Comic Reader Résumé: Week 1 of September, 1986

I accidentally missed The Marvel Saga, the Official History of the Marvel Universe #12 on the first week of August. It had Hulk & Sub-Mariner teaming up to battle the Fantastic Four. There was so much more FF and Namor in the early Marvel Comics stories than the MCU ones. The capsules are really flying by at this point, so I'm not going to touch on them episode by episode. Anyway, the return of Captain America in the early days of the Marvel Age triggers a lengthy recap of his history, blessedly involving peak art by Jack Kirby and John Byrne. We get into the Invaders, Baron Zemo, and Cap's joining the Avengers. I'll be honest-- I'm not certain that my brother bought this issue. The material in it is very familiar to me from the Fireside Sentinel of Liberty trade paperback and issues of the Stern/Byrne Cap run I picked up at flea markets. But he does get the next issue, so maybe it just didn't resonate as much with me because of that familiarity.

I'm uncertain when I got my hands on Alpha Flight #41, but I lean toward either a three-pack or a pull from the quarter bin. Either way, this 1986 comic gives me 1989 vibes. It's about the daughter of the Purple Man, a fairly obscure villain at the time, suddenly acquiring his powers and complexion rather late into her teenage years for a mutant. After learning her hidden backstory, she steals her mother's credit card and runs away to... a ski resort? See, she's had a lifetime crush on a now retired but far famed French-Canadian ski champion, who is now the super-hero Northstar, and she ends up using her power to control people on him. I didn't understand at the time why he was so put out by having the intense interest of an attractive young woman, but now that the subtext is long made text, I get it. If the Purple Man had done that to me, I wouldn't have been cool with it, either. I've always liked Dave Ross, very well served by the inks of Whilce Portacio, and the purchase would make more sense if it occurred after one handed off the reins to the Punisher ongoing series to the other. Despite digging the story, it would be years before I got around to the next chapter.

My brother bought Amazing Spider-Man #283, which I read for the thin connection to Secret Wars via the appearances of Titania and the Absorbing Man. He also got Animax #1, based on a toy line so short-lived that I don't think he even had any of the figures, and you guys, he had so many action figures. I ran an eBay search, and they apparently came with a MOTU-style mini-comic, but the full sized Marvel ones are a lot more readily available than the actual figures, and look a lot better besides. You can still snag loose toys for under $20, so I'm guessing they're no so much ultra rare as simply little traded undesirables. Some of the villains look pretty neat, but that heroes are all dorks in giant animal masks that make them all look like Razorback. There's a reason why that Mort was used early and often in John Byrne's humorous Sensational She-Hulk run. The comic is actually really neat-- a bizarre heavy metal Mad Max riff with animal/machine cyborgs, which makes it real unnerving when you see the bad guys spit-roasting such a creature, despite being some sort of hybrids themselves. This features rare, sorta mainstream heroic artwork by Sam & Max creator Steve Purcell, given a savage embellishment by the finally beneficial Gerry Talaoc. The book already gives big pagan vibes, but then the lead villain goes full bondage freak-- red skin and bat wing Satanic Panic action. This feels like an ill-fitting foreign import, so how this was spawned in Reagan's America, I'll never know. And Walt Simonson wrote it? What a trip. The book lasted four issues, but our interest and/or accessibility didn't.

Lil' bro also had Doctor Strange #80, in which all manner of monster attacked the Master of the Mystic Arts' friendship circle, and the man himself spiritually, as his physical body was undergoing surgery at a hospital. Another sophisticated tale by Peter B. Gillis, with some of the best art of Chris Warner's career, under Randy Emberlin inks. Definitely had Groo the Wanderer #22 in the house, though I'm not sure who bought it. This was the one where an ambassador with the unfortunate name of Gru, spelled with a "u," is constantly mistaken for the dim-witted barbarian and beaten for it. It's a cute bit that overstays its welcome, which frankly, is how I tend to view Groo as a whole.

I remember being put off by that little league cover to Mark Hazzard: Merc #2 when I was eyeballing it at the 7-11. I've never had any interest in sports, and hate when they intrude on my nerdy comics world. I needn't have worried, because the story is also about Mark's son's dumb baseball game violently colliding with the grim realities of a Soldier of Fortune. That said, it's also a funny book, before Peter David went completely overboard with the puns and sight gags. Mark Hazzard is a thug from a brutal world, so the humor stays firmly in the sardonic and bleak vein. This material needs to be collected in a higher quality presentation, certainly more so than freakin' Nightmask, which got a comprehensive trade paperback in 2018 to tie in with Secret Wars, I guess? Gray Morrow's art is shot directly from the pencils, and the line is so light that it nearly disappears on newsprint. A lot of the definition comes from D. Martin's pale coloring, which is also imperiled by the lousy paper, but entirely appropriate to the art. Merc was easily the most grounded, realistic, and in the early issues handily the overall best New Universe title. But part of its reality is that however sympathetic its lead may be played here, this guy would be a villain in the Marvel Universe, and that had to set a moralist like Jim Shooter's teeth on edge. This was so early in David's career that I have an easier time seeing him getting fired from this book for some of the choices he makes here than having left of his own volition, and at least as credited, this is Morrow's last issue for a while. Most of the time, I think the creative turnover on these title is a result of their being low paying dregs, but here, I think the book was simply too daring for the boss man. I love it, and will miss this team going forward.

My brother bought the Mutant Massacre tie-in Power Pack #27 for the Wolverine and Sabretooth appearances. It was overall too domestic and kiddie for our tastes, but then you'd have Scalphunter standing atop a pile of bodies as he gunned down adorable mutant children. Man-- that's just wrong. I like the Jon Bogdanove art a lot more now than I did then, but then again, Power Pack still strikes me as a kid's books that their parents would prefer, so that tracks.

As I mentioned last month, my Batman #402 came in a three-pack, so it's wild how much of this thing was centered on my interests, while being bought largely sight unseen. As the middle book numerically, I might noty have known that there was a Jim Starlin cover in the mix, much less full interiors. This may have been around the time Epic Comics started playing monkey-in-the-middle with his Dreadstar royalty checks, and I understand that he needed the fill-in gig for quick cash to pay an income tax bill. After having spent most of the '80s on cosmic science fantasy, and also entering a period when he was losing interest in drawing, Starlin's stiffness and extremely dated fashions stood out like a sore thumb. Bruce Wayne hanging out at the Playboy Mansion in his Hef smoking jacket with a clearly much younger Robin and a John Watters-looking Alfred should have had Wertham spinning in his grave, and the Swanderson look of it all would have been Seduction of the Innocent era appropriate. But Starlin also brings a '70s New York urban grit, along with some serious grindhouse ultraviolence that could have only gotten by an almost entirely defanged Comics Code Authority. It's about a guy whose mind is broken by tragedy, and comes to think that he's the Batman, but with an m.o. closer to Shadowhawk. Batman had to catch him, to clear his own name, and before "he" kills again. Not gonna lie, I lapped it up. By the way, I didn't realize that all this material had been collected into a trade in 2015, and thought I might pick it up. The not so aptly named Batman:Second Chances trade is going for upwards of $150 online. That just seems stupid high to me for readily attainable late '80s corporate IP that will inevitably be reprinted again, if only on account of those stupid prices indicating demand.