Comic Reader Résumé: Early November, 1986

In a rare bout of consideration for others, I found Blackthorne 3-D Series #11 at Marauder Comics around 1989 and bought it for my mother. She was in a firm Betty Boop phase that included a variety of merch, possibly including a rolling tray, but the one of those I remember most had Elvis' painted face on it. So probably a hash tin, instead? Also, in a credit deduction, I can't say whether it was a proper back issue or a quarter bin find, but I lean toward the latter. Lil' Bro picked up Captain America #326, a haunted house tale with visions of established rogues, and Doctor Strange #81, the final issue of the Master of the Mystic Arts volume. I'm not sure which of us got Fantastic Four Vs. X-Men #1, but only he would continue with it. I completely missed G.I. Joe a Real American Hero #56 for some reason. The Tom Palmer cover sparks no memory. I don't really remember G.I. Joe Yearbook #3 either, another silent Snake-Eyes story by the series' creative team, along with a Serpentor story by Mike Zeck, who also contributes covers and an extensive pin-up gallery. I don't know what happened with all that. My brother might have gotten Justice #4, where the anti-hero deals with the consequences of losing his hand while pursuing the other-dimensional crime lord. It certainly looks better having Geoff Isherwood finish Joe Staton rather than be finished by Vinnie Colletta. It's vaguely familar, and I don't think I ever got a copy myself, discounted or otherwise. Gladstone's re-release of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #516 stories that featured stories related to the simultaneous return of Song of the South was well played, since I must have been old enough to have pangs of nostalgia for that property, and very randomly purchased this.

My half-brother continued buying the "Gang War" arc into the Amazing Spider-Man #285, which had a Mike Zeck cover featuring the Punisher wielding a bazooka. It wasn't too unfortunate that Bob McLeod inked it, but that will be a problem for me in the future. The interiors were by DeFalco, Owsley, and Kupperberg, so I figure the proto-Christopher Priest element probably helped carry it for me. This one was about the mafia heads trying to smooth out their differences while Frank Castle tried to rub them out, with ol' Web-Head getting in the way. At a whopping $2.50, I was perfectly content to let lil'bro buy the up-format Spider-Man Vs. Wolverine one-shot. Mark Bright's rendition of Logan was not pleasing to my eye, and I already got a summary of this in that month's Amazing. At a time when kids like myself bought all things Wolveine, I was like "ehhh, not that one."

The 'Nam #3 continues to be the antidote when I get bogged down by long, arguably overwritten late Bronze Age comics. This one was a relatively light affair, with three Joes getting a three day pass into Saigon, only to be beset by terror attacks and grift. I got excite for a second that I might spot someplace familiar in the comic, but then I remembered that we never went to Ho Chi Minh City on our vacation. Too westernized. We did Hanoi and Da Nang, and the latter was mostly spent at Sun World Ba Na Hills, because I wanted to visit the Golden Hands Bridge, which was built in 2018. So no, I didn't get the 'Nam #3 experience, probably to the good.

D.P. 7 #4 was still a good book, but more Hardy Boys than Alan Moore. When Dave gets mistaken for a Bigfoot-type creature killing cattle in the sticks, it's up to his fellow freak friends to clear his name. I'd have more patience with it if I wasn't a middle aged man trying to canvass dozens of books on a tight schedule to get out a monthly podcast. But as it is, this was a wordy, corny, mystery of the week episode of a period TV show. It's also hard to miss that the New Universe has two series about groups with superhuman powers on the run from nefarious agencies seeking to exploit or exterminate them, and that each team book was among the longest lasting titles in the run. The main difference is that D.P. 7 are adults who do more actual running than the teenage runaways of Psi-Force. It was wise of Jim Shooter to distill the best of both books into the Valiant Comic Harbinger, which outlived each series in a more hostile industry landscape, though. But then again, if you combined the runs of the two New Universe titles and all the volumes of Harbinger, you'd more or less have a parity of total output. Maybe that's all the gas off-brand X-Men can give you?

The Marvel Saga: the Official History of the Marvel Universe #15 maybe learned a lesson from the Dardevil issue and allowed Keith Pollard to draw Hawkeye & Wonder Man in modern West Coast Avengers-style to sweeten their connection to the reprints within. We get their origin stories, plus the debut of noted failure Diablo. Speaking of Daredevil, the yellow-garbed one meets Spider-Man. On the move are Kang the Conqueror and the Scorpion, plus I should probably mention that Doctor Doom is rarely far from these Marvel Saga issues.

Secret Origins #11 offered another instance of my tossing through this title at the mall bookstore, based on the inviting premise, attractive cover, and characters I had little to no experience with getting a key spotlight. Power Girl had been appearing in house ads with sharp Kerry Gammill art, and Hawkman I knew from Super Friends, Super Powers, and team-ups with Batman. But as was the case in most of these occurrences, under the Jerry Ordway cover was tepid art and unengaging stories, such that I only ever bought a single issue of its fifty issue run new off the shelf. This could have been a great book to introduce me to the greater DC Universe, but it failed to induce me to buy, and even having picked up most of the run well after the fact, I keep them more for the reference than any true affection. Superman #2 was another toss through at the mall bookstore, lured in by the premise that Lex Luthor now knew the Man of Steel's secret identity, then put off by how they handwaved it away. Back on the rack, Byrne.

I don't know if we appreciated how good when had it in the '80s, when Barry Windsor-Smith would pop by for a random fill-in issue involving the Disco Dazzler, as I don't know if we appreciated how good when had it in the '80s, when Barry Windsor-Smith would pop by for a random fill-in issue involving the Disco Dazzler, as he did in Uncanny X-Men #214. This isn't Lifedeath-- there's nothing special about this book, except that it was drawn exceptionally well for the largest audience available in comics at the time. And I guess also that Wolverine is continuing to act like a nutjob, but we were still too high on the Mutant Massacre to care.

Comic Reader Résumé Podcast #27

(October 1986)

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ré·su·mé [rez-oo-mey, rez-oo-mey] noun 1. a summing up; summary. 2. a brief written account of personal, educational, and professional qualifications and experience, as that prepared by an applicant for a job.

In Comic Reader Résumé, I use Mike’s Amazing World of Comics to travel back through time via his virtual newsstand to the genesis point of my lifelong collecting of comics. From there, I can offer a “work history” of my fandom through my active purchasing of (relatively) new comic books beginning in January of 1982, when my interest in the medium went from sporadic and unformed to routine on through compulsive accumulation. To streamline the narrative and keep the subjects at least remotely contemporaneous, I will not generally be discussing what we call back issues: books bought long after their publication date. Sometimes, I will cover a book published on a given month that I picked up within a year or so that date, and I give myself an especially wide berth on this aspect in the first couple of “origins” episodes. We’ll get more rigidly on point as my memories crystallize and my “hobby” spirals out of control into the defining characteristic of my life (eventually outpacing squalor and competing neuroses.) It’s part personal biography, part industry history, and admittedly totally self-indulgent on my part.

This episode includes Batman #403, Classic X-Men #5, D.P. 7 #3, Daredevil #239, Elfquest #18, G.I. Joe a Real American Hero #55, The History of Electronics, Justice #3, Marvel Saga #14, The 'Nam #2, Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #14, Strikeforce: Morituri #3, Tandy Computer Whiz Kids, Uncanny X-Men #213, X-Factor #12, and more!

“Transcripts”

• Early October, 1986
• Late October, 1986
• Twitter
• #CRRésumé?
• rolledspinepodcasts@gmail.com
• Comment on Résumé page or Rolled Spine Podcasts.

ALF, Batman, Bloom County, DC Comics, Daredevil, G.I. Joe, Ghostbusters, Inhumanoids, Marvel Comics, New Universe, Radio Shack, Rambo, SilverHawks, Strikeforce: Morituri, Wolverine, X-Factor, X-Men, Movies, Music, Comic Reader Résumé

Comic Reader Résumé: Late October, 1986

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I've been rereading Classic X-Men via my omnibus edition, which I've been very happy with. For each reprint, there's an orange page with black text that offers the original cover and a synopsis for the 1970s X-Men issue. As I've gotten older, my tolerance for the quirks and excesses of Bronze Age comics has worn thin, so I don't anticipate ever revisiting that material in full. I much prefer being given the plot and a gallery of all the revisions made to the material in 1986, then enjoy the new character-focused short story by a more mature and confident Chris Claremont. I favor that to suffering through a monster of the month plot last issue, where Cyclops accidentally unleashed demons that Storm has to put away, or this issue's revival of Eric the Red. I do feel bad for Havok and Polaris though, a reasonably normal and loving couple constantly sucked into the dark vortex that was Scott Summers' drama. Alex feels bad about getting adopted and leaving Scott behind at the orphanage, but like, wouldn't you have, too? The back-up involves Colossus' very brief romance with a defecting Russian ballerina, and how despite twice saving her from thugs, he's rejected for being a mutant. Piotr comes off as both soulful and dense for wasting a day on the beach, contemplating whether a man of steel like himself has a heart worthy of love. It was still a good one, and also, the negative space on the back cover finally allowed me to notice that Bolton has been numbering each cover as part of his signature. #5 in an ongoing series!

Elfquest #18 was full of palace intrigue, and I'm struck by the Tolkien of it all. Yeah, they're all more or less elves, but there's the shorter Wolfriders pitted against the taller telepathic ones on winged mounts, and then there's the ones that are part bat, and only one can still produce children, melting the heart of the king of the other ones, and yadda yadda. Look, it was sexy half-naked slender myth creatures in a fantasy soap opera. X-Men wasn't all that different.

Unicorn to Wolverine in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #14 pretty much marks the last proper issue of the Deluxe Edition. The other six issues are more specialized interests, where this one still looks at the breadth of the MCU. We got your Art Adams, Mike Zeck, Bill Sienkiewicz, John Byrne, Kerry Gammill, Bob Layton, and Paul Smith. The ones hitting it out of the park are Jerry Ordway's Vision, and if you can believe it, Sandy Plunkett's Will O' The Wisp.

X-Factor #12 seemed to be a try-out issue for Marc Silvestri, given that he would soon take over X-Men from the departing John Romita Jr. after a slew of high quality fill-ins. It inhabits an interesting space as a Mutant Massacre aftermath, that reintroduces Boom Boom post Secret Wars II, and makes a point at picking at the flaws of the mutant exterminators cover that would soon be abandoned. You've also got Apocalypse developing his Four Horsemen, and the progression of the crippled Angel subplot that will play into next year's mutant crossover.

Louis Williams did not have much of a career. On a quick search, I couldn't find any information on him, beyond a single issue's work on about three comics, an incomplete Speedy serial in Action Comics Weekly, a two-issue mini-series devoted to The Punisher's I.T. guy, and his five issue run on Daredevil. He did the Klaw fill-in with Steve Englehart, and then a pair of two-parters with Ann Nocenti that had to be separated by two fill-in stories by other artists. I have to assume the dude was not up to speed for monthly comics, and he was likely hired for bearing a passing resemblance to David Mazzucchelli. A shame then, because his work hit me just right, and he's kind of my defining Daredevil artist. He makes Matthew Murdock just pretty and delicate enough for me to believe that her could pull the kind of ladies that he does who are willing to put up with his nonsense, but also sell the violence inherent in his alter ego. His work is perfectly grounded and realistic, and yet he can also delve into the surreal and the outright horrific demanded from him in a script like "Bad Plumbing" from Daredevil #239. Though the cover advertises a Jack the Ripper type with the bloody scrawl "Rotgut was Here," Williams renders the serial killer a disturbing, pathetic creep driven to murder by various mental pathologies. Rotgut appears to be an African-American Albino, and in my experience, most comic artists struggle with an accurate representation of a regular Black person, but Williams excels at rendering such a tricky racial nuance. Rotgut isn't meant to be a credible or recurring threat to our hero, but as the centerpiece for Nocenti's exploration of a particular type of zealot that has only proven more of a concern for society today than he was nearly forty years ago. As I've mentioned, I didn't delve into the more highly regarded Daredevil material for a few years yet, so this was the interpretation that finally drew me onto the title, and which I still compare other runs against.

The 'Nam #2 was bought by my half-brother and read by me. This title should maybe come up more as an early influence on Western decompressed, cinematic storytelling. Like the New Universe, this book takes place in real time, jumping a month between issues. Unlike anything at the New U, this is drawn by one of the all time great comics artists at the peak of his powers, so the book doesn't feel the need to be written so densely as to serve as an installment in a novella in order to encourage repeat business. Michael Golden is killing it here like--well, like the Army kills that V.C. patrol, or like Sergeant Polkow would like to kill his superior when he intentionally puts his squad in harm's way as payback for a personal slight. The book looks so good, and is such a fine example of visual storytelling, that Doug Murray refuses to cover much of it with dialogue or captions, meaning you can read the thing in about five minutes.

After two exceptional issues of Strikeforce: Morituri, the third was a shockingly basic super-team comic. Purple prose, arch dialogue, straining to work in both real and code names while summarizing each character's power. This could have been any period X-Men knock-off, though the science fiction elements lend more towards Levitz Legion of Super-Heroes, aside from a horror element that sets it apart somewhat. It's a perfectly fine example in that class, with nifty costume designs on display and variations on fastball specials executed, but it's hardly transcending standard Marvel fare in the way it was previously

Comic Reader Résumé: Early October, 1986

October of 1986 is technically a five week month, but I don't seem to have bought anything from the first week. Watchmen was nearing its halfway point, but I only have vague, uncertain visions of seeing those covers while tossing through books at the mall bookstore. If so, Dave Gibbons' 9-panel grids clearly didn't grab me like Keith Giffen's. I can speak similar of the final four issues marking The End of the Justice League of America. I'm more confident about having tossed through late life issues of the series, which seemed dark and cool, but the character selection was off-putting, and I wasn't entirely won over by the art.

Batman #403 was the last and frankly least part of a sequential three-pack, but that's not to say that I didn't enjoy it. I like Denys Cowan, just nowhere near the same level as Trevor Von Eeden or Jim Starlin. Plus, the inks of Greg Brooks-- yes, that Greg Brooks-- do the work no favors, occasionally veering into Carmine Infantino territory. This is also the second and final appearance of Tommy Carma, the mass murderer who thought that he was Batman, as we see him break out of a mental asylum in a manner it's not at all comfortable seeing Greg Brooks of all people help render. It feels like Collins was hired to do a fill-in, and then when he was handing it in, was asked if he could do another over the weekend. So it's an immediate, unnecessary sequel to the one he just did, with the added contrivance of the fake Batman actually stumbling upon the Batcave, but it's worth it when the Dynamic Dup rush to a Batmobile that isn't there anymore. Even in the best neighborhoods. Next issue begins "Year One," but I missed three-quarters of that one.

In D.P. 7 #3, the whitest people on the team try to being in the cops to help them with the clinic's headhunters, to entirely predictable results for the racial minorities. Mark Gruenwald gets it. The rest of the issue is dealing with the consequences of the team's decisions and circumstances, a surprisingly mature and organic take on the concept of super-powered individuals spontaneously manifesting. I know this creative team's work on Squadron Supreme is often touted as anticipating Watchmen, but I think that this is the book that fares better in comparison to that lionized piece. Rather than the heavily politicized moral panic of Moore's work, or the romanticized outsiders in the X-Men, this book took a disparate group of people and played out how they would deal with a fantastic circumstance in a believable way that satisfies with each installment.

G.I. Joe a Real American Hero #55 was dubbed "Unmaskings," and it feels like the reveal that the Flint who was captured was actually Snake-Eyes in disguise was added just to validate the kinda lame Zeck cover of him in the process of taking off his mask, alongside Cobra Commander and Destro. The latter two escape from under the Pit, but are on the run, donning new clothes and disguises. The twist is that they're pulled over by a cop who sees a resemblance between the Commander and a kid in a coma that turns out to be his actual son Billy, having survived the drunk driving incident. So there's a tearful reunion on the Commader's part, since his one-eyed kid still hasn't regained consciousness. You forget how much of an X-Men-like melodrama this book was in its heyday. Also, Stalker leads the mission to free Snake-Eyes, who then tears up Cobra troops.

The Marvel Saga, the Official History of the Marvel Universe #14 offers a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants cover, and I don't know if settling on Keith Pollard as the regular artist was an aesthetic choice or a budgetary condition, but these bland, stiff things are killing the title. I bought Marvel Tales with the help of new Kerry Gammill covers, later followed by the likes of Mike Zeck and Todd McFarlane. Classic X-Men was a bonafide hit with its Arthur Adams covers and John Bolton back-ups. Meanwhile, I let my brother buy every lame looking Marvel Saga that I ever read over its two year run, and I suspect at least some of that was X-Men completionism. This is the same kid buying old Werner Roth back issues, after all. Anyway, Green Goblin teaming-up with The Enforcers triggers a flash forward to John Romita stories telling of the psychological descent of Norman Osborne. Likewise, the Brotherhood sequence gets into Scarlet Witch backstory drawn by John Byrne. When we do get back to Kirby, it's for cool baddies like Enchantress and the Executioner. So basically, everything inside the book looks better than the exteriors.

Uncanny X-Men #213 sold us Sabretooth versus Wolverine by Alan Davis on the cover, but made it a Psylocke proving ground inside, and I wasn't mad at it. I think I'd missed the annual where Captain Britain's telepathic sister was brought into the book, since Phoenix had been written out, and Claremont can't not have a telepath around. This purple haired chick in pink just started showing up, so I for one needed the explainer. I did enjoy the issue, but maybe keeping Phoenix and having Psylocke be part of Excalibre would have made more sense, or having Alan Davis take over X-Men instead of launching its least loved spin-off at the peak of its sales powers?