Comic Reader Résumé: Early July, 1986

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When I was a little kid, other children's comic collections were filthy with Archies and Harveys. I'd dabble in the former, but I wasn't even that big a fan of the cartoons of the latter. I hadn't noticed, but Harvey Comics went on a four year hiatus, and returned with The Friendly Ghost, Casper #225. The cover announced, "Casper is back! You Asked For Him! Special Collector's Issue! Join the fun! With Harvey Comics!" It's the excess of cover hype that Son of Ambush Bug #1 had just made fun of, but I think it worked on me. They were just so excited to bring me more Casper, the dead kid from the genteel cartoon that played before the crack of dawn that I rarely watched. I recall nothing of the contents of that issue, and never bought another one. Heck, they did a cool looking revival a decade or two back that I did order, but they never came in, so even when I tried it clearly wasn't meant to be. Richie Rich #219 also came out that month, and also benefited from my FOMO. I could believe Casper was years departed, but I'd have sworn those Richie Rich digests were still lining the shelves of check-out lines. In animation, Casper hadn't appeared in much new since the early '60s, but that Silver Spoon brat had just come off a four season TV show in 1984, and how I despised his displays of affluence. His swindling me out of 75-cents for his pap did not endear me any further. Despite those two disappointments, I did feel a tinge of regret over skipping Hot Stuff: The Little Devil #165, the least recognizable but most fun looking of the three IPs. In retrospect though, shouldn't it have been Wendy the Good Little Witch in that third spot? Oh, and I only heard today that Marvel was going to take over publishing Harvey before the hiatus, and that the connections they made probably led to the creation of the Star Comics imprint. In fact, Harvey tried to sue Marvel for borrowing their laid off talent and design aesthetic, like that makes a lick of sense.

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #11 offers the last John Byrne cover, likely owing to his defecting to DC over his differences with Jim Shooter. As with George Perez on the original Who's Who covers, it's too bad that one of the greatest artists in comics history couldn't complete the assignment of drawing every character in a particular universe's reference book running roughly two years. Also, they were each replaced by... not all-timers. But DC went with wild divergences in style like Paris Cullins, Ernie Colón, Joe Staton, Eduardo Barreto, Kevin Maguire, and yes, John Byrne, with moonlighting editor Dick Giordano not offering the same steadying hand as Josef Rubenstein. I give Marvel the edge on consistency. Appropriately enough, She-Hulk, Scarlet Witch, and Sasquatch are on the cover for Richard Rider to Sidewinder, and Byrne does each of their entries. Aside from Mike Mignola on Rocket Raccoon, the first half is blah, but then it kicks into high gear. Mike Zeck goes beyond with Sandman and Scarecrow, Mark Beachum elevates Scorpion, and Art Adams delivers on Sersi and Shadowcat. Paul Gulacy supposedly returns to Shang-Chi, but I think it might be misattributed, because it looks more like period Kyle Baker to my eyes.

Son of Ambush Bug #4 likely came off the stand at a 7-11, but my memory gets fuzzy on the back half of this mini-series. Not helping is the fact that the vague semblance of a narrative muchly resolves within this issue. The book opens up with a three page parody of The Comics Journal that also summarizes the mini-series to date. Argh!yle's Plan of Steel is thwarted by John Byrne's first refusal for usage of Superman elements in other books, and so the entire orbiting Bureau satellite is literaly blown up by DC's legal department. The Interferor's origin is revealed, he puts Irwin Schwab through the paces of a cycle of reboots, and then... recedes from the core narrative. This is the last time the Bug's infernal nature as an escapee from Hell is really referenced. Combat Cheeks and his Frontline Medics gets a mock cover and single page strip, but has pretty much run its course. This issue still has humorous intent, the next not so much.

I'm sure someone in the family had a copy of G.I. Joe a Real American Hero #52, featuring an awkward Quick Kick versus Storm Shadow cover, and the ninja's reconciliation with Snake-Eyes in the wake of his near-death experience. Also, Serpentor avoids an assassination plot against him to become a folk hero to the Legions of Cobra, and the Joe team's operations are temporarily suspended in the wake of the Battle of Springfield. Adult-me sees a lot going on here, but I think kid-me was bored of all the talky-talky.

The Marvel Saga, the Official History of the Marvel Universe #11, once again covered by Keith Pollard, thinks telling the first adventure of "today's X-Factor" is a bigger selling point than it probably was. Likewise, a cover panel devoted to Molecule Man, hoping for a Secret Wars boost? So we get Magneto, a little gold armor Iron Man, Thor vs. Molto, Fantastic Four vs. Rama-Tut, Human Torch vs. the Acrobat as a fake Captain America, Giant Man, Hulk vs. Space Phantom, Hulk quits the Avengers, and Iron Man upgrades to the red & gold Ditko armor. Finally, two major revivals from World War II-- a Nick Fury still capable of enjoying 3-D glasses, and ol' Adolph himself as the Hate Monger, both in Fantastic Four.

Ironically, I finally committed to buying Uncanny X-Men with #210, just as the John Romita Jr. run was ending and the Mutant Massacre would serve as a peak before a steady decline in my interest in actually reading the book. But that's a few months off, and this grim cover of battered mutants daring you to "C'mon, mess with us-- make our day!!" was more of a fever pitch moment. The silhouetted Marauders were murdering muties and their allies, beginning with a Hellfire Club security officer and a rainbow-themed Morlock. Beyond those bookends though, it was a pretty standard issue with a lot of set-up. A closeted and incognito Dazzler was positioned to return in an upcoming issue. Rogue faced a bigoted peanut gallery at Macy's. Kitty Pryde had another argument against a prejudiced mob, but managed not to drop an n-bomb this time. Magneto questioned the threat posed by the mutant-busting X-Terminators and a role offered within the Inner Circle while navigating Xavier's legacy as headmaster of the School for Gifted Youngsters. It was very ominous, and I lapped it up.

On reflection, it was my brother who got the hot ticket first issue, so I had to settle for Classic X-Men #2 off the newsstand. This was an augmented version of original X-Men #94, and I wonder if these supplemental pages by original inker Bob McLeod ever got reprinted themselves. The Danger Room montage page from the old comic is expanded to two pages of sequential action, then there's a page with Cyclops having a meeting with Professor X, and another page that retcons the New Mutant Rahne Sinclair into a Moira McTaggert sequence. There's also subtle touch-ups, like a crazy-looking Beast being brought back to model. I wasn't wild for this early Len Wein/Dave Cockrum stuff, so it was a good call to sweeten the deal with the Art Adams pieces and the Claremont/Bolton back-ups, this time featuring the early friendship between Jean Grey and Storm, as Ororo attempts to confront her claustrophobia in a subway station. There's a reason why I got the omnibus collecting the supplemental material, but not the actual X-Men issues.

I thought I'd learned by lesson with Super Powers, but that poop-stain brown cover on #2 got all over my hands. I'm going to plead out that it featured a bunch of the characters from the third wave of the toy line that I was still curious about, including a fierce representation for Tyr that wasn't supported by very many other comics. Also, there's a skulking Darkseid in a robe who at one point gets iced by Mr. Freeze. Yeah, I'm out. It's like DC is actively avoiding my business.

I'm a little fuzzy on X-Factor #9. As a Freedom Force appearance and a sort of prelude to the Mutant Massacre, I'd be really surprised if my brother missed this one. I think I may have bought a copy of #1, but otherwise have not been supporting the title myself. This one was drawn by Terry Shoemaker, an artist that I never had a good bead on. He just seemed to hang out around the X-Offices picking up scraps, and got a bit of Wildstorm work in the '90s. His stuff is fine, but I've yet to meet any actual fans of the guy.

Comic Reader Résumé Podcast #23

(June 1986)

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

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

This episode includes Alpha Flight #38, Captain America #321 & Annual #8, Classic X-Men #1, Dakota North #3, G.I. Joe a Real American Hero #51, G.I. Joe Special Missions #1, Howard the Duck #33, The Incredible Hulk and Wolverine #1, Madballs #1, Marvel Age Annual #2, Marvel Saga #10, The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #10, Power Man and Iron Fist #125, Spectacular Spider-Man #118, Super Powers Vol. 3 #1, Uncanny X-Men #209, X-Factor #8, and more!

“Transcripts”

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

Alpha Flight, Captain America, DC Comics, Dakota North, G.I. Joe, Howard the Duck, Incredible Hulk, Madballs, Marvel Comics, Masters of the Universe, Spider-Man, Super Powers, Wolverine, X-Factor, X-Men, Asteroid, Atari, Karate Kid, Movies, Music, Space Invaders, Superman, Video Games, Comic Reader Résumé

Comic Reader Résumé: Late June, 1986

I'm only going to briefly mention Power Man and Iron Fist #125. I remember it making an appearance at the school playground around 1989. It was a friend's copy, and a bummer ending to the series. Danny Rand gets beaten to death in his sleep after using up all his chi to save a child, a lame supporting character is to blame, and he promptly disintegrates from an energy imbalance. This leaves Luke Cage to go on the run when he gets wrongly accused of the manslaughter. It felt like Jim Oswley was taking out his frustration at Jim Shooter cancelling the modest selling title to make room for the New Universe, when a better use of those energies would have been to just roll the creative team over to a New Universe title. That line could have used the help.

In a real "you had to be there" moment, there once was a hot ticket reprint title in Classic X-Men #1. 1986 is considered by many to be the greatest year in the history of comics publishing, and was undoubtedly part of the last period where comic books had a significant cultural imprint with record sales to match. Nothing was hotter for longer than the X-Men, and this title wisely eschewed the original X-Men stories to begin coverage of the poorly circulated, never previously reprinted All-New, All-Different era. Aside from a few Len Wein issues, this was the start of Chris Claremont's record run with Dave Cockrum, and the arrival of the most popular team member, including the joining of Wolverine. Byrne and Perez were still the biggest names in comics, but Arthur Adams was the hottest and most influential new talent-- the truest herald and originator of the hyper-detailed "Image style" that would dominate the next decade of comics. He offered one of the best and most character-packed mutant covers ever, plus a frontpiece. Copious additional pages were provided by John Bolton, who also drew the back cover, and would soon provide a well loved series of back-up stories to the title. At a time when back issues were much more difficult to locate, and trade collections were all but nonexistent, this was the best and most economical option for readers to finally catch up on the X-Men story from the beginning... of the new team that people actually cared about.

I may have already mentioned that my brother had a few Madballs, plus the first issue of the Star Comics series. If you didn't know, these were simply rubber balls with weird or gross faces sculpted on them. I remember their being hollow, so you probably couldn't properly bounce or bat them. How much catch can you play? You might not think that there was a lot of narrative mileage in floating spheres, and Star initially only gave it three issues. I guess they proved popular enough to be revived seven months later as an ongoing series that continued the numbering of the mini. Marvel maybe should have kept the money and ran, because whatever life the property had was spent by the tenth issue.

I was more suggestible in my youth, and hadn't checked in with DC Comics for a minute, so i think I succumbed to the "NEW SERIES! FIRST ISSUE!" hype on Super Powers #1. I still loved the toys, but was at a loss with regards to the newer characters from later lines. The likes of Cyclotron, Golden Pharaoh, Orion, and Tyr were mysteries to me, and I frankly think I was a sucker for the named floating heads bookending the cover image. The interiors by Paul Kupperberg and Carmine Infantino were really bad, perhaps crystalizing my lifelong anti-fandom for these two men. This comic fed into my general avoidance of classic Justice League comics for nearly another decade, and did no favors for the relatively minuscule Fourth World circles. Don't get me started on Darkseid's seemingly perishing from his own Omega beams, or that awful hood ornament Orion was wearing.

I've mentioned a number of times on the podcast that I watched a lot of private investigator shows as a kid, especially the female led ones like Remington Steel and Moonlighting. For whatever reason, I didn't gravitate toward the rumpled old Columbo types, or cops in general, but the glossier self-directed detectives for pay... or at least well-heeled dilettantes like Hart to Hart. So naturally a seeming femme fatale with full bangs wearing haut leather goods while brandishing an automatic with the single word "STYLE" brandished above her letterboxed upper torso should grab my eye. I didn't immediately get the joke in the name Dakota North, nor did I ever really "get" the book itself. I want to say it turned up during its brief and surprisingly sporadic run somewhere in my orbit, whether newsstand or bookstore. On the surface, it was the kind of book that I'd want, but then I'd flip through it and put it back. I want to say my brother had an issue at some point, and I believe I bought a discounted "scratched and dinged" copy at the comic store that I went to right before leaving for Nevada. I think, but am not certain, that issue was #3. The close-up of Dakota aiming her piece seems the most familiar of the covers, as does the splash of her intolerably smug younger brother Ricky touring the Eiffel Tower with a gal pal. I was old enough to see the appeal in the off-kilter cartooning of Tony Salmons, but I still gravitated more toward the flashy than the artsy, and Kyle Baker always had a stronger brew for this particular approach. If you have to choose between a collection of Dakota North or Why I Hate Saturn, you pick Saturn every time. To my knowledge, this series was Martha Thomases only writing credit, and I understand that she struggled with the violence required by the assignment. You would think that would mean the scripts would favor the characterization, but I couldn't get a feel for any of these people. It all seemed obtuse to me-- unsure and at odds with itself. So if anything, I favored the wild action and mild cheesecake where the art broke lose of the unengaging story. Like I said-- I tend to flip through issues when I come across them in dollar bins-- there's something there, but seemingly not enough for most audiences. I would encounter a better and earlier handling of this character type in Collins & Beatty's Ms. Tree, another Marauder Comics quarter pull.

Someone on social media recently tagged me on the announcement of a crowdsourced compendium of the Marvel G.I. Joe comics that was funded in six minutes and had over a million dollars in the kitty at last count. The other person tagged was Ryan Daly, who has often appeared on , if not outright co-hosted, Joe podcasts. He collects Joe stuff and is keeping up with the modern Skybound Energon Universe stuff, like seemingly everybody else. That made sense. It was the me part that I didn't get. I haven't read a Joe comic since the Devil's Due run first started, and while I retain some mild nostalgia, my fandom feels like it happened in another lifetime. But then I remembered this podcast, which has consistently featured Joe content. I talk about Secret Wars being the first series that I collected every month from when I started with #3 until its end, or how Dreadstar & Company was the first book I had a complete set of. Or how I followed Uncanny X-Men to some degree for over a decade from January of '83, and what a formative series that was for me as a person. But before that, I bought action figures, especially G.I. Joes, and I've been talking about the animated commercials and TV series, and buying the comic more months than not from #11, and here we are at #51, plus Yearbooks and now we're launching a spin-off series. As much as I feel this book is in my rearview mirror, especially the rah-rah Real American Hero politics, the paper trail surely indicates that I was a much more devoted fan of this franchise than any other in my earliest years of collecting.

And so we come to G.I. Joe Special Missions #1, previewed in #50, adorned with a dynamic Mike Zeck cover, spotlighting... um... I dunno. Snake-Eyes is in the background, one of two Joes scaling the side of a ship while firing Uzis. They're both in modified scuba gear, so from the colors and flat top I guess Duke? But his hair's more orange than blonde, and he just doesn't "read" as Duke, especially since a more iconic Duke figure is in the corner box for comparison. Neither is in the actual comic, which is a sea adventure mostly involving The Baroness. The art didn't exactly blow me away, and my memory is of seeing it in a three-pack at a K-Mart that I did not pick up. I don't recall if I'd passed on it at the newsstand, probably not helped by it's continuing into the next issue, or if I decided against the book interiors unseen at the department store. What I can say is that this was maybe the first chink in the armor of my Joe collecting period, and it seems given the choice, I got an X-Men pack instead.

My experience of Howard the Duck up to this point was mostly in passing. He'd been a big fad in the 1970s, especially during his Pat Paulsen-aping mock presidential run. There were plenty of period Marvel house ads for subscriptions; the magazine; the Treasury Edition. But in terms of actual comics read, it was just the second issue at my uncle's friend's house with the inset bookshelves from which I modeled my own current and long desired set-up. And to be honest, that's still going to be it, because I fished the weird, years-belated Howard the Duck #32 & 33 out of the Marauder Comics quarter bin in 1989. Instead of being decent human beings about it, the final issue of the original run came nearly a year after the previous one, and that was over six years after the real finale from 1979. Worse, it teamed Howard co-creator Val Mayerik with some unknown, rather than offer Steve Gerber the work. It was a one-off, rags to riches to rags story to meekly support the upcoming movie, distinguished only by tardiness and admittedly one of the best ever Howard covers by Brian Bolland. That'll do, duck. That'll do.

The Incredible Hulk and Wolverine #1 was another one of those weird newsstand outliers that cost a whopping $2.00 and was extra length on sturdier (but non-Baxter?) stock. It had a new wraparound cover by John Byrne, but the interiors were all reprints. Mainly, it was the two-part introduction of Wolverine by Len Wein and Herb Trimpe from 1974's Incredible Hulk #180-181. Also, and much rarer, there was a new 6-page Hercules/Wolverine story from 1980's Marvel Treasury Edition #26 by Mary Jo Duffy, Ken Landgraf, and most importantly, inked by George Pérez. Nowadays, all three of these stories have been reprinted many times over, including a full reprint of this edition in a squarebound version with a new Trimpe cover in '89. However, in 1986, this was the first time these stories had ever been made available again, much less in a relatively affordable upscale format on the newsstand. While it may not have been held in the same esteem as Phoenix: The Untold Story, I still prized this edition, especially the pages of back matter detailing the origins of the character, as created by Wein and artist John Romita Senior, including the design sketches. This may have been the first time I heard about Wolverine's distinctive mask flaps coming out of Gil Kane having screwed up on a cover, with the interiors made to match. I was somewhere near my peak Wolverine fandom, and aside from Marvel Age and the rare trade paperback, there wasn't a lot of opportunities to get that kind of education on the creative process.

Speaking of Marvel Age, our last stop this month is its second annual. The cover was a massive group shot of the main stars of the universe by Frenz and Sinnott, which was by necessity more crowded as a single page than Kerry Gammill's wraparound from the previous year. Starting with a reprint of a 3-page 1967 Lee/Kirby humor strip about themselves, we next got a highlight reel from Marvel's first quarter-century. Back then, "Marvel Comics" started in 1961 with the debut of the Fantastic Four, creating the illusion that a flush Baby Boomer could own every single Marvel Comic, and treating their wartime super-heroes from the series actually titled Marvel Comics as an out-of-continuity prototype. Next was Marvel A to Z, which was their own version of the Amazing Heroes Preview Specials, where they would give a few paragraph breakdown of each Marvel title's general course over the next half-year or so. Where the previous year, they'd blown a fat wad on 25 pages of original continuity storytelling, Marvel was tightening their belts to look more attractive for an upcoming sale. This time they only sprung for about 13 story pages to break up the text, plus some pin-ups with captions and dialogue balloons. The artists were generally lesser known than the 1985 crew, but Art Adams did a story page, and Walt Simonson a pin-up spread. Could you imagine a publisher paying for anything like this today? Anyway, either the New Universe titles weren't ready or, more likely, it was damage control for how lame they were coming out, but the only art for the upcoming line was one of Cynthia Martin's cosmic house ads of fuchsia lightning striking the Earth from outer space. It was still overall a nifty package, with a faux 1961 Marvel Age back cover by Richard Howell, but I still read my brother's copy.