ish) Conan - sorry, I forget which one - had a panel with a figure refracted through water. Roy said at the time he'd never actually scene that done in comic book artwork before.
So I think its probably a deliberate design choice on that cover drawing, that its not immediately noticeable Conan in standing in water. Smith's work increasingly featured touches like that.
Whether it works or not is up to the viewer I guess.
-sean
*seen
Not 'scene'. Duh.
-sean
Sean, Barry drew a cool bit in CONAN 9 (I think — “The Garden of Fear”) of Conan underwater, with the rippling shadows from the water above playing over him. Not sure if that’s what you’re thinking of (or what Roy The Boy was talking about)…
b.t.
Thats the one, b.t.! Thats some impressive recall there, well done.
The long panel where Conan lifts his head above the waterline was reproduced with the interview. Roy basically said that he did a double take when the pages came in, as it was different to anything he'd seen before... and yet once he saw it, it seemed like such an obvious idea.
-sean
Ohhh ffs, that Conan cover is the best cover of the year probably.
For Sean's urgent attention - 8pm, BBC4:
"Dan Snow reveals how the Irish saved Britain from cultural oblivion in the Dark Ages."
Phillip
Dangermash, thanks for the diffraction/refraction differentiation. :)
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