Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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This week in 1974 produced great news for anyone who likes to guzzle that gas, because it was the week in which OPEC's five-month long oil embargo against the United States, Europe and Japan finally came to an end and we could all get back to the hard work of driving up the world's temperature.
Inside the comic, I do believe that, still stuck at giant size, Goliath finds himself in the Andes where he blunders across a hidden civilisation with advanced technology and no reluctance to use it.
And there's more because I do believe Hawkeye's in sensational solo action against Power Man, Swordsman and the Black Widow.
As the world has come to expect - and even demand, my knowledge of what's occurring in Dr Strange's strip is a little vague but I've good reason to suspect our hero's, once more, in combat with Baron Mordo. And that Dormammu's up to his elbows in it all.
Mostly, the Kingpin does, as he's always going on about how he's not the jolly fat man everyone thinks he is. Even though literally nobody has ever expressed an assumption that he's jolly.
However, here he is, giving Spider-Man a good time by swinging him round and round above his head.
But it's not such good news for Webhead once we enter the comic.
You see, our hero's just discovered Wilson Fisk is really the Brainwasher and that he's programmed George Stacy to commit a robbery most heinous.
How's Spidey ever going to be able to inflict the necessary levels of violence upon Stacy without upsetting his daughter Gwen?
Elsewhere, no sooner has Tony Stark finished his encounter with Kala Queen of the Underworld than he's travelling back in time to meet Cleopatra Queen of the Nile, thanks to the Machiavellian machinations of a miserly magician who's menacingly made up his mind to murder his monarch.
Methinks Stan the Man's decided Don Heck's strength is drawing glamorous women and is making sure the stories include them.
Needless to say, Cleo falls in love with Iron Man, despite him being encased from head to foot in armour.
Fresh from his defeat at the hands of Hercules, Thor returns to Asgard - only to discover he'll have to rescue the place from the treacherous Seidring who's used his newly-gained Odin Power to take the place over!
And we finish with a surprise, as, in addition to the book's usual strips, we're treated to Lee/Ditko thriller The Secret of the Universe in which a man sets out to discover just what lies beyond the cosmos and, of course, lives to regret it.
Seriously, if that doesn't make you want to part with six pence of your own money, I don't know what will. frankly, I'd happily part with eight pints of my own blood to get my hands on this book.
And, inside, things are just as awesome, as the Glob makes his first appearance when an escaped convict sinks into a bog and finds himself transformed into a mindless swamp monster with only one thing on his mindless mind.
Smooching with Betty Ross!
Meanwhile, on the streets of New York, the Organizer and his team of animal-themed henchmen are making decent people's lives a misery.
But how does this tie in with the fact that Foggy Nelson's decided he wants to run for the post of District Attorney?
Finally, this issue, the Frightful Four make their dastardly debut, as the Wingless Wizard, Sandman and Paste-Pot Pete team up with the enigmatic Madame Medusa in a bid to defeat the first family of comics.
Thus it is that, no sooner have Reed Richards and Sue Storm announced their engagement, than the villains invade the Baxter Building and start capturing their foes, one by one.
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27 comments:
'Frenzy in a Far Off Land' reminds me of Iron Man # 5's famous 'Frenzy in a Far Off Future'. I wonder which was the original? Iron Man # 5's 'Cerberus' might have inspired 'Skynet', in the Terminator movies!
Phillip
Steve:
‘Needless to say, Cleo falls in love with Iron Man, despite him being incased head to foot in armor.’
In one of the first Iron Man stories I ever read (a sequence from TALES OF SUSPENSE 73 and 74, reprinted in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES 28), at a time when Pepper Potts utterly despised her boss Tony Stark, dismissing him as a shallow, heartless, narcissistic playboy, she picked up a distress signal from Iron Man, frantically rushed to his aid, dragged him to her car and hauled him back to Stark Industries to get him an emergency re-charge. Between Stan Lee’s over-heated dialogue and Gene Colan’s depiction of their body language it sure seemed like there was more going on between the two than mere concern for a fellow S.I. employee. Hmm.
IIRC, Pepper’s warm feelings for Iron Man and loathing for Tony Stark even continued for awhile in the strip, like a cockeyed, somewhat counter-intuitive take on the Lois Lane/Superman/Clark Kent triangle.
I always liked Iron Man’s basic design, but I can’t say I ever found it particularly ‘sexy’. But who knows — maybe Cleopatra had the hots for Iron Man not ‘despite’ of his all-encompassing body armor but BECAUSE of it. Maybe there was something about that blunt, cold, bullet-headed, gleaming crimson and gold metallic sheath that made women go weak in the knees….
b.t.
Phillip:
The Avengers’ ‘Frenzy’ cover blurb pre-dated the Iron Man one by about two years, according to the GCD. One of my favorite uses of the word ‘frenzy’ in a blurb is ‘FRENZY— IN THE HOUSE OF FREAKS’ on the cover of MONSTERS UNLEASHED 8.
It’s a neat, exciting word, ‘frenzy’ — though if I may be so pedantic, it often promises rather more than it actually delivers (does Giant-Man look remotely frantic or in any way out of control on that cover?). It sure does lend itself to eye-catching, alliterative blurbs, though.
b.t.
b.t. - Thanks for clarifying it for me. I suppose Frenzy is good for alliteration, too!
As regards Cleo & Iron Man, 'Antony & Cleopatra' refers to Antony's
"Captain's heart/Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst"
That's almost like a plot summary for every Iron Man story until Jim Shooter stopped Iron Man's heart/armour from malfunctioning every issue, for dramatic tension!
Phillip
Oh my! That Glob cover is one of my first comics I ever bought as mentioned yesterday! CH 47 aka BJ
Damn Steve!
Imagine if you had ultimately learned to draw just like Don Heck!
Phillip, on the subject of frenzied alliteration -
https://peerlesspower.blogspot.com/2021/09/a-fearsome-forgathering-of-frivolous.html
Steve, Don Heck drew Cleopatra's nose too small (as all Asterix readers know, if her nose had been smaller it would have changed the course of history). And she was white, looking suspiciously modelled on Elizabeth Taylor from the contemporary - at the time of the Tales of Suspense original - film, which probably 'inspired' the story. It was politically incorrect monocultural appropriation gone mad!
Stan must have liked the film, because Cleopatra appeared again a little later, meeting Dr Strange in Strange Tales #124. Which by my calculation should have been reprinted in Avengers #11, but - checking the relevant post in this feature - Marvel UK seem to have skipped the story.
Perhaps they didn't want to disrupt the continuity by introducing the character before her first appearance. Although Iron Man didn't get a mention at all, so maybe it was just because the story wasn't any good. But then, why reprint the Iron Man story...?
-sean
On the subject of Dr Strange, Steve, I have to say this week's episode of the Mordo/Dormammu epic 'Beware...! Dormammu is Watching!' - is a bit disappointing. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but the run had set a high bar. Compared to previously, Doc tricking an arrogant Mordo wasn't exactly something we hadn't seen before.
Still, it picks up again next week in - spoiler alert - the Dark Dimension.
That story originally appeared in Strange Tales #139, which a quick look at Mike's newsstand reveals originally appeared the same month as FF #45, 'Among Ús Híde... The Inhumans!' Not a bad month!
But it does remind me that you're right, Attilan was hidden in the Andes back then. Whereas by FF #54 it was in the Himalayas. Was that ever explained? I mean in continuity terms, as opposed to Lee or Kirby just making a mistake or changing their mind(s).
-sean
Sean, Cleopatra was indeed white because she was Greek - she was the last of the Ptolemaic dynasty which had ruled Egypt for 300 years since Ptolemy, one of Alexander The Great's generals, had claimed Egypt for himself after Alexander's death.
But Cleo probably didn't look like Liz Taylor.
Or even Amanda Barrie, Colin.
Thats because the Ptolemaic dynasty began as a mix of ancient Macedonian Greek and Persian. So Cleopatra probably wouldn't have looked 'white' - from a modern point of view - even if you don't allow for further mixing with north African peoples over nearly 300 years in Egypt.
-sean
I doubt the Ptolemaic dynasty would have mixed with any north Africans.
FUN FACT: In the film 'Cleopatra' the role of Ptolemy, Cleo's half-brother and co-ruler, was played by the teenage Richard O' Sullivan, later famous as Robin Tripp in 'Man About The House' (adapted as 'Three's Company' on US TV for our American friends) and its' spin-off 'Robin's Nest'.
It's my understanding that the Ptolmeys often married each other, like the Pharos of old.
Interestingly (to me anyway) one could argue Egypt was ruled by various foreign empires or nations from the 5th century BCE, when the Persians conquered them until 1954 when the British left.
About 2300 years.
M.P.
Also, has anybody else noticed that Tana Nile was basically Elizabeth Taylor from another planet?
Hence the Egyptian name...
Very sexy alien but very bad at colonizing worlds.
That Kirby...
M.P.
At that time, if memory serves, there was no Wilson Fisk, there was just The Kingpin. Anyone know at what point did he finally receive a name?
Charlie preferred comics like when Spidey and Kingpin just slugged it out with maybe some far-flung Ruben Goldberg method of killing our heroes.
Way more preferable and enjoyable and fantastic than the eventual sadistic blood and guts that entered Comics and Netflix a few decades later.
I think Sean, Colin, Phil, the Actuary, et al. Were discussing a few weeks ago about how just endless sadism is really not all that enjoyable. Hence I quit watching Gotham because of the jokers incessant killing and torturing people episode after episode after episode…
B, It seems the Kingpins name Wilson Fisk, was first released in Daredevil issue 171 in 1982. I'm pretty surprised it was so late (if true) .
I believe thats correct, Paul. But thats Daredevils for you - Elektra didn't even turn up tíl #168!
You'd think she'd have been in the first issue...
-sean
*Daredevil
For some reason spellcheck changed that to Daredevils. Stupid spellcheck.
-sean
I don’t think Magneto had a proper (non super-villain) name until the 1980s either.
b.t.
Oh my God. I just went to the Magneto page on Wikipedia to see if I’m right about him not being given a proper name until the 1980s — and it’s page after page after page of hyper-detailed synopses, explaining everything he ever did, good or bad, every significant storyline , every company-wide crossover event, every alternate universe version of him, every one of his children, he was a villain, then more of an anti-hero, then an actual hero, then he was a villain again, then he was Xorn, then he almost killed Kitty, etc etc etc!
Obviously I didn’t actually read all of it, but it took forever just to scroll through it all. And I STILL don’t know when he was first christened with a first and last name!
b.t.
Yeah, some of those wiki 'fictional character biographies' - with decades of storyline s boiled down into the most tedious serviceable prose imaginable - are mad, b.t.
I remember looking up Betsy Braddock once, just to check how a posh English woman became an east Asian mutant ninja. What a life story. Only in comics!
Btw, my suspicion would be you're right about Magneto only getting a proper name in the 80s. Probably around the time of X-Men #150 and 'God Loves, Man Kills', when it first turned out he was a sort of mutant Antifa activist.
Although I thought his name was Erik Lehnsherr but it seems from his wiki page that was an alias. So what would I know?
-sean
Ben Grimm only became Jewish in more recent times too. I'm pretty sure he wasn't originally Jewish, was he?
I've been watching the famous episode 'The Blood Donor' from 'Hancock' in 1961 on YouTube. I've never seen the full episode before but the most famous line "A pint?? That's very nearly an armful" was removed - by YouTube for copyright reasons according to the person who uploaded the episode, answering numerous queries in the comments section. How disappointing - I was looking forward to hearing one of the most iconic lines ever in British comedy.
Yes, it wasn't made overtly clear Ben Grimm was Jewish for a long time, Colin, tíl the early twenty first century. In FF vol3 #56 apparently (I looked it up).
But his name always suggested it imo. As did the fact that his creator - the artist formerly known as Ya'akov Kurtzberg - was often identified with him.
-sean
Regarding those Marvel, or Wikipedia, sites where they discuss the characters, I have given up reading them. Sooo much tedius details covering 5+ decades when I only know and am emotionally connected to the first 10 years. Given the various universes and reboots and etc. I just come to you guys to get the bottom line from the Faithful True Believers!!!
CH aka BJ
I would echo, ah, whoever that was. I would assume it's Charlie.
For me the Marvel Universe ended at some point in the '90s'.
Along with any shred of lingering faith in humanity.
What they're doing now, I don't wanna know about it!
M.P.
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