I was mummified and stuffed in a dark tomb for millenia and all I got was this crappy video game.
I always thought this game was called Tutankhamen, not Tutankham. I stand corrected. According to the game’s Wikipedia page, the name was changed from the former to the latter because the full moniker wouldn’t fit on an arcade case. That’s what you call painting yourself into a corner.
I’ll leave it to keener minds to debate the relative merits of this game and Lock ‘n’ Chase.
The lasting import of the early 1980s Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends cartoon (apart from the intro music’s brassy fanfare) is its placement of Bobby Drake as one of the web-slinger’s crimefighting partners. I’ve sometimes wondered if I’m alone in having a mental block because of this. This cartoon gave me my first encounters with Iceman, and as a result of that he isn’t — for me — a founding member of the X-Men. No, he’s Spider-Man’s AMAZING FRIEND, fighting crime in Manhattan, in college, living in a tricked out pad with Peter Parker and Mary Jane proxy Angelica Jones/Firestar. Try as I might, I’ve never been able to shake that.
Plus Peter was voiced by the same guy who did Bumblebee in Transformers. Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends: The Cartoon that Mind-Raped a Generation.
This one-shot (from a screenplay by Dennis Marks, with art from Dan Spiegle and Vince Colletta) further confused things by bringing the televised shenanigans to newsprint. Adapting the show’s pilot, it reads like a cross between middling regular Spider-Man fare and introductory Spidey Super Stories baby food. It’s not all that good. But there’s a costume party inside, featuring superheroes dressing up as superheroes. That’s worth a look.
For a bonus, there’s also the 3,859th rehashing of the Green Goblin’s origin:
On to the costumes. Firestar is going with a spider theme, while Norman Osborn’s niece (imaginatively named Norma) is opting to ape the prehensile tresses of Inhuman Medusa — and they both have the (I’m sure invaluable) help of old biddy extraordinaire Aunt May:
Bobby goes for another blond hero, while Peter truly lets his imagination run wild:
Is that Spider-Man outfit on backwards? Is it one of those cheap plastic costumes for kids that you find at drugstores? Is he wearing a Spider-Man ski mask? I’m reminded of a Deep Thought: “If you ever discover that what you’re seeing is a play within a play, just slow down, take a deep breath, and hold on for the ride of your life.” A Spider-Man within a Spider-Man.
Anyway, here’s the party — HEY, WOLVERINE, POUR ME SOME GODDAMN PUNCH:
I like that there’s a broad in a Cat costume taking tickets, and I’m especially impressed by the Loki and Mephisto outfits. It’s always more fun to be bad.
The Black Knight? That juice ain’t worth the squeezin’.
The party breaks up for our heroes to change into their real costumes and have a mind-numbingly predictable battle with the Green Goblin. Let’s just skip to the ending:
Yeah, the show had a dog. I’ll say this for the cartoon: at least we weren’t keyed into Ms. Lion’s thoughts.
A last bit of note is a three-page article detailing the efforts of Marvel to bring its stable of characters to the screen. As with most Marvel puff pieces, IT ALL COMES DOWN TO STAN LEE — STAN STAN STAN:
I remember one of Lee’s Bulletin updates in the ’80s pimping the Thor appearance in a Bill Bixby Hulk TV movie. The I.R.S. Audit of the Incredible Hulk or something. He said it was going to be great. IT WASN’T. It took him, his moustache and those mobbed up glasses a long time to get back into my good graces.
Amazing Friends is the earliest cartoon that I can remember watching. It’s unfortunate that the skewed Bobby Drake dynamic was imprinted for some of us like a mama bird’s face on a baby bird’s brain. Scarred for life. Oh well.
“Subscribe to this magazine,” says Julie Schwartz’s bald head
There was clearly an inverse relationship between Julius Schwartz’s editorial talent and his scalp hair. He was the best.
It’s a killer. It’s a bulldozer. It’s KILLDOZER. – Worlds Unknown #6
The TV Movie, like the Big Event TV Miniseries, is a lost art. There was a time when not-ready-for-the-silver-screen ideas could move forward with smaller budgets and lesser known acting talent and have a chance to get out there. It wasn’t Cinerama, but it was better than nothing. The results were often adequate if instantly forgettable, though there were times when burgeoning talent shone through. Television was the medium where the destined for greater things Steven Spielberg cut his feature-length teeth, helming such telefilms as the cult classic Duel and the Darren McGavin-infused Something Evil (a rerun of which I saw as a youngster and one scene therein gave me nightmares for years).
Sometimes these things could be magnificently goofy, and “magnificently” might be an understatement. Often the central ideas would become the stuff of legend, brought up in boozy conversations as exemplars of the preposterous lengths to which the human mind can go in search of entertainment. The very mention of the title would often be enough to make everyone smile and laugh, and if that didn’t do it, then the explanation of the premise would be guaranteed to do the trick.
Example:
“Killdozer. Remember that?”
“Kill Dozer? Who the [expletive deleted] is Dozer? That bitch from Ghostbusters?”
“Not Dozer, you [expletive deleted] douche. And it was Gozer, by the way. One word. As in ‘bulldozer.’ It’s about a killer bulldozer terrorizing construction workers and picking them off one by one, including an aging Clint Walker and a young Robert Urich.”
[Beer shoots through second person’s nose.] “Get the [expletive deleted] out of here.”
Yes. Killdozer. It is real, and it is glorious.
This 1974 masterpiece stands tall in the proud Christine/The Car/Maximum Overdrive tradition of vehicles coming alive and rebelling against their human masters, though this mechabeast is decidedly slower, and must rely on guile and subterfuge to kill its quarry. A crafty bulldozer. Lurking in the bushes (seriously, it lies in wait like a cat-burglar, its engine rumbling the entire time). Stalking its prey. Killing Spenser: For Hire. WHO DOES NOT LOVE THIS?
And, as you can see, it had a comic.
Before we dig (sorry) into said adaptation, a note on the above cover: This Gil Kane-pencilled puffery promises several things that the story doesn’t deliver. There’s no female character (with amply exposed cleavage), that’s one. More importantly, the Killdozer isn’t evilly anthropomorphized like a Johnny Five/Sym fusion (according to the Grand Comics Database, this was a John Romita contribution — surely THE PINNACLE OF HIS CAREER), nor can it talk. I thank God for that last missing bit, that it’s mute and that it doesn’t have the gift of speech. If you threw a KITT element onto the pile, well, to steal a line from Costanza, there wouldn’t be enough voltage in this universe to electroshock me back into coherence.
Based 0n a 1944 short story by Theodore Sturgeon, the TV movie made changes to the original plot, including swapping the World War II backdrop for a then-modern milieu. Also, the how and why of the bulldozer coming alive and developing a taste for human flesh was altered. Instead of leftover anima from an ancient war between man and machine that wiped out a prehistoric civilization, the instigator of horror is a charged meteor uncovered during an island excavation. This adaptation, penned by Gerry Conway with art from Dick Ayers and Ernie “Chua” Chan, follows the short story impetus. Hence:
The comic also adds a layer of racial dissent that was absent from the film:
That strife is snuffed quickly when the “monkey” (their words, not mine) is killed:
The out of control vehicle is stopped, but no one is yet onto its new sinister motives. Things get really fishy when another worker is zapped to death trying to jump its battery, and yet another is (off-panel) gruesomely filleted. TIME TO PANIC. The men start to turn on one another The Thing-style, thinking one of them is a murderer, until all doubt is finally removed:
Now we come to the best part of the story, as the Killdozer runs down the men. KILLDOZER TRIUMPHANT. I’ll grant that bulldozers aren’t the slowest of machines, and one chasing pot-bellied construction workers isn’t the most preposterous of scenarios. It’s not the Austin Powers steamroller scene (well…) — you couldn’t escape one by walking on your hands. But I’d imagine that a Killdozer — even a possessed one — wouldn’t have the tightest turning radius. A little bob here, a little weave there, and boom, you’re out of danger. Just saying.
In no time we’re down to the last two functional workers (another is flapping-his-finger-over-his-lips crazy). They’ve apparently read Watchmen, because they use a variant on the Rorschach/Big Figure toilet bowl gambit to kill the damn thing:
Many aspects of the comic, including characters, deaths and the final Killdozer-kill, were different from those in the movie. Pile those on top of the short story to movie evolution, and you have multiple degrees of separation from the original tale. One might criticize this dilution. Not me. IT’S A SERIAL KILLER BULLDOZER. As a viral video once put it, “Honey Badger don’t give a shit.” Killdozer don’t. Neither should we. I’d like to think that all involved took some joy in turning this thing out. They have my eternal gratitude.
The 1970s were truly the Golden Age of the telefilm, what with the Spielberg contribution, killer bulldozers and countless other glitteringly awful ideas. We shall not see their like again.
I hadn’t realized that there was a Killdozer comic book adaptation. I was pants-soilingly thrilled to learn that there was. Perhaps some of you are as well. Keep watching the construction sites…
One hopes that this “cereal” came with extra lives.
The Nintendo Cereal System. “If you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em.” Indeed. It’d be nice if there were some random power-ups scattered inside to get kids through the inevitable sugar-crash.
The really bad news? If you mixed both the Super Mario Bros. and Zelda cereals together they made DEADLY POISON. (I just made that up. Don’t sue me, Nintendo Powers That Be.)
Remember the Star Wars “C-3PO’s” cereal? It used to give me horrible hiccups. I’m not sure about the relevance of that. Just throwing it out there.
Hint. HINT.
Forgot to include this in the other day’s Batman Family post.
“Robin’s New Look.” Huh. Do you think that readers were trying to say something when they submitted these (standard fanzine fare) drawings? “We’re really creeped out that Batman cavorts with a lithe, half-naked young man and some pants would go a long way towards alleviating that.” Maybe?
How are we supposed to read an X-Force book without Liefeldian ammo pouches and cantaloupey breasticles? – X-Force #124
Rob Liefeld takes a lot of grief, and I’ve given him more than my fair share over the years. The savagery of the loathing, both from me and from others, at times gives me pause. For all I know Liefeld is a wonderful gentleman, kind to puppies and kittens, a builder of bridges, a darner of socks, a doer of good works and a real-life champion of truth and justice. A man’s man. A beacon of light. I have no inside information of anything that would tell me otherwise.
All I have to go by, and this is true for most of us, is his body of work. For a spell it garnered him untold success, accolades and adoration, but in retrospect, and there’s no other way to say this, it’s embarrassingly awful. Not embarrassing for him, mind you. It’s not like he killed somebody, and he can always shrug his shoulders and offer the trump card rejoinder of “It sold.” He even seems to have a sense of humor and a bit of perspective about his place in the industry.
Not embarrassing for him. For us.
We don’t have the same shoulder-shrugger. We’re the ones left with crates of polybagged-with-trading-card copies of X-Force #1. That premier issue is one of the top-selling comics of all time. Let that bounce around your noggin. It’s something we should carry around with us at all times, like an AA member toting his sponsor’s phone number. LEST WE FORGET. There are enough copies of that book out there (those that haven’t been sacrificed to line the proverbial birdcage) to fill the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. We gobbled them up. That’s embarrassing. Drunken hookup embarrassing.
I speak from experience. I was one of the mindless drones that bought into the glossy Wizard-fueled hype of the early 1990s, when Liefeld, Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane scaled Hubbardian heights of deification. We were told that X-Force, Spawn, X-Men, WildCATs and any number of other titles of divergent quality were MUSTHAVEMUSTBUYINTRIPLICATE (but maybe not read) pots of gold. It was the boom before the bust, and like all booms it was a house of cards, one that became painfully obvious with not a whole hell of a lot of hindsight.
Liefeld. He’s the poster child of that chunk of the boom. The WANTED poster, if you will.
Liefeld. I’ve always thought of his art this way: If you’re a man, imagine the most beautiful, elegant, intelligent, charming woman of your dreams, one that makes you want to be a better man. She doesn’t walk so much as glide, she glitters like a fine diamond, she verbally jousts with flirtatious wit, she holds her wine glass in a special way. She makes Jackie Kennedy look like a common whore. Refined. In this comparison that woman would be akin to a great artist, a recognized talent that brings tremendous skill to layout, figure and all other aspects of visual storytelling. Someone that floats your reading boat. Refined.
Liefeld? His art is a drunk skank pissing off the side of a boat. Opposite of refined. (Note: If your favorite artist is Liefeld, then disregard all that. Then induce vomiting and seek immediate medical help.)
I know this ground has been covered before, by folks with intellects and metaphors far superior to my own. But I feel like someone in a support group. My tale of woe must be heard for the healing to begin.
“Hi, my name is Jared, and I once bought Rob Liefeld X-Force comics. Willingly. On purpose. With my lawn-mowing money.”
“Hi, Jared.”
All this is a roundabout preamble to the following: It’s hard to disconnect Liefeld from X-Force, despite his art only appearing in the first nine issues of a title that lasted well-past one hundred (he tacked on a six-issue miniseries in 2004 — THANKS, WE NEEDED THAT). You open up any later issue and, if you’re a shell-shocked member of my generation, you expect to see scrunched up, constipated faces with odd cross-hatching and impossible anatomy. It’s a testament to Liefeld’s travishamockery art that its aftertaste lingers decades later (his everlasting lightning rod status is his greatest achievement). It’s true that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. When I see a random latter-day issue of X-Force, I’m hesitant to go past the cover, afraid that I might have a panicked, violent reaction like that guy in the tarantula/cellphone commercial.
Which brings us to the issue that started me on this cruel reverie.
If there are antipodes in the world of comic book artists, Darwyn Cooke has to be somewhere opposite Liefeld. I can’t say I’m all the way behind his style. It’s more cartoony than what I normally go for, but it has a lot of heart. His Justice League-centric New Frontier — by miles his most prominent work — wasn’t something that held up on subsequent readings, but it was a nice whirl at first blush.
His art doesn’t suck. That’s the bottom line. It’s enough to make me burst through that cover barrier and actually read an X-Force story.
This issue (scripted by Peter Milligan) follows redheaded U-Go Girl (can you punch a name?) as she comes to grips with her past in an attempt to better focus her teleportation powers. She takes a mental trip down memory lane and an actual trip to her childhood home, where she confronts the emotional baggage that spurred on her nascent powers.
It’s the usual journey of self-discovery hokum, but it’s so, SO much better than anything of Liefeld’s. It looks and reads like it was crafted for thoughtful people, not dumb horny teenagers. It doesn’t make you feel like an idiot. Night and day.
I won’t go crazy with scans from this comic (the only issue of X-Force that Cooke ever tackled), but these two pages capture the soft touch at play:
Where are the ammo pouches? How will they reload their comically oversized guns? Now that I think of it, WHERE ARE THE COMICALLY OVERSIZED GUNS?
Milligan and Cooke’s one issue didn’t bowl me over. It’s a simple, visually appealing comic, but I’ll never give a damn about X-Force or X-Statix, or whatever the hell they’ve morphed into. However, I read an X-Force book that didn’t make me want to drive nails into my skull. I thought that a mental door had been slammed shut, deadbolted and boarded up — like a farmer trying to keep aliens out of his house — years ago. I guess not. Amazing.
I haven’t been trying to further bury Liefeld (though one day I’ll have to tell the story of why thinking of his art on Youngblood literally makes me naseous — it’s kind of funny). It’s just so much fun to bust his balls. It’s almost obligatory if you’re going to have a site about comics old and new. So that’s done. Scratch it off the list.
The lesson? Things can change and ingrained preconceptions have to be tossed aside on occasion. Even the worst stink wears off eventually. The drunk skank pissing off the side of the boat fell into the drink and was washed away. Knowledge for life.
King Kong (1976). Original?
Can you call a remake “original”? That’s all I can think of whenever I see this.
Nowadays we’re never able to watch the 1976 remake of King Kong (should we want to sit through a film starring Charles Grodin) without harking back to September 11th. It’s like it’s been written into the script.
Mags about John Buscema! Mags about Frank Thorne! Magsmania!
The John Buscema retrospective (a retro retrospective) would be a nice, family friendly coffee table tome, but I have a feeling that, considering the fetishistic nature of much of Frank Thorne’s work, his might qualify as an “Under the Mattress” publication. If there’s a pin-up of Red Sonja licking her sword, THEN ALL BETS ARE OFF.
Okay, WHO INVITED MAN-BAT? – Batman Family #13
Of the satellite Bat-titles, Batman Family has to be one of the most interesting. I’ve expressed my love for Batman and the Outsiders (more specifically, Jim Aparo’s Batman and the Outsiders) before, but with that team of youngsters you have the Caped Crusader as the elephant in the room. No matter how much you might get into Geo-Force, Metamorpho, Katana and the rest, they’re overwhelmed by Batman’s presence. It’s like astronomers looking for planets in distant solar systems. They can be found, but with that big star shining away, you have to look really, REALLY hard.
Not so with Family. Batman was mercifully absent much of the time, allowing his supporting cast a chance to have a good little run on their own. It’s an intriguing little stew. You had the alluring Batgirl. You had Robin. You had the always proper, always composed Alfred. Sometimes Batwoman showed up. Likewise for Commissioner Gordon and others. And you had Man-Bat.
Let’s digress for a moment. Man-Bat. Surely the black sheep of the family, and one of the laziest concepts and names ever introduced. I’m a bit disappointed we never got a Man-Super (though I can’t say that I always hate the “reverse” concept). We can be grateful that after his transformation into his bat-self, Kirk Langstrom retains enough wherewithal to keep his slacks on. I’m talking getting down on your knees and paying homage to to Jehovah, Allah, Ra, or whatever deity or deities order your universe GRATEFUL. The bat is surely the most nude of all mammals, with its wings spreading out like a flasher’s coat. Praise be that such furry nudity doesn’t get extended to human size.
Digression over. I’m not a fan, but Man-Bat definitely added to the Family menagerie. In this particular issue we have one of the instances where he’s more lucid and therefore a force for good. Huzzah.
Who’s the villain then? Remember that two-year stretch in the 1960s when Alfred was dead? After saving Batman and Robin’s lives he was killed, but, unbeknownst to his employer (and the readers), he was revived as the cottage cheese-skinned Outsider (of no relation to the team). He manipulated characters and events in a number of attempts to kill the Dynamic Duo, until he revealed himself and met defeat at Batman’s hands. Alfred was then returned to his natural butler form, with no memories of his time as the big ugly.
The Outsider makes his untriumphant return in these pages. Huzzah again.
The extra-long “The Man Who Melted Manhattan” is brought to us by Bob Rozakis, Don Newton, Marshall Rogers and Bob Wiacek. As Robin and Batgirl (a by-day Congresswoman at this point) both have their high-octane motorcycles go all haywire and almost kill them, with Alfred appearing at random as they careen and bounce about the streets of New York, Robin recalls that two-year hiatus of his servant/pal. His memory isn’t the only faculty that’s stimulated by shared danger:
That, my friends, is an awkward pass. “Ineligible receiver. Five yard penalty. Loss of down.”
While Dick Grayson is getting rejected, the Man-Bat is out fighting crime in his own unique, half-naked manner. In his travels he comes across the Outsider, who does a little abracadabra to split him in two:
The fight with the were-jaguar does not go well for Man-Bat — back to our young un-lovers. Robin ain’t done mackin’ yet:
Batgirl’s reaction to Dick’s sweet nothings is the same as what we all had while watching the “romance” of the Star Wars prequels. Soporific, baby.
The Outsider confronts our two young heroes (after turning the buildings of New York into lit candles — his dirty deeds really lack focus) and Man-Bat, left for dead after the earlier contretemps, joins in. Turnabout is fair play as the Man-Bat returns abracadabra fire and Alfred is split off from his Outsider persona. He and his fists of fury take no prisoners:
The Outsider falls of a bridge and is gone forever, Alfred passes out (once again having no memory of his Outsider tenure), Man-Bat returns to his loving wife(!) and Robin looks forward to another night of boxing the clown. HOLY BLUE BALLS!
I said at the start of this post that Batman Family can be interesting, and I stand by that. The Batman-free combos make for some different dynamics. A change of pace. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re good. The art is uneven in this issue, the story is clogged with dreadful dialogue (Robin and Batgirl are constantly remarking about the awfulness of the other’s quips — that doesn’t help the reader, folks), and the Outsider’s goofy vengeance is a weak foundation to weave a story around. This is a wasted opportunity to revisit and build upon one of the more memorable eras in the Bat-titles. With characters ranging from a member of the House of Representatives to a half-naked nocturnal mammal scientist, things can easily degenerate into a mess. A mess is what we have here, despite the entertainment value of watching Robin strike out bigtime.
The “death” of Alfred sure as hell wasn’t Ulysses, but it deserves better than this warmed over tripe.
BUT THANK GOD MAN-BAT AND BRUCE BANNER BUY THEIR PANTS IN THE SAME STORE.
When I was scanning the glorious minutiae from that inexhaustible Hopalong Cassidy book (this shall be the last bit — YOU’RE WELCOME, WORLD), this almost slipped past me. It’s an early version of the famous ad for Charles Atlas’ patented “Dynamic Tension” muscle-building course. Been there, done that, even Grant Morrison’s clever incorporation of it into Flex Mentallo’s Doom Patrol origin. Something made me take a closer look, though. It’s like one of those blindingly dull games where you have to pick out the differences between one picture and the next. “Hey, that Captain America shield has a Star of David in the center!”
Let’s play a blindingly dull game!
For your ease of comparison (once more, YOU’RE WELCOME, WORLD), here’s the later iteration:
I’ll ruin the suspense and just come out with it (as if the post title didn’t already). In the older ad the men are wearing undershirts and the woman is in a one-piece. That’s the big difference. The woman’s hair is differently styled, and she’s also wearing her hat in the first. The skeletal weakling (who bears a painful resemblance to the teenage me) is also called Joe instead of Mac, though it’s hard to penetrate the reasons for the name change (perhaps Mac was hipper than the generic predecessor).
Let’s not get distracted, as the hair, the hat and name aren’t the attention-grabbers — back to the half-naked human forms! The obvious reason for the change in attire is the evolution in “decency” that allowed men’s nipples and a woman’s navel to be on display before the entire world in subsequent decades. Body issues. Bikinis and bare chests NEED NOT APPLY in the 1940s, whether it’s on a real beach or a bodybuilding ad beach. Only when a man is privately admiring his Atlas-forged physique in front of his mirror can his nips come out and play. Unless you’re Atlas himself. Which is mildly odd.
Though the earlier version seems horribly prudish (Janet Jackson’s nip-slip would have destroyed Western civilization), Atlas’ advert was only reflecting the beach fashions of the time, and the same was true a couple of decades later as the bare skin got a little more sun. Hence the alteration. You couldn’t have 1960s boys thinking that they were going to get a hunky bod but also their grandfather’s wardrobe. Understandable. “With each booklet you also receive moustache wax and a watch chain!”
I realize that this is all old news (here’s a page with an excellent selection of Atlas ads showing how the public face of CHARLES ATLAS AMALGAMATED INDUSTRIES INCORPORATED evolved over the years), but this change was news to me and struck me as rather funny, and I thought others might be similarly edified/amused. If not, apologies. Permission to kick sand in my face granted.
Finally, I’m compelled to observe that the bully in the earlier ad is about a half-step away from sporting one of those horizontal striped Victorian era bathing suits. He probably rode to the beach on his gigantic penny-farthing bicycle.
Move over, Dynamic Duo. R.C. and Quickie are here.
I’m almost done with this Hopalong Cassidy crap. Promise.
RC Cola turns boys into DAUNTLESS MEN OF ACTION and gets girls to fall in love with dorks wearing horrific sweater-vests. Who knew?
“Emasculating Emma” would work just as well
The Great Hopalong Cassidy Miscellany Burn-Off continues with this Pistol Packin’ Pattie filler. No one could do verbal castration quite like a Golden Age shrew.
Yeah, Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, BUT DID HE SMOKE WHILE HE DID IT? – What If? #14
Before we do anything else, let’s take a lingering look at that cover. There are four magnificent things going on, apart from the broader “World War II IN SPACE” pants-soiler. I’ll lay them out succinctly, as elaboration would only detract from their value.
Nick Fury is smoking a cigar in a space helmet. Dum Dum Dugan is wearing his bowler hat in a space helmet. Reb Ralston is twirling a space-age lasso. And Gabe Jones IS BLOWING A GODDAMN SPACE TRUMPET. In space no one can hear you scream, BUT NO COLD VACUUM CAN STOP A TRUMPET.
Well. Moving on.
Nick Fury is one of those characters who’s utterly ripe for What Ification. His unabashed manliness is a bottomless well for humor. Apologies to Razor Ramon, but it can truly be said of Fury that he “oozes machismo.” He’s the sort of man who’d recite his wedding vows with a lit stogie clenched between his teeth. And his bride would LOVE him for it. Any What If? with him as its subject has a chance to outstrip Conan’s foray into 1977 in terms of awesomeness. It’s an uphill climb to be sure, but I’m sayin’ there’s a chance.
Here’s Uatu the Watcher, with a head and biceps whose normal proportions have been inverted, to give us the set-up for this Gary Friedrich/Don Glut/Herb Trimpe/Pablo Marcos affair:
Who loves ya, baby?
This alternate reality has Enemy Mine-looking reptilians living on an alter-Earth on the other side of the sun, Harry Turtledoveian lizard-men that want to wipe out and/or enslave humanity. Hence the World War II of this reality isn’t an intramural affair, and a middle-aged Hitler is presumably churning out his crappy art with a big smile on his face.
But who cares about that? We want to know why people are allowed to have tobacco products inside space-helmets — and it’s not just Fury who’s doing it:
Not only does it look like the pipe is poking through the helmet, but what happens if it falls out of his mouth? Does it just clank around in there until he gets back into breathable air? Also, Fury’s cigar pops out on multiple occasions and then magically reinserts itself in the next panel. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? These are the sorts of things that can really hang you up. “One giant leap for mankind. Where’s my lighter?”
Moving on to the reason for this advanced 1940s tech that’s given Earth space-lassos and wars with lizard-people. We can credit (or blame) Leonardo da Vinci for this nonsense:
Farfetched.
That one word sums up the big problem with this comic, and it’s an indictment that’s hard to hand down in a world of capes and cowls. This whole issue is disappointingly lame. To be fair, it’s hard to follow the irresistible grin-inducement of the cover, but the letdown remains. There’s an underwhelming attack on a space station called (wait for it) Pearl and an equally underwhelming battle on a space station called (wait for it) Midway. Baron Strucker appears in a most predictable fashion. Things remain open-ended at the conclusion, always a problem with an alternate reality tale — we know we’re probably not going to get a part deux, so we naturally want a nice Law & Order bow wrapped around it.
I was and remain unenthused. Not even Gabe’s LASER-TRUMPET OF DESTRUCTION can rescue it:
This one doesn’t come close to the aforementioned Conan masterpiece. I wouldn’t even rank it above the Venom What If?, an unthinkable placement seeing as how Fury’s rock should always beat the symbiote’s slobbering scissors. But there you have it. After the cocktease of that cover, the convoluted innards really put you down in the dumps.
Can that laser-trumpet play Taps?
Golden Age Rice Krispies
I’m trying to burn off some of the marvellous adverts from the Hopalong Cassidy comic. It was quite a font.
Which of the insufferable Snap, Crackle & Pop trio (I suppose the above scan depicts their Earth-2 counterparts) would you most like to swat? I’d go with Crackle. That goddamn hat.
Jared
blog into mystery 