In April 1984, I must have found comfort in the familiarity of Al Milgrom's (and Jim Mooney's?) art, or liked the chromatically challenged pairing of symbiote-enhanced Spider-Man and Black Cat, since I bought Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #92. Perhaps I was just intrigued by the bold cover question, "What is... The Answer?" A cheesy villain in a lame story, that's what.
Daredevil #209 was better, though off-puttingly weird. A legion of little girl robots with bombs in them were set to explode, so Daredevil has to run around the city "deactivating" them. For instance, in one encounter, blind attorney Matt Murdock has to quietly knock one down an elevator shaft. Arthur Byron Cover had a black sense of humor that played heavy under the art of David Mazzucchelli and Danny Bulanadi. I suspect I'd enjoy it better today, as I'm now more adulterated. My strongest memory at the time of publication was sitting in the bedroom of the family trailer, cutting out an order form for Secret Wars action figures that I'd never send, and ruining my copy.
Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars #4 showed great improvement, starting with an impressive cover image of the Hulk holding up 150 billion tons of mountain. I got hit with a lot of then-current continuity minutiae (Iron Man's a black guy now, and no one else knows?) that added value to the series as a means of keeping up to date with the entire universe. Bob Layton drew the issue, and I didn't mind, even though I was an established (if consciously unaware) Zeck fan.
Boy, I sure wasn't giving DC Comics much attention, was I? I didn't buy Blue Devil #2 for another few years, and I've yet to read the copy of the first issue I only acquired in the past decade or so. Still, it deserved mention before next month...
7 comments:
Ahhh Secret Wars... my gateway drug to my addiction to comics. Secret Wars issue #2 was the first comic I ever officially "collected". By issue #4 I was all in. Loved Mr Fantastic manipulating the Hulk in that issue.
You didn't read Blue Devil#2?!?!?! Unsubscribe!
It wasn't my call, Shag. I was getting all my unavailable-at-local-newsstands Blue Devil comics at the flea market, which didn't have a copy of #1 or #2 for me to buy.
Excuses. You are dead to me.
C'mon! I own it now! I think. Oh, wait, I might still be missing #2, actually. I definitely owned it at some point, for sure.
I'm sending Shockwave to your house. You suck.
I checked my longbox, and I definitely don't have #2. It goes from Firestorm #24 to BD #1 to BD #3. I always preferred the Metallo guest-spot anyway. I know all about Shockwave, though. He's the one who fires the cassette tapes out of his chest, right?
Put down your WebTV keyboard and just walk away now. Walk away man, just walk away.
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