Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Official trailer. (Spoilers ahoy!)

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth! Mere days ago, Marvel Studios unleashed the trailer for its latest venture into cinematic carnage, with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Can it ever hope to live up to the excitement of Eternals? Only time will tell.

The first thing that hits me, from it, is that Cambuslang Splungiepatch is still doing his, "Hugh Laurie is House," voice. I must confess it's a fact which aggravates me greatly, as he sounds all wrong doing it. For that matter, why is he even doing it? If any American Marvel character could get away with having an English accent it's Dr Strange. It's not like he's Captain America or The Thing who'd sound ridiculous with an English accent.

The second thing that strikes me is it's massively CGI-heavy. Given the nature of the character, that's inevitable but the question is always can CGI ever genuinely be compelling?

The third thing that strikes me is it would appear we get a bus fight between the sorcerer supreme and Shuma-Gorath, which is not a thing I ever thought I'd live to see. Still, I'm always happy to have a bit of Lovecraftian vehicle-flinging in my life.

And the fourth thing that strikes me is it's directed by Sam Raimi. As I loved Raimi's first two Spider-Man films, it gives me great pleasure to see him being let loose on an official Marvel Studios movie.

The Scarlet Witch is in it but I managed to totally miss WandaVision So, that doesn't really provoke any great emotional response in me.

What does provoke a response is my assumption that the character who shows up at the end is Nightmare. I've always loved Nightmare and will be highly delighted if it is indeed he.

But wait! What's that? Halfway through the trailer? The mystery voice? Could it belong to the star of a certain franchise that exists in the strange and alien dimension they know as The 20th Century Foxyverse? And, if so, how does it affect the already tangled continuity of that series?

Only you can decide.

Well, no, admittedly, you can't. And neither can I. Only the big film studios can decide that. What we can do is decide whether we like it or not.

And we can do that in the comments section below.

Strange Tales #110. The first appearance of Dr Strange.

By the Hoary Hosts of Hogwarts! It's an exciting time for all fans of the mystics arts, with Meddly Mick Thrunglesnatch's Dr Strange taking the global box office by storm.

And that can only mean one thing.

That it's time for me to cynically cash-in and try to raise my page-view numbers by looking at the sorcerous surgeon's first ever appearance.

That appearance was, of course, within the pages of Strange Tales #110, and such was Marvel's faith in the character that he didn't even get to feature on the cover.

Was our hero daunted by this omission?

Of course he wasn't. He was too busy wondering when the Ancient One was finally going to die, and concentrating on the dark forces that surround us.

It's New York. A man is being tormented by dreams of a chained and hooded figure.

What can it mean?

He doesn't know but he knows of a man who might.

That man is Dr Strange who obliges by promising to enter his dreams that night to get to the heart of the problem.

No sooner has he done so and discovered the chained figure represents victims of the man's ruthless business practices, than Strange encounters a much bigger problem - his, "Ancient foe," Nightmare has appeared and now refuses to let him leave.

As Strange and Nightmare face-off, the nameless man wakes from his slumbers and decides to shoot Strange while he's still in a trance, in order to prevent him revealing what he knows.

Fortunately, thanks to his psychic link to Strange, the Ancient One opens the Eye of Agamotto, the would-be killer is thwarted and Strange escapes back to the land of the waking, all ready to give the man a good lecture and, no doubt, escort him to the nearest police station.

To be honest, with its total earnestness, its lack of length and its not exactly warm hero, the tale comes across more like a one-off curiosity than the start of a sensational new series that's going to take the world by storm but it's pleasingly drawn by Steve Ditko, and Stan Lee reins in his own showboating instincts to create a sense of the sombre and mysterious.

I'm not totally sure how Strange manages to get past Nightmare and back to the land of the waking. He basically just seems to fly past Nightmare who stands there while he does so. This does give the impression that he's not exactly the greatest threat in the universe.

Another oddity is there's a sequence in which Strange's astral self flies all the way from New York to Tibet, only to be told, when he gets there, to go straight back to New York. Well, that wasn't a wasted journey then.

The other thing that strikes me is that both Strange and the Ancient One spend the whole story with their eyes closed. There is literally not one panel where they have them open. I would assume this is Steve Ditko's attempt to make them look Asian, except I can't believe Ditko really believed that people from Asia never open their eyes. How did he think they avoid walking into things?

Therefore, I shall be kind and assume that it's simply intended as a trait that he decided people of a mystical bent possess. It is interesting though that the strip started out with two central characters who were Asian and, by the time the film was released, they'd both managed to turn non-Asian. I do worry that Wong might be next.

I also wonder if Ditko's intention was that the chained figure is meant to represent someone the unnamed man has murdered but Stan Lee, inspired by Jacob Marley, decided to water it down and make him simply represent the victims of the man's ruthless business methods.

Anyway, it's all nicely moody and atmospheric and gives us a pleasing introduction to a smattering of Strange's powers and his mentor but I refuse to believe there was a single person who read this tale at the time and concluded that one day it would be the subject of a multi-million dollar movie. Why, for that to be the case, they'd have to have been almost as psychic as Strange himself.

PS. A great big Steve Does Comics No-Prize goes to the first person who can guess which early 1990s chart hit was lodged in my brain while I was reading the sequence in which Nightmare is refusing to let Strange get back to his own world.

New movie trailers! Wonder Woman and Dr Strange!

No one could accuse me of not keeping my ear to the ground when it comes to the latest movies. Hence it's only taken me five years to get round to watching the first Thor movie, which I enjoyed a fair bit, especially the portrayal of Loki.

Therefore, it's come to my attention that, yesterday, new trailers for two upcoming comic book movies hit YouTube and certain other places. One was the new plug for Wonder Woman and the other was for Dr Strange.

So, let's take a look at those trailers. If you don't want to be spoilerised, don't read on past this point.




Having taken a look at them, I am intrigued by the fact that Wonder Woman takes place in World War One, which somehow feels a more interesting setting than the World War Two milieu that I grew up with and it clearly provides for some dramatic shots.

On the other hand, I hope the entire film isn't just going to be, "Wonder Woman fights World War One," which may prove to be something of a waste of the character's potential for getting into fantastical scrapes.

I also worry that, apart from the vaguely annoying ending, I don't see a lot of characterisation going on in the trailer. I hope we're not going to get a totally by-the-numbers portrayal of our dashing dominatrix and her flyboy boyfriend.

The Dr Strange movie, I'm not sure about. I do feel that Benilux Slumberparty should have been allowed to keep his English accent, as Dr Strange is one of the few Marvel heroes who could work as an Englishman. Plus, I can't hear him do, "American," without thinking of Hugh Laurie in House.

Also, the visuals look to be somewhat lacking in the weirdness I'd like to see from a Dr Strange movie. I see, for instance, no echoes of the visual style of Steve Ditko which so defined the strip.

Initially, I didn't like them replacing the Ancient One with a not-so-ancient Briton but, in retrospect, he was a somewhat clichéd concept, so it may not be a bad idea after all.

The lack of a certain flame-headed demon does, however, disappoint me.

As for which film I feel most tempted to see, I must confess it's the Dr Strange one, as I have more interest in the character than I have for Wonder Woman, even though I probably find the Wonder Woman trailer more intriguing.

That's just my opinion. What's yours? Feel free to use the comments section below to let the world know.

Strange Tales #120. Is there a doctor in the house?

Here it comes - hot off the chopping board - my latest video review.

This time, I tackle the first Dr Strange story I ever read, as the psychic surgeon makes a house call and battles his least likely foe yet.

It was originally published in Strange Tales #120 but, as those who've encountered the first ever post on this blog will know, I originally read it in somewhat more British circumstances.

Now, at last, after over forty years, I revisit the tale I shall always associate with an electricity meter.

Don't ask me why I always associate it with an electricity meter. Even after forty years, some tales are too dread to tell.

Marvel Premiere #4 - Dr Strange meets the spawn of Sligguth!

I must confess I've always been in two minds about HP Lovecraft.

On the one hand, I've always liked the idea of old, evil things lurking in slumber, ready to rise at any moment to once more claim the world that they see as being rightfully theirs.

On the other hand, I've always found his actual stories to be fairly hard going, with far too many adjectives flung in and not enough characterisation and dialogue.

Then, of course, there's the whole issue of certain 1920s and 1930s social attitudes that no longer look quite so clever in a world that learned from Nazi Germany where ideas of racial purity and inherent racial decadence might lead.

Still, despite such reservations, I have always had a soft spot for The Whisperer in Darkness and At the Mountains of Madness. Thus it is that I'm always going to be grabbed by the idea of Dr Strange coming up against Lovecraftian menace.

I'm not sure if Marvel Premiere #4 was the first time he ever came up against such menace but it was certainly the first time I became aware that he was doing it, when I first read the tale in Marvel UK's Avengers mag. It was 1975. At the time, I was on a coach, on my way to the seaside. What could better prepare you for the English seaside than a tale of eldritch dread?

What happens is this. Returned home from his most recent fight with Nightmare, the good Doctor discovers he has a visitor, in the form of one Ethan Stoddard who's worried about his girlfriend who's in his hometown of Starkesboro and getting more and more obsessed with all things evil.

Needless to say, it's not long before Ethan and Strange are on their way to Starkesboro to find out what's happened to her.

When they get there, it's obvious the duo are not exactly welcome and that the locals have a somewhat reptilian shift about them.

And it's not much later than that that Strange and Ethan find themselves trapped in the local church, surrounded by malevolent locals, as Strange finds his powers being drained by the town's aura of ancient evil.

And there's a sacrificial altar just waiting for him!

There are two obvious things that stand out about his tale as you read it.

The first is - despite a splash page credit for Robert E Howard - an obvious debt to Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth. In fact, at times it practically feels like plotter Roy Thomas has simply inserted Strange into that tale.

The second thing is that it's drawn by Barry Smith who does an excellent job of creating a tale that's far moodier than we're used to from Marvel. The usual Marvel house-style of high-octane action is abandoned in favour of something far more subtle and slow burning.

Oddly, as the issue progresses, Smith's influence on the tale starts to wane, just as surely as Dr Strange's powers do, as Frank Brunner increasingly takes over the art chores until, by the last few pages, there's very little if anything left of Smith still visible.

That's not exactly a disaster - as Brunner is himself one of Dr Strange's great artists - but it would have been nice to see Smith maintain control of the art all the way through the issue.

Looking ahead, it's also a shame that Smith doesn't stay on the strip beyond this issue, as he clearly has a handle on how to do this kind of thing and it would have been great to watch him see it through to the end. Instead, after this issue, the serial goes through a string of artists, robbing it of the visual cohesion that would have benefited it greatly.

Overall, it's not a bad serial. In fact, it's perfectly entertaining. It's just that, looking at Smith's work, you get a feeling of just how good it could have been.

The most forgettable comics I have ever owned. Part 9: Marvel Two-In-One #37 & #49.

It's a case of, "Steve Does Appropriate," today as the feature the internet can't stop talking about returns with a two-in-one edition of its own.

A couple of years back, I bought a job lot of old comics that contained, amongst other things, a sizable run of Marvel Two-In-Ones. Upon perusing them I was surprised to discover that amongst them were two comics I'd totally forgotten I'd ever owned during childhood.

The first featured the Thing being buzzed in the ear to distraction until he starts breaking things - such as street lamps - and lands up in court. Needless to say, New York's only living lawyer Matt Murdock's soon on hand to no doubt fail in his duties.

The other tale features Dr Strange - and possibly the Thing going on holiday. And this is just how forgettable the comic is; because, even though I re-read this tale just two years ago, I still can't remember what happens in it, making it the only comic I've ever owned whose contents I've managed to forget twice.

As I've said before, given my love for the Thing, and how fondly I remember his series, it really is remarkable the difficulty I have recalling any story he's ever appeared in.

Oh well, I don't care. He's orange, he's made of rocks and he says, "It's Clobberin' Time!" a lot. And, when it comes down to it, that's good enough for me.

Marvel Premiere #3. Barry Smith tackles Dr Strange.

One of the things you have to give Barry Smith about his early Marvel career is he clearly didn't believe in outstaying his welcome. Apart from his two-year stint on Conan, if he started to draw one of your favourite titles, you could be pretty much sure it wouldn't be long before he stopped drawing it. Daredevil, Ka-Zar and the Avengers all saw him managing noticeably short stints on them before vanishing without trace, and so it was with Dr Strange.

On his way home from wherever it is he's been, Dr Strange is almost run over by a lorry but saves himself with a quick burst of the old, "Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth."

But, returning to his Sanctum Sanctorum, he senses an evil presence.

Before long, he's in a world gone weird, his body's been possessed and he's up against an unknown foe.

It's then he realises that he didn't stop the lorry from hitting him at all and is now in a coma, trapped in the land of his old foe Nightmare.

Armed with this knowledge, he soon disposes of the threat and makes a full recovery - but not before discovering there are darker forces than even Nightmare behind it all.

It's a nice tale and beautifully drawn by Smith. The writing too seems more sophisticated than we sometimes credit Stan Lee with being capable of. No one's credited with the story's colouring, so I'm assuming it was supplied by Smith who does some rather lovely things with red and black at certain points in the tale.

To be honest, even though I read the good Doctor's adventures avidly every week in Marvel UK's Avengers mag, I remember virtually none of his stories, which can't be a good sign.

However, along with Steve Ditko's early haunted house tale, this is the one that's always lodged itself in my memory, which suggests it must have been a cut above the average.

The only disappointment is that Smith hung around for just two issues before being replaced by a whole string of other artists just after he'd launched the somewhat repetitive Shuma-Gorath storyline which seemed to consist mostly of Strange going to seaside towns to be threatened by vaguely identikit watery menaces. Given how stylish a start to it he'd made - and just how suited he was to the strip - it would've been nice to have seen just what Smith would have done had he managed to see the whole project through from start to finish.

Strange Tales #115 - The origin of Dr Strange.

William Hartnell was fifty five when he was first cast as Dr Who.

Lou Reed is seventy one.

This makes "crotchety old" William Hartnell young enough to be Lou Reed's son.

Such unlikely agenesses raises the question of how old is Aunt May?

If Peter Parker was sixteen when The Amazing Spider-Man was launched, shouldn't that make her somewhere in the region of thirty six? One can only marvel at the life she must've led, to have been in that sort of state before she was forty.

This in turn raises the question of just how old is the Ancient One?

Is he genuinely ancient or is he merely ancient in the sense that William Hartnell and Aunt May were?

Tragically, there're no answers to this question in the origin of Dr Strange.

But there is the answer to the question of how Strange got the mystic powers that so fail to define him.

Stephen Strange is a self-centered surgeon who, thanks to his free living ways, has lost the digital sensitivity vital for surgery.

Taking this development with impressive aplomb, he decides to become a no-good drunken bum.

However, there is just one hope left for him. He goes to Himalaya, in the hope the legendary Ancient One can help him.

While there, Strange discovers the Ancient One's prodigy Baron Mordo's up to no good and agrees to become the Ancient One's apprentice in an attempt to foil him.

I first read this tale in Origins of Marvel Comics and, as with all early Dr Strange tales, was much taken with its ability to not outstay its welcome.

The thing can only be labelled a masterclass in compression. In just eight pages, we get to meet Dr Strange, discover his backstory , meet the Ancient One, meet Baron Mordo, discover Mordo's evil scheme and then see the good doctor become the Ancient One's sidekick. If Stan Lee and Steve Ditko had been let loose on the Lord of the Rings movies, the trilogy would've lasted about ten minutes and been all the better for it.

Thanks to some rather pleasing Steve Ditko art and the fact I've always wanted to be a master of the mystic arts, I'll give Dr Strange's origin tale eight Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth out of ten, which puts it slightly behind most 1960s' Marvel super-hero origins but comfortably ahead of most 1970s' Marvel super-hero origins.

Dr Strange's all-time greatest foe - Poll Results!

A wise man once said there's nothing in this life quite as magical as magic. He then went on to say there's nothing quite so circular as circles, and nothing quite so blue as blue. What a sage and a wit he was.

Reader, that sage was me. And that's why I took his advice and now make a point of arriving everywhere by hanging from a flying umbrella while trilling that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

But all this talk of magic can mean just one thing.

That it's time to announce the thrillsome-tastic results of our poll to discover just who is Dr Strange's greatest ever foe.

Many as the Moons of Munnopor were the votes, and many were the recipients:

Joint fifth, with one vote each, were Dracula and Nightmare.

Fourth, with three votes, was Baron Mordo.

Third, with four votes, was, "Marvel Editors."

Second, in what I see as a turn-up for the books, was Silver Dagger, with five votes.

But, to perhaps no one's surprise at all, the winner, with a walloping twelve votes, was that inflammable fiend of  infamy the Dread Dormammu. So, congratulations to the master of the Dark Dimension, and let's hope his success doesn't go to his head.

As always, thanks to all who voted - and commiserations to all those villains who failed to make the grade.

Dr Strange's all time greatest foe.

By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth and the Flipping Fiends of Fomething-or-other. Our dauntless quest to find the greatest super-villain of them all brings us to that magical master of mystery Dr Strange.

As we all know, the good doctor once had a battle with the bottle but then went on to face even deadlier foes. There was the Dread Dormammu, the Naughty Nightmare, Bothersome Baron Mordo, the Fiddlesticky Faceless Ones, the Sinister Satannish, Umar the Unspeakable and those two hypnotised blokes who beat him up in that Steve Ditko story where he teamed up with Spider-Man.

Those two blokes aside, it's fair to say that, thanks to their mystical bent, most of Dr Strange's foes have been a little more stylish than the run-of-the-mill villain. So, of all the foes Dr Strange has ever come up against, who's been your favourite?

Personally, I've always had a soft spot for Nightmare, possibly because he was the first Dr Strange villain I ever encountered, but also because I too have been known to have had the odd nightmare in my time and can therefore claim that Nightmare is the only foe of any super-hero that I've ever encountered. Needless to say, my mastery of the Eye of Agamotto has kept me safe every time.

But, in the end, it's not my opinion that counts. It's yours. So, give me your favourites and, as always, in a couple of days from now I'll put them in a poll - and at last the world can answer the question; "Just who is Dr Strange's greatest ever foe?"

Super Spider-Man #171. The Death of Gwen Stacy & the Green Goblin.

Something very strange happened in the Autumn of 1975. A number of the comics I'd been getting week-in and week-out for several years disappeared without trace from my local newsagents. The Mighty World of Marvel, The Avengers and Spider-Man Comics Weekly all vanished at around the same time. If not for Planet of the Apes, what would I have had to keep me going? Fortunately, within a few months they were all back. But when Spider-Man Comics Weekly returned, it was in a whole new form.

It had been Titanised.

Like that other Marvel UK comic, Spider-Man's weekly mag was now printed sideways. This was good. Thanks to it allowing them to print two pages of artwork side-by side on every physical page, this meant you got twice as many pages for your money.

So what did you get?

You got trauma.

No sooner had the comic reappeared than this happened; Gwen Stacy died.

Now, I managed to miss the issue where she went but I sure as shooting heck had the next one, in which I discovered that in my absence Gwen had bought it. This was terrible. Gwen was blonde. She wore nice boots. She wore an Alice band. How could they kill such a creature? On top of that, by the end of this issue, the Green Goblin was gone too.

To say this was powerful stuff for a twelve year old would be no matter of hyperbole. Seeing Spider-Man clutching the corpse of his long-time girlfriend was quite the most moving thing I'd ever read in my life. This story and the ones that followed, as Peter Parker tried - and sometimes failed - to come to terms with the death of Gwen Stacy had a potency I'd never seen before in a comic and left an impression on me that remains to this day. I still regard the events of the next couple of years on that strip as the greatest era Spider-Man ever had. One that only dissipated when Ross Andru left the mag and Peter Parker graduated.

Two into one will go. The landscape format that showed us a whole new way of looking at comics.

Fortunately there was more. After that Spider-Man classic, the issue gave us a Gene Colan Dr Strange story. I don't remember if I could make sense of the tale at the time but, looking at it now, I don't have a clue what's going on. Dr Strange and Clea are in Dormammu's Dread Dimension but Strange has lost his powers and is having to rely on Clea to do "pagan" magic to achieve something or other. It's a bit of a surprise to discover Dr Strange's normal magic wasn't pagan. Now I'm left not at all sure what kind of magic it was. There's some sort of junkie in it, a man who seems to be Clea's father, Dormammu, Umar and various others and, frankly, I'm left bewildered by it all. It does though end with a giant Dormammu climbing up out of a huge crack in the Earth, ready to perform some evil deeds or other. So, if it leaves you bamboozled, at least it makes you want to read the following issue.

Next we get a centre-spread poster featuring Luke Cage and Mace. Like virtually all artwork produced specially for Marvel's UK comics, it has to be said it's not great.

Nor is the specially produced splash page for the George Tuska Iron Man tale that follows it. Shell-Head's up against The Controller who I think turned up in the pages of Jim Starlin's Captain Marvel. The presence of this tale baffles me. Up until now I was under the impression Marvel UK's Iron Man reprints ended when the comic switched to landscape format. Now I've discovered they didn't. This means I must've read years of Iron Man stories from that point on, with no recall of them at all. Essential Iron Man Vol 3 clearly beckons, as I try to find out what happened in all those tales I've forgotten.

Next it's a Thor adventure as he sets out to tackle Dr Doom after rescuing a protesting girl from a mini-riot. He soon finds out Doom's kidnapped her father in order to get him to build him some missile silos. In the flashback, the girl's clearly aged at least ten years since he was abducted, which implies he's taking an awful long time to build those silos and that Doom blatantly kidnapped the wrong silo scientist. In order to lure Doom out into the open, Don Blake plants a story in the papers that he's developed a cosmetic surgery technique that can cure any disfigurement. This seems rather thoughtless of him, as the hopes of disfigured people the world over will be built up and then cruelly dashed for no good reason. Aww but who cares? It's drawn by John Buscema, so every panel's a thing of simple beauty.

We finish off with a Thing/Black Widow team-up that I assume comes from the pages of Marvel Two-In-One. Much as I love the Thing - and the Black Widow - I'm not convinced Two-In-One was always the greatest comic Marvel produced, and this tale does little to change that. The story's pretty silly, with the Widow at one point whipping off her top to reveal she has the parts for a disruptor cannon attached to her back, hidden in a strip of fake skin. Let's own up, we've all done it. Meanwhile, the Thing spends half the story hauling in a three mile long stretch of cable to stop a bomb going off. As well as the somewhat lame story, the art looks terrible. Either Klaus Janson's inking doesn't suit Bob Brown's pencils or Janson's habitually lavish use of ink suffers unduly from being shrunk to half normal size.

So, was the landscape format a good thing?

Of course it was.

As said before, the great thing about it was you got twice as much story for your money. Where else would you get an entire 20 page Spider-Man story, plus seven to nine pages each of Dr Strange, Iron Man, Thor and the Thing, and a double-page pin-up, all for 9 pence? The downside isn't really the small size of the artwork. Apart from the Thing story, it really doesn't suffer. The main downside is the small size of the letters page which only has room for two letters. As it's clear from one of those letters that the comic's only recently switched to the new format, it would've been nice to see more room for fan reaction to the switch.

The Avengers #61. The forces of evil blow hot and cold.

The Avengers #61, as UK readers got to see it.

Welcome to Steve’s Hand of Cheat. It may not have the iconic power of Maradona’s Hand of God but it’ll get me booed at less football grounds and allow me to type this post.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, my policy is to only review comics that I had as a kid, and, technically, I never had The Avengers #61.

I still don’t.

I did however have the tale - and a zillion and one other Marvel comics - reprinted in Marvel UK’s weekly black and white mags, and it’s dawned on me that I can therefore review any story I encountered in those, with impunity.

Having made this conceptual breakthrough, I thought I’d cover The Avengers #61 (or #79 as we in the UK knew it) because it’s one of my favourite Avengers tales of all time.

It all kicks off when Dr Strange shows up at the Avengers’ mansion and tells the few Avengers on duty that, thanks to the Sons of Satannish, the world’s in deadly peril. Not only that but the Black Knight’s been seriously injured.

No sooner has Strange done a bit of quick but tense surgery to sort out the Knight than the Avengers, together with the recuperating hero, set out to save the world. The Knight and Hawkeye go to Antarctica to stop the giant fire demon Surtur while the Vision and Panther go to Wakanda to deal with the humongous ice monster Ymir. I’ve got the feeling from somewhere that, in Norse Mythology, Ymir had some sort of relationship to a giant cow. Sadly, there’s no sign of a giant cow in this tale. Dr Strange however does what he does best and stays behind to talk to himself.

Despite our heroes making no impact at all in their attempts to stop the giants from doing whatever it is they’re trying to do, it all ends happily when Dr Strange makes the two demons vanish then reappear, face-to-face, just as they’re about to strike a blow, meaning they inadvertently hit each other and disappear in a puff of smoke.

There’s so much to love about this tale. One is it has Dr Strange, which is always appreciated by some of us. Strange is wearing his short-lived super-hero style outfit that looked so bad when everyone else drew it but actually looks good here.

Secondly, it has a certain scale to it as we get the outmatched Avengers in a two-pronged battle against the odds.

But the main thing is that, for my money, it features the best art job I’ve ever seen from John Buscema.

Aided by George Klein’s inks, from its opening double-page splash of the Avengers facing the colossal figures of Ymir and Surtur, the issue’s like a master class in how to draw a comic book. Its use of lighting, camera angles and figure drawing are simply a joy to behold.

I suspect this may not be coincidence. Buscema was at the peak of his powers when he drew it but beyond that, it’s not a conventional super-hero tale. The dominating presence of the supernatural gives Buscema the chance to draw The Avengers in a way he’s not quite done before, lending a style of drama to events that’s quite distinct from the strip’s usual look. If it was indeed true that he hated drawing super-hero comics, it’s hard to believe he hated drawing this one as it shows every sign of having been done by a man who, inspired by a chance to ramp up the mood and melodrama, was pulling out all the stops.

So, I may have had to cheat to review this tale, and if I didn’t follow up my bout of rule-bending with the literary equivalent of running past the entire England team to score the goal of the century, at least I came out of it with the sense of satisfaction that only the determined swindler can know.

Savage Sub-Mariner #69. The Sub-Mariner vs Spider-Man!

This is more like it. Spider-Man vs Namor, twenty pages of rip-roaring action, web against water, sticky toes vs ankle wings. At last that question answered; "Who'd win a fight between Spider-Man and the Sub-Mariner?"

Well, no, in fact, it isn't.

Despite what we're promised on the cover, there is no fight between Subby and Spidey. They meet early in the tale, have a chat in which Namor gives us an info-dump on what's been going down in Sub-Mariner-land and then go their separate ways, as Subby basically stages a re-enactment of what happened last issue, in Sub-Mariner #68, by fighting and defeating Force. It has to be said that, for all his boasts of being unbeatable, Force is again, as super-villains go, a noticeably useless foe for Namor who defeats him in double-quick time.

But our anti-hero's not the only one doing re-enactments. In a sub-plot so prominent it practically becomes Plot, a group of characters re-stage the Beatles' Yellow Submarine movie by rescuing a place called Zephyrland from the spell of the dreaded She-Beast.

Who are these people? And what have they done with the "A" Plot?

It being Yellow Submarine Mark 2, they do it of course by using music. I don't see what these events have to do with anything and have no idea who these people are - or what guest star Dr Strange has to do with it all - but the truth is that, with Subby spending the first half of the tale info-dumping and the second half quickly defeating a foe he quickly defeated last issue, it's this somewhat odd subplot that actually gives the issue most of its appeal.

The other thing that lends it appeal is the artwork. It's pencilled by George Tuska who I know isn't everyone's cup of tea, and inked by Vince Colletta who I know is even less everyone's cup of tea, but their style's mesh pretty well here, to some degree nicely cancelling out each other's weakness - although I do have to admit Tuska's Spider-Man looks too muscular and has a strange shaped head (NB: not a Dr Strange shaped head).

It seems that, after this, there were only three more issues of this title, which is a shame because The Savage Sub-Mariner was one of my favourite strips as a kid, and it's a pity not enough people shared my enthusiasm to keep it going. Oh well. As we all know, like the tide itself, Namor may sometimes recede but, in the end, he'll always come back.

Avengers #9 (UK). Where it all began.

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The weekend of November 17th 1973 was the weekend I started collecting comics.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't when I started reading them - I'd been doing that for years even by that point, starting with British titles like Whizzer and Chips, The Beano, The Dandy and The Beezer, with the odd issue of TV21 thrown in, before I moved on to the likes of Marvel, DC and Alan Class - but November 17th was when I started to collect them.

In retrospect, it must've been the above comic, issue #9 of Marvel UK's Avengers mag that made me do it.

You see, up until the launch of The Avengers comic, Marvel UK's weekly reprints of their American output had been printed with matt covers. The Avengers put a stop to that. Its covers were printed on glossy paper, just like the originals, with the added plus that UK comics were much larger in size than their American counterparts. Of course, they were in black and white but that didn't matter. And the first issue of the UK Avengers that I ever owned was issue #9.

At the time, I thought it was a magical thing with its mighty Jack Kirby cover showing the Avengers smashing their way into the Mole Man's lair, its glossiness and its better page quality than Marvel's other UK mags. Admittedly, until I recently bought this comic off eBay, I couldn't actually remember anything about the Avengers' story within other than that it featured the Mole Man. The Dr Strange tale on the other hand, wherein he encountered a living house, was burned into my memory.

Having now reacquainted myself with the comic, I have to say the Avengers tale's a startlingly random thing in which ants warn Giant Man there's trouble brewing beneath the Earth's surface. The other Avengers act like jerks and refuse to listen to Giant Man's warnings and so he sets of alone to deal with things, only to be captured. Then the other Avengers feel guilty and go to rescue him but not before a bunch of subterraneans attack them for no great reason. Halfway through the tale, the Mad Ghost turns up and joins forces with the Mole Man, again for no great reason. His apes are nowhere in sight. Apparently he's decided to dispense with their services. Has he killed them? Has he put them in a zoo? Has he sold them to Michael Jackson?

We're never told.

Then the Avengers show up and whup some underground ass, priding themselves that they've set the Mole Man's plan back by several months. As the Mole Man's plan was to destroy the planet Earth, I'm not sure a few months' delay's much to be smug about but the Avengers think otherwise and seem very full of themselves.

The issue's Dr Strange tale's pure class. I must confess I generally tend to like Steve Ditko's work more in theory than in practice but there's no denying he was perfect for the adventures of the sorcerer supreme and his tale's packed with atmosphere and ominousness as the good doctor investigates a haunted house. Strange himself comes across as a bit of a tool in all honesty and I'm not sure the tale makes much sense. At the end of it all I'm still not sure what the house actually wanted and I'm not sure Stan Lee was either but the whole thing looks great and let's face it that's the main thing you ask of a Dr Strange adventure.

But wait, our American readers demand. The Mad Ghost? Who the hell's this Mad Ghost of whom you speak? I should explain that the British never had a taste for the rampant commie bashing Marvel loved so much in the early 1960s and thus, when the tales were reprinted in the UK, the Red Ghost became the Mad Ghost. Personally I prefer the change; a mad ghost is always going to sound more interesting than a red one.