I can hear music

Strange is the human mind and, just as we have a tendency to associate certain smells and sounds with certain places and events, so we can come to associate certain songs with certain objects.

Thus it is that, for various reasons - some straightforward and some more arcane - I tend to associate certain songs with certain comics I read as a kid. In one of my attempts to be inclusive, I thought I'd share which songs I associate with which comics and ask if you have any similar song/comic associations.

Kids in America by Kim Wilde, with Nightmare #17.


For some reason, I never appreciated Kimberley's monster early-1980s hit at the time but have come to recognise it as possibly that decade's finest three musical minutes. It was out at the same time as I first read the UK reprint of this comic.

In retrospect, I think the record was better than the comic.

January by Pilot, and Angie Baby by Helen Reddy, with Savage Sword of Conan #4.


As mentioned elsewhere, I got this comic on a Sunday. Sunday was and is the day of Radio 1's UK singles chart countdown and I'm fairly sure both songs were played on that rundown on the day I first read this mag.

Shine A Little Love by ELO, with Nova #3.


As Nova #3 came out in 1976 and ELO's Shine A Little Love came out in 1979, I don't have a clue why I associate these two things with each other but I do.

Gonna Make You a Star by David Essex, with Mighty World of Marvel Annual 1975.


I remember David Essex being on Top of the Pops, doing the song in question as I read the annual for the first time. The Goodies were also present. They mimed the line, "I don't think so."

Whispering Grass by Don Estelle and Windsor Davies, with Avengers #66.


As I said mere days ago, I heard Don and Windsor while on a coach headed for Blackpool as I read the first part of this story in Marvel UK's weekly Avengers mag. To this day I can't see the panel where the Vision's stood over Wonder Man's grave without hearing those magical words, "I will not 'av gossiping in my jungle!"

Dancing in the City by Marshall Hain, with Rampaging Hulk #9.


I seem to remember this being a hit around the same time I read Rampaging Hulk #9. The two are now inseparable in my mind, which is a bit of a shame as it's not a song that's ever overly interested me.

I also associate it with Substitute by Clout but there's no way I'm ever admitting to that on the Internet.

Roll Over Beethoven by ELO, with Mighty World of Marvel #5.


I remember singing this on Pond Street bus station escalators shortly after getting Mighty World of Marvel #5 from a nearby news kiosk. I don't think I liked the song at the time. I just liked the noise it made and also that "Beethoven" sounded like, "baked oven." The things that amuse you when you're eight.

On the Run by ELO, with Conan the Barbarian #5.


There's a worrying amount of ELO on this list. I recall this playing on the radio while I was dutifully using my felt tips to colour this story in Fleetway's legendary 1972/3 Marvel Annual. Dave Lee Travis may have been the DJ. The fact that it'd taken me over six years to get round to colouring it in says everything about my dedication to the task.

Down  in the Park by Gary Numan, with X-Men #108.


Now here's an odd thing. I remember hearing Gary Numan's We Are Glass on Radio 1 as I read this story for the first time, in Marvel UK's Rampage magazine. But, the human psyche being a perverse thing, it's not We Are Glass that I associate with the book but instead the more memorable Down in the Park.

If you sing Down in the Park without the accompaniment, it sounds like one of those nightmarish hey-nonny-nonny folk songs they always made us sing in primary school. This realisation always gives me more pleasure than it should.


So, am I alone in such madness? Or does this association between comic book and song afflict you as well? If it does, what songs do you associate with the comics you read as a child?

Let's all do the Mind Warp. Supergirl in Adventure Comics #420.

DC Comics clearly liked to spoil us in the 1970s, giving us not only its hundred page mags but also its 52 page behemoths as well. So it is that Adventure Comics #420 gives us not the usual two, but four tales of derring-do and occasionally derring-don't.

After being followed by a strange probe, Supergirl follows its heat trail to a planet with a garden that can defeat all attempts at attack. I'd tell you what happens next but just trying to type a plot summary not only hurts my brain but robs my fingers of all will to go on.

All I can say is there's a goody-goody youth, three bad guys, an enemy army and a thing called the Mind Warp. For a while Supergirl goes a bit aggro and then the three bad guys go a bit aggro and, as far as I can make out, everyone but Supergirl's dead by the end of it all. It's OK to read, if a bit baffling but the fact that I can't force myself to explain its conceptual intricacies suggests it must lack a certain something.

I do though have to congratulate artist Tony De Zuniga on only giving us one gratuitous shot of Supergirl's backside in the entire tale, surely a record for a story from her shorts era.

Speaking of complete arses, next up we get the less than welcome return  of Animal Man who has to fight a gang of small-time crooks despite there never seeming to be any impressive animals nearby for him to mimic. In the end, he has to defeat them by using the powers of a fluffy bunny rabbit.

As the tale closes, Animal Man declares the nation's crooks had better watch out because he's going to wipe out all crime in the country, which seems a little ambitious considering he's having to rely on the powers of Mr Flopsy. Oddly enough, the local zoo has no animals, but the local pet shop sells gorillas. That's one hell of a strange town.

Now we get the tale of a thief who goes to a mysterious planet to steal a load of treasure guarded by nothing but a bunch of statues. I'd say it has a twist ending but if you've ever read anything of this type before, you'll have guessed the twist before you've even got past the first panel.

The issue finishes with its highlight as it reprints a story from Supergirl's dim and distant loopy era. In it, Superman investigates a giant egg that's been unearthed by an earthquake, and is promptly turned into a giant flying snake monster by its red Kryptonite shell. Thinking the monster he's become has killed Superman, the US government sets out to destroy him.

Fortunately for Supes, Supergirl comes along and realises what must've happened, meaning everyone just hangs around and waits till he turns back into Superman. This is what the main Supergirl tale lacked - simple-minded imbecility. But I say that ruefully, as such juvenile nonsense is actually a good thing in a Supergirl story.

Despite all that, the strangest moment of the issue has to come in the letters page when someone I won't name demands that DC Comics strips every single one of its super-heroes of their powers forever and gives them a non-super-powered sidekick, on the grounds it'll make the stories more compelling. Oddly enough it was an idea DC never followed up on.

Fantastic Four Annual #5. "I will not 'av Psycho-Men in my Jungle!"

So it's 1975 and I'm on a coach headed for that Las Vegas of the north; Blackpool. Before the journey's over, I'll be reading Barry Smith's first ever Avengers story while Don Estelle and Windsor Davies "sing" Whispering Grass on the coach radio. It probably doesn't reflect well on me that such a song can be the highlight of a coach trip but I don't care. The phrase "Guilty Pleasure" is unknown to me, as I refuse to feel guilt.

But, before that moment arrives, I'm reading this week's Mighty World of Marvel and, within it, the Fantastic Four's first encounter with a deadly new peril known only as Psycho-Man.

Psycho-Man is good. Psycho-Man can control the emotions of mere humans and thus have total power over them. Psycho-Man's smaller than the smallest germ and can only be seen because he's inside a human-sized robot he controls with the power of his will.

But there's something wrong. While Psycho-Man's head has a teeny tiny man inside it, inside my head there's a tiny voice that says this story isn't as good as I'm used to from the Fantastic Four. I don't know why - I'm only eleven, I have few critical resources - but it feels like a 100 watt bulb's been suddenly replaced with a 40 watt bulb.

A zillion years later, I read the tale again, as an adult, in Essential Fantastic Four Vol 4  and it has exactly the same effect. To my adult self, it's like virtually every Fantastic Four tale printed in the three years preceding this tale was a classic and virtually everything in the three years following it was no better than mediocre. The feeling's so stark I can practically point to the exact panel in this story when the Fantastic Four's Silver Age golden age ended.

At the risk of being daring, I'll say it's either panel three of page four, or panel one of page nine. The first instance is where a trio of totally unnecessary lackeys are introduced for Psycho-Man to boss around - including one who's dressed as a cowboy(!). In the latter, it's where the story suddenly goes off at a tangent to introduce the Black Panther's first ever encounter with the Inhumans. In both cases, you're left in no doubt that Jack Kirby's now being left entirely to his own devices by Stan Lee when it comes to plotting the strip, and we find the tale being driven along by what seems to be a random flinging together of ideas and action, rather than coherence and planning.

A large part of the problem is that, although it's advertised as a Fantastic Four tale, they're barely in it. This is the issue where we learn that Sue Richards is pregnant. As a result, she and Mr Fantastic are in no mood to go adventuring. Instead, with two of the FF out of commission, we suddenly get the story veering off to Wakanda as the Black Panther and the Inhumans have a fight before teaming up to take on Psycho-Man who, by total coincidence has set up base under an island off the coast of that kingdom (even though we were told three pages earlier that his base is in the Caribbean). Kirby's lack of interest in characterisation's thrust in our faces in this segment as the Panther and the Inhumans team up, despite neither party making any attempt to introduce themself to the other.

Once inside the villain's lair, the heroes are confronted by Psycho-Man's irrelevant lackeys and defeat them. Now, from nowhere, the Human Torch, the Thing and Triton suddenly arrive without explanation, and our veritable army of heroes find themselves confronted by Psycho-Man's creations drawn from their worst nightmares.

With that fight going nowhere, Gorgon shows up from wherever it is he's been and, handily, it turns out his foot-stamping power's the only thing that's effective against Psycho-Man's handiwork, before the Panther, who's been forgot about, launches himself at the villain to stop him. Suddenly, and without warning, from being arguably the greatest American comic book of the 1960s, the strip's lurched into a valley of mediocrity and redundancy it'll rarely escape until after Jack Kirby leaves. So, for some of us, the tale of Psycho-Man represents a minor watershed in comic book history.

Still, not everything was negative about that coach trip. I loved and still love the Barry Smith Avengers yarn and, to my eternal surprise, I still love Don Estelle and Windsor Davies' version of Whispering Grass. The Fantastic Four may have changed on that fatal day but it seems some things will always remain the same.

Bringing it all back. The play's the thing.

As I'm sure you know, writing this blog's the only thing that stops me from plunging headlong into madness. So, I thought I'd give you the chance to allow it to serve your therapeutic needs as well.

Therefore the question I'm asking you is which super-heroes did you most pretend to be when you were a kid, and in what ways did you pretend to be them?

As I've mentioned before, the comic book characters I most pretended to be were Dracula, the Sub-Mariner and Daredevil, with Daredevil being perhaps the most imitated. Pretending to be Daredevil did, after all, give me the chance to indulge in my five great childhood passions; super-heroes, Lego, Meccano, lying down, and pretending to be a woman. I won't go into any detail other than to say, "Billy club, grappling hook, hauling myself into dangerous places, and Daredevil expected an answer from the Black Widow when he spoke to her."

I'm sure you have equally heart-warming tales from your own childhood, that you'd like to share with us. Or perhaps you don't. Either way I'd like to hear from you in that comments box below. Remember, you'd have to pay hundreds of pounds an hour to get this sort of service from a trained psychiatrist, while Steve Does Comics offers it for free. Truly they don't lie when they call this the Steve Does Comics Age of Primal Therapy.

Nostrils and monsters. Life's a beach on the island of terror.

Never explain and never apologise. Neil Gaiman once told me that.

When I say he, "told me," he told me nothing of the sort. I've never met him and he's never met me. That's probably for the best, as I have a much daintier nose than him and I'm told these writers can easily plunge into a jealous rage.

But the advice I began this post with, I read it in an article he once wrote, and The Incredible Hulk #170 (AKA, The Mighty World of Marvel #176) is a perfect example of its correctness, as, having seen off the Bi-Beast, the Hulk and Betty Ross find themselves on a mystery island. With no immediate way to leave, the Hulk takes on the role of protector and provider, while Betty Ross takes on the role of annoying woman who keeps running off and having to be rescued.

The island, you see, is home to a bunch of giant monsters. Where they come from and how they got there, we don't know. Not only that but the monsters themselves don't know. It seems they're from outer space but the hows, whys, whats and wherefores are so long forgotten they've degenerated into little more than animals. All we - and they  - know is they speak in cryptic symbols, without the aid of speech balloons, and they're very keen on killing Betty Ross. This means that, when she flees the Hulk one time too many, they take her off to be sacrificed, at which point the Hulk flings them to their deaths in a volcano, before a rescue helicopter arrives.

You can't get round it. With its almost total lack of clarity as to what's going on and the unlikelihood that such gigantic creatures could've remained undiscovered on a small island for what seems to have been thousands of years, it's tempting to write the whole episode off as a hallucination caused by the infected wound we know Betty has.The problem is I'm pretty sure the Hulk makes a reference to the monsters in a later tale, so it looks like if it was a hallucination it's one they were both sharing.

I've mentioned before that in 1975 The Mighty World of Marvel disappeared from my local newsagents, again without explanation and apology, but this was the first Hulk story I read upon its return. It seemed a strange tale then and it seems a strange tale now. And that strangeness lies at the heart of its appeal. However frustrating its lack of answers, it's that very lack of answers that makes it live long in the memory.

So, it looks like Neil Gaiman was right. There is a strength in not explaining things. Maybe I should write a post without any explanations. Maybe I should make a plaster cast of my nose and send it to him, leaving him none the wiser as to why. The power of mystery. The power of mystery.

Adventure Comics #415. Rolling the ball but rarely dropping it.

The good news is Supergirl finally has her powers back. No more of that exo-skeleta-cyborg or whatever the hell it was called.

The bad news is her battle to find a decent costume continues as the first tale in this 52 page comic sees her wearing an outfit as cluttered and badly assembled as the front cover's masthead.

After peeking through his interplanetary telescope, an outer space pirate's decided Linda Danvers is the only woman in the universe for him. Not knowing she's really Supergirl, he orders his Mister Spock lookalike lackey to kidnap her.

That's when it all starts to go wrong for the pirate. First, Supergirl rejects his advances, then his death-ray doesn't kill her. And then his Mr Spock lookalike lackey - upon discovering his commander's a wrong 'un - responds by disintegrating himself. Needless to say, within a few panels Supergirl's mopped up the bad guys and handed them over to the space police.

In the issue's second tale we're introduced to Animal Man. Now, up until reading this issue I knew nothing of Animal Man other than that he existed but it transpires he has the power of any animal on Earth but can only use the powers of creatures that're near him at the time. Round my way that means he'd have the power of kittens and hedgehogs but, in the story, this somewhat clumsy condition's got round by having the villain just happening to hang out on an island he's filled with deadly animals, giving Animal Man plenty of opportunity to use his abilities. It may be harsh to say it but, given the unwieldiness of his powers, and a certain sense of sappiness about him, I don't feel any great desire to see Animal Man again.

Next we get a second outing for Supergirl. It's supposed to follow directly on from the first but the fact she's wearing a completely different costume telegraphs that they were never meant to be linked. Mercifully she's now in what those of us of a certain age regard as Supergirl's real costume. You know - the one with the hot-pants and cleavage. After all the horribly fussy and seemingly randomly thrown-together outfits we've seen her in lately, it's a relief to see her in something that at least feels coordinated.

Sadly the story itself isn't of similar classic status as, returning to Earth from her adventure in space, Supergirl comes across a mad scientist in a satellite who wants to launch its missiles at us. It all goes belly-up for him when Supergirl destroys the missiles while he and his satellite burn up in our atmosphere. In just six pages, there are at least eight panels with the "camera" pointed straight at Supergirl's backside. DC were clearly determined to make full use of those hot-pants.

Finally, we get Zatanna.

I can't deny I have two problems with Zatanna. One is she keeps saying everything backwards.

The other is I can't see her without thinking she's Kate Bush.

For those unfamiliar with the Wuthering Heights singer, in her early days it wasn't altogether unknown for her to appear on TV in an outfit noticeably similar to Zatanna's, as she warbled away. Thankfully, she didn't insist on singing everything backwards, which, given Kate Bush's eccentric nature, is pretty much the only thing she didn't do.

No time for singing, Zatanna has to confront her father Zatara who's turned evil and is using his powers to destroy a city. It all ends happily when she kills him.

I seem to recall from childhood that Zatara was almost as big a source of problems for Zatanna as Odin was for Thor, so his death might be no bad thing but, as it turns out, she hasn't really killed him. She's just tricked the evil elemental who's possessing him into thinking she has, so it'll flee his body. Hooray to Zatanna - and well done to her on keeping her hat on through thick and thin.

Apart from the fact that I'm really not that interested in Animal Man, there're two things that strike me most about this issue. One is that - terrible costumes aside - Win Mortimer draws a rather lovely Supergirl. The other is how conventionalised the Supergirl strip's become by this point. There was a time when to open a Supergirl story was to know one was to be plunged into a whole world of socially irresponsible lunacy. By the time of Adventure Comics #415, nearly all that madness is gone to be replaced by an earnest sort of blandness. It's a shame. Although the more sensible stories don't threaten to damage the brain as much as their predecessors, there was something you couldn't help but like about those older tales.

Fourteen ways to spot if your neighbours are Inhumans.

Thanks to a well-known Australian soap opera, we all know that everybody needs good neighbours. But how do we know if our neighbours are members of a highly advanced secret race that’s been super-evolved by a bunch of aliens to be used as an army in a future war with another bunch of aliens? Well, here’s where we find out.

1.
They can’t get through a sentence without mentioning someone called Black Bolt who they expect to do absolutely everything for them.

2.
They speak English as a first language despite being from South East Asia.

3.

They can’t make their minds up if their house is in the Andes or in the Himalayas.

4.

They all have super-powers but half of those powers are of no use whatsoever, like being able to swim, or being invisible but with a shadow that means everyone can still tell you’re there.

5.

They’ll accept any madman as their king if he sticks a crown on his head and says he is.

6.

They keep accidentally creating a dome of impenetrable energy over their house that they then can’t escape.

7.

They speak only in exposition.

8.

One of them used to be evil but is now good, and no explanation has ever been given for this.

9.
They keep calling themselves a family even though it’s not clear in which way any of them are related to any of the others.

10.
They think they can get what they want just by stamping their feet.

11.
They say they’ll love you forever, in a love greater than all loves - and then promptly marry someone else.

12.
Their weddings get gate-crashed by Ultron.

13.
Even though they’re from a completely landlocked kingdom, one of them’s been genetically modified to only be able to live in the sea.

14.
Their comic always gets cancelled after twelve issues.