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A wise man - or, possibly, woman - once said, "Hooray for Hollywood!" and who am I to argue?
But not all films are made in Hollywood.
Then again, I suspect that all the films listed below were.
I can honestly say I've only ever heard of one of those movies, and I think you can guess which one it is. However, despite having heard of it and being able to hum the odd song from it, I've never actually seen it. I shall, therefore, have to forego my usual task of nominating a Steve Does Comics Movie of the Month.
You, however, may have your own thoughts as to which are triumph and which are tripe.
And it all happens when the injured Centurion Nova-Prime chooses a successor. And that successor is high schooler Richard Rider.
But, with great power comes great responsibility and, so, our hero then has to battle Nova-Prime's greatest foe, the dreaded Zorr!
And who better to celebrate that than the man who literally wraps himself in its flag every day?
Gasp as, upon meeting the mystic Mister Buda, our hero finds himself sent back to World War II!
Thrill as he becomes Betsy Ross's inspiration for the American flag!
Shudder as he assures Geronimo of the American brotherhood to come!
Tremble as he finds himself in a World War I dogfight, boxes with John Sullivan, helps a fugitive slave, witnesses the first atom bomb test, helps victims of the Chicago fire, visits an undersea lab, finds himself in the middle of a war on the moon and then discovers just what the truth is at the heart of America!
The lord of the vampires' UK mag may have died an undeath but its US counterpart refuses to shake off this mortal coil.
Unlike one of Dracula's victims who comes to him, seeking death.
I remember little of this tale but I do have a feeling the menace is created by the same process that created the Scorpion and that Dr Harlan Stillwell's involved.
It has always struck me as odd that we're expected to think that a man with the powers of a fly is a threat to a man with the powers of a spider. Isn't that rather like pitting a villain called the Antelope against a hero called the Lion?
In our first tale, the Thing and Sub-Mariner battle it out for possession of the evil Serpent Crown, on the streets of New York. I'm not totally sure that qualifies as a team-up.
In our second tale, Daredevil's exposed to radiation, goes mad and takes it out on Captain America in a charity boxing match. That doesn't really sound like a team-up either.
In our third tale, when rival fan clubs discuss who's the stronger, Thor or the Hulk, the thunder god drops in to relate the story of the pair's epic clash in the pages of Avengers #3!
And, in our fourth tale, Laufey, King of the Giants, is killed in battle with Asgard, leading to his newborn son Loki being adopted by Odin.
Come to think of it, none of these stories involves a superhero team-up.
Talk about false advertising.
Union Jack gets centre stage on this month's cover!
Other than that, I'm struggling to say what happens in this one but I'm sure it'll all connect, somehow, with the presence of Baron Blood and his vampiric antics.
And I'm struggling to recall most of what happens in this one too. I am, though, aware that Sersi makes her debut in a yarn titled The Devil in New York.
From that title, I'm going to assume it involves the Deviants attacking New York City, and our heroes having to take action against them.
Everyone's favourite barbarian gets his second annual in 10,000 years and, in it, we encounter Marvel's adaptation of The Phoenix on the Sword, as brought to us by Roy Thomas and Vicente Alcázar.
The penultimate issue of Amazing Adventures brings us Keith Giffen and Bill Mantlo's contrivance for introducing a whole host of Marvel's most popular heroes into the strip without breaking continuity when Killraven enters an automated museum and becomes involved in the dreams of the man trapped in there.
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6 comments:
Maybe that Human Fly & the later red-costumed Human Fly could battle for the name "Human Fly". You know, like Josten & Luke Cage, battling for the name "Power Man".
That Nova cover I always conflate with August 1979's Spider-man Comic # 328's cover, although they are, in fact, different. Incidentally, the latter being one of the Marvel Revolution's best single issues of a weekly ( Wonder-man knocked Namor unconscious, for a start! )
I've got that Killraven somewhere in the garage!
Phillip
Maybe that Human Fly should also have a right with old Archie Comics superhero The Fly over who gets to wear a green and yellow costume, Phillip.
There does seem to be a similarity there... Are they by any chance related?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fly_%28Archie_Comics%29
Of course the dodgiest costume here is on the cover of the Invaders. Union Jack looks suspiciously like the type to have been at the front of those morons on the march through Dover yesterday.
-sean
*Maybe that Human Fly should also have a FIGHT with old Archie Comics superhero The Fly...
Duh. Apologies for the typo.
-sean
My younger brother was watching BUGSY MALONE on cable once so I saw snippets of it as I walked past the living room to the kitchen and back to my room. Starring tweenagers Jodie Foster and Scott “Chachi” Baio, Songs by Paul Williams, directed by Alan Parker who later made a dreary and depressing movie adaptation of Pink Floyd’s THE WALL. The big climax had two warring gangs of kids dressed like Depression-Era mobsters having a shoot out with these weird weapons that fired gobs and gobs of whipped cream. I was like, “Huh. That’s something”. Afterwards I never had the urge to watch the whole thing from the beginning.
b.t.
I had every one of these comics back in the Long Ago. CAP’S BICENTENNIAL BATTLES is probably the best of them and the SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL probably the worst. I agree that the GIANT SUPERHERO TEAM-UP Treasury is clearly mis-named — GIANT SUPERHERO SMASH-UP would be more like it. Either way, it’s a pretty damn good package — 84 ginormous pages of Superdudes pounding the snot out of each other, drawn by Jack Kirby, Gene Colan and Big John Buscema (twice!). I mean, there’s not a bad page of art in that thing.
I know I’ve read ETERNALS 3 all the way thru, several times over the past half-century but honestly, I couldn’t tell you what happens in it.
I quite like the Union Jack / Baron Blood two-parter, it’s one of Rascally Roy’s better Invaders mini-sagas. Sorry UJ’s outfit triggered you, sean.
The Alcázar / Montano art in the CONAN ANNUAL isn’t bad, but I would have preferred to see it inked by Alcázar himself.
I bought the first five issues or so of NOVA but I just never got into it. Warmed-over Spider-man and Green Lantern tropes, bland costume design, dull lead character. Wolfman tried really hard to put a spin on the Peter Parker / Spidey situation but he forgot to make his protagonist interesting in any way. Richard Rider isn’t a Jock and he’s not a Nerd/Brainiac, which is actually pretty realistic, come to think of it. Actually, he’s kinda like I was at that age, do you’d think I’d find him very relatable — but I couldnt care less. And Teenage Me would have been an incredibly dull protagonist in a Superhero comic too.
b.t.
That should be “SO you’d think etc”, not “DO you think…”
I had no idea about that scary protest march in Dover. None of the news sites that I check out regularly had anything about it. ZIP. Plenty of stuff about What’s-his-name’s vanity construction projects, though, and Mitch McConnell still being MIA, and pundits speculating about the Dems snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the midterms, and Stephen Colbert’s team winning a few Emmys and oh, That Guy is apparently wearing a new wig. You know, the really important stuff.
b.t.
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