Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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What's this that stands before us?
Is it the Veil of History?
Let us sweep it aside and discover just what it conceals!
It's a dramatic cover that promises broken teeth all round but, before we get to that epic clash, we must visit Conan the barbarian.
And it's bad news for the brawler, as he's been tied to a stake and is about to be fed to a giant crocodile that's been terrorising a seaside town for years.
Of course, it's even worse news for the crocodile because it means it's about to get totalled by Conan the barbarian.
Then, the Avengers get to fight the Squadron Supreme.
Or, at least, some of them, before they manage to convince those some of them that they too are good guys and that the Squadron's world is in mortal peril!
And Iron Fist and Radion manage to inflict yet more damage on the Post Office Tower before the neon-fingered knucklemeister manages to transform his foe back into a normal human being.
As we can all see from that cover, the Hulk's having a return match with the Inhumans. I do particularly like the way he takes out Quicksilver by tapping him with his fingertips.
Except, as far as I'm aware, the Inhumans are nowhere in sight in the Hulk's strip.
Instead, he's still battling the Cobalt Man who explodes at the tale's climax, joining a healthy list of characters who've experienced an unscheduled violent self-disassembly event during encounters with the Hulk.
In no mood to fly apart is Daredevil who's just worked out that Death's Head is none other than Karen Page's dad!
And the Fantastic Four are prisoners of Maximus the Mad - and the pesky tyrant has plans to gain control of all humankind!
Now our heroes are in trouble because the giant brains have escaped!
Even if they do look like giant maggots.
Anyway, it would appear it's curtains for those giant brains, as Jason, Alexander and their allies set about trashing their subterranean base.
Next, Shanna and Ka-Zar defeat the Red Wizard who turns out not to be a Wizard at all and has been using technology to fake having magic powers. Not to mention using robot dinosaurs. Methinks a nod towards The Wizard of Oz is occurring.
After that, the Black Panther discovers that All Our Past Decades Have Seen Revolutions!
More importantly, Venomm makes a bid to break out of jail.
And it appears it's going to be successful!
Iron Fist is in England. Dracula is in America. It's like some sort of super-powered foreign exchange programme.
Exactly what Drac's up to in the States, I'm not at all clear about but I suspect he may have arrived in search of - not paradise - but Dr Sun.
Elsewhere, as agreed, Moon Knight delivers Jack Russell to the Committee but then has a change of heart and helps his captive thwart the evil organisation.
And the Man-Thing's up to something or other in a tale called The Survivors!
Politics comes to the Spider-World, as the Disruptor shows us all how to do democracy the direct way and Mary Jane reveals she votes for candidates purely on the grounds of how dishy they are.
Definitely not dishy is Umar the Unstoppable who decides to attack Dr Strange, while Mother Earth is warning Clea about something or other.
I do believe this week's double-page pin-up features the Man-Thing vs the Werewolf by Night
In a rather more technological vein, Iron Man's still battling the Mandarin, in an episode ominously titled Unmasked!
And, in the Thing's strip the Miracle Man is back and again causing trouble for Wyatt Wingfoot's tribe. With opposition on that level, it looks like the help of a Ghost Rider shall be required.
And, when it comes to Thor's strip, our hero manages to convince his friends that Loki has swapped bodies with him and has to be stopped. However, Neal Adams doesn't appear to have arrived yet.
And even the villain's lackey, the Changeling, is starting to have doubts about the wisdom of his plan to destroy the planet Earth.
Following that, as the cover makes clear, Subby's having problems with the Plunderer.
Captain America's up to something with an agent in a communist land and, while he's at it, has time to help destroy that land's brand new secret death-ray thing.
After that, we encounter a short tale in which a pre-X-Men Charles Xavier travels to Washington, in a bid to convince the FBI that not all mutants are bad.
And Captain Marvel's assailed by a number of his old foes.
Including Rick Jones!
But it turns out to be a trick by the Super Skrull, on behalf of his mysterious boss.
But who could that boss be?
Who?
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3 comments:
It was announced in this week's comics that the FF will be moving to Titans! With X-Men moving the other way into MWOM.
As I said on PPoB at the weekend, this feels like a really weird decision to me. Unless I was lucky enough to be bought both MWOM and Titans each week, I'd be mightily pissed off to see a strip that I was heavily invested in disappear from my comic.
So why did they do it? Did they think that FF was too good to be playing second fiddle to Hulk in MWOM and that Titans needed a proper headline act? Were Hulk, Spider-Man, Avengers and FF seen as the big four (at least in the U.K.), so putting them all in different comics would maximise sales?
Or was it because the FF strip was starting to fall behind others and needed accelerating by moving into a landscape magazine that would enable it to get through its reprints at double pace?
Or, along the same lines, because the X-Men strip, despite starting late in U.K., was in danger of catching up and overtaking other strips too quickly? As a result of all those reprints roughly around X-Men #60-90 and of (maybe) the US version being printed on a bimonthly basis at times? In which case, moving it form landscape format to portrait would mean it got through reprints at half the rate.
Or was it the first step of some masterplan for merging or splitting the U.K. comics. No - I don't believe that. Mergers and new comics all seemed pretty planless at Marvel UK with FF and Avengers each appearing in at least four different comics in the space of about a year.
dangermash - The FF was often swapped about. In Super Spider-man & CB, at first, the FF was in the line-up - then it got canned, replaced by Thor. Conversely, in MWOM, Captain Marvel - doing well, in my eyes - was ditched, in favour of the FF (not in a particularly strong period, either! ) Admittedly, some 'The Complete Fantastic Four' jiggery-pokery was also going on, at that time. Your comments regarding reader reactions are spot-on. My brother - being a big Marvell fan - disgusted at CM being ditched, largely lost interest in MWOM, after that. But, I suppose, the Marvel Revolution's uneasy birth pangs - in the not too distant future - were probably already being planned by Marvel UK, by then, so they probably couldn't give a toss!
Phillip
DM, Phillip, Steve, et al…. Please help me understand again why Marvel UK simply didn’t just reprint the entire comic in a monthly format like in the United States with Marvel tales or Marvel’s greatest comics or Marvel triple action, etc.?
And because Charlie is a curious, dude, were those monthly American reprint of Spider-Man the fantastic for the avengers available in the UK while they were being reprinted in the Comics above?
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