Comic Reader Résumé: 4th Week of September, 1986

Classic X-Men #4 Between my Al Milgrom, Peter David, and Conway/Buscema periods, I tend to center Spectacular Spider-Man in my Web-Head experience. I also dismiss any influence from Tom DeFalco or Ron Frenz, who mostly worked on books that I skipped. And yet, my half-brother bought Amazing Spider-Man #284, the first part of the Gang War, and I certainly read through that story arc. This isn't my first or last foray into Amazing, either-- it's just that nothing here ever hit me like "The Death of Jean DeWolff." As you may have surmised, this one is about a mob conflict with super-human contributors, including Hobgoblin, Jack O' Lantern, The Rose, Hammerhead, and The Arranger. While these characters had a strong period presence, they were largely abandoned going into the '90s, and this churn helped to distance me from the Spider-titles. I experienced the classic rogues more through stuff like Marvel Saga and the cartoons, so they never resonated in the same way for me. Probably one of the reasons I've yet to embrace a Spider-Man movie is that they don't deal with my generation of supporting cast or foes, although Into The Mutiverse came the closest with the Kingpin and Prowler.

After a few months, I'm back to Daredevil with #238, with a near unrecognizable Art Adams on the cover, after being mucked up by Klaus Janson inks. The interiors are by Sal Buscema and Steve Leialoha, which is also not a complimentary combination, especially on a loose Mutant Massacre tie-in spotlighting Sabretooth. Man-- was there a concerted effort to put Sabretooth over nine years into his career, and if so, was it all down to tying him into Wolverine's back story? I don't recall ever seeing Sabretooth before 1986, and then he was everywhere. DC somehow pulled that same trick off with Lobo a few years later. Anyway, this is an oddball story with a uniquely and questionably sympathetic take on the feral mass murderer, and it's only that much more off with the mismatched art team. Still, I picked it up at a flea market relatively soon after release, likely influenced by having read at least one of the better stories to follow, starting next month.

Marie Severin finished Mark Texeira's breakdowns on Psi-Force #3, and you can't tell that Tex didn't do the job himself, it looks so good and true. This is the first "breather" issue of the series, mostly about the kids going to school, relating to one another, and failing to relate to classmates. I genuinely like these kids, feeling and fearing for them when a knife wielding punk tries to cut them out of his circles. New scripter Danny Fingeroth doesn't seem to miss a beat, as this teen drama works for me in a way New Mutants and the like never could.

Strikeforce: Morituri #2 was another fantastic read, as the government think tank that gave the team its powers is also willing to allow them to die in a potentially lethal stress test to force the swift manifestation of their broader abilities. That seems like a waste of resources to me, since each member already had enhanced physical attributes to survive the Morituri process, but these deadly games work because of the human drama of their very real peril. While Peter B. Gillis' script is remarkable on its own, much of the heft comes from the art of Brent Anderson at his career best, accomplished through no small help by the inks of Scott Williams. Each character has a distinctive face-- body type-- posture-- manner of emoting. It a beauty to behold. I've said before and shall repeat: this is one of the best comics from arguably the best year ever for mainstream comics. After rereading the first issue, I was already kicking myself for missing the admittedly pricey trade paperbacks from a dozen years back, but there is blessedly a comprehensive single-volume omnibus coming next year.

Finally, appropriately, we'll wrap up with the colossal X-Men Annual #10, continuing to feature Arthur Adams illustrations, with the absorption of his signature character Longshot and the Mojoverse into the mutant sphere. This was also the first appearance of the X-Babies-- the actual X-Men temporarily regressed to young children, and the far less heralded up-aged New Mutants in fairly lackluster adult costumes. I don't think it helped the New Mutants' long term prospects that they looked like dorks even under Adams' pen, and when you think about it, what have they amounted to? Magik is about the only member presented that still has something of a career, and she's not exactly a huge breakout in modern x-circles. Anyway, this annual was a load of fun, and highly coveted at the time... especially for the peak body hair on naked Logan, which I admit is a metric that opens up a line of questioning that I won't be fielding. I got the Marvel Arthur Adams Omnibus, so I'll probably reread this someday, but the number of words per panel is almost as dense as Wolverine's personal foliage, and somehow more off-putting.