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What would one find upon entering a zeitgeist-happy cinema in August 1984?
You'd find not a single movie I've ever seen but you would locate The Philadelphia Experiment, Cloak & Dagger, Red Dawn, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, The Woman in Red, Sheena, Tightrope and Bolero.
I really couldn't even hazard a guess as to which of those films would be the best.
But I'm guessing it's not Bolero.
The New Mutants hit their 18th issue and do it bearing a cover by the now almost-inescapable Bill Sienkiewicz.
Not only that but he draws the inside of it, as well.
From what I can gather, Danielle Moonstar's decided the Demon Bear that killed her parents is coming for her.
Elsewhere, Rachel Summers, still in the wrong time period, tries to contact Professor X.
Warlock tries to escape his father who appears to be called Magus. Which seems odd, bearing in mind the links between the other Marvel character called Warlock and his future self the Magus. Is this coincidence? Is a plan afoot in the head of writer Chris Claremont?
And that pesky Demon Bear does indeed show up and, having showed up, decides to critically wound Danielle.
A brand new book hits our spinner racks - and our eyeballs - as Amazing High Adventure is unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.
It would appear to centre around tales that draw upon real life history.
And, so, blessed with 52 pages at its disposal, it brings us such yarns as The Pike, Gold, Ambrose A Abernathy's Amazing Adventure Apparatus and Death Stroke, featuring such people as the Aztecs, Inuits, Russians and even Oliver Cromwell.
This time, it's demanding to know what would have happened if Uncle Ben had lived.
Presumably, our cast would never have been short of rice.
On a more tragic note, it seems that, while Uncle Ben survives this tale, Aunt May doesn't.
I can only assume her death spurs our hero to fight crime, rather than remaining the high-salaried entertainer he always wanted to be.
And it's unlucky for some - including them - as Roger Stern and Steve Ditko serve up an epic that, if its cover's to be believed, sees the world's mightiest team confront one hundred Hulks.
From what I can make out, they're clones, and the Fixer and Arnim Zola are mixed up in it all.
Is that the Fixer who Daredevil killed in his first appearance? Because, leaving aside that he's dead, getting mixed up in cloning Hulks doesn't really seem to lie within either that character's style or his skill set.
And that smashing is being done by the Hulk.
All I know about this one is it runs for three issues and is the brainchild of Scott Adams, John Byrne, Bill Mantlo, Mark Gruenwald and John Romita.
Also, I know that someone called The Chief Examiner is out to study the Hulk and his powers.
For what dread purpose, I cannot say.
That, therefore, will be me.
On his way to Earth, a Kymellian called Whitey's attacked by the evil Snarks, causing his ship to crash near the home of the Power family.
There, to save them from the deadly Snarks, Whitey bestows superpowers upon the family's four children.
It's all the fault of the Molecule Man who's done it to impress a woman.
Elsewhere, the X-Men decide to join forces with Magneto; in the process, allowing the Wasp to escape his clutches.
I do believe that, even as this is occurring, Galactus and Dr Doom are each concocting a scheme for dealing with the Beyonder.
It's credited to a combination of David Michelinie, George Lucas, Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz and Butch Guice and spans 64 pages.
It's another impossible-to-ignore cover from Bill Sienkiewicz, while Mark Bright draws the insides.
Apart from that, all I know of this issue is Alison lands a job in a music video which bears an uncanny resemblance to the one for Michael Jackson's Thriller.
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17 comments:
I haven't seen any of those films. I started watching Buckaroo Banzai once but I didn't last long. It was... not for me.
Not such a lucky bag of comics, for as Sean noted on Sunday this was the month that Bill Sienkiewicz started on The New Mutants, and gave us on of the best covers of all time. But it's not here.
Seriously, the NM run was one of the major highlights of my young comics reading life. It was bonkers! The stories were the usual rambling, soapy nonsense but the art made it seem interesting and fabulous. It's a shame it kind of petered out. It's nice when a comics run can have what feels like a proper conclusion, like Paul Smith on X-Men or Miller's two runs on DD. But I guess it's not always like that. It's an industry.
It reads slightly less impressively now [I took out a second mortgage to pick up the Artist Select edition, such was my love for this run] but still unlike anything before or since.
But it's not here so I can't write about it.
I have never seen any of these other comics before, but I really like the Dazzler cover.
What if Uncle Ben had lived's familiar, but I can't place it.
Regarding Avengers Annual, I think it's the Fixer, as in 'Mentallo & the Fixer' (the villain who invents weapons with wacky names, like 'Jericho Tubes', etc! )
In Questprobe, it sounds like the Hulk's taking his driving test, with the lead driving examiner!
Was Power Pack's writer an Edward Lear fan? Why not make the kids' opponent the Jabberwocky, instead?
The Hulk lifting one hundred & fifty billion tons is just plain silly. This makes Marvel without limits, just like DC (except Kryptonite & the colour yellow.) It's even dafter than Gladiator lifting the Baxter Building, one handed, above his head.(That being said, the Avengers' Graviton story's one of my all-time faves, and that had Wonder-man, the Vision, Thor & Iron Man catching Graviton's sky-island, and lobbing it a considerable distance! The hobgoblin of little minds...but that's a poor excuse. Let's say realistic limits can't be transcended, until a writer's got the reader invested in their story first. That point isn't the cover! )
'High Adventure' looks intriguing - but how to cram all that into 52 pages? Unless it's the Aztecs & Conquistadores this month, followed by the rest later (?)
Phillip
HEAR YE, HEAR YE!
RED DAWN is required viewing for republicans. It reenforces their belief that the more guns they own the better chance of surviving a russian invasion of the US.
It is one of the most banal examples of confirmation bias that exists for low-functioning republicans… about 95% of the party.
On the other hand, the issue of Playboy featuring BO DEREK from BOLERO was required viewing for Democrats.
I can announce that, by popular demand, I've now added the New Mutants to this post.
Fairly sure I had (and still have somewhere ) that AVENGERS ANNUAL — IIRC Ditko is inked by Byrne inside and the results look pretty good.
Also think I had that AMAZING HIGH ADVENTURE but besides that spiffy Sinkeweicz cover, I can recall eff-all about it.
I love the idea of BUCKAROO BANZAI more than the actuality of it. I once had a big discussion with a nerd friend of mine, analyzing its strengths and weaknesses and we concluded that if you “fixed” what was “wrong” with it, it would just be a standard sci-fi adventure movie and we’d rather have the baffling, sometimes irritating , pseudo-hipster New Wave Doc Savage movie just as it is, “flaws” and all.
b.t.
God bless you.
See? It’s a great cover!
Torvill & Dean famously won gold for Great Britain at the 1984 Winter Olympics, using Ravel's Bolero as the music for their ice-skating routine so it's a strange coincidence that a film called Bolero gets released a few months later. I saw The Philadelphia Experiment on TV many moons ago and it's based on a supposedly true incident from World War II when the US navy tried to make a warship invisible. As I recall, in the film the ship is thrown forward in time to 1984 and the crew has to cope with life in the future but I think they returned to their own time at the end of the film.
A comic starring Oliver Cromwell?? Sean won't be pleased ;)
I've just been reading the Wikipedia entry for The Philidelphia Experiment and only two of the ship's crew go forward in time to 1984 not the entire ship! The film's plot is rather more complicated than I remembered but it's been a long time since I watched it!
The lead story in Amazing High Adventures #1 - 'The Pike' - is about the English war criminal Oliver Cromwell sorting out the backward natives in Drogheda. Shame on Marvel for publishing dodgy ahistorical shite like that.
The cover of the month is obviously New Mutants #18, Steve. Bill Sienkiewicz wasn't an obvious choice for regular New Mutants artist (!) but I agree with Matthew - it was an interesting experiment, and he did a great job. Between that and Barry Windsor-Smith returning to the X-Men, suddenly I was reading comics by Chris Claremont again.
Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in...
-sean
I just re-read New Mutants #18, probably for the first time since it was originally published, and it still seems a waste of Billy the Sink's considerable talent. Claremont's by-the-numbers teen angst is at odds with the imaginative visuals. I'm guessing X numbers were huge at the time, and so it was probably a pretty lucrative gig.
DW
DW -
I mean, yeah... it's rambling and mediocre writing, but who was actually a decent imaginative enough writer at that point in time to match Billy's talents?
I think whatever comic he'd picked it would have been pretty dire: all he could do is make it much, much better than it would otherwise be. It was certainly the second most interesting newsstand comic at the time.
Matthew
Fair point, and I'm conscious of commenting with the benefit of decades of hindsight. Just prior to his commencing New Mutants, I wanted BS on Daredevil and would have loved him to illustrate Miller scripts. Otherwise, writers that were aiming slightly higher age-wise. Of the then Marvel writers, possible Roger Stern, Denny O'Neil or Walt Simonson. At DC, the big hairy one was already on his way, but obviously working on a much lower selling title.
But, agreed, not a great pool of mature writers waiting for such a collaborator.
DW
Matthew:
What did you think of the two Daredevil - related projects that Miller and Sinkeweicz eventually did do together a bit later — the ELEKTRA ASSASSIN limited series and the LOVE AND WAR graphic novel?
I seem to remember that when Miller and Mazzuchelli began working together on the “Born Again” stories, Miller tried to get Mazzuchelli to loosen up and take more chances with his style and storytelling by looking at Sinkewieicz’ NEW MUTANTS run.
b.t.
Sorry, I meant to address that comment/question to DW, not Matthew
b.t.
Oh, and Steve:
If that cover is anything to by, I think the correct answer to the question “What if Uncle Ben had lived?” is that he and JJ Jameson would wind up spitting at each other at very close range. The End.
b.t.
B.t. I liked both Love & War and Elektra Assasin, and have purchased both multiple times. I attended an early UKCAC (London based convention) at which Billy the Sink was a guest and he had a lot of the original Elektra pages with him (which, from memory, we were able to browse through fairly freely). I think Elektra has aged better artistically, but Love & War better for the storytelling. I tend to value the writing as much as the art, and I don’t think as highly of certain comics as perhaps others, who take more joy from the artist.
I do recall discussing with friends, at the time, that Mazzuchelli and Billy should swap titles, but this was before Mazzuchelli hit his stride. To their credit Marvell did publish Stray Toasters a few years later. Perhaps the fact he worked in ‘mainstream’ comics at all was an anomaly.
DW
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