Comic Reader Résumé: Late May, 1986

As I've probably mentioned in the past, but just to recap, I manage to evade John Byrne's Fantastic Four better than most in my generation. I remember seeing the Diablo cover with the FF as candlesticks and thinking that looked cool. I think I tossed through the triple-sized 20th anniversary issue. I believe the sideways issue was at a barber shop that I went to, and the same may have been true of The Masque of Doom photo cover. I of course got the She-Hulk papped topless issue, and one of the "Dark Sue" Malice issues. Ultimately though, I preferred She-Hulk as an Avenger, and I bought more Thing solo comics than FF ones up to this point. I think I got Fantastic Four #293 out of a 3-pack with something else I wanted more, but at least it was another She-Hulk cover. Her, I liked. The Storm-Richards Family, never. Reed was like a pedantic high school science teacher, Sue like a wallpaper Kindergarten teacher, and Johnny felt like a pretty boy bully somewhere in between. I was so invested in the Fantastic Four that I struggled to figure out how it related to the movie Fantastic Voyage. The shrinking one with Raquel Welch, not the Sinbad one. I was ignorant, not an imbecile. The 1967 Hanna-Barbara cartoon ran really early in the morning, and the 1978 one with H.E.R.B.I.E. was too lame and short lived to rate much attention from me. As you've probably noticed, I was quite the Marvel Zombie at this point, and the FF felt like a DC team in the most pejorative sense. You had the one crazy kid in the padded cell screaming that he was Dr. Doom, and then most of the issue was doing science stuff in the desert to a big ink blob. Toward the end, the team get sucked into some future state where the original FF were worshiped as gods, which felt very Mort Weisinger before I knew what that meant.

Thor was another one of those old-timey Kirby-type books that did not appeal to me. I tossed through the one with Dracula as a back issue. The Walt Simonson stuff had a great sense of power to it, and I did eye that first Beta Ray Bill cover and his continuing adventures, the frog stuff, and that one killer spread from a Marvel Age annual where the Asgardians were using conventional assault weapons. Nothing ever sealed the deal though, and quite randomly, I dipped in on a fill-in. I don't recall if I bought The Mighty Thor #370 on purpose or out of three-pack, quite probably the same one as the Fantastic Four. I wonder what the third book would have been-- maybe an Uncanny X-Men? Anyway, it had a nice inventory pin-up cover by Big John Buscema, but the interiors were inked by P. Craig Russell, for a very contrasting look. Both Thor and FF had gorgeous John Workman lettering, which couldn't have hurt. The story was a western titled "Easy Money," and was written by Jim Owsley, the future Christopher Priest. It was about a wannabe Bat Lash style card sharp who has a run-in with a Lee Van Cleef type with a band of murderous outlaws planning a train robbery. If you say that sounds like a typical Thor story, that's exactly why I liked it, as it had a bit of a Highlander vibe, but in the Weird West. To say more would spoil it, but despite spending years in obscurity, it seems to have reappraised and lauded over the years, recently added as a bonus story in the final Black Panther by Christopher Priest Omnibus that sits on my bookshelf.

I'm pretty sure that my brother bought The All New, All Daring Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man 117. The cover featuring Black Cat battling Dr. Strange is very familiar. It was another "Missing in Action" tie-in with a blink & you'll miss it Sabretooth cameo. Also, the last page with a woman drinking coffee in the mountains near Spidey's shredded costume, unquestionably by a different art team than the main story, is a solid memory for me. However, the actual story by Rich Buckler and a young Dwayne Turner, wherein they give Black Cat her equivalent of Dinah Lance's jazzercise outfit, drains all the energy out of me just by looking at it. I never read this thing.

Weirdly, Louise Jones is credited as writing X-Factor #7, even though she was Simonson last issue and Walt will be penciling the title in a few months. I bring this up mostly because the actual issue offers nothing of interest. This is the one with the big bald guy and the slug guy. Also, this was during that period where the team wore uniforms and pretended to be Ghostbusters but mutants, while also wearing their X-Factor costumes and supporting mutants. But both these groups have five members with distinct body types, only one girl who's a redhead on both teams, and one guy who wears red glasses per team. Who fell for this?

I don't recall if I ever bought the two-issue, double-length Lois Lane mini-series by Mindy Newell and Gray Morrow. I just know that it haunted the quarter bin at Marauder Books in 1989, and that wasn't the only shop I could say that about. Even if I did finally pick it up to own, I've yet to read it. And hey, while I'm shouting out Marauder's clearance bins, let me also mention other frequent detritus like Independent Comics' The Epsilon Wave, Mr. Monster's Hi-Octane Horror #2, Nervous Rex, various issues of Eclipse's New Wave, Blackthorne's Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos #1, Elite's SeaDragon, Aircel's Stark Future #1, and Ocean Comics' Street Fighter. I often use the Champions RPG as a shorthand for uninspired, plainly derivative, fannish junk characters in pedestrian stories by anonymous journeymen and never-wases. This is in part because I fished Eclipse's adaptation, Champions #1, out of these bins, and it was the platonic ideal of basicness. It made the New Universe look like Watchmen by comparison.

Lil' bro might have had a copy of Star Comics' Masters of the Universe #3. He definitely had figures of Orko, Battlecat, Prince Adam, and probably the cover-featured Slime Pit. He was a prolific collector, who owned most of the 1985 and 1986 figures. Just at a glance, I recognize Moss Man (a repurposed Beast Man,) Roboto with the transparent chest that let you see his gears, Sy-Klone, Two Bad with two heads and a pair of action-swinging arms, Stinkor, Spikor, Leech with the suction cups, Mantenna with the bug-out eye-stalks, Modulok with two heads and six insect legs, Extendar with techno-expanding neck and appendages, Rio Blast-- who looked like a redneck crossover with the C.O.P.S. line, King Hiss-- who was made out of snakes inside a removable human suit, and some of the stupid Transformer guys that turned into rocks. He also had a number of vehicles, but I didn't care as much about those. Battle Bones sticks out though, because it was a dinosaur skeleton with hooped ribs that doubled as a carrier for a bunch of figures. We both had color variations on Hordak and Grizzlor, mine with the lighter brown fur and his near-black. The Horde Trooper was featured in this comic, and at first I though he had one, but now that I look, I'm not so sure. All this is to say that the comic looked like kids' stuff, so I skipped reading it.

If there's one thing I'd rather not have to write up in one month, it's Son of Ambush Bug, and yet here we're back for more or less a third helping. I do have angles though. DC Comics fans talk a lot about the impact of Crisis on Infinite Earths, and particulars like how Roy Thomas got hosed by losing access the Golden Age heroes amidst the obliteration of Earth-2 from continuity. But what about Julius Schwartz?

After Mort Weisinger lost his editorship over Superman, his life spiraled, and he was destitute when he died. Nothing so dramatic happened with Julie, but after line of DC Science Fiction Graphic Novels adaptations floundered in 1985, and with the massive editorial overhauls of 1986, Schwartz was more or less shown the door. He would continue as a sort of goodwill ambassador for DC Comics along the lines of Stan Lee, with some sort of stipend involved, but as a powerful figure, the man was done. And in this very issue of Ambush Bug was an ad for the Man of Steel mini-series, with Andrew Helfer as the new overseer of the Superman line, and John Byrne the primary creative force who was intentionally erasing much of the body of work Schwartz had commissioned for that character since the 1960s. It's hard not to see the largely plotless excesses of Son of Ambush Bug as a sort of primal scream of rage and quiet whimper of futility at the injustice of its creative team's straits. Everyone involved was losing "their" DC, and probably their financial welfare, and also having their memories and legacies scrubbed before their eyes.

The book goes to dark places, as when a secret government operation tries to use the Ambush Bug suits left on his many corpses to develop agents who could teleport, only to learn the suits were literally devouring their wearers. Or how the tossed-off gag of an Ambush bug-fronted super-team from the first mini-series was now seeing its underdeveloped membership committing suicide. And that's before they die a terrible running gag about iguanas into the bombing of Hiroshima. But again, I found this madness engrossing, trying to figure out mysteries about what I'd miss that were never meant to even be considered, much less solved. In retrospect, everyone was just filling pages, and there's a genuine underlying anger to the anti-humor.

I've heard that Giffen would often just draw random things and hand off the pages to scripter Robert Loren Fleming to figure out what to do with, not offering any notes or suggestions. I tend to think that's why this mini-series is amused with itself, but not actually directing any sincere humor toward an audience. It's all a hostile meta in-joke, with the embodiment of capricious editorial feat in the cosmic villain The Interferer turning the creatives into his whipping boys. And yet, I adored the art, the constant breaking of the fourth wall, the jokes lobbed by and against the various named members of the creative team. Schwartz is clearly absentee, but he gets his turn. For instance, the issue is sandwiched between splash pages of a barely clothed airhead bimbo who hosts the comic, and in the end is left in the clutches of Schwartz, which reads a lot different after Colleen Doran's accusations that Schwartz was a sex pest. I have no doubt that Giffen's jab at Jules were affectionate, but even here, there's a grim undercurrent.

Web of Spider-Man #18 was I think the last part of "Missing in Action," and it was about how anyone who thought that scraps of Spidey's costume lying around after a battle meant that he was dead was a dummy. Like, Web-Head pioneered torn costumes. So he was running around, beat up and half naked, doing a reenactment of a Macon County Line or Born Innocent or one of those other movies where regular folk are railroaded into prison by crooked southern authorities. Anyway, Peter eventually got loose and hitchhiked home. There's also a teaser for the arrival of Venom. This was another of my bro's books. Easily the most interesting thing was Kyle Baker inking Marc Silvestri.

West Coast Avengers #12 was I think another bro-chase, which I recall mostly for the debut of Wonder Man's red & green costume, which I still thinking is among the most hideous suits ever worn by a mainstream hero. I think JLGL drew it for OHOTMU, and if he couldn't salvage it, nobody could. Speaking of OHOTMU, there's a trio of new villains introduced, and ZZZAX with three z's will perpetually be thed last entry in future volumes. Quantum was trying to compete with Wonder Man's couture, so the only one to catch my eye was Halflife, a blue-skinned zombie hooker almost certainly inspired by Linnea Quigley's character from Return of the Living Dead. The final splash featured Graviton, who I took to be a low rent Magneto, and have yet to be disabused of that notion in 38 years. The blue & white suit looks good, though.