Alpha Flight #45 had a wicked white Sasquatch cover where Kevin Nowlan inked June Brigman, who was then complimented by Whilce Portacio on the interiors. Brigman is still best known for co-creating Power Pack, and only did five issues of this book, which is too bad, because she was a good fit. For maximum bleakness, the issue starts with the glass casket burials of Snowbird, her husband, and the infant son she herself killed while possessed by the spirit of Pestilence. Top that, Aquaman! Also, Northstar was dying from fairy AIDS, Vindicator had lost confidence as a leader, Puck pined for her in a humiliating way, and Snowbird's corpse in Sasquatch form was resurrected by Pestilence. On the plus slide, the once seemingly dead Walter Langkowski helped defeat Pestilence and reclaim the body, but then he was a bit put out to realize that his human form was now a girl. Convoluted, but I liked it.
My half-brother continued buying the "Gang War" arc into its fourth chapter in Amazing Spider-Man #287, as I more or less continue to recycle that opening sentence verbatim. This one had Daredevil, as was legally required of any major crime stories set in New York in the '80s. I was surprised to see Erik Larsen's name in the credits, and have to assume this was or very near to his introduction to the not-so-friendly neighborhood. I also assume the editor brought in Art Nichols to smother Larsen's eccentricities in drab late Bronze Age advertising art realism, because Larsen was already better than this hash. It's just plain hard to look at, especially when the Man without Fear turns up in a fat suit to trick Spider-Man into fighting him... and the Falcon... for reasons?
Ah jeez-- here comes Captain America #328 and the debut of D-Man, wrestler turned (future) hero of the homeless. Not a champion for the homeless, but an unhoused super-hero. I feel like even in the Marvel Universe, someone who can lift 25 tons could manage gainful employment, but D-Man was a special kinda guy. By the way, this being an audio medium, that's d-apostrophe-man, not like Etrigan or that one guy from the Justice Machine. Short for Demolition Man, probably because Marvel was afraid Sting might sue. Demolition would have been a good gig to stave off homelessness. Anyway, Dennis Dunphy had been introduced a year earlier, during Ben Grimm's per-cancellation trend-chasing wrestling days. Cap was supposedly investigating the Power Broker that had given Super Patriot and his B.U.C.kies their strength & stamina, but was also considering the need to start juicing himself, as if Cap fans hadn't already heard enough steroid jibes. So this random mohawked wrestler dude decides to help Cap by putting on a variation of Dardevil original bumblebee costume with a Wolverine mask, except it was the current Wolverine instead of the old cat-mask, which he might have been able to get away with. And to top it off, Paul Neary gets inked by Vince Colletta, a real Vegemite and sardines combination for me. Change my relationship status back to "it's complicated" and skip the rest of this story arc.
Classic X-Men #7 had a striking cover-- literally the team knocking through a wall-- which has been referenced many times in the years since. As Arthur Adams goes, I found it a bit flat, and preferred the inside cover image of Storm in space gear. The expansion of the reprint story is more obvious this time, as the new pages and panels were drawn by Jim Sherman. Besides smoothing out some of the bad science while sending the X-Men on a space shuttle to battle Sentinels on a satellite, they also insert a subplot that explains why the Hellfire Club would be spearheading a project that would obliterate mutantkind. That leads into the John Bolton back-up, with the artist in his element, drawing salacious elites in Victorian garb, as they betray and murder one another. The back cover is a White Queen pin-up, but the star of the story is the Black King.
Daredevil #241 had the first and last appearance of the Trixter, spelled with an "x," as well as Todd McFarlane, though you can hardly tell once Al Milgrom smothered all the life out of him. Spider-Man and Daredevil have enough in common that you want to shoot for contrast, and McFarlane will become a premiere Spidey artist, so I'm not sure I'd have wanted the full Todd treatment, anyway. That said, Ann Nocenti is her usual weird, bleak self, and I have to wonder why Todd never tapped her for any Spawn material, because she was a natural fit for the kind of material Todd was always trying, and usually failing, to deliver. Look at this story really drive that home, but also reminded me that sometimes Ann Nocenti was too much for my taste with this gonzo grimdark Christmas misery.
I bought Fallen Angels #1 because it was a heavily promoted X-Men tie-in with art by Kerry Gammill. Unfortunately, it was really a Sunspot mini-series where he runs away from the X-Mansion and gathers a bunch of misfits into a short-lived grouping, if never really a proper team. My brother would pick this up off and on, but myself and most of fandom washed our hands of it with a swiftness. I continued to read my half-brother's copies of Fantastic Four Vs. X-Men into #3, mostly to see how one of my favorite X-people, Shadowcat, managed to survive her post Mutant Massacre drift into irrevocable immateriality. The drama over whether Mister Fantastic intentionally exposed his family to cosmic rays didn't do much for me. I clearly had Christmas cash from my father's family burning a hole in my pocket if I had the coin to spend on Groo the Wanderer #26. Admittedly though, it was probably the best of the ones I read, as the imbecile gets shrunk by a pair of witches, and dose his own take on Sword of the Atom. It's a novel angle, and Sergio Aragones' detailing was in top form.
Mark Hazzard: Merc #6 I bought new at 7-11, and began a run of Mike Zeck covers that will last most of the rest of the series. However, I don't. I wonder if that Zeck connection made some of my memories of this title bleed into my enthusiasm for G.I. Joe. But what's weird is that I don't end up buying many or maybe any new, and the issues I enjoyed the most have a Mark Beachum association instead. Anyway, this one had Vince Giarrano art, which would normally have been a deal breaker, but this is in his early days when he drew in a more conventional style. Mark's pilot buddy Treetop gets the shop a gig guarding an actual former Nazi up for political office in a German-speaking country. Predictably, Mark almost immediately turns on the guys paying his bills, and seemingly kills one of the guy's guards at one point. There are "Never Forget" types who keep trying to out the politician, and one who had slept with Mark also ended up murdered in plain sight during a demonstration by another guard. Mark goes full Dalton in the last reel of Roadhouse, spending more time avenging the girl than we ever did with her while alive, killing scores with seeming impunity. Ultimately, Hazzard turns the politician over to... the media? Who are more interested in yet another old Nazi that they seemed intent on electing than the 6'4 scarred American running around with an Uzi. There were so many inkers that the credit went to Manny Hands, and I guess veering from a Kubert to a Salmons could have been more schizophrenic than this, but I get why I more or less quit here.
Once again, I paid a buck-fifty for Mephisto Vs... The Fantastic Four #1, purely on the strength of that righteously Satanic cover that, in a rare reversal for me, should be plagiarized more often. I've seen it "homaged" once or twice, but this thing is sick and that sickness should have spread further. The interiors by John Buscema & Bob Wiacek are painfully conventional by comparison, not at all warranting the up-charge. However, Al Milgrom's story has a mean streak, as Mephisto forces appropriately forces Faustian deals on various heroes in pursuit of possessing the purest soul. The narrative leans into the horror, and is sturdy enough that DC ripped off the premise for a months-long intra-company crossover a decade later. One of my favorites, in fact, and that stoutness kept me coming back to this mini-series, as well.
The New Mutants #50 had so much gong on that I didn't even mind the Rick Leonardi cover, or even how that cover got ripped off not long after I bought it. Hey, the Jackson Guice Magik splash page looked better without it. Actually though, this may have been too busy. We start in Limbo, and then Magik teleports to the Shi'ar Empire. That brings in Professor X, Lilandra, the Starjammers, the Micronauts, Grimjack, and Munden's Bar. I obviously wouldn't have caught the First Comics references in 1986, but I'm pleased to see Claremont was a fan, too. The New Mutants were still in the fascist future, which I'm not sure ever gets addressed again, unless that's where Bishop came from? But Magik just picks up her team in a portal from that future, everyone does to Earth, and they fight a version of S'ym corrupted by the transmode virus before the title bout with Warlock's father, Magus. Not my Warlock, and not that Magus, which I confess to being slightly resentful about. I liked this issue fine, but for whatever reason, I was done with this book until getting dragged back for the next crossover, Fall of the Mutants.
I said last month that I was sticking around for Psi-Force #6 and beyond, as long as Mark Texeira was delivering that sweet art. About that... under maybe his best cover of the run was a hideous Christmas story fill-in my Mike Vosburg and Al Milgrom. Six months in, I'm invested in these kids and their sob story holidays, but let's not push it with another lousy fill-in next month.
More evidence of my riches was Star Trek Movie Special #2 at $2.00, I believe bought at the mall bookstore. Despite the issue numbering, it actually adapted the fourth and best of the movies, The Voyage Home. I think the creative team of Barr, Sutton, and Villagran also did the main Trek title, which I readily skipped, but I plucked down the pair of bucks for this here souvenir. Besides, unlike with The Search for Spock, I don't think they offered action figures for this one. I'm thinking the VCR might have finally come into the household around this time, but I could still see value in having the comics adaptation of a favored movie.
West Coast Avengers #19 is a rough read today, what with it centering on the old west Ghost Rider doping up Mockingbird to be his love slave, and both battering Kid Colt andc Two-Gun Kid when they try to do something about it. Also, Wonder Man's idiocy gets Hawkeye injured, and Clint uses a doomed past life of Firebird as a way to each out for help in the present, neglecting to mention to the poor woman the doomed part of the equation. Not a lot of heroism in this super-hero comic.
X-Factor #14 with Cyclops versus the Master Mold, although the true battle was with his burgeoning awareness that he's a sleezeball. Simonson gave the book a distinctive look, and I at least read my brother's copies, unlike when he'd pick up New Mutants.
I once again splurged on a $1.50 comic, maybe because I was having a good Cap month, at least so far, and bought X-Men Vs. the Avengers #1. This was probably Marc Silvestri's audition of Uncanny X-Men, where he had a long run that I struggled with. He's so much better at drawing the Avengers, especially Captain America, although with John Buscema and Tom Palmer still on that title, it didn't seem to need saving. This very month offered the conclusion to the beloved Roger Stern arc "Under Siege," but in a year, that title's prospects become pretty bleak for much of the next decade. As for this Magneto-centric mini-series, well, I could have used Claremont here, because I wasn't entirely up for Roger Stern's serving of mutantkind. It was funny to see a Quinjet parked in front of a K-Mart on the splash page, given how much of my toy buying, including Secret Wars, was centered on one.
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Monday, December 16, 2024
Comic Reader Résumé: Early December, 1986
This must have been the one Christmas when my younger stepsister from my mother's marriage gave me some comics as a present. I don't think that I ever gave her anything, ever, and we had a mildly antagonistic relationship in those years. It was a really sweet gesture, and I don't know what possessed her. I haven't seen her in something like twenty years at this point, when she occasionally shopped at the adult boutique where I worked. You might find that a bit too candid, but unless she got born again in the meantime, I don't think she'd care about the mention. Anyway, I hope she's doing well, and I hope her father isn't. I never thought I'd be able to identify a specific Archie comic, but sure enough, she gave me Betty's Diary #6, in which the young lady explores multiple potential careers. I'm a known girl's guy, but this was clearly a bowling ball with Homer's name on it. Which again, is better than literally the nothing I had to offer. Betty tries her hand at creative writing, a teenage hobby of my older stepsister, and there's a panel of fairy tale versions of the Archie gang that stuck with me. The next story had Betty crying at a nativity scene, and I surely rolled my eyes at the Spire of it all even then. The third story was about Betty failing to find some quiet alone time, because she was just too popular. Oh-- I can totally relate. F'sure.
Even I don't understand what my relationship status with Captain America comic books was up to in this period, but we were back on-again for #327. "Clashing Symbols" was about Johnny Walker trying to make Cap look bad by having his 'roided-up buddies wear his mask and call themselves Buckies. Yes, even the Black one. Lemar Hoskins. Had to look it up. If you didn't know, "Big Black Buck" or abbreviated versions of same was a racist term applied to young men of African descent that supposedly embodied all of the worst stereotypes you'd expect from friends of the Klan. The murderers of Emmett Till got off by framing the 14 year old as a Buck, if that helps you with context. Mark Gruenwald was clearly just riffing off the name of Cap's boy sidekick when he developed the Bold Urban Commandos, or B.U.C.s, and nobody minded until grown ass Lemar Hoskins took on the actual Bucky name and costume. Given who he was a sidekick to, they could have leaned into the political commentary, and kept his legs exposed besides. Instead, within a year, Bucky was given a new name and monicker, Battlestar, and he was eventually shuffled off to Silver Sable's Wild Pack. Part of the irony is that Lemar Hoskins is himself a racist, or at least played one while assaulting Middle Eastern students while slinging related epithets that you couldn't print in a modern comic. When you misspell the word that you're burning into someone's lawn, your redemption arc is short and bends toward obscurity. Most of the rest of the issue was Paul Neary making Bernie Rosenthal as visually unappealing as Gruenwald was assassinating her character. I cop to the bias of DeMatteis/Zeck being the best Cap, followed by Byrne/Stern, so Bernie is my one true pairing with Steve. Her getting done dirty like this was not endearing. From there, Cap and Super Patriot brawled in a parking lot outside a Springsteen concert for an hour with no clear victor, but Rogers was left demoralized by his inability to win, both in person and against a popular rise of far right extremism. Now that, I can relate to. As with Flag Smasher, I love how Super Patriot embodies an ideological divide with our hero, wielding a flaming sword instead of a shield, the prominence of red in his costume contrasting against the blues of Cap. It clearly impressed Denny O'Neil, who stole whole cloth from this run for Azrael and Knightfall.
D.P. 7 #5 picks up where their Kickers Incorporated appearance left off. One story was about their banding together against an external threat, where here their personal difference divide them. Specifically, Glitter is so desperate to be relieved of the powers that separate her from her children that she helps talk the group into seeking an exorcism. Meanwhile, Scuzz willfully rejects the group from the combination of not feeling valued, and because he fears the emotional investment after a lifetime of abandonment. There are brawls and other theatrics, but ultimately the creators interest is in the domestic soap opera within a found family. I like it, but by being a proximal Marvel title, commercial expectations and narrative conventions clearly compromise the effort. It wants to be Concrete and settles for Midwestern X-Men.
The third issue of Matt Wagner's The Demon mini-series was probably the first time I saw Etrigan outside of the one issue of Who's Who that I bought new. It wasn't by choice, as this was another Christmas comic from my stepsister. This was the penultimate issue, basically one long Satanic incantation story, and I wasn't a horror fan yet. I halfway think it was just something that she ended up with, because it was such an odd choice, although that choice was the most memorable thing about the book. I never have read the rest of the series, so I have no idea what was even going on here.
I was back for G.I. Joe a Real American Hero #57, with a nifty cover of Destro teaming up with Flint and Lady Jaye. There's a whole "Man in the Iron Mask" thing where Major Bludd has assumed Destro's identity and taken over his Scottish Estate, and I guess because he's temporarily on the outs with Cobra, the Joes help him reclaim it. By the way, this issue has circulation numbers, and the book was averaging half a million reader, with the most recent issue up another 35K. I think you could have a top book with just the 35k today.
With Mark Hazzard: Merc #5, I think I bought it new, but I'm not absolutely certain of that. The 'Nam's Doug Murray takes over as writer, and Mark Beachum provides layouts for Alan Smithee-- er, "Jack Fury," even though Morrow outs himself on the cover. Most of the time, enough Beachum shines through, especially on the sexy ladies, to make up for the Alan Kupperberg issues. Other panels have a Kyle Baker quality, which I'm also not mad at. But then other pages, maybe too many of them, just look like the more amateurish Blackthorne stuff. But the main problem is that the story is a rip-off of Streets of Fire, with a line pilfered from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and it's just badly done. The humor is gone, and in its place is an Andy Sidaris martial arts tart and a hard lean into straight-to-video action cheese. It's readable, but much diminished from its initial promise.
I picked up Marvel Fanfare #31 at the same neighborhood 7-11 that I got most of my comics, and that shouldn't have happened. A friend of mine had some early issues of Fanfare, and my brother had some others, but this was a book made for direct market only sale to comic shops, on all-cover stock at a hefty $1.50. So it was never supposed to be on a newstand, and I wouldn't normally pay twice the standard cover price. But this was a Captain America story by J.M. DeMatteis, with art by Kerry Gammill, the only person that I could ever approve of replacing Mike Zeck. Admittedly, unfortunately, it's also a team-up story with Frog-Man, quite a step down from when this same creative team had Spider-Man in that slot. But Gammill's art was so gorgeous that he rated the high production values, and I love when S.H.I.E.L.D. material seeps into Cap's world. The mystery baddie is the Yellow Claw, a rare titular villain from his own comic in the 1950s, who'd fought Nick Fury during the Steranko run. This was a two-parter, and it took me probably a decade or more to finally finish this story. I literally had the comic in bed with me before I decided that I had to say "no" to any more reading ifg I'm going to get this thing done while it's still 2024.
Since I read The Marvel Saga: the Official History of the Marvel Universe #16, I was convinced that the obscure X-Men villain Lucifer, who dressed like Magneto and crippled Professor X, would prove to be the notorious '90s archfoe Onslaught. Decades on, what did Onslaught even do? Send a bunch of classic Marvel heroes on a vacation to Image Comics? What also sucked was that Onslaught was wholly from the X-office, but all he did of real note impacted the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and Hulk. Would a villain like Lucifer, who fought the X-Men and Avengers in their first meeting, have been a more legit option? Certainly better than Professor X turning evil, again. Anyway, most of the rest of this issue just continued or resolved ongoing story arcs. Dormammu's origin is covered with then-recent Paul Smith art, mingled with older Ditko and Colan material involving Clea.
Marvel Tales Starring Spider-Man #197 got me back by combining the Chris Claremont/John Byrne team with Iron Fist, the character with whom their collaboration had begun. I mean, I didn't know that back then-- I just thought Byrne drew Iron Fist better than anyone else, which was true if the other name in the hat wasn't Kerry Gammill. Plus, this one featured Steel Serpent, at a time when dark mirrors were still wired instead of tired. Since '70s comics ran short, there was a new Bob Layton Hercules 5-pager with his trans-curious Skrull sidekick. Same 7-11 as the Marvel Fanfare, though probably not in the same week.
Pepe Moreno doesn't just happen to ink The 'Nam #4. It's a choice, and I'd argue a bad one. The story is solid-- another instance of Top Kick putting men in harm's way in service to his own agenda, and the consequences of that decision in the presence of a news crew. Michael Golden has clearly put everything down on the page, but Moreno's style is simply incompatible, and his embellishments dilute rather than enhance. I liked the story fine, but every turn of the page was a reminder of that compromise.
I really wasn't into Uncanny X-Men #215 at the time. I didn't care about a two-part solo Storm story versus some dorky fake World War II-era super-heroes drawn by Alan Davis. I didn't realize that the X-Men were peaking for the time being, and that as I gained a political consciousness, their "law and order" murder games would prove more relevant and timeless than I could have feared in that period. But also, it's still weird that they tried to do anything with the Crimson Commando after this. These characters are too disturbing.
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Comic Reader Résumé Podcast #28
(November 1986)
Spotify ◫ YouTube 
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 Classic X-Men #6, D.P. 7 #3, Daredevil #240, Marvel Saga #15, The 'Nam #3, New Mutants #49, Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #15, Spitfire and the Troubleshooters #5, Strikeforce: Morituri #4, Uncanny X-Men #214, West Coast Avengers #18, X-Factor #13, and more!
“Transcripts” The Avengers, DC Comics, Daredevil, Marvel Comics, New Universe, Strikeforce: Morituri, Wolverine, X-Factor, X-Men, Movies, Music, Comic Reader Résumé
Monday, November 4, 2024
Comic Reader Résumé: Late November, 1986
Classic X-Men #6 reprinted The All-New, All-Different X-Men from 1976, moving a barely visible Cockrum Wolverine from deep in the background to an Arthur Adams cover sharing the spotlight with Jean Grey well into the foreground. I'm pretty sure Elfquest was boring the pants off me by #19, but I think I was still hanging on.
I always think The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition ran longer than twenty issues, but as with the original version, it effectively ends with #15. Also like the first edition though, when the core coverage resolves, the book moves into addendum with the books of the dead and inactive. There's no need for a paraphernalia issue since that was all incorporated into the individual enties in the Deluxe Edition, but Marvel couldn't miss the chance to out-morbid itself with five issues of spectral heroes and villains rising from the grave. But those arrive bi-monthly sometime next year, so we'll stop Wonder Man to Zzzax, Plus Appendix to Alien Races. Aside from an undeservedly good JLGL Wonder Man in his worst of many bad costumes, plus a good Kerry Gammill Yellow Claw, this volume swiftly nosedives into X-team group entries and all of the aliens. So, so many aliens in their Underoos.
Among the many random things that most boys like but I'm not into is mechanized suits of armor. I know that's highly specific in most areas, but like archers, comic books are absolutely filthy with them. I think that there's just some disconnect in my brain where I question who the pilots are without the suit. We see Ellen Ripley survive against an exceedingly lethal alien species, while her peers and supposed superiors perish, before she levels up to the power loader that still sees her as the underdog in a fight with the alien queen. She's not defined by the power loader-- it's just another tool for the heroine to employ. But in the comics, the powered armor always comes first, and there's usually a whole pool of people who get to wear a given armor type. You can pick your favorite Iron Man, but there's only one-- well, there used to be one of a kind for a lot of heroes, but now everybody has an understudy or successor or whatever that never goes away. It's part of what turned me away from Marvel Comics in the '90s, and it's part of why I abandoned DC in the 21st Century. How many Green Arrow variations does the world need? Which is a really long way to say that I easily skipped Spitfire and the Troubleshooters for most of its brief run, because right there in the name, the book was about Armor and the Operators. And yet I believe that I bought the fifth issue, guest-starring the one & only (for now) Star Brand. I had not previously bought either title, so I can't say for sure what possessed me, although the issue had an involved human story that was well rendered by Tony DeZuniga. Herb Trimpe was the penciller, which likely kept the storytelling clear and bright. but DeZuniga's embellishment buries most any trace of his style. The story by Conway & Thomas was about the main operator of the armor being imprisoned for a justifiable homicide that she was nonetheless innocent of, the skewed dynamic ofg her romantic relationship with her lawyer, the unwanted advances of a fellow inmate, and the plot of the terrorists responsible for her plight. It was also about her students' misguided efforts to rescue her by recovering the faulty armor from a police impound, their own interpersonal dynamics, and the peril of one pilot when the power pack threatens to blow him and a chunk of the city to smithereens. But on top of that, you've got a guest star with true superpowers inserting himself into that scenario in a way that's far more satisfying and narratively important than the usual intracompany punch-outs. So of course I never bought another issue again, to this day. In my defense, I don't think it was even on the newsstand for much longer, but I could have dug it out of quarter bins like I did other New Universe titles.
Titles like Star Brand, for instance. I'm not sure when I started, but I know that I kept flipping through the book on the stand for the John Romita Jr. art, which the idiots at Marvel kept hiding under bland covers by lesser lights that the Grand Comics Database can't even identify. I'd guess Ron Wilson and Alex Saviuk were in the mix, and #5 was signed by Vince Giarrano & José Marzán Jr. My best guess at how it worked was that my brother bought one or more issues that I read, but I want to say specifically the previous issue, which had a detailed recap of the series to date. I think I finally recognized Romita as the guy that I used to really like on X-Men, and the story got way more into protagonist Ken Connell's personal life than most books. This exposure probably intrigued me, leading to my purchase of the fifth issues of Spitfire and Star Brand. That, or I made all this up, and I got all the aforementioned comics out of the Marauder Books quarter bin. Given Ken's moralizing to the Spitfire crew in their title, his hypocrisy in his own is delicious. Besides being a womanizer who sleeps with three women in just this issue, proposing to one after a freak-out when she so much as dates another guy, he's also really bad at super-heroing. The guy launches an assault on a Libyan military compound, assuming he read the map right, and in a previous issue was involved in the detonation of a nuke. This guy is in no position to lecture, and given that Ken is broadly regarded as a writer insert of Jim Shooter, a controversial figure who's no stranger to his own professional and narrative conflicts, just makes it all that much sweeter. Despite arriving late, I'd stick with this one for a bit. Maybe. I've acknowledged that I may also be an unreliable narrator on this matter.
In the time between Jean Grey's seeming death in the Dark Phoenix Saga and her supposed resurrection last year, Scott Summers married her doppelganger and had a child. Madelyn Pryor and little Nate were mostly forgotten after the first issue, and Jean even seemed to develop a romance with Angel, so it was weird how hard that 180'd in X-Factor #13. I suspect that even more than fighting Storm for X-Men leadership in #201, this issue was the start of Cyclops' long, torturous heel turn. His returning to his abandoned family, only to find them gone and losing his mind, really underlined how unheroic his actions leading up to this point had been. Claremont had started this whole boondoggle when Jean was considered definitively and eternally dead as a way to write out Cyclops. Digging back into it certainly helped deepen ties between X-Factor and X-Men that made the former feel relevant to the latter, but at the cost of making Cyclops a cad in a way that stuck longer and harder than any of Jean's other deaths and revivals. I literally don't know if she's currently alive, or her alternate future daughter has her title, or her teen self is active in the present, or what. I clearly do not care, either.
I re-read the two part Rotgut story arc at the same time last month, so I'm a little disappointed in my past self for not doing present me the solid of doing a write up on Daredevil #240 while it was still fresh in my mind. I'm also frankly re-reading too many of the 1986 comics, leading to production delays and excessively long coverage, so maybe I should lean into any loss that gap entails. "The Face You Deserve" is both the title and a line of dialogue that has stuck with me, about how at twenty you have the face you were born with, and by forty, yadda yadda. We're getting a lot of preservatives these days, so I'd say that these days, the toll really doesn't come due until age 60. My glasses hide my crows feet, and natural highlights conceal the white steaks in my hair, but my soul feels older and more tired than my features betray. Anyway, Louis Williams continues to depict New York City life in an uncommonly realistic way while being nimble enough to convey the insanity and surreality dictate by Ann Nocenti's serial killer script. I mean, most of Nocenti's stuff is like that, and I'd argue that it gets away from her after Williams leaves, but they were a perfect pairing on their few issues together.
I dipped back into New Mutants #49 for the catnip of dystopic futures, this time a fascist mutant society run by an evil Suspot. They were always making Sunspot a bad guy in these things, so that when he eventually made a proper heel turn, no one cared. And then he did a face turn, and no one cared. I think Sunspot died at some point, and still no one cared. But for this issue, guest penciller Bret Blevins was inked by Val Mayerik, a fascinating combination. There was a lot of jubilant detailing that recalled Art Adams, but then it was also rough-hewn with impressionistic flourishes, recalling Bill Sienkiewicz. Those two names are often bandied about among the best comic artists of the '80s, if not ever, but not with regard to the same drawings. So yeah, that was a wild variation on the increasingly old Days of Future Past saw, plus it featured one of the bleakest and most disturbing takes on Magneto's Holocaust origins, and I suspect my first exposure to same. No wonder I came back for the big anniversary issue.
For some reason I skipped Psi-Force #4, a Kathy Ling spotlight story where she tries to run back home, which I fished out of the quarter bin in 1989. But I was there for the Psi-Stalker in Psi-Force #5. Continuing to riff on movies like The Fury, the C.I.A. had there own pet psychic psycho that they sent to infiltrate the runaway shelter and kidnap his fellow gifted youngsters. And he would have gotten away with it too, if not for the power of Anastasia Inyushin's love. See, she made this empathic loop with her healing powers that shorted him out, or something. Don't expect cogent answers from pseudo-scientific principles. Tex was still doing breakdowns that were well realized in the inks, so I'm showing up so long as the stories stay passable and the art this pretty.
Maybe teased by my half-brother's purchases or intrigued by a team-up with Marvel's Old West heroes, I picked up West Coast Avengers #18 at the 7-11. It started with the Born Again Evangelical Firebird stopping Hank Pym from shooting himself in the head, so I maybe had questions about that, as well? Plus there's the factor of my odd fixation on Al Milgrom on Spectacular Spider-Man, which never transferred to the hated Incredible Hulk, and the draw was maybe diminished by the heavy polish of Joe Sinnott. But also, Ghost Rider went full creeper, punching out and kidnapping Mockingbird while her husband and teammates continued on their time-lost way. There was a lot going on, and I guess I had to read it properly to parse it all out.
Monday, October 21, 2024
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.
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.
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Comic Reader Résumé Podcast #27
(October 1986)
Internet Archive ◫ MP3 ◫ Spotify
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” 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
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Comic Reader Résumé: Late October, 1986
Click To Enlarge
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
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
Monday, October 7, 2024
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?
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Comic Reader Résumé Podcast #26
(September 1986)
Internet Archive ◫ MP3 ◫ Spotify
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 Alpha Flight #41, Amazing Spider-Man #283-284, Animax #1, Batman #402, Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos #1, Classic X-Men #4, D.P. 7 #2, Daredevil #238, Defenders of the Earth #1, Elfquest #17, G.I. Joe a Real American Hero #54, Groo the Wanderer #22, Howard the Duck: The Movie #1, Justice #2, Mark Hazzard: Merc #2-3, Marvel Saga #12-13, Mighty Thor #374, The 'Nam #1, Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #13, Power Pack #27, Psi-Force #3, Strikeforce: Morituri #2, Super Powers #4, Uncanny X-Men #212, X-Factor #11, X-Men Annual #10, and more!
“Transcripts” Animax, At The Movies, Batman, DC Comics, Defenders of the Earth, G.I. Joe, Howard the Duck, Marvel Comics, New Universe, Siskel & Ebert, Strikeforce: Morituri, Spider-Man, Super Powers, Thor, Wolverine, X-Factor, X-Men, Movies, Music, Comic Reader Résumé
Monday, September 9, 2024
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.
Friday, September 6, 2024
Comic Reader Résumé: 3rd Week of September, 1986
Classic X-Men #4 reminds me of just what a crazy book this was. You had those utterly modern, exhaustively rendered, perfect super-hero images on the front cover and frontpiece by Arthur Adams. Then you'd have these brittle thin, awkward and fragile lines of John Bolton on the back covers and back-up stories. Bolton had that art school quality, and was such a misfit on costumed action, but perfect for these introspective character pieces that Chris Claremont was crafting. This one was about Logan and Kurt becoming fast friends during mock combat, and later as part of a dare where Nightcrawler reveals his true form in a town near to the X-Mansion. I'd argue it's a lesser tale, but there's swell story title lettering by Tom Orzechowski, and Bolton manages some surprisingly iconic hero images. Between the two, you have Dave Cockrum producing new pages of story to supplement the old, while Claremont reworks old dialogue to better fit later characterization and changing publishing standards. This came at no small expense, not the least because all that bonus content came at the cost of any advertisements or marketing materials on a newsstand comic. That said, it also came at a better than 25% mark-up on the usual 75¢ demanded for a typical Marvel Comic. Regardless, it was a good return on investment to get a top selling title out of a reprint from pre-royalty inventory material.
I recall seeing the first issue of G.I. Joe Comics Magazine, a digest-sized sequential reprint of the monthly comic, but I'm not confident that I ever bought any. As much as I was into the title, I didn't feel a compulsion to read back material, especial with the Yearbooks around to summarize it. I also like standard comic books mainly, with an allowance for magazines, but digest and treasuries were always too extreme in dimensions for someone who had to pack up all their worldly goods as often as I did. Further, digests were so puny-- such a compromised way of reading material that was never intended to be printed so small.
My following on to Elfquest #17 is somewhat inexplicable. I was still into fantasy trappings at that time, where I've since developed a strong aversion. I'm sure the pretty art, strong female characters, and soap opera were a draw. The abrupt stopping points and overall meandering nature were not, plus those annoying web fairies were still here. There was a lot of telepathic torture in this issue, as one would find in a typical X-Men comic. I don't think my brother was buying these either, so it was all me.
As much as I gripe about Keith Pollard's Marvel Saga covers, he's a great fit taking over The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition with #13, Super-Adaptoid to Umar. Pollard did a lot of style guide work, and most of the art for the Master Edition. He's no Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, but he knows his way around these characters and the Bronze Age Marvel style. If you don't immediately notice the absence of John Byrne, he's getting the job done, with all due credit to the inks of Josef Rubenstein. All the usual suspects are inside: Byrne, Zeck, Simonson, plus another couple of entirely random Bollands. Paul Smith contributes, and I could have included him with the other surnames, but I thought folks might assume I meant Barry Windsor-Smith. Which leads me to wonder, how did we ended up with more Bolland pieces in OHOTMU than BWS ones?
I feel like I should have learned my lesson by Super Powers #4, but the comic is too familiar to deny. Maybe my brother bought it, or I dug it out of a quarter bin within a few years of relief? This final issue was about Kupperberg and Infantino playing with the same Wave Three action figures that I would have, if I had them all. They never made a Janus figure, which was just Darkseid masquerading in a more comics-accurate Orion look than the Man-E-Faces version from the toys, but Golden Pharaoh, Mr. Miracle, Tyr, Steppenwolf, and the rest were still on toy aisles for you to play your own games on Apokolips. Well... maybe not Cyborg, but I do think I have a vague recollection of passing on that now highly sought after figure for something much more gimmicky and disposable, probably Cyclotron and his dumb removable face plate. Which I didn't have long before it got stolen, like I hope also happened to this lousy comic.
As referenced last month, my brother bought The Mighty Thor #374 as a tie-in to the Mutant Massacre crossover, and I think closer to the time of release. It must have been so disappointing to circle back to #373 for a few pages of lead-in already covered in that same week's X-Factor comic. Anyhow, Thor takes on Harpoon, Blockbuster, and Vertigo, sending them running in moments. That trio was more than holding their own, at least with a few more members at any given time, against whole X-teams. Thor was saving Angel, who was permanently crippled in this encounter. So I guess that helps depict their relative power levels, and if I recall correctly, Thor was at reduced strength in this period. Wasn't the whole reason he grew the beard because his visage had been rendered ghastly by the touch of death? No really-- I haven't read these comics in nearly forty years, and was never big on Thor. That's why when they go back to Baldar and the Midguard Serpent, I check right out. I hope I remember right, because one of the Marauders comes back to break Thor's arm, and the only other thing he does in the crossover is wander around and befriend Artie, the big-headed pink kid that projects holograms. Not a big win for the Thunder God, here.
More Simonson on Simonson action coming at you in X-Factor #11, another chapter of the notorious Mutant Massacre. This one isn't as well remembered because it's mostly about Morlocks that lived, at least for now, but still a sight better than the early issues.
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
Comic Reader Résumé: 2nd Week of September, 1986
Where I was somewhat indifferent towards my brother's copy of the first issue, I think I started feeling it more with I'm uncertain when I got my hands on D.P. 7 #2. Though the book was initially told from a single character's perspective about the no-duh, too-good-to-be-true Clinic that was grooming the Displaced Paranormals for service to the C.I.A., we now get the proper ensemble that will drive this title. These characters each have their own voice and perspective, disagreements are organic, and their collaborating on a plan of action is relatable. There's no Professor X here to provide guidance, a mansion, and a stealth fighter. These are just a bunch of people from all walks of life, trying to escape a bad situation, barefoot and underdressed in backwoods and off the highway. As they're hunted by other powered beings, we see clever applications of everyone's special abilities, and Paul Ryan's relatively unglamorous art suits this more domestic take on mutant tropes. There's a reason why this was the New Universe title that lasted the longest, and managed to be one of the best regarded Mark Gruenwald series. I wrote a lot about Flint last month, so that doesn't leave much for me to say about G.I. Joe a Real American Hero #54. The cover by Mike Zeck had him parachuting while a Cobra airship came gunning fort him, and was memorably featured on one of those animated TV commercials where Marvel conspired with Hasbro to sidestep regulations by promoting the comic books, and not the toys, even though they chant "Cobra Launch Base" fifty-something times in thirty seconds. Flint is captured by the twins Zander and Xamot to be turned over to Dr. Mindbender for conditioning. Can you smell the refresh in here? There's also a lot of Serpentor, while Cobra Commander and Destro are literally buried and presumed dead under the remains of The Pit, just to make the subtext text. I wouldn't see the actual flick until home video, but I did buy the first issue of Howard the Duck: The Movie at the local 7-11. Given that they only had three issues to adapt a feature film, I'm not sure that it was wise to devote so many pages to the moody opening scenes and the "Hunger City" sequence where the band Cherry Bomb plays Howie through a series of misadventures upon his arrival in the misfit city of "Cleve-Land." What was wise was having Kyle Baker draw it, giving the very '70s Howard a fully '80s makeover. The book just looks cool, even if the story's a mess and Baker is definitely in comic strip mode. I got a commission done of Beverly to get signed by Lea Thompson, but was embarrassed when the artist sexed her up. I wish I'd given Baker's Beverly art as the reference instead of pictures, because he better balances the new wave rocker and suburban girl next door qualities of the character as depicted in the movie. Danny Fingeroth's script doesn't launder the weaknesses from the movie as effectively, and in fact he probably highlights the more off-putting aspects of the characters' personalities, which is likely why I didn't come back for the other two parts. I do think I'll keep an eye out for the last Marvel Super Special magazine that collects the lot though, if I can get it cheap. Let's be real-- if I find one, it'll be cheap. Justice #2 features more of a young Geof Isherwood's solid Adamsesque pencils undermined by Vince Colletta inks, as our protagonist kills his cellmates in a New York jail. Then he's interrogated by Rebecca Chambers. I was going to make a Cheers joke, but I myself was mixing up Diane Chambers and Rebecca Howe, when the most famous Rebecca Chambers is the S.T.A.R.S. chick from the first Resident Evil that isn't Jill Valentine. This Becky Chambers is the Black plainclothes cop that was pursuing the same drug dealers as John Tensen, the guy we mostly just call Justice. He's totally hot for Becky's pure blue aura, to the extent that he kisses her, which even in the '80s was a big no-no (while being interrogated for multiple murders, I mean.) His whole story about being a Justice-Warrior from another dimension gets a big boost when the pair are attacked by brown-skinned were-creatures that run wild on the jail. These creatures lack auras, and cannot be effected by Justice energy "sword," so he just has to straight up break their necks. But his left-hand shield square things still stop Becky's bullet, so don't ask me how this is supposed to work as anything but a pure fantasy title, surely undercutting that "world outside your window" sales pitch. Justice basically just walks out of the pokey, then brutally executes a bunch of drug dealers to get the money to pay for a cab ride to Los Angeles. I don't know what drugs Steve Englehart was on when he wrote this, but you can definitely note his distinctly oddball touch over the next several issues, now that both of the book's creators have abandoned it. Marvel Saga #13 is back for the second week of September. It's a Daredevil spotlight issue, given verisimilitude by Klaus Janson inks on the Keith Pollard cover. The earlier pages though are devoted to Hulk's first major battle with the combined Fantastic Four and Avengers, with that great Donkey Kong image of Hulk throwing girders from atop a skyscraper under construction as the heroes make their way up and through it. Black Widow gets introduced to Iron Man, triggering flashbacks to her origins with Gene Colan art and too many repurposed OHOTMU entries. Spider-Man gets Betty Brant's ne'er-do-well brother killed, and the Avengers face the Masters of Evil. It's a good issue, made better by the Daredevil section favoring Frank Miller art, though it made for a nice juxtaposition with the sunnier Bill Everett panels. After the United States' defeat in the Vietnam conflict, and the despicable reception our lost and wounded soldiers faced upon returning home, we as a nation needed to have a serious conversation about these matters in the aftermath. But instead we got Reagan and Rambo to whitewash the whole thing, with Jim Braddock returning to liberate P.O.W.s and effectively win the war we lost as late as 1989. There were a few years of introspection, and then we were right back to Team America: World Police. As a child of the '80s, I was exposed to a near constant barrage of Vietnam War material, and I wasn't really prepared to parse the legitimate consideration from the "Namsploitation." I don't recall if it was myself or my brother who bought the first issue of Marvel Comics The 'Nam, as we more or less alternated issues, and I'm also not sure where that title fell on the line I've drawn. At the most basic level, the book was conceived by Editor-In-Chief Jim Shooter, who had a mock-up put together that married the title to an image from a G.I. Joe comic, and they ended up hiring popular Joe artist Michael Golden. You have to figure Shooter wanted a Joe-like title that Marvel would own, and would tap into the popular subject of cinema at the time. On the other hand, he assigned the job of editor to G.I. Joe and actual Vietnam vet Larry Hama, who turned around and hired fellow vet Doug Murray to write it as a real-time exploration of Murray's own experiences in the war. So whatever Shooter's intentions, Hama was playing it straight, and it seemed to make a major splash, The first issue outsold Uncanny X-Men, and it was a newsstand staple for as long as Golden was on the title. The book got glowing newspaper write-ups, was swiftly collected in trade paperback, and was also repackaged as a black & white magazine. I feel like this book had to be tapping into a mainstream audience beyond the comics faithful, but when I look at circulation statements, they're nothing special. Less than 170K by around issue #15, and Golden would have drawn most of them up to that point, which had to be disappointing for someone of his fame. This first issue is stunning to look at, not only for its hyper-detailed art, but also for Golden's sublime coloring. You're immediately endeared to the characters, despite relatively sparse dialogue peppered with so much lingo that a dense glossary was included at the back of each issue to decipher it. That said, we ate it up, and for a brief period, it was among our favorite titles. Among the effects of the Mutant Massacre was my actually buying Uncanny X-Men every month with my own money, even #212 with the Rick Leonardi art. That said, it had a bloody BWS Wolverine cover, and the start of the Logan versus Sabretooth feud. I guess Storm also fought Callisto again, but when it's over sewers full of meat that used to be Morlocks, who actually cares?
Sunday, September 1, 2024
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.