Made for each other – Super-Villain Team-Up #7
No one out there can compete with the villainous bombast of Doctor Doom. Marvel’s man in the iron mask has an ego and a willingness to express it unrivaled in all of comicdom. You can’t picture this guy speaking in even tones. Everything has to be a bellow, a shout, a holler, and it all always boils down to how great he is and how stupid everyone else is. End of story.
If there’s anyone out there who can hold a candle to him in the single-minded jag-off category, it’s the Sub-Mariner. A fellow ruler, Namor the tweener vacillates between somewhat reluctant heroism and high-dudgeon punitive expeditions against the surface world. It doesn’t take much to set him off. Throw an empty soda can into the Atlantic and the next thing you know he’s marching the Atlantean military down the streets of Manhattan, demanding (loudly) redress.
Putting these two together would seem like a natural pairing, and it was (and is). They have a lot of common asshole ground. Monarchs. Jerks. Wordsmiths. They can pool their catchphrases into an unstoppable “Bah! Imperious Rex!” salvo.
But one comic sometimes ain’t big enough for the both of them, and Namor spends most of this issue off-panel as the “slave” of Doom, due to a previous bad bargain (I like to imagine him losing a variant of the pro wrestling “loser leaves town” match). It’s unclear if this is “menial labor” slave or “leather and red ball in mouth” slave, but he’s a slave nonetheless. And though he spends most of his time sitting around in a Latverian sitz bath, there’s still a lot to keep a reader entertained in the Steve Englehart/Herb Trimpe/Pablo Marcos “Who Is…the Shroud?”
For instance, here’s special guest star Henry Kissinger!:
At no point does Doom say “Pray with me, Jew Boy.” Oh well.
Doom has exploited Cold War tensions in a diabolic bit of triangulation and realpolitik, forging a treaty with the U.S. which allows them to focus their energies on the Soviets and ChiComs (I’d suggest they just call Thor). This puts the screws to constant Doom foils the Fantastic Four, who are expelled from Latveria with the U.S. government’s support and have a heated political debate as they depart:
Is there anyone more “establishment” than Reed Richards? Even Superman calls this guy a square.
With the Four now barred from opposing his rule, Doom is left to luxuriate. Namor sulks to his chambers, where he gets a surprise visitor:
The Shroud recounts his blatant Batman (with a dash of the Shadow) ripoff origin, including parents gunned down in front of him and a life of dedicated training. The big difference is the hot-branding iron to the eyes that left him blind (the rare origin that actually is senses-shattering) but with heightened perception.
Oh, and he’s out for Doctor Doom’s blood.
And what’s the good Doctor up to? Why, walking the dogs, of course:
One benefit of absolute rule? Not picking up your pets’ shit.
He has his hell-hounds out because he’s taking them up in the hills to stalk a wolf — good to have hobbies I guess. On his way he gets a little horny and pops into a hovel to bag himself a babe:
Now he’s the prima nocta noble in Braveheart. He’s really racking up the demerits.
Doom takes Gretchen out on the hunt (nothing loosens up a timid Latverian virgin like the baying of dogs), and as he paws her — but before he can unbolt his cod-piece — there’s a severe case of pre-coitus interruptus:
Doom, of course, can’t believe this crap:
They square off, with Doom shouting his usual insults, the Shroud matching him bloviation for bloviation and deploying his Bat-a-ra-, I mean Bomb-a-rangs:
Doom meets his, well, doom when the Shroud superheats his chestplate, forcing him to remove it, and it rains storytelling payoff:
But we learn, after the Shroud frees Namor, that (surprise) Doom isn’t dead, though the tables have very much been turned:
Now that’s a much more appealing brand of slavery.
There’s stupid-stupid and then there’s stupid-fun. This is stupid-fun, a veritable horn of plenty in terms of 1970s Marvel goodness. Doctor Doom is a great villain, and an easy case can be made for him being THE villain, but part of his charm is that it’s so much fun to watch him fall flat on his metal encrusted face. He enslaves Namor. He bamboozles the Ford administration. He plucks a young babe from her loving family. And then he gets shoved off a cliff by his poorly trained mutts (at least it wasn’t squirrels) and thrown into bondage by broads wearing seashell bras. It’s like a simple, great Betty Crocker recipe. I wish I could read something new like this every damn day.
And I wish we still had droit de seigneur. Oh, and also that I was a seigneur.
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Month, Part 4 – Mad #186 (The Star Trek Musical)
“Hello my Trekkie, hello my Trekker, hello my ragtime geek…”
You have to love the Michigan J. Frog/Spaceballs chestburster cover.
This shall be the last installment in for the Mad month. It’s been brief, but fun. We’ve seen Close Encounters, the Hulk, and The Greatest American Hero all get the works. It seems fitting that we tie things up with one of the richest veins of parody Mad ever mined, the Star Trek mythos. Spock’s ears. Scotty’s accent. Shatner’s toupee and paunch. There’s a lot of clay there with which to sculpt.
This spoof (Mort Drucker/Frank Jacobs), published in the awkward 1970s interregnum between the end of the series and the release of The Motion(less) Picture, has a good laugh at the expense of the hopelessly typecast and adrift ensemble (those days you could get Shat to come to your house for a handful of cash), all set to the tunes of popular tunes of the day. I know Nichelle Nichols belted out a song or two during the original run, but when it comes to singing Star Trek actors, all one can think of is Shatner and “Rocket Man.” This can’t live up to that insanity. But it can try.
Here’s big-belly Bill giving us an “Age of Aquarius” welcome:
How about a thoroughly sadistic looking Leonard McCoy ignoring some pleading Don Martin crewmen?:
Here’s some “Spock Thoughts” for you:
Finally, the entire cast (minus poor Chekov) signing off — could Kirk be in a more Kirky posture?:
Mort Drucker. The Mad maestro. He’s one of those guys that didn’t just set the bar, he posted a record and then took the bar home and buried it in his back yard. The Jerry Rice of Mad illustrators. Everyone else is playing for second. And the lyrics here ain’t too bad either.
This was a good way to close things up. I’ll let you know when I get ready to dig into Sylvester P. Smythe & Co.
Bubble Yum, the vanishing gum
One would think that the real trick here was making a gum whose flavor would magically disappear seconds after being placed in your mouth. Huzzah! It’s gone! Bubble Yum was like Bonkers candy in its unabashed sugarfication, but you felt obligated to chew on it for a while even after the fruity tang high-tailed it out of there. That whole gum thing. The taste evaporation effect also applied to kindred competitor Bubblicious. The orange variety of that brand, which I chomped as a kid, was great for a couple blinks of the eye. Then it would morph into a wet pencil eraser.
And don’t get me started on the spider eggs/legs rumor.
It’s the End of the Band as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) – Rock ‘n’ Roll Comics #35, “R.E.M.”
Sometimes there are happy occasions when worlds collide. This comic is one such cheerful confluence. An R.E.M. comic book. There is a God.
I had always intended to feature it here on the blog, but I wanted to wait until I could find a physical copy. Patience. But yesterday fate intervened. The band broke up. The only band I ever gave a rat’s ass about. The band that provided the soundtrack to my life.
As Elvis would have crooned, it’s now or never. And it took me all of ten seconds to track down a digital version.
So much is wrapped up for me with R.E.M.’s music. Hearing “Stand” on the radio as my mother drove me home from school. Buying Out of Time, the first album of theirs that I owned. A holiday at the tail end of my junior year in high school when a local radio station had an “R.E.M. Triple-Play Weekend,” spinning three-song blocks of live stuff and rarities that I diligently taped on my old boom box. Listening to Life’s Rich Pageant as we went to pick out our Basset Hound puppy, who pissed all over me the first time I picked him up. My high school girlfriend and me choosing “Strange Currencies” as “our song” because it was the closest thing to a love song on their most recent album and I’d be goddamned if I let any other band supply one. The Monster tour concert that I missed because I had a Regents exam the next day (parents…) and giving the ticket to one of the finest young ladies I ever knew (who eventually became a nun) and she brought me back a tour program that I still cherish. The day Bill Berry took his drum kit home and I thought the band was done but found out with relief they were carrying on as a trio. Shaving my balding head for the first time and reflecting how receding-hairlined Michael Stipe probably felt the same way when he did it. Berry’s Swiss aneurysm. Discovering that they did a cover of a song called “Superman.” The cheap bass that I bought so I could be just like Mike Mills and start a band with my buddies (already dreaming of the millions, we were going to call our first album Totem Pole and have our faces on, yes, the album cover’s totem pole), only to get frustrated and set it aside after learning the bass line to “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” Discovering that one of my college roommates was just as big a fan of theirs as me. Marveling at how every time Stipe sang “Fall on Me” it sounded like it was coming from the very depths of his soul. Getting reamed by the manager of the college radio station where I once DJ’d for playing a couple of their songs back to back, thinking IS THIS A FUCKING COLLEGE RADIO STATION OR NAZI GERMANY? Me shoehorning them into a Beavis and Butt-Head post. Writing this.
For crissakes, I used to me a member of their fan club. A FAN CLUB. AS AN ADULT.
Quite a ride.
I could go on and on. I came to them rather late in the game, after they had already left the cradle of the I.R.S. label and gone over to the Warner Bros. megalith, where they didn’t sell out but produced their most potent stuff. If “Losing My Religion” doesn’t knock your socks off, I don’t know what to tell you, and it was a great joy to rummage through the rich catalog that had brought them to the top of the rock mountain.
Over the past decade I’ve gone my separate way and held tight to the pre-millennium material. Their new output, while still on occasion wowing, moved farther and farther away from the music I came of age with. Stipe’s vocals didn’t carry as well as they used to. Their politics, always on the far left and which I admired in a way and didn’t begrudge them, were more and more being worn on their sleeves — the last concert of theirs that I attended had an atmosphere like at any moment I might be forced to show Greenpeace and NARAL membership cards or get my ass tossed out. Then again, I suppose they didn’t change and that’s the not-as-far-left me talking.
A part of me hoped that they’d hang it up. I’ve never been a fan of rock geezers. They were in their fifties. It was time.
Then I got word (through my Twitter account — a long way from recording songs on a boom box) that they were through. I don’t want to stretch a metaphor too far, but I felt a watered down version of what one feels when a loved one passes painlessly and quietly away at a ripe old age. That’s overstating it. Nobody died here. I’ve shed no tears. But the feelings were similar. Sadness and relief bound together.
Oh yeah. The comic.
It’s one of the goofiest things you’ll ever see (there’s another underground book out there that has Pete Buck cast in the role of an action hero — I’ll save that one for a reunion). A cheaply made, unauthorized account of the band’s beginnings (in a series that occasionally ran afoul of acts), its framing device is a government agent charged with investigating subversive rock groups:
His quarry?:
What follows is a loose tale from their first encounters with one another (Buck meeting Stipe, the two of them bringing in Berry who in turn brought in his pal Mills), their first concert (in a church that they lived in), to their earliest recordings and opening for bands like The Police on to the chart-topping success of Out of Time in 1991. Being thoroughly acquainted with the chapter and verse of their journey (knowing about Mitch Easter’s Drive-In Studio is like an R.E.M. fan’s Masonic secret grip), there were no surprises and little excitement in reading Jay Allen Sanford’s script, and I can’t imagine it holding any interest for non-aficionados. Blackwell’s art, while appropriately folksy in light of the band’s rural southern tinge, is your standard alternative fare.
But this book’s mere existence is a gift from above. It gave me the chance to vent a little on a bittersweet day and offer an all too brief celebration of what these four (then three) gentlemen meant to one fan.
The band’s acronym, while mostly associated with rapid eye movement, doesn’t really stand for anything. The guys just liked the sound of it. Stipe once said, though, that his grandmother thought that it stood for “Remember Every Moment.”
Sound advice. And I do.
Apple cider, apple pie, apple crisp, apple fritters, dried apple heads… – Classics Illustrated Junior #515, “Johnny Appleseed”
Summer’s over and there’s an increasing chill in the air. Almost time to start heading to the orchard for the traditional apples and apple byproducts. Make mine Empire.
Speaking of apples…
I have fond memories of my elementary school’s art teacher, who, in a yearly assembly in the cafeteria, would put on a performance as Johnny Appleseed. He’d dress in torn jeans and a shirt that looked like it was made out of a loudly patterned tablecloth, and wear on his head, yes, a kitchen pot. I can’t remember a lick of what his act consisted of, but, with his everyday long dark hair, he was quite the sight. And wide young 1st and 2nd grade eyes could be fooled into thinking that this guy might simply look like the art teacher and could actually be the real Johnny Appleseed. Like a kid sitting on the knee of a mall Santa Claus.
Then I got older and found out that Johnny Appleseed was a real dude, not a popular myth brought to life by an art teacher. So he really was/is a bit like Santa/Saint Nicholas. Next thing you know somebody’s going to tell me that Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox were firmly rooted in reality.
Appleseed’s true biography is clouded by tall tales and various retellings, including a largely forgotten Disney movie. This Classics Illustrated version of his life story follows more along the lines of the nonsense and, with a biblical bent, drifts close to the misty shores of hagiography. Think the Pope John Paul II Marvel comic.
Along the way we learn that Appleseed (nee Chapman) is a friend to natives:
And a pal of woodland critters:
Not only that, he can bridge the societal gap between horse-thieves and the law, bringing them together in square-dancing amity:
Could somebody pass along Johnny’s phone number to the Israelis and Palestinians? Please?
And yes, along the way Johnny sprinkles some apple seeds, as well as healthy doses of Bible-thumping (true enough).
This is a harmless little comics that’s honed quite nicely towards younger readers, somewhat fanciful but faithful to the myth if not the man. Likewise for the easy to process art. This one (like other Junior editions) knew its audience.
In a postscript, I did a Google search on that old art teacher, fully expecting to find an obituary if nothing else. Instead I discovered that he’s STILL TEACHING AT THE SCHOOL. There was a picture of him on the school website. The long, black hair has been shorn and it’s fully gray, and he’s a little stooped. But he’s still there. Good for him.
He once gave me a B on a drawing of Spawn that I did in high school (he taught classes there as well). I think its lack of originality kept it from A territory. I don’t hold a grudge (really). It gives me a warm apple pie glow to think that he might still be doing the Johnny Appleseed bit.
The Mighty Thor vs. The Socialist Utopia – Marvel Tales #5
A while back I vowed to look at an issue of Marvel Tales, the title that introduced the young me to the wonders of the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man. And here we are, with one of the earliest editions. They’re oversized treasure troves of delight, reprinting multiple stories from the Golden Age of Marvel’s Silver Age. Just look at the selection of wares offered on the cover. A dash of Ditko Spider-Man. A pinch of Kirby Thor. A dollop of the Human Torch. A clove of Ant-Man. Hell, you even have the Wasp in Time-Life Operator headgear.
It’s gold, Jerry. Gold.
There’s an added thrill in reading these reprints, so close as they were to the original publication and still well within the rosy aurora of the best of times. It’s as if Lee and co. in throwing all these together were saying to their readers “Can you believe this? Can you really believe that we’ve done all this great shit?” Even in this warmed over hash you can pick up on the energy of those days. It was a different time and the markets have undergone a sea change, but they sure as hell didn’t need some lame-ass 52 relaunch to move product back then.
You could pick any of the offerings here and come away sans disappointment. I was tempted to simply let some coin flips decide which I’d dig into, but one won my heart. Because of that, and though it feels weird, I’m going to steer clear of the Amazing Spider-Man (#8) reprint herein, which re-offers Spidey battling a runaway robot (a bit of a theme for the guy) and his own teenage angst.
Ah, what the heck. Here’s Peter Parker decking Flash Thompson:
Ditko’s always struck me as a rather humorless chap (*cough* Mr. A *cough*), but things like this make me reevaluate that assessment.
Okay. On to business. The true gem in this cache is the rich fare of the Journey into Mystery (#87) reprint. One can’t go wrong wading through any of Thor’s early adventures, and finding a good Kirby-drawn Thor story is about as easy as throwing a ball into the ocean. It’s a universal truth, even in the early stages, when the character was still getting his legs. Though the off-the-wall Asgardian elements hadn’t yet been fully introduced in all their glory at this point, there’s a zaniness in watching the God of Thunder handle more Earthbound, mundane heroic tasks. The Frost Giants and trolls could wait.
And what was the greatest threat to the mid-century Western world’s psyche? The one that would grab ahold of an audience? Why, communism, of course! Yes, in this tale Thor wallops dirty goddamn commies with Mjolnir. Joe McCarthy would have been so proud.
“The Prisoner of the Reds”! (Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers) starts with a number of American scientists disappearing, leaving awkward notes in their wakes:
I like how even the notes carry the OLD TIMEY EXCLAMATION POINTS! And can a John leave a “Dear John” letter? Is that kosher?
The disappearances make the news and reach the eyes and ears of Dr. Donald Blake. Being a good, patriotic American with godly powers, he resolves to get to the bottom of it all. He gets the sanction of a connected friend at the Pentagon (“Yeah, Don, whatever you want…”) and sets up his own Paul Newman/Robert Redford sting. A shifty looking photographer shows up to look at the biological weapon he’s (falsely) publicized that he’s working on, and Blake gets a face full of gas:
Random scientists working willy-nilly on biological weapons. Comforting thought.
Blake is smuggled to some random fortress far behind the Iron Curtain, where he’s thrown in the clink with the other kidnapped scientists. Thank God his apparatchik captors decide to separate them AND let Blake keep his walking stick — the kindly, cooperative commies!:
Thor starts unleashing Holy Hell, and one of the poor guards makes an entertaining observation about his chosen weapon:
The fortress is outfitted like the hideout of a James Bond villain, including a (laser beam-less) shark tank:
Thor is captured when the dirty rotten Reds threaten to kill the prisoners if he doesn’t surrender, and they strap him into their handy Norse God Immobilizer (“And you said we’d never use it!”):
What’s that guy doing? Reveling in his triumph? Is he smitten? Admiring his shave? What?
No matter. He obligingly leaves his prisoner alone, and Thor changes into Blake and slips his shackles and reclaims his hammer. Oops. After he frees the scientists and gets them to safety, a timely editor’s note lets us know how Thor is going to end this little drama:
His work done, the fortress razed and the disciples of Marx and Lenin cowed, Thor returns home and the sexually frustrated Donald Blake is left chomping on his pipe (sometimes a pipe is just a pipe) as Jane Foster dreams of Thor’s bare biceps:
What are we to make of this one? Thor, five issues into his Marvel career, had yet to find his groove. The arch dialogue, the (for the most part) ditching of the good doctor alias and the going-for-broke fantasy would be what made the character a lasting success. But seeing Goldilocks as the champion of the Free World, cracking the skulls of troglodytic, propogandized Cold War enemies, has a unique charm. It’s one of the more rollicking anti-communist screeds you’ll ever read, and I’m now going to rank it right alongside Rocky IV on my list of guilty pleasures. I’m fairly certain that this is the only one out there that has a hammer-summoned thunderstorm denoument.
Anyway. Make Mine Marvel Tales!
Thank you for your cooperation. Good night. – Robocop #16
Robocop is a touchstone character with material of a somewhat checkered quality. His uber-violently entertaining cinematic debut was followed by sequels of rapidly plummeting quality, and his comic book output was mostly unremarkable. His most resonant graphic depiction was the organic (as it were) pairing with that other cybernetic franchise, the Terminator mythos. Frank Miller and Walt Simonson’s Robocop vs. The Terminator series was a bit of an event, but for me it ranks second to the greatest of all of Alex Murphy’s crossovers, the time HE SHOWED UP AT AN HONEST TO GOD PRO WRESTLING MATCH.
I may not be the biggest fan of the guy, but there’s something charming about his relentlessly goofy stiffness. I seem to remember a scene in one of the films — perhaps the first sequel — where he snuck up on a Detroit drug operation, his gears whizzing loudly, his feet stamping like jackhammers all the while, and no one heard him. It’s hard not to smile at that sort of chicanery. So what the hell — I’ll give one of his comics a go around.
Simon Furman, Andrew Wildman and Danny Bulanadi bring us “TV Crimes.” There’s been a rash of odd crimes in the already ravaged Detroit of the future (a future, judging by the date on the cover’s tombstone, that’s only days away), to wit:
Average, law-abiding citizens have been committing violent acts under insane delusional fantasies, which are as divergent as Wild West gunslingers, Freddy Krueger and Superman:
I can’t wait for the time when a dead man is a source of evening news levity. Maybe we’re already there.
Robocop, racked with guilt over having to take the “gunslinger’s” life, resolves to get to the bottom of this. He has some help from his fetching once and current partner:
Brain TV. How about it, science?
The two near-future crimefighters head out to do a little good cop/bad cop with the local purveyors of implant broadcasts. On the way they’re assaulted by a gauntlet of deranged folks, and Robocop’s circuitry is besieged by images of a lost life:
Murphy shakes off this happy dream in short order, and when he does he’s confronted by the man behind the deadly nonsense, a fired TV station employee who’s literally lost his head:
How does Robocop deal with this boob-tube clown? With what one might call “the direct approach”:
Arnim Zola, beware.
B-level Marvel books from this era (ca.1991) all looked alike to me. I could never get into them because of that. This one has that going against it, plus the dubious moral equilibrium of having Robocop tortured by his taking of a life and then putting a nice bow on the case by caving in a dude’s head. But in the up and down history of Robocop, I’d put this tale on the “up” side of the ledger. It has a cyborg cop punching a guy with a TV for a face. That’s almost — almost — as good as the pro wrestling appearance.
The curious case of the phantom Silver Surfer t-shirt
Okay, this old ad has thrown me for a loop.
I looked at it, saw that (cool, sweet, boss) Silver Surfer t-shirt there at the bottom, and was suddenly flooded with fond recollections of a similar one that I owned that had the Ron Lim Surfer on the back. But then I thought about it more, and I started to question whether or not I actually owned such a thing. I think I might have seen one for sale and, fantasizing about how gobsmackingly awesome it was and how with me wearing it men would want to be my friend and women would want to be my lover, envisioned it covering my bony adolescent frame. The potent dream might have crafted the memory. I really don’t know which is the truth.
I realize no one cares about this early-thirties senior moment. I had to vent. And if Marvel’s still taking orders…
“Believe it or not, I’m blogging on air…”
Between this and the I Spy post from several days ago, I think I’ve exhausted my supply of Robert Culp-related material, at least for the foreseeable future. Time to let that field lie fallow.
I have only the dimmest of memories of The Greatest American Hero. I get the feeling that my parents plopped me down in front of the TV when it was on because it was a guy in tights flying around and that’d be something that would shut me up for an hour. I think I probably got a little antsy after the stupidly awesome theme song stopped playing (a ditty that spawned one of the funnier Seinfeld bits and in turn countless answering machine recordings). The show, with a teacher given a super-suit by aliens, fell flat to my young eyes. Perhaps I wasn’t ready for its biting satire. Or perhaps it sucked. Maybe both.
Whatever the case, I don’t really care all that much about the show. Even though I used to have an ungodly supernova of hair like William Katt.
The Mort Drucker Mad parody, given the obvious title of “The Greatest American Zero,” follows along the same line as the Incredible Hulk spoof highlighted here earlier. That means that there are a lot of cameos of comic book heroes, starting with the very first page:
Spider-Man swings into frame was well, though there’s no DDT this time:
The spoof follows Katt and Culp as they trail a trio of terrorists who’ve stolen nuclear material. One of the crooks may look a little familiar, and our hero and his government handler (who, under Drucker’s pen and ink ministrations, looks a bit like Frankenstein) get a chance to drop some sexist mid-air humor at the expense of Mary Poppins:
The story ends with the tights-wearing teacher coming to the realization (in much the same way as Banner did in the Hulk riff) that his incredible abilities may not be all that much of a burden:
When you read some of these things in close succession, you can really see the pattern that the Mad folks followed. It’s not paint-by-numbers, but there’s a groove. To pilfer a line from Mark Twain, the spoofs don’t repeat themselves, but they sure do rhyme.
I’m not complaining. If it works, run with it. And it works.
“Blogging away, on a wing and a prayer…”
Walk like an Egyptian – Batman and the Outsiders #17
What a fun cover, right? It has to be one of the better ones that’s been posted here in a long while. Kudos to Lynn Varley, longtime Frank Miller collaborator/ex-wife and the only colorist I can ever name off the top of my head, for her contribution to its “muted by time” palette.
As I held this comic in my hands preparing to scan it, I realized that Batman and the Outsiders has a fairly prominent place in my own personal Bat-memories. It was published smack dab in the middle of my young boy comic book heyday, and a part of me always envisions Batman alongside his diverse little band of young heroes. You had European (Markovian, to be precise) royalty in Geo-Force, an African-American with a bolt-on afro in Black Lightning, a Japanese babe (with a blade that could spawn many a castration phobia) in Katana, sometimes blonde bimbos like Halo and Looker, and Whatever-The-Fuck-Metamorpho-Was. Quite the ensemble.
Perhaps the most important member of the team was the original artist on the book. Jim Aparo, who has a seat at (if not at the head of) the table in any discussion of the greatest artists to ever doodle the Caped Crusader’s pointy ears, did some very, very fine work on that character in this series. Now that I think of it, that may have a lot to do with my fondness for this series. It was likely my first exposure to the Aparo-Bat. It’s like going to you first ballgame as a kid. You don’t forget such intros.
The story that goes along with that stupendous cover — scripted by Mike W. Barr — is one of those time-travel conundrums that makes your head feel like its going to explode Scanners-style. But before we get to the vein-throbbing paradoxes, we’re gifted with some more DC sand-hieroglyphs. For your viewing pleasure:
That looks like an album cover.
This whole tale is wound up with Metamorpho’s Egypt-themed senses-shattering origin. When he’s gravely injured, the group flies him back to the spot where he first gained his powers. Once inside the fateful pyramid they’re all magically transported back in time to the land of Tutankhamen and Ramses in olden times. When they get there Metamorpho is remade as a brainwashed servant of some evil dude seeking to overturn the line of pharaohs and natural course of history, while the rest of the gang is cast in the roles of saviors. Let the Batman ass-kicking commence:
It’s kind of nice to see the big guy happy in his work.
Metamorpho overcomes his erstwhile allies with his elemental powers, perhaps stealing some cues from mentor Batman’s “How to Defeat Fellow Heroes” playbook:
It falls to Geo-Force to zip them all out of there, and when they reach safety the fractured group ponders their temporal predicament and Batman shows off his knowledge of Egyptian dynastic history:
If you’re starting to get a headache, allow me to add that at one point in the book (when the team is in the present-day) the phrase “At that moment, 3000 years ago…” is used. That should tip you right over into migraine territory. It’s like something the Enterprise-D crew would use to cripple the Borg.
Things are continued into the next issue, where history is preserved and Metamorpho returns to his normal, not-all-that-happy self. Yay.
Outsiders certainly had its moments. I can remember loving the brief arc in 1984 that tied in with that years Los Angeles Olympics, a two-parter which featured another great cover with the memorable image of Metamorpho melting in an oversized torch. Barr and Aparo (and later Alan Davis) really had a good time working with Batman and his little band of “Not Ready for Prime Time” players, and it paid dividends for the readers. And this was the look of the Dark Knight Detective that I grew to adore. Check out the pensive, shadowy Batman in that last scan — no one could do “Batman rubbing his chin, deep in thought” quite like Aparo. That’s the Batman of my youth. Good stuff.
As a side-note, sort of an “Inside Baseball” indicator of my affection for this title, I should note its placement in my “little black book.” I keep my checklists written down in a small Moleskine notebook (which is rapidly running out of room, rendering the remaining pages as valuable as Manhattan real estate), and when I really started getting into buying older comics a few years ago, I of course started making lists for classic books like The Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, The Amazing Spider-Man, etc. But wedged into those early listings, before Action and Superman and Batman and Detective were included, I put down Batman and the Outsiders. Not a big deal, but that says it all.
Priorities.
I’d be all for throwing Lori Lemaris back into the drink…
There were a number of one-page cartoons in the issue of I Spy from yesterday’s post. This was the only one that really caught my eye.
There’s a metaphor for life in there somewhere.
Okay, who brought the Jell-O? – I Spy #3
I’ve never watched an episode of I Spy all the way through. The Bill Cosby I was raised on was the one that played the obstetrician patriarch of the affluent Huxtable family, the one that wore an increasingly seizure-inducing series of sweaters and relentlessly hawked Pudding Pops. It’s sometimes hard to remember the Cosby of today, an elderly gent who’s taken on the role of national scold (and who may or may not have molested drugged women), as a dashing figure enmeshed in the world of international espionage, but so he was, alongside television thoroughbred Robert Culp.
Tennis playing spies. Wearing cardigans. You have to love it.
Their accompanying comic adventures come across in much the same way as those of fellow TV members of the Gold Key stable, like the Adam-12 boys and the Dark Shadows troupe. The latter had vampires. Hard to top that. The former had stories that were perhaps a little goofier but nevertheless just as stiff as the original material. I Spy at least had the advantage of exotic ever-changing global locales to serve as backdrops. This issue (Script: Paul S. Newman, Art: Alden McWilliams) is set in Venice, a treasure-trove of vistas for Kelly (Culp) and Scotty (Cosby) if there ever was one:
The boys meet up with a fetching contact who gives them their mission: find an old friend of Kelly’s and kill him. They’re then put through the standard gauntlet of near-death gondola-infused contretemps:
They go round and round until it turns out that they shouldn’t kill Kelly’s old pal, and discover that the dame who put them on his trail is actually working for the other side. Double-dealing in the world of espionage? Who woulda thunk it? The resulting showdown provides the opening for one of the best gun sound effects I’ve ever come across:
That, friends, is a literal laugh out loud moment.
Yes. You read that right. She unloaded with her burp-gun. Just be thankful she didn’t bring any of her fart grenades.
Well.
I can’t say that I’m nuts about these Gold Key TV tie-ins. They’re kind of neat as artifacts of bygone small-screen days, but on their own they’re not all that hot. The scripts can plod along like Clydesdales, and the art is often a bit wooden (though some of the action work here is fairly good, I have to admit). Then again, this issue gave the world a belching automatic weapon. We owe it a debt of gratitude.
“BURRPPPPP.“
Giant fruit falling from the heavens! It’s the end times!
I always see this old ad for Bonkers candy cropping up in 1980s comics. Remember Bonkers? Did anyone out there actually ingest them? Did any actual fruit or fruit by-product make its way onto the ingredient label? I only have dim recollections of the television commercials, a staple during my Transformers/Jem/ G.I. Joe afternoon cartoon diet, vignettes which featured the live version of the old bag in the above ad, giant fruit crushing people and sudden onsets of ecstasy. I think the Book of Revelations spoke of such happenings, or maybe I need some refresher Sunday school. Anyway, bizarre. Thanks, YouTube.
Perhaps the huge mutant fruit was dropped from the Bonkers blimp seen above. Or it could be that it fell from the table of the giant at the top of the beanstalk. Who knows?
Perhaps no hero is better suited to working himself up into a misunderstood, self-righteous lather than the Silver Surfer. One false step, one wrong move, and this shiny alien either throws down with a fellow good guy (as in his dust-up with the ever-lovin’ Thing, though, to be fair, it was the Thing’s own jealous psychoses that started that one) or threatens to use the Power Cosmic to cow the dull masses. Temper, temper.
That’s how this issue, a Stan Lee-written, John Buscema-drawn, Joe Sinnott-inked reprint from the Surfer’s classic first series, gets its start, with the Sentinel of the Spaceways blocked and attacked while trying to do a good deed and then going through his “angry god” floor routine. To that end, Stan and John deploy the appropriately unsubtle Christ verbiage and imagery:
All this gets the attention of — and is the prelude to the introduction of — one of the great villains in Marvel’s history, the devil who isn’t THE devil, Mephisto. The Mephisto that I remember from the early ’90s Silver Surfer books sort of sucked. No, let me take back the “sort of.” He full on blew. He came across as more of a trickster, a player of pranks, a toady to those temporarily more powerful than he. Not so in this first appearance. He has grandeur. A villain in full, one worthy to be placed alongside mouthy greats like Doctor Doom. Here’s our first angled shot of the shadow-shrouded lord of the nether realm, so typical of wonderfully overdone Silver Age Marvel:
It should also be noted that he was apparently a classmate of Loki’s at the accredited Larry Craig School of Throne Sitting. Hang that diploma high!
What does Mephisto use to try to drag the pure Surfer off the pure path? None other than that raven-haired, big-breasted Zenn-La beauty, Shalla Bal:
A fine choice, Mephisto. A fine choice.
This issue is high on the bombast, as this vile deceiver tries to corrupt the Surfer with offers of his lover, wealth, power, babes, a new pair of briefs, everything. But none of it works. And it gets a bit repetitive, as Stan and John try desperately to fill the extra pages that the Surfer’s mag carried. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy it when Mephisto tried to suck the Surfer’s essence (that sounds perverse) into his own skull and thereby conquer him, only to be overwhelmed by the do-right feedback:
Nobody could write this crap like Mr. Lee. Nobody. I’m fairly certain “did pain me like a canker” is going to enter my everyday phraseology.
I love the Surfer, and I’d love to get my hands on a lot of these old issues. Watching Lee and Buscema go wild with such a spectacular character is like driving with the top down on a crisp sunny day. Buscema’s style was particularly well-tailored to the Surfer’s unique isolation and suffering (as in that first interior scan above). Unfortunately, I don’t see the original books around much in good shape, and they’re pricey as all get out when they are spotted. So, since I like comics in comics form, not trades or collections, its nice to have these Fantasy Masterpieces reprints to tide myself over until I’m either less frugal or much, much wealthier. Probably the former.
Maybe if a certain onerous spinner of lies offered me Silver Surfer back issues…
Hulk’s fist can’t defeat enemy. Hulk wishes had belt with useful gadgets.
I know I said before that I found the Spider-Man ski mask charming. Now that I’ve seen this different view of it, I retract that earlier evaluation. It’s terrifying.
The Hulk utility belt is one of the dumbest ideas ever. Grappling hook? Handcuffs? Maybe if it came with hair gel and some “Tattered Purple Pants in a Can” I could buy it. As it is, it would fit right in with the Mad parody from yesterday. He’s just not the easiest hero to accessorize. Accept it. Move on.
And don’t get me started on the “Hulk Van,” which would even stand out amongst the DC fleet.
Jared
blog into mystery 