Time to spread the love – in my own way
The Groovy Agent over at Diversions of the Groovy Kind has been kind enough to nominate me for a Kreativ Blogger Award. I’m pretty new at this blogging business, so I’m very flattered. I’m not nuts about the chain-letter/comes-with-duties aspect of this “award,” but the fact that another blogger, especially one who runs a blog that I enjoy immensely, thinks highly enough of my ramblings to highlight them is extremely gratifying. A big thanks for that.
Since I’m still a relative neophyte with this stuff, there aren’t all that many blogs that I follow closely that haven’t already had the Kreativ Blogger imprimatur. So I’m just going to list some folks whose stuff I enjoy, and that I think everyone should check out — though everyobody over in my links section deserves a visit.
In no particular order, and with no strings attached (you’ll find the links on the right):
Silver Age Comics – A wonderfully informative blog that makes me wallow in my comics ignorance.
Silver Age Gold – A lot of smart, entertaining posts about, you guessed it, Silver Age comics.
Bob Mitchell in the 21st Century – This blog gets my appreciation because of its Funny Panel Friday feature. Guess what — the panels he puts up are actually funny. I always get a laugh.
Sequential Crush – I know two things about romance comics — Jack and Squat. This blog makes a start at remedying that.
Gorilla Daze – Nice posts on famous and not-so-famous titles and characters.
The Random Longbox – I like the “random” gimmick. For some reason it reminds me of the old The George Michael Sports Machine TV show.
E.G. Comics – Not a blog, but my favorite local comics haunt. If you’re ever in the D.C. area, please pay Ed a visit. He has a fantastic shop in the Virginia suburbs that has the best mix of new and old comics in the region.
Part of the “award” is a requirement that I list seven things about me that people might like to know. I’m down with that.
1) In 2003 I graduated from law school, and a couple weeks after my graduation I shaved my head. I haven’t been follicled since.
2) My favorite movie is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and I have a feeling that it’ll keep that distinction until the day I die.
3) If you asked me what I think the best book ever written is, I’d tell you William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. If you asked me what my personal favorite is, I’d tell you W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage.
4) My paternal grandmother and I shared the same birthday 67 years apart. When I was a kid that made birthdays awfully damn fun.
5) I don’t watch a ton of TV, but I have a weakness for Maury. DNA tests and lie detectors are wonderful things. As is baby mama drama.
6) I have a terrible run-out-of-the-room-screaming fear of spiders, yet my favorite comic to buy is The Amazing Spider-Man. I think that qualifies as irony.
7) Who do I like more, Superman or Batman? Superman.
I know I’ve changed things up a little with my duties as Miss Amer-, wait, I mean as a Kreativ Blogger, but Read more…
Comin’ at ya – The Amazing Spider-Man #19
This issue of The Amazing Spider-Man holds two personal distinctions — it’s both the earliest issue that I own and it’s also one of my favorite covers from the whole series. Lord knows I paid a high enough price for it — I can remember it shot my budget for a couple of weeks. But the sacrifice was worth it. After all, I love me some Spidey.
It’s one of my most beloved covers mainly because of the wonderful 3-D quality that it has. The way Spidey’s swinging through the webbing makes it look like he’s bursting right out of the paper. Ditko was just so wonderful at depicting him in action. He could always capture the marvelous grace and kineticism of the character, even with a cover concept as relatively simple as this one.
I also can’t help but hear a couple of the old classic Spidey theme songs in my head whenever I see this image. For you, well, I won’t call you old-timers, but maybe older-timers, there’s the classic 60’s intro that everyone knows by heart (or they at least know the first couple of lines by heart):
For me, though, I usually hear the theme from the 80’s cartoon, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. I’m a child of the MTV decade, after all. It’s a catchy little tune:
I’m going to have these ditties bouncing around in my ears for hours now. And that’s not such a bad thing.
This is the first issue of Strange Adventures that I’ve ever purchased. It was the cover that got me — I just had to know how the kindly-looking and very well-dressed postman fought off an alien invasion. Though you have to wonder why in the year 2956 kids wouldn’t just be getting info uploaded straight into their brains instead of snoozing through a futuristic slideshow. But anyway…
Our first yarn (there are three in this issue) is the cover story, “Earth Hero Number One.” Written by Gardner Fox with art from Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson, this tale starts in the far future where a teacher uses a “Tele-Time Ray” to show a class the story of Earth’s greatest champion, a 20th century mail carrier named Calvin Jackson. He’s on his appointed rounds one day when he’s abruptly beamed aboard an alien spaceship. The aliens are telepaths, and they use him to communicate with the people of Earth. Trouble promptly erupts as the nations of Earth launch missiles at the aliens which are consequently repulsed by their more advanced technology. The Earth generals surrender because the missiles’ radioactivity is poisoning the water. It turns out that water is what the aliens are after — they plan to steal it and take it back to their parched world. They promptly start putting it into giant water balloons, and before they leave they decide to celebrate by drinking a toast with their ill-gotten H20. Unbeknownst to them, Jackson has laced their water with sleeping pills — one of the old biddies on his route gets special (“medically approved”) sleeping pills from her doctor son. This knocks the aliens out, and they’re promptly shackled. Earth and the aliens reach an agreement to share water, and all is right with the world. And back in the future we learn that the class is taking place in “Calvin Jackson School” in honor of Earth’s champion. I guess dead Presidents are out of vogue by then.
Our second story (from Fox and Anderson) is “Earth – The Forbidden Planet.” It tries to have a Twilight Zone-style twist, but it falls pretty flat. Across the universe, Earth is a taboo subject — you can’t talk about it, you can’t go there, etc. Then one day an alien (yet another alien that looks exactly like a human) is forced by mechanical troubles to land on Earth. Instead of finding some horrible place that kills him instantly, he’s welcomed and feted. All his senses are tickled. He’s given the tastiest meals, listens to the finest music, feels the softest furs, smells the sweetest flowers. He leaves wondering what all the fuss was about. When he gets home he’s promptly condemned, and we soon learn — through the inner monologue of the fellow that passed judgment — that Earth is planet non grata because, due to an accident of cosmic fate, it’s the only planet whose inhabitants aren’t all blind. This judge is blind. Rand Tal is blind. Everyone not human is blind. It’s feared that, if the people of the universe were to find out that they’re missing one of the senses, they’d no longer be content.
Kind of silly.
Last we have “The Evolutionary Ensign of Space.” This one has art from Carmine Infantino (yahoo!) and Anderson, and is a “Space Museum” story. The treat in this one is the art — Infantino’s stuff never gets old for me. The story? Meh. It’s not so hot. There’s a lot of hooey about interplanetary wars, anti-adhesion guns, and becoming a being of pure energy. I’ll leave it at that.
Even though I was less than thrilled with some of the material in this issue, I still had a good time going through it. I’m glad my tastes have expanded a bit beyond the capes and tights and cowls that I grew up on — it means that I’m able to enjoy something like this every now and then. Also, just for your viewing pleasure, I found a scan of the first story here. It’s from a later reprint, though the only thing I saw changed was the color of the “water balloons” — they went from green to clear. Enjoy.
What does Nick Fury have to do with Peter Griffin?
So what is it that the grizzled, cigar-chomping elder of the Marvel Universe has in common with the stupid, bumbling patriarch of Family Guy? The simple answer is “ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.” But then you have the convoluted workings of my brain, where nothing is simple. Here’s the three-step stream of consciousness that linked the two of them together for me.
First, on Tuesday I purchased this issue of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos:
After I bought it I found out that it was a cover-and-all reprint of an earlier issue from the series. Oh well. Still, I really like Jack Kirby’s depiction of a harried and tattered Fury, beset and trapped by his enemies. This dredged up another Kirby image in my mind, one from his later tenure at DC. Here’s step two of my mental journey, New Gods #8:
There are some obvious similarities here. Both Fury and Terrible Turpin are cornered, their postures are similar, both have seen better sartorial days, and both characters are apparently facing pretty long odds. The big difference between the two is that Turpin is wearing a shirt, or rather what’s left of a shirt. It was Turpin’s overall state of disheveledness that made a light go on in the dim recesses of my noggin, and brought me to the last stage of this brief trek.
If you’ve ever watched Family Guy — and I realize the show’s humor isn’t for everybody, though I think it’s geared pretty nicely to those in my demographic — you know that, every once in a while, out of nowhere, Peter squares off against a giant chicken. They punch and kick and generally wail on each other through buildings, on planes, on boats, wherever, in colossal contretemps that parody big budget Hollywood smash ’em ups. By the end Peter comes out on top, but after every donnybrook he’s bloodied and bruised with his shirt and pants ripped. Here’s a couple of images to illustrate what I’m babbling about:
Terrible Turpin’s look on that New Gods cover made me think of this, and that’s how Nick Fury and Peter Griffin came together for me. I guess that this is one of those weird mental crossovers that you get every once in a while. Or that I get every once in a while.
Just thought that I’d share this with you folks.
I’ve never really been able to “get” Ghost Rider. I never know if he’s Johnny Blaze, Dan Ketch, the demon Zarathos on his own, the Spirit of Vengeance, or what. I just can’t keep it all straight. Also I’m not much of a motorcycle aficionado, so there’s another strike against me taking much of an interest in the guy. I do remember that he was the toast of the town back in the early 90’s, back when “darker” characters like Wolverine and the Punisher were all the rage. Apart from that, though, he’s always been on the fringes of the Marvel Universe and, consequently, of my tastes.
But I can always get reeled in by a nifty cover. And this one reeled me in.
A Ringmaster-less Circus of Crime tangles with our titular anti-hero in this tale from Roger Stern and Bob Budiansky. A lot of the story focuses on Zarathos being trapped in Blaze’s subconscious and just itching to get out and wreak some vengeance. There’s also a good deal of hubbub about the evil clown named, you guessed it, Clown, who enlists his compatriots in the Circus of Crime to disrupt an ordinary circus that Blaze is associated with, but it turns out that Clown is really out to double-cross the baddies and is on the side of the good carnies. Confused? I was for a minute, too.
The thing I thought was neat about this story is that, when Blaze sees his friends fighting with the evil-doers, he reluctantly lets Zarathos out, but he doesn’t realize that Clown is really on the side of his buddies. Not knowing that, Ghost Rider gives him the “cold fire” treatment and Clown is left trapped in a repeating psychic loop of his failures and his life of criminal dissipation. When Zarathos is confronted with his mistake he can’t believe it, and is so taken aback he transforms back into Blaze. Not a pioneering storyline, but I’ll take it.
On the whole there’s not much meat on the bones of this plot, but I did really dig that Ghost Rider “oops” when he punished the wrong guy. Do superheroes have malpractice insurance? And, while I’m at it, don’t you think that cover would make a cool poster? I sure as “hell” do. And yes, I realize that that’s an atrocious, cringe-inducing attempt at a witticism. Hopefully Ghost Rider won’t penance stare the living daylights out of me for it.
You can’t tell the players without a program
These are a few variations of an oft-repeated cover design, one that I’ve always liked and one that gives you more of an idea of what characters are going to be turning up on the inside of a book. It’s just putting headshots in the cover margins — a real simple way to structure things. I was first exposed to it as a kid with the third Super Powers toy tie-in miniseries. Here’s issue #1 from that:
This sort of thing obviously comes in handy during the big crossover/team-up events. A prime example would be the frequent JLA/JSA meldings:
Now that I’ve been able to pick up older issues I associate this design a lot with Kirby’s covers. He used it some with his Fourth World titles, though he was also using it during his tenure at Marvel. Here’s The Fantastic Four #54, but note that this one lacks identifying names to go with the headshots:
And here’s a last example – with this Journey into Mystery cover, there are no margins in which to place the headshots, so they’re just hovering over the image proper:
I could throw in a lot more instances where this has been used, but I think these get the point across. As I said, I sort of appreciate covers like this, though I can see how others might find them pretty lame. When was the first time that this sort of cover was trotted out? I don’t know. I’d be interested in an answer to that question, but I just haven’t had the time to look into it too deeply.
I can remember seeing ads for The ‘Nam back in the day, and I recall that it never really drew my interest. I loved G.I. Joe, but I had no interest in the “real world” environment of Vietnam. If I wanted “in country” lore, all I had to do was sneak into the attic, open up my father’s old Army trunk, and pull out the uniforms, the pictures and the medals. Comics stayed in the fantasy realm.
But I’ve grown up and grown older, so I can now appreciate these sorts of things more. So recently I picked up a big chunk of early The ‘Nam issues. I really haven’t had the chance to read through them, but I was struck by the quality of some of the covers, and thought I’d share them with folks who may be as unfamiliar with the title as I’ve been. We’ll start off with the first issue – I like the way North and South Vietnam bisect the cover:
Issue #9 does a nice job of capturing the wide-eyed innocence of kids sent to war:
I like the stark contrast of color with #13:
With #15 all I can think of is Eric Cartman railing against “stupid hippies”:
Issue #24 gives us an alternate take on an iconic image:
I was reminded of a classic issue of the 80’s G.I. Joe comic with issue #26. Larry Hama was the driving force behind the comic book Joes and he also edited The ‘Nam, so maybe that’s where the copycat thing comes into play. Here’s both:
And lastly, #31 gives us something I think anyone reading this blog can appreciate:
There’s some nice stuff here, I think.
I have a long history with the Hulk, probably longer than my relationship with any other comic character. I was little when the wonderful – if unfaithful to “canon” – TV show was on, and, though I had to cover my eyes every time David “Don’t Call Me Bruce” Banner transformed into his green alter-ego, it was my favorite show. I was such a devotee — on clear nights in my childhood home in northern New York I’d tune in to a Quebec station that broadcast a dubbed version of the show. I remember I called it “French Hulk.”
Ah, to be a kid again.
So I love picking up old Hulk comics like the one above. Except there’s a problem. Namor. No offense to the ruler of Atlantis, but I can never seem to get interested in his adventures. It could be because he’s always such an @$%hole. Or it could be that the stories are just garbage that can’t even be salvaged by Gene Colan’s art. I don’t know.
I won’t go into detail on the two stories in this particular issue, mainly because both are in midstream here. Neither starts in this issue and neither ends in it. Here’s the quick contrast, though — Hulk’s story has him tangling with and teaming with the Leader and ol’ Greenskin comes across the Watcher to boot, while Namor’s has him battling the Demon of the Diamonds. Which of those two sounds more enjoyable? I’ll let you guess which way I lean.
I suppose my preference could simply be a part of my anti-Namor bias. Still, I can’t help the fact that whenever I buy a Tales to Astonish from this era, I know that half of it is going to be a bit of a buzzkill for me.
I’ll shut up now. I wouldn’t want Namor to bellow “Imperius Rex!” and come after me.
It’s good to be handy – Excalibur #2
I was over in D.C. this past weekend and I picked up some comics at a quarter each at a used book store — you can’t argue with bargains. In the pile were a bunch from the old Chris Claremont/Alan Davis run on the United Kingdom’s super-team, Excalibur. I found that the back of each of the comics had a pin-up focusing on a character or two — kind of a nice little extra from Davis. The image above is from the back of issue #2, and centers on Shadowcat and her dragon companion, Lockheed. Call me an idiot, but it took me a second to figure out what was going on, that she had phased through the computer panel so she could better work on it — at first I thought she just had something laying on her lap. So I kind of like this one, though I question why she’d have to be in full costume to get some work done in the HQ. I don’t sweep my floors wearing a suit and tie, but to each their own.
I’m back for more punishment.
Not too long after I started this blog I reviewed the very first of the “Wonder Woman Family” adventures, Wonder Woman #124. Check it out at you own risk. I don’t want to get too deep into summing that issue up – the last time I tried to make sense of that story I almost had a stroke, so I’m giving it a wide berth.
But, lest anyone accuse me of shirking my duties, I’ve decided to brave another iteration of the antics of Wonder Woman and the teenage and infant versions of herself. How bad could it be?
Pretty bad.
“The Amazing Amazon Race,” written by Robert Kanigher with pencils by Ross Andru, doesn’t have the same mind-blowingly stupid plot hook that that first foray did. So we can be thankful for that. No, this one is just dull. Dull, dull, dull.
Wonder Woman is reading her fan mail, and she selects an imaginary fan to share an imaginary adventure with her. There are about twelve too many layers of “imaginary” here, but I guess we’ll just roll with the punches. She whisks the fan, Alice, away to Paradise Island. There, Wonder Woman competes with her fellow Amazons in a competition to be Wonder Queen for a day, and apparently the prize for that is wearing a crown for a 24 hour period. It’s the Amazon equivalent of the Miss America Pageant, I guess. Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot show up to compete (Maybe what I hate the most about these stories is that no one seems to find it odd that younger versions of Wonder Woman just show up out of nowhere) in a variety of boring races and feats of daring-do. Alice watches them and Wonder Woman drags her along on a water race where Alice’s life is promptly placed in danger (as seen on the cover). In the end Wonder Tot wins the competition. That about sums it all up.
Dull.
The backup story, again by Kanigher and Andru, is entitled “Wonder Woman’s Invincible Rival – Herself!” While no potboiler, it’s at least a bit less lame. Don’t let that not-so-ringing endorsement fool you, though – it’s still not very good. It’s your typical Wonder Woman romantic fare, with Wonder Woman taking the role of her double, “Miss X,” in a movie, alongside her beau, Steve Trevor. She does this so that she can find out if Steve really loves her, and the big lummox falls for this thinnest of ruses. For a time, as I was reading this story, I thought that he really knew that Wonder Woman and Miss X were one and the same, and that he was just toying with Diana by falling head over heels for this “new” woman. But no. The ending, which has Wonder Woman throwing off her Miss X costume to save Steve and others from a collapsing roof, reveals that he really was fooled, which I guess makes him one of the dumbest men in the history of comicdom. But his love for Wonder Woman is confirmed at the end, so I guess all is right in their little world.
As much as Silver Age silliness may grate at times, it’s very often endearing. But with the Wonder Woman stories, there seems to be a disconnect, something that prevents them from crossing the boundary from junk into charming. It could be that it stems from old men trying to make stories relate to young girls. I don’t know for sure. But stories like these don’t cut the mustard. They just don’t. Silliness is one thing – brain dead is another.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe I still have some lingering frustration from that first “impossible” story. Maybe I hold Wonder Woman up to a too-high standard. But these stories are just so drab. She deserves – or deserved, I should say – better.
And I like Wonder Woman. I really do.
There’s no deep story analysis to be had here. Let’s just say that, while Superman does go all Mola Ram/Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on Luthor in this issue, it’s all – wait for it – a hallucination. But still, Klaus Janson proved that he could do more than ink Frank Miller’s pencils with this cover.
And, really, who could blame Supes if he finally eviscerated Lex? I think I could even understand him mounting Lex’s severed head on a wall in the Fortress of Solitude at this point.
A bought this a couple of weeks ago – it’s the first Challengers of the Unknown comic that I’ve ever picked up. Their heyday was before my time, and my tastes have always run towards characters of the tights and capes variety (though this didn’t stop me from piping up in a Challengers debate recently). I recognize their significance in the DC mythos, though, so I was happy to make a start at adding this foursome to my ever-growing archives.
What did I think of this issue, my first foray into the adventures of the Challengers? On the balance I view it rather favorably. The first story inside, “One Challenger Must Die,” written by Arnold Drake with pencils by Bob Brown, finds the Challengers tangling with an old foe, that back and bigger than ever Volcano Man. There’s not much meat on the bones of this plot, and the cover says it all. The Challengers argue over whose plan will work to stop the monster, the argument boils over into fisticuffs after both strategies fail in the first attempts, and finally they put their differences aside to team up, combine their plans and bring down the big lumbering oaf.
Not the most involving story.
I liked the second, “Cosmo Turns Traitor,” a good deal more – it gives you a healthy dose of Silver Age silliness. The Challengers are chasing a criminal, Mastermind, and his thugs on a mountain road when the evil-doers’ car is whisked away by an alien. It turns out the alien, a big spindly yellow dude named D’Jann, is on Earth looking for his pet, J’Suna. In another one of those wonderful Silver Age coincidences, J’Suna is the Challengers’ super-powered pet, Cosmo. Mastermind convinces D’Jann that the Challengers are villains and that they’re using Cosmo and his powers for their own nefarious ends.
Hijinks ensue as Mastermind uses D’Jann’s gizmos to try and kill the Challengers, but Cosmo protects his friends, that is, until his alien master summons him telepathically. The Challengers follow Cosmo into the trap, and Mastermind changes Prof into a cloud man, Red into a wind man, Ace into a two-dimensional man, and Rocky into a flame man (the last is more fodder for the Challengers as Fantastic Four debate, I suppose). In true James Bond-villain fashion Mastermind leaves the Challengers to accidentally finish each other off with their new powers, but they escape and in the ensuing brawl Cosmo is injured. Then there’s more nuttiness, until D’Jann finally figures out Mastermind’s double-dealing shenanigans and helps the Challengers capture him.
After all that hoopla there’s a nice little coda to the story. The Challengers are prepared to let Cosmo go back to his former master, but D’Jann decides to let the little guy stay on Earth. You see, with D’Jann he’s just a pet, but with the Challengers he fights bad guys. So he stays with the Challengers.
Awwwww. Of course, he promptly disappeared from the title never to be heard from again, so I guess the good feelings didn’t last.
As indifferent as I was to the first story, I enjoyed the second one quite a lot. It was pencilled by Bob Brown, but in my cursory internet search I couldn’t find any info on the writer. It may be Arnold Drake again, but the different tenor of the story leads me to question that. And Cosmo, a little orange outer space raccoon, is cute and mute, which puts him in stark contrast to the Martian Manhunter’s voluble and offensively stupid sidekick Zook. I like Cosmo, and it’s too bad that he apparently didn’t share many of the Challengers’ adventures.
So it’s taken me some time to get into the Challengers, but, thanks to that second story, I’ll be on the lookout for more of them in the future. And DC Comics – bring back Cosmo.
This issue has some significance to the ongoing Captain America mythos because, at the end of the issue, the Falcon becomes Cap’s partner. That’s all well and good. It’s always nice to have landmarks in the run of a title. But I could really care less about all that because of the other Marvel character on the cover.
The Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing. Or MODOK to his friends. Or underlings, as the case may be.
I’ve always liked MODOK – there’s something so damn goofy and oddball about the character. The big head, the spindly little limbs, the failure of every one of his schemes despite his supposedly unmatched intellect – all these characteristics rolled together form a pretty righteous compost.
Thanks to the cover puffery, I knew going in that this issue was going to give me the origin of MODOK. Nice. What it didn’t tell me was that the issue, written by Stan Lee, would be pencilled by Gene Colan. In the classic Cap/Iron Man duo, I’ve always associated Colan with the latter thanks to his excellent work on the early days of ol’ Shellhead. So this was a nice surprise to my still-learining mind.
Colan’s shadowy art, which worked so well for him later with with his efforts on horror titles, was a nice match for MODOK and his ugly mug. Here’s Colan’s take on MODOK from the title page:
He gives him even more of a mostrous feel.
The plot? The previous issue had Cap dispatching an android Bucky Barnes sent as an Assassin by MODOK. This failure prompts some reflection on the part of the big-headed one, including a flashback to his creation, but he soon devises a new way to destroy Cap. MODOK’s plan this time around is a bit more convoluted – he creates a giant android, the Bulldozer, and unleashes it in Harlem, where it begins destroying the slums. MODOK’s big plan, you see, is to discredit Cap by having this behemoth tear down the slums that are hated so much by those that have to live in them, and to therefore make AIM the champion of the common man.
Yes. That’s the plan that his big brain came up with. The phrase “Too clever by half” springs to mind.
I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that Cap and Falcon defeat him (with a brief assist by Tony Stark). By the end of the story MODOK is buried under rubble while the two heroes become partners.
I’ve always appreciated the Falcon because he was an early black character that didn’t have “black” in his name, but MODOK was what made this issue for me. Colan’s art was such a nice match for MODOK’s ugliness. It was a pleasant surprise to find him working on this title – I just hadn’t had the chance to buy any Captain America comics from this time period until recently, and had no idea that he had such a great little run on it.
And one last note… This isn’t a full-on return to the Blog into Mystery Casting Couch, but a few years ago there was an internet meme about a rather unfortunate fellow named “Brian Peppers.” Do a Google search – Snopes.com has an entry on him. He reminded me a little bit of MODOK. Ouch.
So it’s been a while for this series – I’m afraid that I was channeling a little to much of Kevin Smith with my tardiness on this one. My reasons are noble, though. I care about Rom, and since a lot of people couldn’t give a *&%$ about him, I want to be able to give the character’s swan song my full attention.
So I’m back to the Silver Spaceknight. We’re up to Rom Annual #4, “Blows Against the Empire,” written by Bill Mantlo with pencils from Steve Ditko:
And just to catch you up, Rom has reunited with several of his Spaceknight comrades (Seeker, Scanner and Trapper) and two have been lost along the way (Raak the Breaker banished to Limbo, Unam the Unseen dead but redeemed). He’s still on his way back to his homeworld (Galador) now that the war against the Wraiths has come to an end.
So where are we now? The Shi’ar Empire appears in this issue in a big way. We open with a Shi’ar Dreadnought finding a metal-clad being floating in space. They bring it aboard, where it promptly wakes up and blasts the hell out of everything and everyone. A Shi’ar praetor squares off with it, and both combatants are killed in the process. A doctor on board the Dreadnought, Tyreseus, takes the metal fella back to his lab, where he discovers that the he’s a Spaceknight named Pulsar grievously wounded in battle. Then Tyreseus makes a big decision:
Tyreseus destroys the Dreadnought and flies off.
Rom and his comrades come upon the wreckage of the Dreadnought, and soon another Shi’ar vessel arrives and beams them aboard:
If this nice two page spread looks familiar, it should. Here’s what you might be thinking of (sorry for the crappy scan – it’s from a history of the Marvel Universe book I have):
Apparently the Shi’ar Empire has some pretty stringent protocols for where people stand when folks are beamed on board.
The Spaceknights are promptly accused of having destroyed the Dreadnought and a big old brawl ensues. Seeker squares off against the Shi’ar equivalent of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome‘s Master Blaster:
Vola the Trapper and Scanner also hold their own, with Scanner using a stratagem that would make Moe Howard proud:
Rom tangles with Gladiator in a true battle of titans:
Everything comes to a close as quickly as it starts, though, as Scanner reveals that her heightened senses have determined that a Spaceknight did indeed destroy the Shi’ar ship, and that the Spaceknight was Pulsar. Rom does as his honor demands and orders his friends to stand down until they can get to the bottom of this.
Gladiator throws them into the clink and is feeling pretty good about himself, right up until he gets a message from the Majestrix that another Dreadnought is under attack. Oops. Soon “Pulsar” turns his attention to the vessel containing our heroes and they reach an agreement with Gladiator to team up and deal with this together, as Scanner has determined that the Spaceknight armor contains someone besides the original Pulsar.
The Spaceknights and Gladiator confront the rogue and Rom uses his Neutralizer to negate his powers. Helpless, he retreats to a nearby planet and there he meets his fate:
Apparently “mercy” isn’t in Gladiator’s vocabulary, though you can’t fault him for being a bit peeved.
With his last words, Tyreseus reveals his true identity and his reasons for doing what he did. He came from a primitive warrior race enslaved by the Shi’ar, and when a chance to free his people presented itself, he grabbed it. But when he took the Spaceknight armor and returned to his world to lead his people in rebellion, he found that they had grown fat and happy in the folds of the Empire. They wanted no part of this mechanized being claiming the role of liberator. After this rebuff, his subsequent attacks on the Shi’ar were the result of his one remaining motivation – vengeance.
And then he’s dead.
Over Tyreseus’ corpse, Rom and Gladiator debate his deeds:
I like the setup of the last three panels – they always remind me of the point in the first issue of Watchmen when Rorschach is leaving Dan Dreiberg’s basement. Alan Moore has spoken highly of Ditko’s use of the pattern of equally spaced panels, and I can’t say I disagree with him. They worked so well on that original run of The Amazing Spider-Man, and if they’re good enough for that, in my book they’re good enough for anything else.
Our story ends as Gladiator sees that perhaps Tyreseus wasn’t the villain that he seemed to be. To thank Rom and his comrades for their assistance, he activates an interplanetary transporter that sends the Spaceknights all the way back to Galador.
It’s a nice little story, once again dealing with the question of just what defines concepts like courage and honor. The Shi’ar character designs were a great match to Ditko’s fluid pencils, and I remember as a kid really liking his depiction of Tyreseus and his cat-people:
All in all, it’s a cool stand-alone issue within this wider final arc. Next time – and hopefully next time won’t take as long to get done – we arrive on Galador, but we learn that the return home is just the start of one final challenge for our heroes.
I’ll admit the cover poses a good question – how exactly does Superman get a haircut? I mean, that’s one of those dumb topics that comic fans debate far too long over beers late at night. How does his hair get cut, wouldn’t he blow a hole in the back of the toilet every time he took a leak, etc. I can remember the John Byrne Man of Steel reboot showing how Supes shaved – he used a mirror and fried off his stubble with his heat vision. That makes sense, I suppose, but I don’t know if that would work so well in the scalp area.
So what answer does this issue have to offer? I mean, that’s why people would have bought it, right? It wouldn’t fail to follow through, would it?
Would it?
Well, we’re given a cop-out. Apparently Superman’s hair and fingernails don’t grow when he’s on Earth – he could only get a buzzcut or a manicure if he traveled to a world with a red sun. So the cover tricked me. It tricked us. It pulled the old switcheroo, promising one thing and delivering another.
Damn you, comic book!
This “answer” comes in the back-up feature, where Superman responds to mail from his fans. This story, a reprint (with modifications) from issue #35, is sort of entertaining – a crook has laced several return envelopes with kryptonite, and every time Superman licks one of them, he grows progressively weaker. Except he doesn’t actually lick them, he only pretends to do so in order to draw out his enemy. The story’s a bit silly, but then I think back to the anthrax mailings back in ’01, and it doesn’t seem to be such a light-hearted flight of fancy. From what I can pull off the net, Otto Binder and Curt Swan handled the original creative chores on this tale, but I’m still curious to know what the modifications were for the reprint in this issue. Maybe some more digging is in order.
The lead story, written by Jim Shooter with art from Swan, deals with Jimmy Olsen’s past lives. I was less than impressed with it, and I’ll leave it at that. If you can’t say anything nice…
One last note on the cover – as you can see, it’s an “infinity” cover, from no less a talent than Neal Adams. I remember covers like this used to drive me nuts as a kid. I mean, I’d get my face right up next to it so I could get a close look and see how small the image could get. I did everything but place the picture under a microscope. I just had to know how far the artist was able to take it. In this instance Adams is able to bring things to the second level effectively – it falls apart with the cover that’s within the cover that’s within the cover. If that makes any sort of sense.
Postscript – There has to be a story out there about how Superman gets a haircut – there’s probably a bunch of them, but right now I can’t recall any and I’m too tired to hunt them down. Feel free to pepper me with examples in the comments section if you’re so inclined.
Jared
blog into mystery 