Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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I remember being on holiday, this week in 1976, merrily hoovering up comics on the streets of Blackpool, in order to import them to the fair city of Sheffield.
But, when it came to Marvel UK, just what were the comics I was hoovering up?
Good gravy above! It was these precious gems!
This time, it's Magneto who has the honour of duping the world's most dupable man.
And, of course, it all leads to war with the surface dwellers!
The week's Nick Fury story reveals that SHIELD Agent John Bronson is secretly the Supreme Hydra! I think we can assume the colonel isn't going to put up with that for long.
Meanwhile, Johnny Blaze accepts an offer to ride in a Las Vegas demolition derby.
Captain America's still battling the Red Skull's Fourth Sleeper which now threatens a military base. However, the star-spangled superstar has a magic tuning fork that can potentially stop the unstoppable machine.
Finally, the Sub-Mariner takes the Helmet of Power back to Atlantis. Whereupon, it transforms into the deadly Serpent Crown!
That's quite a dramatic cover.
I do believe it's by Ron Wilson.
Admittedly, I only know that because the Grand Comics Database tells me it is.
Regardless, in this book, Brutus learns that Malagueña and Gilbert survived his attack.
Jason and Alexander, meanwhile, encounter the mysterious Keeper of the Light!
Far away from that, and in another time period entirely, Ka-Zar's having trouble in the city of Tordon-Na. Sadly, I can be no more specific about it than that.
The Man-Thing, meanwhile, is futilely attacked by Spanish conquistadors, despite being in modern-day Florida.
But, obviously, the highlight of this issue is our encounter with Grottu, King of the Insects, a radiation-mutated giant ant that decides it would be absolutely spiffing to conquer the planet. This is, of course, a Lee/Kirby short-form classic.
Finally, Marvel's adaptation of the original Planet of the Apes movie sees the wounded Taylor being treated in an ape hospital - and coming to the attention of one Dr Zira...
I think we can all surmise that this one in which the Hulk must battle his own shadow.
Or, at least, the alien warlord Kaa masquerading as it. You'd struggle to call this tale a classic but I do have a soft spot for it.
When it comes to the Avengers, the Skrull Emperor orders Captain Marvel to build an Omni-Wave Projector for him and says he'll crush the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver beneath a pile of furry things if he doesn't.
Conan, meanwhile, avoids being eaten by rats but then has a bunch of wolves to contend with!
And Brother Brimstone kills the actor who plays him on television, dragging Daredevil into a full-blown murder mystery.
I believe it was in this Spider-Man tale that I first discovered you can tell Hollywood movie fake dust from real dust by licking it to see if it tastes like soap.
This is a piece of knowledge that has, so far, not yet proven to be at all useful to me in my life.
However, of more concern is that the villain has blown up our hero's flat - and his girlfriend with it!
Fortunately, Mary Jane Watson will live to dance another day.
But will the Goblin, after pulling a stunt like that?
Elsewhere, Iron Man must put a stop to Midas' plans to destroy Tony Stark. I suspect Madame Masque will prove to be an unlikely ally for the tycoon.
In the Savage Land, the Thing is looking into unusual volcanic activity that could threaten mankind's survival and, along the way, encounters a pterodactyl, an allosaurus, a Ka-Zar and a Zabu.
But it looks like game over for Thor because Hela's decided to pop his clogs for him.
But, wait. Odin has a plan and sends him back to Earth, as Don Blake, in the hope that the goddess of death will not be able to find him there.
And it's good news for us all because Doctor Strange finally defeats Dracula and cures himself and Wong of their recent bout of vampirism!
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55 comments:
Steve, I seem to remember reading on a blog that the POTA #97 cover was drawn by Jeff Aclin with inks by Tom Palmer .
Found the Facebook page confirming Jeff Aclin as the cover artist.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/175949599279730/posts/874268816114468/
PHILLIP - congratulations on busting through the fifty-comment threshold on SDC SYB! Rumor has it that Steve sends out a no prize via certified mail! Enjoy!
That FF with Subby (103 or so?) was one of my first spinner rack purchases! Thanks for the memories STEVE!
And because I always thought submariner and torch were two sides of the same coin, surely Marvel had the two team up to attack the fantastic four or Atlantis?
JP
Thanks for the Jeff Aclin info, McScotty. :)
Joe - I'm expecting Steve's No Prize any minute!
Phillip
Phillip, I hereby award you an official Steve Does Comics No-Prize. Don't forget to keep it in a safe place. It could be valuable one day.
Steve - I'll treasure it! I've made a space between the nick-nacks on the mantelpiece!
Phillip
Whoever was in charge of designing the UK covers really struggled to compose effective compositions for the landscape format — they were fairly dreadful for a good long while, but I think they finally got a handle on it. The SUPER SPIDER-MAN WITH THE SUPER-HERORES and TITANS covers have been pretty darn good the past few months.
Phillip, I keep all my No-Prizes in a special binder that also holds all the Marvel Value Stamps that I didn’t cut out.
Steve, “Star-spangled Superstar” may be a bit “obvious” (I’m sorry to say it’s certainly no “Puce-panted Powerhouse”) but I surely do appreciate you tossing us ‘Lliteration Lovers a bone. :)
b.t.
Mercifully Charlie has no No-Prizes. Thus he is relieved of the awesome responsibility of where to store them!
However, and there must be one otherwise why write this, Charlie does have his Marvel Stamps paperclipped together in a cardboard cigar box (Dutchman if you must know this detail) from when he laid them inside that box 50 years ago!
I seem to recall the box coming from my Hungarian grandparents house in East Chicago, In. However, and there must be one otherwise why write this, my grandfather didn’t smoke cigars. I dont recall my grandmother smoking them either.
'Alliteration afficionados' would have been better, b.t...
-sean
COLIN - you know what? If you had only waited a few weeks to ask about DUETS, I could have coughed up some Dolly Parton with Kenny Rogers or Kris Kistoferson or maybe even Johnny Cash!!!
Our TVs and Radios have been paying homage and giving her lots of air time. Jas the UK been doing same?
Why, yes it would :D
b.t.
I don’t think I had any of these weeklies. I was also on holiday (in Cornwall, rather than Blackpool) where they had these strange Marvel comics that were smaller, mostly only featured a single character, and had coloured internal pages. Like Steve I purchased several of these strange publications, which I assumed were reprints of the proper black and white originals.
If I had have bought The Titans I probably wouldn’t have realised that this was the final Jack Kirby Fantastic Four story (ignoring later mash-ups). What a run. If those weird, smaller comics included a complete run of just the Fantastic Four stories from MWOM and The Titans, that would be a great run!
DW
JC, Dolly Parton's death received a lot of coverage over here too.
DW, I too discovered US Marvel comics during the summer of '76 but I found mine while on a school day-trip to Bristol Zoo in July.
Phillip, do you remember the Space: 1999 ice lolly?
Namor was attacking the surface dwellers this week in '76, was he? What a surprise.
The amount of times he had a go at New York, you'd think the US would have responded more forcefully. President Ford should have at least changed the name of the Atlantic to the American Ocean. That would have shown him.
-sean
Colin - No, strangely. It's Haunted Houses, Orange Dragons, and Red Devils, that stick in my mind, from that era.
Phillip
For those UK readers interested in ice lolly nostalgia - count me in! - Jonny Trunk's new little book 'Fancy An Ice Cream?' is a must.
It brought back deeply suppressed childhood memories.
Good ones, I might add.
No love for FAB, Zoom or Funny Feet, Phillip?
The King of Norway has died aged 89 and the new king is 53, younger than all of us SDC regulars.
Colin - I didn't have a FAB, until about 5 years ago (from Iceland! ) A tv show about Lyons Maid vs Walls said FAB was a lolly designed for girls! Who'd have thunk it? I've never had a Funny Feet, even to this day. Plenty of love for Zoom, and the other rocket lolly (whose name slips my mind! )
Phillip
Gentlemen!
This will be the most important news of the weekend!
Mikey D of Beastie Boys has a new album out! It is the first solo work from a Beastie Boys since the death of Adam Yauch in 2012 January of cancer.
And at 95 William Shatner has a new album out too!!! I heard a clip of one of the songs and it sounds very, very interesting to those of us who may be older.
You know, with the Christmas commercials playing already I have to wonder if there are any Christmas songs creeping up the charts?
Charlie, ever interested in culture, has taken a look at “fancy an ice cream? A collection of vintage ice lolly wrappers”
So my question is, was it much more customary for you, Britz to buy an ice cream treat at hawk at a store or off of an ice cream truck?
Actually, did you have ice cream trucks? Or was it an American thing?. I never saw an ice cream truck in France, or Germany… Although I did see meat trucks and cheese trucks, lol, coming to the distant and tiny villages where there were no grocery stores.
I can say, from my experience, we rarely bought ice cream creations from the trucks or ice cream stores because it was simply too expensive. Nor did we really buy the creations at the grocery stores because they were still too expensive. Rather, we always got a half a gallon of Neapolitan or a half a gallon of Rocky Road or such and spooned it out into a cone or a bowl at home.
* Was it more customary for you British folks to ad-hoc buy a lolly (creation) , than to buy a half gallon of ice cream at the grocery store?
JC, mince pies will be available in my local Tesco starting around mid-September : )
Phillip, my local Tesco starting selling ice lollies about six months ago but whenever I'm in the store it completely slips my mind to go and investigate which varieties they've got. I must remember next time!
Joe - Usually ice-creams from corner shops. However, ice-cream vans (heralded by the sound of 'Greensleeves' ) always drove around 1970s housing estates, hawking their wares! That tune, associated with ice-cream vans, is very much a part of 70s UK national culture!
Phillip
JC, we do indeed have ice-cream trucks but we call them ice-cream VANS.
And ice-cream creations/lollies from both vans and shops were very popular over here but ice-cream sold in tubs (not half a gallon because we use metric) is popular too.
Phillip, Greensleeves is still being used by ice-cream vans - I've heard the tune multiple times over the summer!
In the 1960s to late 1970s ( at least) as Phillip notes Ice cream vans were very common. Most of the vans where I used to live sold ice cream, ice lollies, bread, milk, sweets, bubblegum cards , cigarettes etc One van even sold comics ( see link to my blog for what a UK ice cream van looked like) Small corner shops also sold ice cream/lollies etc
So in general, at that time kids tended to get ice lollies and ice cream ( Nuggets, Sponges, Oysters, cones etc) from the ice cream van. Desert type ice cream ( mousses, Artic rolls , ice cream cakes etc,) we got from shops and supermarkets .
https://twthen.blogspot.com/search/label/Sweet%20times?m=1
Well that is something! Obviously, I cannot speak for all Americans, but I’m curious about my fellow Americans like Red, BT, and MP.
I rarely had an ice cream from an ice cream truck. My parents were fairly frugal and I sure wasn’t going to trade my comic book money for an ice cream cone That would only last about 30 seconds.
But in our house and all my relatives house, we always could count on a half gallon of ice cream, usually Neapolitan, vanilla, strawberry or chocolate. And often times they had the wafer cones as well.
Granted, my Hungarian grandmother would not get the half gallon but a quart sized ice cream from the corner grocery store lol.
Also, in the late 60s it seemed like frozen bananas that had been coated in Hershey’s chocolate and frosty flakes cereal were the FAD. Everyone’s mom was making them.(See what I did there, Phillip :)
Late 60s fads & crazes, Joe?
Phillip
Yeppir!!!
Colin - Greensleeves still on the ice-cream van playlist? Just goes to show what a quiet life I must lead!
Phillip
Charlie Joe:
We must be Brothers From Other Mothers — we only got to indulge in treats from the ice cream truck once in a blue moon. That square-ish half-gallon carton of Neopolitan ice cream from the grocery store was what we usually had too.
The Thrifty Drugstore chain had an ice cream freezer in the front of their stores— 5 cents a scoop in a wafer cone. If Mom was feeling generous, she’d let us get TWO scoops on the way out of the store — I’d always get one scoop of stawberry and one scoop of chocolate.
b.t.
Yep BT - brothers from anutha mutha… lol. Funny thing was, all the kids went to the Truck just to see what was in offer. And only the preordained few ever got to buy something. But even then at 8 or so years old I could sense the prices were comparatively high.
UK gents - I only remember ice cream being on offer. There was nothing else in that truck about the size of a small UPS delivery vehicle but ice cream.
And as an adult, with little kids, I used to get chaffed when that thing would park on our little cul-de-sac, which opened up into a park, tennis courts a small soccer field for kids. That truck would just sit there for an hour (!) playing whatever goofy tunes by ringing bells. Like from 7-8 pm.. It got to be really, really annoying. Eventually, one day I went out there and asked the guy how long he was gonna stay because we were getting tired of it.
Charlie/Joe, in my experience ice-cream vans only wait a very short time for customers before moving on.
Jolene, 9 To 5 and Islands In The Stream have all entered the new UK Top 20...
...but Rein Me In still reigns (see what I did there) and scores a 23rd week at No 1.
Yeah, ice cream vans used to only wait for a few minutes before moving on . We also had general vans in the late 60s early 70s selling bread, tin goods, veg, fresh fish/meat etc. I haven't seen an ice cream van in years other than at events like gigs, sports days, parks when it's very hot etc. Along with Greensleeves vans used to play the Popeye theme and occasionally in Scotland "Scotland the brave"
My understanding is that the Scots take ice cream vans very seriously, Paul...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_ice_cream_wars
-sean
Living next to a very active park on a cul-de-sac was a target-rich environment for ice cream man. People always coming and going. Hence he parked his Good Humor butt there all evening.
Maybe if Good Humor man had played Van Halen- “I’m your ice cream man, stop me when i’m passing by! All my flavors guaranteed to satisfy!!! “ instead of Green Sleeves?
Better to play the KLF. "They're justified and they're ancient/And they drive an ice cream van..."
Make mine a 99!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2BWjgLEMNo
-sean
I forgot all about the ice cream wars, sounds trivial but was deadly serious. I think the movie Comfort and Joy dealt with that.
Back to the Lollys! Do you UK gents actually remember the Lolly ICE wrappers??? I might be able to do that for cereal boxes.(Charlie and sibs and all kids wolfed down breakfast cereal big time!)
Also based on living in Europe your refrigerators - freezers were more for day-to-day shopping (smaller) and maybe a half gallon of Neopolitan would take up too much space? Hence you bought ad-hoc creations and me and BT had another bowl of Neopolitan?
SEAN - i did listen to your KLF tune. Very cool tune and food truck! KLF had a #1 in the US called 3 am Eternal in 1990. Never heard it. It is very CC Music Factory. Also there are many internet rabbit holes for food trucks lol.
Yes this is what I do driving to see my 91 y.o. folks in Indiana at 8:00 AM.
3am Eternal was a good one, Charlie (btw the pic was an ice cream van, not a food truck).
Of course the British badly messed up this year by voting for Burnham and then Herr Nigel, rather than Count Binface. Seeing as winning a by-election seems to be the way to become prime minister these days, Binface could be running the country by now and there'd be a cap on the cost of 99s.
-sean
99s??? Was ist das?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Flake
-sean
STEVE - let me be the first to congratulate you on a 50-comment post!!! Make sure STEVE mails you a NO-PRIZE!!! And make sure it is suitable for framing! JP
I shall make sure to do that, Charlie.
Can you share a picture of your No Prize?
Hull is on a roll!!! Roarrrrr go the Tigers!!!
Charlie, I shall post a no-photo of my no-prize.
And here it is.
Am I nonplussed at the notion of a nominal No-prize non-photo? Nonsense!
b.t.
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