Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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The power of Glam once more conquered the UK singles chart, this week in 1974, as Gary Glitter seized the summit, with his track Always Yours, making it his third and final UK Number One. I must declare I have no memory of it. Nor do I recall ever having heard it on the radio - not even before certain things came to light about its singer.
There was, however, no change at the pinnacle of the UK album chart, with David Bowie's Diamond Dogs retaining the top spot it already held.
Elsewhere, the Avengers are still making a meal of defeating the alien Ultroids. And now things are serious because the extraterrestrial nogoodniks have kidnapped a burgomeister!
Dr Strange, meanwhile, is in a Dimension of Death and having to survive various traps created by Umar the Unstoppable.
But how can even the Hulk hope to defeat a lump of sludge?
Thinking about it, I can't remember how he does it but I do recall it all ends with the muck monster reduced to a load of slugs that, in the final panel, begin to make their way back towards each other.
Thinking about it even more, doesn't the Glob fall into an electrical substation and get blown to pieces? Possibly, from the very crane that is pictured on the front cover?
When it comes to Daredevil, I think this is the one in which the Plunderer gets his hands on the other half of the medallion that was given to him and Ka-Zar when they were boys, and that enables him to create a gun which makes things melt or disintegrate or just go bendy in people's hands.
And, finally, the Fantastic Three are still trying to stop the Frightful Four and their deadly new ally the Thing.
Spider-Man remains convinced he's been reduced to the size of an insect and trapped in a model amusement park.
However, it's not long before he realises he's actually normal sized and in a real amusement park.
But that can only be bad news for Mysterio and the control tower he occupies at its centre.
The Black Widow and Boris are still in America and still trying to kill the Crimson Dynamo.
But they won't succeed if Iron Man has his way.
Nor if the Crimson Dynamo has his.
Sadly, I suspect that neither of those two will have his way.
Thor, meanwhile, is successfully defeating Ego the living planet and gaining the cooperation of the Rigel Colonizers while, on Earth, Jane Foster's offered a new job - as a school teacher for the High Evolutionary's New Men.
And, finally, we get a two-page look at Peter Parker's pad, as drawn by Larry Lieber.
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23 comments:
Steve, you’re absolutely correct that the Master of Kung Fu series fell into an early rut of stories where Shang-chi is out and about minding his own business when suddenly, assassins attack — rinse and repeat. In this story, at least the assassins weren’t sent by Fu Manchu, but by a mobbed-up casino owner hoping to curry favor with Fu. But it was still a formula and it was starting to wear thin.
Fun fact: the evil casino owner was drawn to look like Paul Gulacy’s favorite comics artist Jaunty Jim Steranko.
b.t.
b.t.-
Who wouldn't want to be immortalized as the model for a villain in comics?
I would!
And we've all seen that done many times. That Justin Hammer guy from Iron Man was Peter Cushing, Dracula was Jack Palance...etc. My favorite was when an artist drew Norman Osborn as looking like James Caan, one of my all-time favorite actors. It was in a Hawkeye comic, I think.
It actually made me like Norman Osborn!
...in that issue, anyway.
M.P.
Anon commends the UK soccer teams for leaving the door open for others! Throw up and never did Charlie and his Mrs. feel more excited than walking through the central Plaza in Munich yesterday with potentially inebriated and fired up fans from Slovenia on the left and Serbia on the right, lol. It’s not like those two groups of people have ever had trouble getting along?
“Though Charlie and his missus…”.
‘Throw up and never did Charlie and his Mrs. feel more excited’ may be my favorite predictive text malfunction ever :D
b.t.
M.P.:
One of my favorite instances of an artist ‘casting’ a famous actor as a comics character was in LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT 52 and 53 where artist Arthur Ranson drew Bruce Wayne to look like Ron Ely. I would never in a million years have thought of the Tarzan / Doc Savage actor playing Bruce Wayne / Batman but it kinda worked.
Jim ‘Demmy Marston’ Steranko himself based SHIELD agent Clay Quartermain on Burt Lancaster.
And of course Gulacy had a habit of using various actors’ likenesses as supporting characters in MOKF, including David Carradine as Lu Sun, Sean Connery as Clive Reston, Marlon Brando as James Larner etc. As the series progressed, Shang-chi looked more and more like Bruce Lee, and by the end of Gulacy’s run, Fu Manchu had become a dead ringer for Christopher Lee. Which may have been a bit on-the-nose, but was also AWESOME.
b.t.
b.t. - Also in Master of Kung Fu, I think Gulacy based Juliette (the Cat's girlfriend) on Marlene Dietrich!
http://thegreatcomicbookheroes.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-claws-of-cat-master-of-kung-fu-38.html
Quartermain as Lancaster never occurred to me - I'll have to check it out.
And, as M.P. pointed out to me long ago, Hogun the Grim is Charles Bronson.
Phillip
And in Gulacy's Black Widow, Bishop is Michael Caine, and Langely is Humphrey Bogart:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjodiuZBGDLpYx3CCN4F3i-VIbh8ozjm89I4e0UxFCyveh6ysaU4o-94X3gKEFpPx1Oid_SEcmJ-ohs1Fh34N9MrhuDukxV6rIO_JDkvL0WR4pJDOYgv4RioTfqJF7Ej2WctvVpDaLx/s1600/RCO022_1487580533.JPG
Phillip
What’s really sort of culture interesting is I find no evidence of comic culture in Germany unlike Frqnce, UK, and USA which have a long history.
But I defer to you gents on this, notably the UK crew and particularly Sean who seems to know the European comic scene par excellence!
B.t. All they eat here in Munich is deep-fried or roasted pork shoulders (schweine haxe) and drink bier… pork and bier beginning at sun up! My brain cells are starting to go dormant!
Phillip:
Those are good examples of Gulacy’s various ‘Special Guest Stars’. He also had Jimi Hendrix trading sword blows and philosophical barbs with Kirk Douglas (while Woody Allen did his Neurotic Nebbish schtick from the sidelines) in the SABRE graphic novel, and gave James Coburn the starring role in a 3-part horror serial in EERIE 103-105 , where he briefly ran into a photo-swipe of Kevin McCarthy (the actor, not the former Speaker of the House). Sydney Greenstreet and David Niven also turned up as characters in Gulacy’s MOKF run. I’m sure I’m forgetting some…
b.t.
b.t. - You've seen my hand, and raised it! As regards Sydney Greenstreet characters, Midas in Iron Man, has Greenstreet's turn of phrase (Maltese Falcon-wise). Also, in Spidey, Rupert Dockery (sounds almost like Rupert Murdoch), owner of the Daily Globe, resembles Mr. Greenstreet, too. The Kingpin perhaps...?
Regarding other lookalikes, in the Warriors Three, Fandral is Errol Flynn, and Volstagg is Falstaff (another fictional character - so quite "meta" for the 70s!)
Phillip
I seem to recall a character based on Croucho Marx that appeared in MOKF as well. Not sure if that was under Gulacy's run though.
Good catch, Paul. You’re right, that wasn’t Gulacy, it was Keith Pollard in GIANT-SIZE MASTER OF KUNG FU 4 (and a couple issues of the regular book too, IIRC).
Gulacy based the look of Mordillo’s murderous robot buddy Brynocki on the famous Bob’s Big Boy mascot.
I see Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster in Gene Colan’s depiction of Happy Hogan as the Freak in TALES OF SUSPENSE.
Don’t anybody bring up Alex Ross’ MARVELS or we’ll be here all day…
b.t.
To bring the game full circle, Steranko’s Marlowe/Spade pastiche gumshoe Chandler was an idealized self-portrait. The heroes on his painted covers for Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark paperbacks and for the first issue of the NICK FURY VS. SHIELD comics mini-series also looked familiar.
b.t.
Not only is it the solstice, but it's a full moon tonight too.
Beannachtaí ghrianstad an tsamhraidh duit, a Steve.
And everyone else too, as we move into the darkening half of the year.
Its a bit surprising that an editor never put a stop to Paul Gulacy putting likenesses into his work. A reference to Jaunty Jim Steranko is one thing, but more generally... well, with some of the characters he drew it might have been hard to convince a lawyer that any resemblance to persons living or dead was entirely coincidental.
Pretty sure I've read that back in the mid-70s Marvel specifically told artists to avoid likenesses in their film adaptations, like Planet of the Apes, because even though they had a licence from the studio there was no agreement in place with Charlton Heston or whoever.
I guess back then no-one paid much attention to what went on in comics generally, and it wasn't til much later that a celeb like Samuel Jackson might notice, say, the rebooted Nick Fury in the Ultimates and consider that maybe Marvel owed him a fee or something..
-sean
sean:
I think the POTA thing was a bit of a wake-up call when it came to using actors’ actual likenesses. IIRC, Marvel just assumed they could draw Taylor as looking like Charlton Heston, so George Tuska drew him that way, and when the pages were submitted for approval to Fox’s licensing people, they were told all the Taylor faces needed to be re-drawn to look less like Heston. Apparently this happened at the very last minute so John Romita had to re-draw all the Taylor faces because they didn’t have time to send the pages to for Tuska to fix.
(Sidebar: I’ve sometimes wondered if Tuska’s original Taylor heads REALLY looked that much like Heston, or if the person in Fox’s licensing department was just being extra-cautious. But anyhow…)
Going forward, Marvel made sure that none of the characters in the other APES
adaptations looked like their filmic counterparts. No James Franciscus, no Bradford Dillman, no Ricardo Montalban, etc.
Presumably this general guideline was in place for the LOGAN’S RUN adaptation too, but y’know, I noticed there were a few drawings in the STAR WARS adaptations that were clearly based on photos of Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford. Come to think of it, there are tons of photo-swipes in the BLADE RUNNER adaptation too. And the STAR TREK movie adaptations. Etc. Maybe the Marvel lawyers had started getting approvals to use likenesses up-front (and in writing) at that point?
Nowadays I’m sure everyone’s legal departments would be all over blatant appropriations of actors’ likenesses, like those in Gulacy’s MOKF. Wasn’t there a lawsuit because Jackson Guice had used some famous pop singer’s likeness on a cover? And I remember hearing something about KINGDOM COME— Jill Thompson had apparently posed for photo reference for one of the characters, someone in Editorial recognized her and demanded that Alex Ross get a signed waiver from Thompson giving DC the right to use her image. Strangely, that same editor apparently didn’t notice that Ross made all the “Old Bruce Wayne” images look exactly like Gregory Peck (I don’t think Peck’s estate ever sued).
b.t.
Well, I think George Lucas really changed merchandising, b.t.
By the 1980s - the era of Al Williamson doing Empire Strikes Back and Bladerunner - comic book adaptations became standard for marketing on a film's release (rather than an afterthought following success) and actors were more likely to be already signed up to all that stuff as part of their contract.
I suspect you're right about any likenesses by George Tuska probably not being that close to start with.
-sean
In early issues of Marvelman, Leach had clearly based MM/Mike Moran on Paul Newman, Liz Moran on Audrey Hepburn and Bates on Jon Finch. He was pretty open about it. It was lucky it never led to any legal issues for Miracleman, at some future point…
DW
Early chapter rather than issue
DW-
Paul Newman? Yeah, maybe...
I always wondered if the Lee/Kirby version of the Red Skull wasn't at least partly inspired by Moe Howard of the Three Stooges. Without the bowl haircut, obviously.
The same temperament, the nutty schemes, the same problem with bungling minions...
M.P.
...okay, one thing I just remembered. Back during Moore's run on Swamp Thing, Abigail Arcane's husband Matthew Cable, ex-FBI agent and alcohol enthusiast, got possessed by the ghost of Abigail's dead uncle, Anton Arcane.
The possessed Matt Cable was drawn as a dead ringer for Ted Bundy. Complete with that big shit-eating grin he had.
It made an already creepy story even more so.
M.P.
I never realized the Arcane-possessed Matt Cable was drawn to look like Ted Buddy. Gross.
That reminds me that Bissette and Totleben also put the face of former Secretary of State Alexander Haig (who infamously declared he was ‘in control’ of the White House after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan) on SWAMP THING villain General Avery Sunderland.
b.t.
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