Kill it! KILL IT!!!
Is there a doll phobia? Does that have a name? [The answer? Yes.] Because I might have it. I swear, if I saw this “Patty Prayer” thing — this outwardly sweet, God-fearing thing — in real life I’d plunge the nearest sharp object (ice pick, Odinsword, Reese Witherspoon’s chin) right into its skull. Go all Boris the Bear on it.
If there’s anyone that can keep pace with Ben Grimm in an “I’m a monster!” mope-fest, it’s Morbius, the Living Vampire. A kind of good guy who has to suck blood to survive, his curse, while giving him a nice gothy complexion, puts Ben’s purely physical issues to shame. Along the spectrum of Marvel’s undead (or unundead), Morbius stands somewhere between Dracula and that wispy dude that tried to give Luke Cage a hickey. He ain’t all that great, but he ain’t all that bad.
This issue’s (Bill Mantlo, Arv Jones, Dick Giordano) superpowered set-to is spawned by that all-too-familiar catalyst, Alicia Masters. And yes, her goddamn sculptures, which Ben at some point has to think of as nothing but glorified Hummel figurines. Being blind, she of course can’t detect a vampire sneaking up on her as she works:
Ben, bringing flowers over (judging by the frequency of his botanical gifts he has FTD on speed dial), hears her screams and busts in just in the nick of time. His anger is what it was in his dustup with the Silver Surfer x100. We’re talking George-Brett-with-a-mouth-full-of-chew-charging-out-of-the-dugout-to-curb-stomp-an-ump pissed. After all, Morbius was going to end her life, not just make out with her or slip her the little Surfer. The furious boyfriend and the stymied bloodsucker throw down, chucking convenient hunks of stone at one another and debating the ethical imperatives of monsterdom:
Alicia, who feels there’s good in just about anybody, stays Ben’s hand and Morbius, taking advantage of the lull, beats Living Vampire cheeks out of there. At this point the next member of the dramatis personae walks on stage. The Living Eraser (who’s even lower than Paste Pot Pete on the Marvel totem pole) demonstrates his moniker-bestowing power on some drunk bum:
Handy. And keep your eyes peeled for the Living Monolith. These things come in threes.
He had the misfortune of appearing in this dimension right underneath Alicia’s apartment window, and a fleeing Morbius, still thirsting for blood, pounces. This brings Ben in for Round 2:
The Living Eraser capitalizes on the confusion and “erases” Ben and Morbius to his home dimension, where he’s usurped the throne and imprisoned the rightful ruler and his hot daughter. Our one-and-a-half heroes are thrown in the hoosegow with the royals, but if there’s one comic book truth that holds true in all dimensions, it’s that puerile ruses will work on ANY prison guard:
Ben and Morby, armed with their own dimensional erasers, head back to our dimension, but not before the Living Vampire gets cause for a Living Erection courtesy of his private Orion Slave Girl:
Unholy vengeance and dueling erasures would seem worthy of a wonderfully off-kilter splash page, no?:
It takes all of three seconds to subdue the this D-list villain, and surely this triumph is the start of something great for Morbius. A fresh chapter. He’ll begin a new life with his green babe, stop bitching, join the local Elks Lodge, etc. Right?:
Some folks just can’t handle happiness.
This is one of the weaker TIO issues on the docket this month. The Living Eraser, while stupendously silly, isn’t a villain upon whom you’d slap the franchise tag. Morbius, who admittedly has had stints moving mags, doesn’t add a great deal to this particular issue. His “curse” comes across as a less engaging — and less entertaining — brand of what Johnny Blaze brought to the table earlier this month and later in the run. Even poor Ben, such a fertile soil for crops of comic goodness, is a bit watered down. But at least there’s that splash page, which is worthy of the Mighty Marvel Manner tradition.
You can’t win them all, and this title was still getting its ever-lovin’ sea legs underneath it. Growing pains. And there was much better to come. Stay tuned.
Did Dum Dum Dugan ever ride Godzilla around like he was Moon Boy and the big galoot was Devil Dinosaur? If the answer’s no, then allow me to pose a second question: WHY THE HELL NOT?
It’s not always easy to make a gigantic lizard with radioactive fire-breath a sympathetic character, but Marvel tried its damnedest during Godzilla’s two-year rampage through Marvel continuity. Though he often ran afoul of various members of that company’s hero roster, he was nevertheless portrayed as something akin to a misunderstood dog, a storytelling rut followed by everything from the King Kong remakes to Gorgo. This issue is a fine example of that well-worn trope, as something that could not possibly be considered warm and fuzzy is nevertheless rendered cuddly.
Written by Doug Moench and artified by Herb Trimpe (who also tackled that other 1970s Japanese import, Shogun Warriors), “A Monster Enslaved!” opens with S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Gabe Jones tracking the big fella in a nifty whirligig:
The monster né Gojira, having tuckered himself out stomping around the wilderness, retires to what must be one of the largest caves on Earth for some rest. Cue cute-ifying moment #1:
Awwwwww. Somebody, quick, knit him a sweater with a big G on it.
Dum Dum, who looks like he’s gunned down a few Bambis in his day, is the head man on the Godzilla task force. Mothra. Rodan. Megalon. Dum Dum Dugan. Seems like a natural progression. The mustachioed repository of unabashed machismo always gets his monster, and he has a new helicarrier (that unfathomable S.H.I.E.L.D. budget) to help out in the hunt. Off the team goes to grab the now cornered menace, despite Gabe’s misgivings about capturing the snoozing creature. They drop some gas into Godzilla’s bedchamber, which (understandably) pisses off the big guy to no end:
But wait:
Allow me to add a “Booooooooo!” to another “Awwwwwww.”
They fly their quarry back to base (using the handy dandy Godzilla tote compartment seen on the cover), and once he’s safely (sigh…) locked away, Gabe has a chance to moon about like the Irish kid in Gorgo and wrestle with his conscience:
Then, before Gabe starts tooting some mournful tunes with that trumpet of his:
Is anyone surprised by this?:
Godzilla and his Homer Simpson beer belly bust out and we’re all back to square one. Good work, Dum Dum. Stick to fighting Nazis.
Godzilla has to be one of the greatest here today, gone tomorrow licensed characters in mainstream comics. There’s something so fun about watching him flit about with familiar funny book faces. A giant hell-beast that belches fire. One that takes naps and just wants to be left alone. One that thinks he’s people (or something). WHOSE PRIMARY ENEMY IS DUM DUM DUGAN AND HIS SURGICALLY ATTACHED BOWLER HAT. You can’t go wrong, even if the sympathetic portrayal a tad too syrupy.
It seems like there’s been a lot of Herb Trimpe showing up here recently. That’s not a conscious effort on my part, but might perhaps be due to his heightened presence in 1970s Marvel, when there was a whole lot of fodder being churned out for future dopey blogs. Trimpe’s work can sometimes lack a little bit of oomph, maybe due to a heavy workload, but that’s not the case in this book. Sure, there’s the cute stuff, but look at the last panel in the second to last scan, as Godzilla awakes from Dum Dum’s drugs. The eyes. The teeth. You feel a cold icy hole in your gut, like Godzilla’s going to leap right out of the page and bite your damn head off.
Mr. Trimpe, this future dopey blog salutes you.
After Godzilla’s 24 issue run he largely disappeared from the House of Ideas, apart from a handful of oblique references and sly reworkings. Kind of like Rom. Marvel’s reprinted the series in one of those ghastly black and white Essentials volumes, and I guess IDW now holds the rights to the King of the Monsters. That’s all well and good, but a part of me wishes he could return to the Marvel fold. Have him join the X-Men — he’s a kind of mutant, isn’t he? And my lasting memory of the character is that awful 1998 American version, where I spent the entire run-time fantasizing about Godzilla eating Matthew Broderick, digesting him and crapping him out in a merciful snuff-shizer fusion. We could all use a belated chaser to wash away that aftertaste.
Before Captain Jack Sparrow
Johnny Depp and his eyeliner didn’t have much to live up to, did they? I get that “ZAP” is integral to “zap action,” but I’m not certain that it’s the best sound effect for clashing swords. Though, to this product’s credit, the moving skeletons at least have more energy than static Aurora kits, and definitely more emotional range than Orlando Bloom.
I’m still a tad aghast that The Pirates of the Caribbean, which bored me just as much as The Country Bear Jamboree (yeah, swap in “Bore” for “Bear”) during my childhood haj to Disney World, morphed into a mammoth film franchise. Shiver me timbers indeed.
I don’t particularly care for the Shadow, but he carries the minor distinction of being a favorite of my father. I never quite got the old man’s enthusiasm as he recited the “Who knows what evil…” opening, but good for him. He was of that last generation of boys whose primary electronic entertainments were serials on the radio, and it warmed my soul to picture him huddled next to one with a blanket over his shoulders doubling as a cape. Like father, like son.
The Shadow has had a long run across multiple platforms, including a lead balloon of a movie in 1994 starring funny abusive father Alec Baldwin. Lamont Cranston — and his myriad other aliases — has also had his share of comic book iterations, including a fondly remembered one in the early 1970s of which this second issue is a part. He wasn’t woven fully into mainstream DC continuity — he did cross over into Batman for a nice little story — and his solo adventures could be a mixed bag. But a freak show? I still curse HBO for cancelling Carnivale, so this issue might tickle my fancy. One can hope. At least his giant Jimmy Durante schnauze will fit right in with the bearded ladies and wolf boys.
Denny O’Neil scripted “Freak Show Murders,” with Michael William Kaluta providing the art. What gets the ball rolling here is a deal gone awry, one centered upon a statue made from a rare space-age alloy. An American agent attempts to buy the statue, but is interrupted by a gun-toting harlequin:
The titular hero interrupts the shenanigans, but the baddie gets away with the statue. The Shadow thinks that the crook is affiliated with a nearby carnival (those magnificent deductive skills at work) and sends his gal Margo Lane in undercover. The off-beat assemblage is made up of the standard carnie stock (knife-throwers, Siamese twins, snake charmers, tattoos — somebody call the Circus of Crime) and a guy who smokes a lot:
The Shadow arrives shortly thereafter, revealing that the American agent, Kilroy, took refuge in the carnival disguised as a primitive freak. I’m not sure about the logistics of that supposedly life-saving masquerade, but kudos to Mr. Shadow for figuring it out. He soon gathers all the show participants in a tent for the Agatha Christie reveal, and shatters the duplicity of the duplicates:
The Shadow then follows one of the twins to a train, where they hook up with the other harlequin-costumed sibling. The Shadow, along with Kilroy, gives them battle. Both twins die, the last when he follows the precious statue out the window:
Cue the maniacal HAHAHAHAHA laughter. Evil. Hearts of men. All that jazz.
O’Neil’s script is a rough read, a disappointment coming from a guy who grounded the 1970s post-Adam West Batman renaissance in grit and crime. The story is a clunker laden with contrivances, and one gets the sense that he was having a hard time putting flesh on this character’s skeleton. I’m not so sure how to feel about the art of Mr. Kaluta (who also helped bring the worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs to DC). I’m a bit conflicted. Sometimes it looks sort of cool, especially in the context of carnival freaks, but other times it looks a bit, how shall we say, odd. An unpleasant odd, not a variety-is-the-spice-of-life odd. Others might dig it wholeheartedly. It reminds me of my reaction to Sam Kieth’s art, specifically the stuff he did for the earliest issues of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Perhaps Sam read these old mags and drew some inspiration from them. The ages match up — Kieth would have been right in the sunny years of childhood when this comic was published — so it seems plausible.
My half-assed amateur sleuthing for the day, ladies and gentleman.
Maybe my father — the blanket-cape-by-the-radio version — would go nuts for this comic. Not me. HAHAHAHAHA.
Jimmy Olsen’s long lost brother?
A month ago I bought a new bike, one that I assembled myself, and somehow, miraculously, it hasn’t fallen apart like the cop car at the end of The Blues Brothers, leaving me in a bloody heap on the side of a road. Small blessings. And it’s been somewhat of a boon. Every week I make a twenty-mile round trip to my favorite comic book store, and when I’m zipping along at high speed under my own power I feel a little like Superman. Or, at the very least, Ultraman.
I brushed up on my bike maintenance and safety info before I started riding, including watching one of the creepiest monkey-masked instructional shorts you’ll ever behold, but perhaps I could have used some 1940s tips from befreckled Bobby Shelby (a Golden Age bike ad fixture) & co. Did kids ever actually think it was fun to ride ten miles to see a Freedom Train? Did they ever use “may” instead of “can”? Did such things only exist in the realm of sepia-toned marketing?
Put the Queen on the main viewscreen, Mr. Worf – Sebastian O
If nothing else, I can thank (or curse) this series for expanding my genre vocabulary. In my internet reading to find out just what the hell this was, I discovered what steampunk is. Long story short, it’s Jules Verne stuff, i.e. advanced technology in a historical setting, steam-powered helicopters, that sort of crap. According to some of the pictures on the Wikipedia page, it’s also another excuse for pasty, doughy white people to play dress-up. Good for them.
Edumication. It’s a beautiful thing.
If you’ve ever asked what it would be like if Oscar Wilde was a Victorian era amoral James Bond, Sebastian O is your answer. Penned by Grant Morrison and drawn by Steve Yeowell in 1993, it looks and reads a lot like more well-known works set in that epoch, like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Gotham by Gaslight, and maybe a dash of Elseworlds material. Not to dismiss it, but if you’ve seen one, in some ways you’ve seen them all.
The “steampunk” (God help us) elements are kind of fun. Steam powered carriages, wooden choppers, skyscrapers, palm readers and the like all make for an odd read that remains visually stimulating throughout. Sometimes these purposeful anachronisms might even make you chortle aloud, as I did when confronted by a gigantic image of pleasantly plump, empire-obsessed dowager Queen Victoria on a Star Trek: The Next Generation style screen:
We are very amused.
The story follows hired killer Sebastian as he escapes a wrongful imprisonment for his open homosexuality and hunts down those who threw him in a deep, dark dungeon. He has no compunctions about taking life as he traipses through his effete milieu, crossing paths with characters that also fall outside the strictures of that era’s morality. Really, the gayness of the story is unrelenting, assuredly making it somewhat unique in the annals of comicdom. What other book would have a cold-blooded killer’s first act upon fleeing his straw and stone cell be getting his chest shaved by his bare-breasted maids?:
You can find all three issues of this early Vertigo mini collected in a trade. It’s different, I’ll give it that, and that might make it a worthwhile buy, especially for the Morrison-philes out there.
Annuals are tricky things. They can offer artists extra pages and a broader forum to craft a neat standalone story. Or, as is often the case, they can turn into bloated, indulgent crap-fests. They’re a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.
Well, this one (scripted by Tom DeFalco, pencilled by Ron Wilson and inked by a cast of thousands) is just about the sweetest goddamn chocolate covered cherry that I’ve ever bitten into. Let the Ever-Lovin’ October officially begin!
The gathering force here is that ‘roided up Elder of the Universe, the Champion (his 1st appearance), who’s brought to Earth by his unquenchable thirst for gymnasial satisfaction. To that end, the possessor of the Power Primordial (the Tab to the Power Cosmic’s Coke) challenges an assemblage of the strongest heroes on Earth to fight him, and not just any kind of fight, but literal honest-to-goodness-Larry-Merchant-at-ringside boxing. Ropes, gloves, Everlast trunks, everything. A diverse assemblage of hyper-powered dudes are plucked from their daily lives and brought to an extradimensional training center, where the Champion explains his plans and provides them with private alien Mickey Goldmills:
The winnowing process begins, with Doc Samson getting his doesn’t-belong-here ass knocked out cold by an apparatus, and spoiled brat Namor crossing his arms, holding his breath and refusing to cooperate until he’s finally sent home. Good riddance to both. The working class Ben Grimm, though, is like a fish in water:
The rest of the roster makes it through, and the night finally arrives for the big fight. The exhibition is hyped in newspapers, Time, television and radio, and tickets become a hot commodity. The event isn’t held in any half-ass beer hall, either. No, it’s staged in a packed to the gills Madison Square Garden, the Mecca of pugilism. The only nod to the strangeness of the card is a force-field around the ring so no one, including folks like the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, can interfere (despite their best efforts) and retrieve their comrades.
All the chosen heroes are game for the challenge (even if they aren’t given much choice), but none can stand the test. B-listers like Sasquatch, Wonder Man and Colossus are pummeled into the ground like railroad spikes, while the Hulk is disqualified once his mindless brute aspect makes itself apparent — the Champion has standards, after all. Thor, as usual, threatens to steal the show:
Yes, there is a panel in existence of Thor in boxing regalia and straddling a spit-bucket, yacking away. Verily indeed. And he doesn’t shut his Asgardian yap when the bell rings:
Perhaps the best shot Earth has of victory is disqualified when he brings Mjolnir into the fray (the comic book version of the Tyson-Holyfield ear-bite) and gets disqualified. So it all boils down to one last hope:
Things do NOT begin well, even if Ben’s spirits remain undaunted:
He reaches an as-yet-achieved milestone — hearing the bell ring a second time while still on his feet:
Things don’t take much of an upswing after that, and poor Ben is in desperate need of a trowel- and spackle-wielding Ferdie Pacheco during the next rounds. Seriously, the Champion PUNCHES HIM SO HARD HE BRUISES STONE. THIS SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE. Then, finally:
The Champion grabs his belt(!) and hoists it up, and it’s presumed that, having chopped Earth’s greatest heroes down to size, he’s going to wipe it out of existence for being unworthy, as if we’re a planet full of mincing Truman Capotes. There’s one guy, though, who hasn’t yet begun to fight:
So does the Champion go all Ivan Drago and kill the Thing in the center of the ring? No way — HE’S A REAL CHAMPION, FOLKS!:
The force field disappears and his fellow heroes swarm the fallen Ben. I DID IT, ALICIA! I DID IT! And then he goes into traction for a couple of months.
The first time I ever read this story was in one of those anthology trades, Marvel’s Ten Greatest Fights (And Shitty Punisher Garbage That Doesn’t Really Belong) or something along those lines. It was a bit of a revelation, because I’d never been much of a fan of the Thing. He was part of the Fantastic Four, a team and title that bored me senseless in my youth. But this one made me arch an eyebrow and wonder if maybe I was missing out. Now I’m a Thing-ophile, as big a fan of a prominent-browed stone dude in Haynes as a grown man could be and not run afoul of local statutes.
You get the feeling that the folks working on this annual had as much fun as those of us reading it. Maybe more. Probably more. It gives it a warm “we’re all on this ride together” feeling. I’m not saying that 10,000 years from now aliens will review the literature output of the human race and rank this comic somewhere between Gilgamesh and The Golden Ass, but its gloriously entertaining manliness is a hell of a way to kick off an October.
Apologies to Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, but if you only read one boxing-related superhero comic this year, make it this one.
Flash Gordon moonlighting?
I guess sometimes battling Ming the Merciless isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially if poor Flash has to work nights as Captain Tootsie.
Tootsie Rolls: The 5-Hour Energy of the 1940s.
Moore on fire – Warrior
It somehow escaped my notice that Alan Moore’s groundbreaking and career-making work on Marvelman and V for Vendetta ran concurrently in the defunct Warrior mag. I knew that both were first published there, but not that Moore (along with artist partners Alan Davis, Garry Leach and David Lloyd) was firing them off all at once. He was really scattin’ and beboppin’ back then, wasn’t he?
A note before I continue: I loathe the original Marvelman name for the Mick Anglo character. I realize it was barred from use on American shores by various (obvious) corporate reasons, but this is one instance where soulless conglomerate shenanigans actually produced something worthwhile. The Miracleman moniker is superior. It rolls better. It feels better. And it draws the character a little further away from the old pasty British ripoff of the Captain Marvel character — a crappy dilution of a (forgive me) crappy original. Therefore, Miracleman is what the Kimota-fueled Mr. Moran shall be called here.
On to business.
I recently bought a small cache of Warriors from its somewhat magical 26-issue run. I was a bit surprised to spot them. They’re not the most common things to find here in the colonies, and, like the U.K. Transformers mags, I despaired of ever laying hands on them. It was a pleasure to plunk down cold hard cash and scurry back to headquarters like a dog with a bone. It also wasn’t so bad to see a couple of classic stories in their original oversized format.
Miracleman was a character whose Eclipse reprints awakened me to a new world, one where guys in tights could be something much, much more than cardboard cutouts mouthing lame banalities. I’ve touched before upon my long-time love for his (still unfinished) arc, but it deserves restating. It was like the first time a sports fan watches the NFL in high-definition. An eye-opener. The stories had a depth and pacing that I wasn’t accustomed to. They weren’t necessarily better than the standard fare, just on a different plane.
For example…
One satellite in the Miracleman system that sticks in the mind is that enigmatic assassin with the sapphire teeth, Evelyn Cream. In his later appearances he fell more into cliché territory, constantly harping on his blackness and the irony of serving and protecting an Aryan Zarathustra, a Hitlerian wet dream brought to life by the evil Dr. Gargunza. But those first impressions were stunning. He was a force of nature, a great white shark with the body of a fullback, odd orthodontia and eye-obscuring glasses. Here was our first clue to his — as Kevin Harlan would bark — “no regard for human life,” as he questioned the terrorist burned and struck deaf by Mike Moran’s first transformation (from #7):
So much for Steve. And I have to say, the teeth don’t work quite as well in the original black and white.
There was also this unquestionable high point of the early Miracleman saga, Cream’s crafty means of subduing a man who can become invulnerable at mere utterance of “Kimota,” from Warrior #8:
You know, I only had the first two of the Eclipse reprints as a lad, and they only got as far as those panels. I got a hold of the rest of the Miracleman series (delayed thanks to endless copyright garbage — thanks, McFarlane) a few years ago. So that messy baby and fade to black ending was the last chunk that I saw for a very, very long time. Quite a wait.
The Miracleman mythos was a snowball rolling downhill, picking up mass and speed as it thundered along. Moore began another feature in the magazine about the Warpsmiths, who would later be woven in during the Eclipse issues, while other odd characters like Big Ben, “The Man with No Time for Crime,” were incorporated on the fly. Here they both are on the cover of #10:
En fuego, folks. En fuego.
Things got hung up in #21, but when they got rolling again over in the states — after that blissful Miracleman alteration — they only got crazier until Moore tagged in Neil Gaiman. Some day check out Kid Miracleman’s treatment of “the one person who was ever nice” to him. That’ll clear the sinuses.
Oh yeah. That little “Remember remember the fifth of November” guy. In the above issue, as Moore had Miracleman knocking Big Ben into next week and stumbling upon the underground bunker that birthed him, and had the Warpsmiths zipping along in their own feature, V was gently poisoning one of his torturers and showing her (but not the readers, damn him) his true face:
Man, with these you were really getting a whole lot of bang for your buck. Or quid. Or pence. (Also, not that anyone cares, but I’m 100% in lockstep with Moore on the movie adaptation of this work. Clumsy. Sledgehammer in lieu of scalpel. Lame. And that’s just Natalie Portman’s accent. The whole film is social commentary for simpletons, a drunken grope instead of a caress.)
Getting off track.
Looking back, there was a line in one of those early Miracleman chapters (in the Eclipse days, I think) that rung truer than any I’d ever heard before or since. A pissed Miracleman was flying to confront arch-foe Emil Gargunza, and wasn’t doing so in a roundabout fashion. Instead of going around various obstacles, whether trees, buildings, earth or people, he plowed right through them. They were all part of, as he phrased it in his mind, “this paper world.” That’s such a perfect phrase. The “what if heroes were real” trope has been done to death, but Moore, as with most things he’s touched, managed to scoop a degree of vérité from it, and do so in a way that was simple and natural. He put a growing detachment into Miracleman that was chilling, not so much a disdain for the fragile things that surrounded him, but something more akin to pity. Pity for us, the denizens of the paper world.
That Moore penned the anarchist derring-do of a Guy Fawkes-masked terrorist at the same time, well, that’s sublime. Apologies to those who worked on the other characters that filled out every Warrior issue (sorry, Pressbutton), but for me they’re like stars when the sun has risen. Invisible. Moore was young back then. I don’t think he was a full-fledged warlock at that point, wearing rings that would make a decked-out pimp whistle with admiration. Watchmen was still in the future, as was From Hell and oh so many other books. He was hungry. And his output was like a one-time-only jazz riff that miraculously gets preserved for all time.
From over the Atlantic and across the span of years, I doff my cap.
How many licks does it take to get to the center of the Indian Wrapper Legend? The world may never know.
As if the broken treaties, smallpox infected blankets and Chief Wahoo weren’t enough, the Tootsie Roll Pop Indian Wrapper is, if not the ultimate indignity, perhaps the last straw heaped upon the collective back of North America’s native population. Not even a complimentary “Tootsie Toque” or Toot Sweet would make amends.
I know it’s not October yet, but I’m just too goddamn excited. I can’t wait. I need to get going on this.
A Marvel Two-In-One month. The Thing. One of the most consistently entertaining reads that Marvel ever churned out, sprinkled over my favorite month of the year. Like chocolate and peanut butter. C’est magnifique.
Two-In-One was never a title that soared to great literary heights, but the Thing, one of the truly great everyman characters in comics, made it special. The focus on the rocky monster with an encrusted heart of gold and the pairings with leading and lesser lights of the company’s pantheon turned the book into something that’s fun to revisit anytime, anywhere. Ben Grimm was and is a hero equally at home wagging his fist in front of Galactus and downing some suds at a Yancy Street watering hole. He’s great, and he usually elevates any book that features him. No exception here.
I’ll be picking out some random stories from Two-In-One‘s hundred issues-plus-annuals run over the next four weeks, and I hope others can share in the love. And perhaps a few others can catch the wave.
Why not start with blue-eyed Ben battling that literal hot-head, the sometimes hero, sometimes menace known as Ghost Rider? It’s a pairing forged in heaven. Or hell, as it were.
The story (Tom DeFalco, Ron Wilson, Chic Stone) ramps up when Ben’s training gets a little out of hand and rattles the Baxter Building so badly some of girlfriend Alicia Masters’ endless superhero sculptures are broken (what a great blow to the culture). When she goes to find out what the ruckus is and is almost killed by one of his workout devices, the Thing enters into one of his epic “I’m a monster!” mopes — it sometimes seems that poor Alicia is more trouble than she’s worth. He laments his always dangerous strength by shattering some condemned structure and flying off on his nifty sled:
Really, how can anybody be depressed when they have a personal rocket-bike?
Meanwhile, Ghost Rider is on a flaming rampage:
I never liked the overly wordy GR, but okay. Whatever floats your boat.
When he finally cools down and settles back into poor Johnny Blaze, the Thing shows up to give him a lift:
At this point, I think the Thing’s face is less cracked and craggly than Robert Redford’s sun-ravaged mug. So Ben has that going for him.
A grateful Blaze gives the Thing a couple of tickets to his upcoming stunt spectacular. Benny-boy sees this as a golden opportunity to make amends to Alicia for upending all of her hard work, even if she can’t see a damn bit of the show. I guess the tractor-pull was sold out. Proving that there’s always some sort of problem that has to be dealt with, Ben has to eject a seat-squatting Mr. Clean when they arrive:
Once that unpleasantness is taken care of, Ben’s treated to watching (and attempting to describe to his date) the antics of death-defying Mr. Blaze, which appear to defy the laws of every science known to man, Kree, Skrull, or whatever:
It’s the motorcycle equivalent of Queen Elizabeth II’s Naked Gun pitch.
When Blaze lands he wipes out due to some teens swerving around in a stolen hot-rod. I think you know where this is going:
Unholy vengeance commences, but the Thing steps in to bail the kids out of hot water:
They then engage in super-powered fisticuffs, with a verbose Ghost Rider mouthing off like a vexed Doctor Doom. The Thing has himself a moment of clarity as he wails away:
Instead of getting beaten to death with a STOP sign, the newly non-violent Thing uses his dulcet tones to calm the vengeance-seeking demon. Mission accomplished:
Ben holds a spent Blaze in his arms and they beat cheeks out of there before the fuzz arrive. We’re left with a happy/depressing ending when our hero and his lady reunite:
Cue the Incredible Hulk “Lonely Man” music. At least Ghost Rider has his own hellish wheels and doesn’t have to thumb rides.
This one hits all the classic Ben Grimm bases. Lamentation of fate. Self-effacing humor. Scaring a bully. An “it ain’t so bad, in fact, it’s pretty damn good” denouement. It’s a winning formula, one that should make this October a good one. Until next time, true believers.
Erik Estrada, Dracula. Dracula, Erik Estrada.
Only in fever dreams and the realm of stiff-limbed playthings could the worlds of Bram Stoker and CHiPs collide. I’m thinking that Ponch would fill the sputtering Lou Costello role in that crossover.
Super-bitch? Super-ditz? Super-suck? – Adventure Comics #389
I shudder to ponder my fate if any of my exes had such a power. They were a long string of horrid succubi, in stark contrast to my embodiment of virtue and light, and would assuredly have used it without compunction.
The story that goes along with the cover is unspeakably lame, even by the standards of B-level Silver Age. Just when you think it can’t possibly push the suck-o-meter any further into the red part of the dial, it cranks it up a notch. Wow. Just wow.
The entire story (Cary Bates/Kurt Schaffenberger) centers around the premise that the Maid of Steel (and alter-ego Linda Danvers) is a vapid twat that falls for any man who treats her poorly. Yes, the focal point of this story is something that would make any feminist or multi-celled creature crimson with shame. Here’s the bastard beau (Kim — never trust a man with a girl’s name) in action (as well as Supergirl’s seldom-employed “super-suck” breath):
[Insert perverse humor here.]
Kim resists every romantic attempt by both Linda and Supergirl — Supergirl makes him a car, for crissakes — and every cruel drop of rejection makes both sides of the coin love him more. It comes as no surprise that Kim isn’t on the up and up, and that he’s actually an interstellar con in the fiendish employ of Brainiac:
Those four panels are like a vortex of dumb. Seriously, reading them the first time you’re half afraid the comic book is going to fold in on itself like the house at the end of Poltergeist. The end result is that Brainiac sends a robot duplicate of a jerky Lothario to mess with Supergirl’s empty blonde head. Yes, this ploy is intended to be the product of one of the galaxy’s greatest intellects.
The culmination of the scheme is supposed to have android-Kim finally rejecting Supergirl and blowing himself up in front of her like a self-immolating Tibetan monk, sending her into an emotional tailspin from which she’ll never recover. This all goes awry when Supergirl doesn’t do what’s expected, and instead whisks Kim (and a magically appearing space-suit) to, well, take a look:
A dragon burial ground in space. One would think that such “camouflage” would actually draw more attention, but okay. If Supergirl’s “joke” at the end, though, doesn’t make you ram your head into the nearest wall, I don’t know what will. And frankly, I’m amazed that Bates and Schaffenberger bothered to include a spacesuit and didn’t just settle for the Mariel Hemingway/Superman IV “screw it” solution.
Supergirl turns Kim to stone (a precursor to her brief time as Medusa). Brainiac appears, and all is revealed — Kim switched himself with the android, hence the fouling of green-skin’s carefully laid plans. Perhaps realizing that he really was doing things in a roundabout way, he sprays her with Kryptonite Scrubbing Bubbles and takes his leave:
After Brainiac’s departure and some help from the not fully petrified Kim, Supergirl gets back on her feet and has her own set of secrets to reveal:
She takes poor Kim to a regular old Earth prison, where one presumes she’ll make frequent conjugal visits. Oh, and Brainiac escapes.
This book reeks of deadline pressure — or something along those lines. One can envision the need to get a Supergirl story done and folks sitting around and wondering what in the name of Rao they were going to do with her this time around. And the end product is this dreck. If I were in a better mood (I’m not in a bad one, mind you), perhaps replicator-pillows and dragon-stomach cemeteries might give me a warm chuckle. The shallow portrayal of a principal heroine, however, should leave anyone cold. Mixed together it all forms a stomach-churning potion.
Super-suck breath indeed.
Make Mine Liberty!
Captain America striking a pose in front of the Declaration of Independence isn’t bad, but it can’t hold a candle to the garment on the right. I swear on all that is good and decent, if I had that t-shirt with Spider-Man, the Hulk and Cap standing in for Archibald Willard’s Spirit of ’76 fife and drum trio, I’d wear it everywhere. Dates. Job interviews. Papal audiences. Everywhere.
Jared
blog into mystery 
