Comic Reader Résumé: Early April, 1986

Alpha Flight #36 had a Mike Mignola cover and promised appearances by the Avengers and Dr. Strange. I'm pretty sure my half-brother had a copy. That's all I've got on this one. He definitely had Amazing Spider-Man #278, with it's stark Mike Harris cover of Spidey standing over the body of Flash Thompson dressed as Hobgoblin, the words "Justice is Served" written into a shadow cast long across the white background. It looks like peak '80s edge at ten paces, but you crack that cover and the Vinnie Coletta hits you like a wall of stink. The Tom DeFalco plot over co-scripting duties by Peter David and Jo Duffy raises even more red flags. I'm guessing DeFalco blew his deadline on the development pipeline for Kickers Inc. and needed the help pulling together an issue long Scourge of the Underworld tie-in, where most books just snuck him in for a page or two. In case you don't know, Mark Gruenwald had the idea to gin-up sales on Captain America by giving him a Punisher-like vigilante adversary that specialized in murdering lower-tier Marvel super-villains. Despite the cover tease, it's The Wraith that buys it this issue. No, not Jim Gordon's son, but Jean DeWolff's brother. Really rough year for that family.

My brother was way into Scourge, to the point that he set out to buy every one of those titles in his killing spree. I don't know if he got them all, and I certainly didn't read them all, but Captain America #319 was certainly among the key issues. After low-key playing out the premise for a few months, this was the issue that announced the Scourge by name on the cover, including the floating heads of a bunch of justifiably worried costumed criminals. Along with the Serpent Society, Diamondback had been appearing in the title for a few months, but I believe this was the issue that really launched her partnership with Cap through much of Gruenwald's lengthy run. It was obviously intended to give Cap a Catwoman, and inker extraordinaire Joe Sinnott does what he can, but she's just not that appealing in all that pink as drawn by Paul Neary. Apologies to fans of the recently deceased artist, but his work almost single-handedly drove me off the book. Plus, this was the infamous issue with the massacre at the Bar with No Name, where the Scourge wasted about seventeen villains, delivering a substantial portion of the total census for the upcoming revised Handbook of the Dead. If that had happened in a Spider-Man comic, or had Mike Zeck art, we'd still be raving about it today. Instead, it's mostly a footnote, and most of these folks stayed dead!

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #8 was Magus to Mole Man, headlined by Marvel Girl, Mr. Fantastic, and Mockingbird. The art is solid Bronze Age consistency with few real standouts, but Bret Blevins goes out of his way on Man-Thing, and you can miss a rare Brian Bolland appearance on a different Merlin than he's known for. Art Adams' Mojo and Stan Woch's Modred the Mystic also pop.

I think Power Pack #24 got a house ad, plus a Cloak appearance, so maybe that's why my brother bought this one? I really like the Jon Bogdanove art now, but doubt that would have put such a Franklin Richards heavy issue over with me back in the day.

I think my half-brother went back for seconds with Avengers #269, which was full of Kang lore involving multiple variants, including Immortus. To me, this was awful convoluted multiple Earths DC nonsense, and if the Avengers harbored those sorts of shenanigans, then it was a title to be avoided going forward.

I'm definitely familiar with the Tom Mandrake drawn Two-Face story from Batman #397, but I'm vague on the timeline. Two-Face was not featured on the 1960s Batman TV show, and had not appeared in animation up to that point, so I didn't know who he was in 1986, much less regard him as a major Batman villain. I recall my introduction, and this wasn't it. This one was also from when Batman and Catwoman were basically a duo, leaving Robin to his own devices. When I see Jason Todd on the splash page with a jutted lower lip while dragging an assailant into the police station, I "read" him as the attitudinal Post-Crisis incarnation of "The New Adventures." Plus, there's a deformed stripper wearing a porcelain mask in this comic that is extremely provocative for the time, but made no impression on me. So, I figure this must have been from the 1988 sack o' comics or later.

I'm the one who brought Conan the Barbarian #184 to the table, probably from out of a 3-pack. There are so many covers of that dude fighting giant monsters naked, that one where he's mostly clothed, standing semi-hunched in a doorway, stumbling in like a zombie actually stands out in my memory. I wish I could say as much about the story within. It's another Owsley/Buscema/Chan joint, so it looks nice, but too much talky-talky.

For some G.I. Joe a Real American Hero #49 was probably a shark jumping moment. The Zeck cover features Destro and Dr. Mindbender exiting a pyramid's tomb with a mummy, and the story is titled "Serpentor." Yep, the genetically-engineered new leader of Cobra, made up of DNA from history's most notorious military leaders and tyrants. Look, I had all three of these action figures, but the bald guys got a lot more play than the dude with a big orange snake cowl. Thankfully, we're still a little ways out before going full Cobra-La.

The Incredible Hulk #321 had two teams of Avengers and some Fantastic Four in a throwdown with the Jade Giant, which was more spectacle than lil' bro could resist. But also, it was like, half an issue of Hulk-Busters, including a middle-aged Asian lady who judo-tosses Hulk, and it's Al Milgrom layouts finished by Dell Barras. I gave it a toss, but me-- I could resist it fine.

The Marvel Saga, the Official History of the Marvel Universe #8 reminds me what a weird, thankless gig this was. Peter Sanderson did the research and synopses, but he's only recapping other people's stories with any significant editorializing. The always retro Ron Frenz leans into anonymity with a cover and splash pages that looks as much like Steve Ditko and Werner Roth as he can manage. Not exactly what the kids were clambering for in 1986. Spider-Man goes well out of his comfort zone by hitchhiking on a jet fighter to catch a defective space capsule in mid-descent so that he could deploy its parachute to save the life of astronaut John Jameson. That kid will have no better luck going forward, and by that I mean John Jameson. Peter Parker marries a super-model. He's just a whiner. There's also coverage of early tales of the Fantastic Four, Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man, which I'm even less interested in now than I was then. There's a distinct lack of retcons allowing the use of art by John Byrne or Bob Layton, so this is a whole lot rough, loose, exhausted Kirby punctuated by distinctly jazzier Ditko Spider-Man material involving Chameleon and his failed Fantastic Five bid. Okay, we do get the first Thing/Hullk bout, and they work in a little Simonson and Sienkiewicz. When we're talking the origin story of Warren Worthington III, fresh takes are very necessary.

I guess I was interested enough in Kraven the Hunter and the new Vulture with the green skullcap to buy Marvel Tales Starring Spider-Man #189, but I'm not proud of it, Kraven's lion man vest shot lasers out of the eyeholes. What's that I said about saying no to dumb DC elements in my Marvels?

Secret Origins #4 covered Firestorm, the finer details of which I wasn't aware. I tossed through it at the mall bookstore, but the art and character just didn't appeal to me enough to delve deeper.

From memory, I would have sworn that Bret Blevins drew The Sword of Solomon Kane #6 of 6, but the painted cover is Dan Green and the interiors are John Ridgway. I usually like Al Williamson, but he's a bad fit here, and even worse over Sandy Plunkett in a short poetry section at the end of the book. Kane has never had the drawing power of other Robert E. Howard characters, but something about that bony, severe pilgrim works for me. Oddly enough, he looks like a Downward Spiral period Trent Reznor here, as he dares to expose his fully nude... arms, because he's in Africa and it's Africa hot, bro. Also, this one has winged demons and severed heads on pikes staring blanky for many panels, and that horror vibe is the lane where Kane most appeals to me.

Given that emotionally John Romita Jr.'s X-Men is my definitive version of the characters, it's funny how readily I avoided issues of his run in comparison to others. Years in to my active collecting, I'm perfectly content to continue reading friends & relatives' copies of a supposed "favorite title" instead of buying my own. I still think that it was mostly down to frugality, but I honestly disliked or was disinterested in a lot of the members, villains, and their designs at this time. I particularly viewed Phoenix unfavorably, with her lousy attitude, trashy mullet, and hideous yellow & red costume. Even when she was in the red vinyl with the spikes, the fetish kink of it was off-putting at that age. Anyway, Uncanny X-Men #207 was about Rachael Summers putting on a sexy French Maid outfit and infiltrating the Hellfire Club in a bid to kill the Black Queen, and somewhere along the way gets stabbed in the gut by Logan. But hey, this was the cover Wolverine slashes with his claws, so I think I got it out of a three-pack a few months later. I barely get anything that was going on here, so I should have probably reread it, but nah.

I'd left the previous issue's cliffhanger hanging for a while, but at some point after release, my half-brother helped me to read The All-New, All-Daring Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #116 for the Sabretooth appearance. I might need to explain that. At this point, Sabretooth was still best known as an Iron Fist foe that had teamed-up with the Hulk villain The Constrictor to more evenly match up when Luke Cage had been paired with the martial artist. My friends and I picked up Power Man and Iron Fist on occasion, but I hadn't seen any Sabretooth appearances, and would have known Constrictor only from his Secret Wars action figure. In about half a year, Sabretooth would join the Marauders in their Mutant Massacre, and be positioned as Wolverine's nemesis. Despite already being a hugely popular anti-hero, Logan hadn't really had a prominent foe, the closest by my reckoning being Ogun, who had not survived the Kitty Pryde mini-series. So Sabretooth went from an also-ran in a lower tier title to an overnight sensation, and little bro liked his characters with mean streaks as wide as Sabretooth's. So even though of the two of us, I was the relative "Spider-Man guy," he's the one who made the purchase sometime later this year or into 1987. And it's funny, because it's mostly a Black Can story, and it establishes a new status quo for Sabretooth that doesn't survive his transition to the X-office. Sabretooth is a hired lackey of The Foreigner, who'd been introduced a year earlier in Amazing Spider-Man. It was the same issue that introduced Silver Sable, but very discreetly. It had been in a three pack that someone had cracked open in a store that I was in, and that I'd tossed through. That story was about an elderly thief called The Fox, and did not hold my interest. At some point, amybe right from the beginning, The Foreigner was established as Silver Sable's ex-husband, but the character hadn't progressed until Peter David picked him up for use in Spectacular. David tried to make the Foreigner an overarching big bad, but he was just a regular looking guy without a costume or powers, so it didn't really take. Also, Jim Owsley hiring a guy from marketing to replace Al Milgrom was not a popular move, so there was immediate pressure to get rid of this guy who would only later become one of Marvel's defining talents. The Foreigner would be used to wrap David's run the following years, out with a whimper. That said, I've long thought it odd that no on e ever seemed to do anything with Foreigner's connection to Sabretooth, and being a big name mercenary, why he was never connected to Deadpool. Maybe because this appearance ended with Sabretooth clawing his own face to get web fluid off it, and it hurt so bad that Spidey took the pitiful thing to the vet or something. Sabretooth had a lot of emasculating appearances before hitting it big.

The penultimate Sectaurs, #7, was either another sack comic or Marauder Comics quarter bin buy. Bill Mantlo just wasn't spinning the same gold here as he had on Micronauts, and this story did not stick in my brain. It's a shame, because the art of Steve Geiger and Keith Williams continues to over-perform, deserving better. I never read the last issue, and I'm pretty sure the toys were off the shelves, so this is where we bid the Sectaurs adieu.

X-Factor #6 probably had a circulation of half a million, and I wasn't much more impressed with Apocalypse than I was the Alliance of Evil. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that high grade copies go for a few bills, but from my personal experience, it's difficult to assign the book that much value. Walt Simonson insists that he only tweaked a Jackson Guice's design, and Guice only recalls working off a design by Simonson. It sure looks like a Simonson to me.