Defenders Week: The Essential Elf With A Gun

I will be perfectly honest with you: the sole reason I started Defenders Week - heck, the sole reason I went back and started reading The Defenders from the start in the first place - was because of Steve Gerber's classic nihilistic, existential theatre of the absurd interlude drama, The Elf With A Gun Saga.



Intermittently throughout his groundbreakingly awesome run on The Defenders, Gerber would draw attention away from the primary plot for a seemingly unconnected series of vignettes in which otherwise ordinary people caught in the midst of doing nothing spectacular were suddenly set upon by a homicidal mythical midget intent on shooting them down like wooden ducks on a fairway ...



The implication was, of course, that the Elf With A Gun was ultimately to somehow cross over into the primary Defenders storyline, and frankly wouldn't have seemed out of place considering that Gerber's other contributions included an evil possessed deer, a personality cult centered around a cosmic being masquerading as an abusive schlep, and about all the Jack Norriss you can handle.



In fact, the one occasion when the Elf got within some sort of proximity to the main story seemed to be teasing a confluence.



Fantastically though ... IT NEVER DID. Gerber offed the Elf suddenly (see below) in its final appearance.



A hundred issues after the Elf's debut, series writers J.M.DeMatteis and Peter Gillis revisited the idea with something approaching a conclusion. As an authority in the overwhelming epic that is the Elf With A Gun saga, I give it a thumbs-down. Gerber wrote an amazing story about a serial killer master-of-many-disguises elf and how he got killed by a truck, and I dare anyone to put a better coda on it than that.

Defenders Week: Hellcat is a little bit forward.

Defenders Week: This Deer? It is evidently something or the other...

This deer? It is evidently evil.



This deer, it is evidently evil.



This deer is evidently evil!



THIS DEER IS EVIDENTLY EVIL!

Defenders Week: Everyone Loves Forcing Themselves on Valkyrie!

Welcome to Defenders Week here at Gone&Forgotten (By “week” I mean “the next several articles, whether they happen to come out within a seven-day period, but let’s face it, they won’t, so anyway what I mean is here’s a bunch of subsequent articles on the same topic”). It’s Defenders Week (see previous note) because I’ve recently taken advantage of this near-complete Defenders run I’ve had sitting around for forever and a day to sit and read pretty much the whole catalog in a few sittings.

Here is what I basically learned about the Defenders; the entire concept (of a loosely-affiliated team unlike the tight-knit Avengers and X-Men) is a lot more fun and neurotic than an organized team, that Steve Engelhart and David Anthony Kraft clearly wrote the best issues, and – most importantly – EVERYONE LOVES FORCING THEMSELVES ON VALKYRIE.

Valkyrie has the dubious honor of being Marvel’s first “liberated female” superhero, except that she actually was the Enchantress in a secret super magical disguise and was using women’s lib as a tool to trick the female Avengers into turning against their male partners. Listen, hey, I’ve read those old Avengers comics, I’m 100% behind Scarlet Witch and the Wasp slipping Ben-Gay into Black Panther’s speedos, those guys was DICKS.

Anyway, many a years later, Doctor Strange transferred the soul of a woman named Barbara Norriss – who had been trapped in an alien dimension and driven totally bazonkers – into the body of the Valkyroe FOR SOME REASON, from which point on Valkyrie became essentially the first dedicated member of the Defenders.

Valkyrie was supposed to be a new vanguard of female character, was probably a transparent piss-take on Wonder Woman (who’d been lauded earlier by Gloria Steinem and either awkwardly or ironically embraced by the feminist movement even as she was sort of a palsied mess of a character in the Seventies), and was the model of the self-possessed Seventies’ woman – except mostly she just got made out on by all her teammates when she wasn’t looking.

Unsurprisingly, the first guy to take advantage of Valkyrie was then-ex-Avenger Hawkeye, a guy you can imagine eats every meal at Hooters and has a subscription to both Maxim AND Stuff.



Naturally, Val ends up sort of liking the attention, because that’s … I dunno, irony? Base condescending tripe? Something?

Next up is teammate Nighthawk, who has to ruin a nice moment by reminding us all that he’s the privileged son of a billionaire and he can do whatever he wants.



Valkyrie starts to finally get sick of dudes cramming their tongues down her gullet like they’ve got worms on the end of ‘em and are angling for sturgeon in her abdomen. Problem is that this time the tonsil-hockey all-star in question is Barbara Norris’ (that’s Val’s braindead host body) estranged husband and full-time schmuck Jack.



Jack trying to get into Valkyrie’s pants turned into one of the single most annoying subplots in Defenders history – and this is the comic that brought you the elf with a gun (see a later entry) and an evil deer (ditto). Nick Fury eventually showed up to induct Jack into SHIELD, and then ideally shot him on the way back to that magic barbershop where SHIELD used to have their headquarters, and fed his body to the Hulk. I can dream.

Engelhart was hilarious enough to acknowledge that his “Valkyrie trapped in a women’s prison” storyline was directly lifted from exploitative B-Movie dreck, and where would those films be without the warden trying to make it with the fresh meat?





Lastly, Valkyrie ends up hanging out with - as near as I can tell – an extra-nerdy film school dropout version of John Byrne and hanger-on Jim Shooter, meaning that she’s been so soured on all experience with men that she’s just giving up. This doesn’t stop the advances of exciting new villain LUNATIK, whose primary weapon is … LOVE.



Now, see, the thing is, there might be more occasions of dudes getting in cheap tongue-locks on Valkyrie, but these are all the incidents from the issues I’ve read so far. Who else tried to slip her one, do you think – Hulk, Doctor Strange, Namorita? They’re all possibilities, because if I’ve learned anything from the Defenders it’s that … EVERYONE LOVES FORCING THEMSELVES ON VALKYRIE.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Secret Wars II

"Yo yo yo, check it out, boy-eeee! We're
representin' from the Golden Age, don't front or you will know our rage, patriotic boy toys from the Forties, chug our forties, and the ladies like to suck it cause we taste so sweet, take it Dandy!"

"Yo Yank, you know my glock goes ackackack, and all you sucka DJs betta step back back back, when we busta rap even the japs know it's like When Animals Attack!"

"I'm DJ Yank, y'all. Gimme your thanks, y'all. I take it to the bank y'all, with my homie, you call him 'Dandy.' and he say 'Hooop! Dere it is!'"

"Hoop! Dere it is!"

"Peace out, y'all."

Here it is, finally, the followup to Marvel's wildly succesful Secret Wars miniseries, brought to us by then-editor-in-chief Jim Shooter - the man famous for being able to say "The last thing this industry needs is another superhero comic" and "I'm writing a new superhero comic" in the same breath, and G&F alum (for his thick-necked brushstrokes on Kitty Pryde and Wolverine), Al Milgrom.

Props where props are due department, Shooter may never go down as one of the great writers of mainstream comics, but he'll always be at the very least one of the more dependable workhorses. Usually, you can depend on him for an entertaining story, often a very well-done story, and only occasionally a terribly awful bad nine-issue miniseries. Al, as mentioned earlier, is a heck of an editor and cleanup inker, but inexplicably was allowed to pencil this, ANOTHER high-profile Marvel miniseries which would've benefitted from a gentler touch. Young Steve Leialoha, a current fave of mine, provides halting and seemingly confused inks.

The story picks up on what no man can call an "unresolved plot thread" without breaking into riotous laughter - or bawling in horror. The Beyonder, an omnipotent being peering into our universe by means of a spontaneously generated cosmic peephole, kicks off the original Secret Wars series abducting Earth's greatest heroes and villains and having them play out the plateau of their eternal morality play for him. In this sequel, his curiosity about humanity left unsated, he ventures to Earth in a human disguise. hoping to learn about us by living among us.

Abstractly speaking, it's an interesting enough premise for a story ... a being of virtually limitless power and no moral barometer to speak of is driven to Earth by his one human characteristic - curiosity - to learn by walking among them what it is precisely that makes humanity so unique. It's a very Seventies story, very Green Lantern/Green Arrow, except that if Denny O'Neil had been writing it, it would've wrapped up in twenty-five pages, and the kicker would've been that the alien ends up finding happiness and contentment being a hobo.

Sadly, this thing is a plodding brickhouse of overdone monologues and tiring existentialism.

By contrast to Secret Wars I, where the mightiest heroes and viallins on Earth fought a cataclysmic war of mythic proportions, Shooter brings us in the sequel such riveting scenes as: A television cartoon writer gaining trememndous destructive powers and blowing up a McDonald's, the Beyonder destroying the earth, and it gets fixed immediately (that happens like FIFTEEN times or something), and the Beyonder looking at all the STUFF he has. Over and over again.

I'm not one of those guys who thinks every book needs to have a fight scene, but I do consider myself something of a fight scene snob in that I want any fight scene I DO see to at least be ... any good at all. Whereas this book did have three battles per issue, or thereabouts, they all went like this: (A) group of super heroes leaps out from behind a billboard, parked car, toaster oven, etc (B) they whup on Beyonder for about two or three panels and then (C) Beyonder basically yawns and walks away.

Boom, THREE TIMES AN ISSUE! And theoretically all the heroes of Earth had been alerted to the Beyonder's presence, and to the terrible destruction he could cause, but rather than - say - make a plan or come up with some inexplicable scientific gadget to defeat him ... you know, the stuff they do every issue of their own comics and have done since the beginning of time ... they just like to leap out from behind the bushes and try to jump on his head. It's about as effective as putting a flaming bag of poop on his doorstep, except that this way the Beyonder doesn't even get POOP ON HIS SHOES!

To illustrate this point, let me recreate a particular scene for you: The Beyonder hooks up with Boom-Boom*, a character who debuts in this series though eventually ends up with X-Force. Boom Boom separates from him at some point and rats him out to the Avengers. The Avengers gather their whole roster, Dr.Strange, and the Fantastic Four. They jump out of the bushes and stumble over each other for four panels. Then the Beyonder walks away, and they LET HIM GO despite being there to defeat him in the first place.

But wait, there's more. Noticing that the Beyonder seems a little depressed, the heroes decide to ask Boom-Boom if she knows why, only she's slipped away in the confusion. So they write her off.

That's right, using only the amazing power of her OWN TWO LEGS, she left the scene of the battle which only lasted about a minute and a half, meaning she is CLEARLY lost for good. How could the heroes possibly hunt her down knowing that she's gone a full HUNDRED YARDS or more away from her last known location!? If only someone there had some kind of super-advanced armor which could track people, or was a super-brilliant scientist who could create a vanilla-pudding sensing hemmorhoid pillow using only a tin can and a plastic spork, or was the GODDAMN MASTER OF THE MYSTIC ARTS and had an ALL-SEEING
EYE AMULET right on his goddamn lapel!

This is only one of dozens of scenes that actually had me yelling at this comic book. Not just shouting in frustration or incredulousness, but also trying to force it out of existence using only my voice, like that one groovy black Legionnaire. I used persuasion where I could. "Staples! Jesus Jumping Cats, how can you stand to hold together a book this awful? Fall apart! Now!" and "Paper, you dishonor your noble tree ancestors by holding onto this image. I demand that you reject the ink that created it, NOW!"

It didn't work.

Also weighing the book down like a pork-stuffed redwood log were the endless FLASHBACKS and RECAPS. Lord, you really didn't have to worry about missing the original Secret Wars story, because they recapped it for you ... in every issue. Okay, that's not precisely true; they stopped doing it around the fourth or fifth issue ... at which point they offered recaps of the previous issues of THIS miniseries. Hell, sometimes they went for the threepeat and would recap the first series, the previous issues of this series, AND any important events from any of the eight hundred CROSSOVER
books they did. If you buy one Marvel comic in 1985, make it Secret Wars ... because it blows the plot of every other book they produced that year.

The thing also failed to follow the "show, don't tell" rule of good comics - "failed" in the same sense as when you say something like "The pilot failed to adjust his trajectory and crashed his missile-laden jet first into the children's hospital and then smack dab into the main gasline for the town." The average panel in this book is anywhere from one-third to THREE-FOURTHS dialogue, and at one point there becomes such a critical struggle between
allowable text space and cramped art that the hand-letterer gives up and they have a typography machine add in text in a smaller typeface to several panels.

Not that every word was pure gold ... far from it. Most of it was sort of endless, over-obvious mewling about the varied state of the human condition - some of it sounding all the world like Steve Ditko grabbed the pen and wrote a few pages. Other parts would be the heroes or narrator taking a moment to describe what was happenin before their very eyes. No kidding. Lots of "Look out, he's shooting energy beams" and "those shards of glass are coming right for us!" ... stuff that the artist should've been able to represent without the writer feeling he had to mention it.

To wit: Captain America explains, as the Beyonder
vanishes in a flash of yellow light, "He disappeared!" Yes, thank
you Cap. You roided out imbecile.

I swear there's more to loathe, but to document every failing in the book would be to REPRINT this book. Suffice it to say, the heroes unveil their boots of clay as they make a resolution to actually go kill the Beyonder (say it with me ... "!!!"), and then end up changing their mind, because he turned himself into a baby. That the heroes, all of whom abide by that hoary old comic standard, the Code Against Killing (could be worth fifteen points in Champions), decided to off the super-omnipotent being but then change their minds when it's a super-omnipotent alien BABY being kinda puts
a lie to any moral standard they're supposed to represent. Mind you, if these had been TEXAN super-heroes, that baby would've been frying in an electric bassinet before we had time to blink.

There's so much more in this series, like the fact that it was the awakening maternal instinct of the female heroes who kept the good guys from killing the Beyonder baby, or how the Beyonder comes to earth and ends up looking like a white Michael Jackson (that was back in the days before "White Michael Jackson" was such a redundancy), or how ONCE AGAIN Stan Lee pops up in a guest shot in a book we review (And why is he always so evil?)

• Enjoy Byrne/Austin here ... and suffer the inside art
  

*Boom Boom makes her first appearance in Secret Wars 2 #5. I called Bob Rozakis night and day at his home number, trying to figure out how much a mint edition copy would get me. He would just say stuff like "Professor Zoom, the reverse-Flash, is Eobard Thawne" and "Man-Bat #1 is worth thirty cents in good condition" and "Leave me alone or I'll have you arrested."

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Human Fly

Edit: I know, and my face is redder than Rick Rojatt's - despite my skepticism and harsh words, the Human Fly was a real guy. I feel like a dope, but nonetheless, here's the article as it originally appeared...


Eep Eep! All hail Brak! Um ... hold on, wait a minute, I'm not Brak I'm ... well, at my best guess, I'm a weightlifting orangutan in a Beatles wig. All hail DC's line of G-ed up Science Fiction comics. I appeared in an issue of Mystery in Space or Strange Adventures or Spacey Weirdness or Galactic What The Hell? or something or other as an alien creature in an interplanetary zoo! And what made the rubes line up to see my act? The innate human curiosity to see an orangutan in a Beatles wig lift weights. Come on, admit it, you'd wanna see it too.

After the zoo folded, most of us got sold to labs for cosmetic experiments. Not me, though ... after all, I'd spent my time in captivity buffing up and shooting steroids. I tore through my captors like I was busting through a soggy napkin. Their gory entrails stained my orange pelt a brackish red. All hail Brackish Red! Since then, I've shaved myself and now I compete on the Weider circuit. I'll see you at the next Arnold Classic! But until then, we present...

By gum, it's yet another Fantastic First Issue from Seventies Marvel ... well, actually, according to the cover, it's a "First Fantastic Issue," implying that other fantastic issues will be following. Ha ha, this is a lie.

This is the Human Fly, the character promoted as "The Wildest SUPER-HERO Ever -- Because He's REAL!" "Real" being comic book code for "Pretty much we largely made him up just about in entirety."

The premise of the series is that an anonymous young man is involved in a terrible car accident which apparently shatters every bone in his body, to judge from the full body cast he's shown in immediately afterwards. Despite being told by doctors (whose bedside manner could use some work) that he's going to be a cripple for the rest of his life, the Fly spends every waking hour rebuilding his body through secret exercises, until not only does he return to his former state of health, but he develops amazing additional new agility and strength. Oh, and the doctors gave him a steel skeleton.

Which means he can't produce platelets anymore, and he's gonna die if he ever gets cut. But I digress.

Deciding to be symbol for the disabled, he collects assistants from the ranks of other accident victims. This includes Ted Locke, a brilliant engineer who lost his hands in an explosion while trying to save a woman and child from a bridge he'd rigged to explode. Um ... oh, and this was in the Vietnam War, so it wasn't just a case of Ted blowing up bridges for no reason. Anyway, having lost his will to live (and his HANDS, ha ha!), Ted is given a cause to fight for when the Fly recruits him for his team. I like Ted because he has claws for hands. Raar!

Then there's Kendall Blaze, the beautiful and daring pilot whose terrible disability is ... that ... um ... well, she doesn't have any. But, she WAS in a terrible accident, and ALSO had her confidence shattered, and was even in one of those full body casts for a while, so she counts. Kendall's backstory was that she was a co-pilot on a commercial airliner which went into a vicious dive when the pilot - a misogynist who didn't put much faith in female co-pilots - had a sudden heart attack and collapsed. Kendall pulls the plane out of its dive at the last second, and although it still crashes, there isn't a single loss of life. Except the pilot, I guess, whose heart exploded at 15,000 feet. Unfortunately, they don't clarify that point for us.

Looking back on the thing, I'm not precisely sure why the plane had to crash in the first place. The pilot had a heart attack, and then the plane went into a dive, and Kendall crashed it. Maybe she does suck at flying. Nonetheless, this does lead to my favorite two-panel
transition in the history of comics. Panel One, Pilot says 'You know, I don't believe a lady pilot can fly a plane," Panel Two, Pilot says "Oh Christ, my heart!" HAHAHA!

The Fly and his team (including ever-so-Yiddish publicity agent Arnie Berman, whose endless use of the word "boychik" makes me want to pummel Bill Mantlo to death) are bedevilled by investigative reporter Harmony Whyte, who has a name more suited to getting dollars stuffed in her pants than in anchoring a news program. Harmony is dedicated to finding out the Fly's true identity, ostensibly so she can reveal him for the glory-hungry hypocrite she suspects him to be ... and why finding out his real identity would help her do that, I dunno. I also have a hard time imagining her pitching this idea to her editor. "I need the company to expense me travel around the world with a full camera crew so I uncover the true identity of this guy who walks tightropes and jumps pools of fire. What's that? No, why would I want cover the hostage
crisis or the SALT talks? I've got a stunt man to expose!"

Author Bill Mantlo offers a text piece to explain the background and genesis of the Human Fly (As an aside, I always consider a text piece explaining the concept of the character to be a sign of trouble. Also, if the character drives around in an RV, that's trouble too. And if they have both ... well ...) He starts off with "The Human Fly is me," which to my mind kills all the suspense regarding the Fly's secret identity. Oh wait, there's more...

The whole text piece is done in earnest, Mantlo claiming straight-faced through the entire article that the comic was entirely based on the story of triumph personified by a "young Canadian man" who, like the fictional Fly in the comic, endured a crippling injury, overcame it, had his skeleton replaced
with a steel skeleton, then fought beside Spider-Man.

Mantlo really tries to sell the text piece, claiming that the real-world analog of the comic book character had been praised on television around the world, and had even landed the appellations "space-age daredevil" as well as "the living bionic man," and furthermore had been favorably compared to Spider-Man and Captain America (?) in the news media. Worse yet, he gives
the 'real-world' Fly actual quotes, such as "I've got 50,000,000 kids out there depending on me. I've got as lot of people to support...youngsters in hospitals, struggling against cancer, polio, cerebral palsy or whatever. I've got a lot of people to support."

Polio? Isn't that .... cured .... now? Ah, probably not back in '77 .... me, I had a cousin who suffered from 'whatever,' so I know how serious that is.

Mantlo is pretty freely mixing pop culture with urban legend and outright fiction, not to mention that he's trying way too hard to sell the 'real story' of the Fly in that damn text piece. Of course, the inspiration for the character is largely based on the attention-seeking daredevils who populated the airwaves
and newspapers in the late Seventies ... see "Real People" and "That's Incredible!" for a plethora of examples ... along with a real-life inspirational story. Some of our more veteran (By which I mean "Old") readers will remember
the news stories of a young man, crippled by only possessing one leg, undertaking a cross-country run for the purpose of showing the world what the disabled could really do ... and that man's name? Of course, it was ... Forrest Gump.

The Fly is surely the most earnest super-hero of the Marvel Universe, as he lays all his motivational cards on the table
at every possible opportunity."After expenses, any money I make goes to charity ... to help the disabled." he tells the tv cameras on more than one occasion. Likewise, the Fly is focused on creating an example for others survivors of deabilitating accidents. And this is hard to make fun of, so I won't. But moving on ...

Art chores on the series were provided in part by Lee Elias, well-known to Golden Age enthusiasts for his Black Cat work. I really love Lee Elias' work, and I'm only sad that the Human Fly never gave one-page tips on performing "Judo Tricks."

Seventy-Seven, the year of the Fly's debut, is also about the same time that Marvel created regionalistic super-hero Captain Britain for its Marvel UK comics line. Considering that as well as the Fly's Canadian origin and distinctive white-and-red costume, I can't help but wonder if he was intended to be a regionalistic Canadian hero. I find myself thinking about this somewhat idly, but even so I propose that the baton was a concession to French-Canadian interests. Ha ha.

On a costume note, I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what doesn't work on the Fly's costume. The flared gloves might be a little much, also the extravagant caplet or the bizarre white piping that bisects his body at several points. Or it could be the the flared eyehole designs which make him look like he's wearing immense albino fake eyelashes. Or the baton. Probably the baton.

Actually, the two things which stand out for me are the rocket design on his belt (why a rocket? What does a rocket have to do with being a human fly? I'm so confused) and the fact that, in closeups, the Fly is pretty clearly wearing Chuck Taylor's Converse All-Stars canvas tennis shoes.

Most puzzling to me is that the Fly had two guest stars in his first two issues, but only one of them gets any cover credit at all, much less an appearance. The two guest stars in question were Spider-Man and the Ghost Rider, and the guy who gets the cover appearance is ... Ghost Rider. Spidey plays a pretty pivotal role in the climax of the first issue, but not only doesn't show up on the cover, he isn't even mentioned on the cover. in fact, there's no HINT from the cover that there's even a guest star in that issue, much less Marvel's flagship character. So much for Marvel's merry marketing machine ...

The only final note I can think to leave you on in terms of Human Fly is the fact that Bill Mantlo, at one point in the third issue, referred to the Fly as a "manchild." That's a term you don't usually hear without the words "lumbering" or "hapless" preceding it.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Kitty Pryde and Wolverine

Greetings true believers, I am 3-D MAN! In the 1950's I defended
America's shores from alien ... uh ... alien ... whoa, sorry, but if you could just see what you look like. You're coming right at me! It's amazing!
Anyway, I was a Roy Thomas creation from the pages of Marvel Premiere, and ever since ... dude, okay, serious, I just happened to look at the TV over there. It's totally freaked out! It's, like, not just colors, but its all, like, wheeeeeeoooooo, wheeeeeeeeo.
Sorry. So, in the 70's .... No WAY! Come check out this wallpaper! It's totally like FLOATING off the wall! Dude, come here, I wanna check out that old plaid shirt I got last Christmas from my aunt Edna. WHOA! Check it out! It's totally like it's all freaked out! This is insane! Who needs television, man, when you got 3-D glasses. Shit. This is totally fucked up.

Uh ....

Oh yeah, here's this month's G&F ...

Let me set the stage for you.

I'm 19, just entering college, and like a lot of kids that age I've grown disillusioned with comics. So I drop by the local shop with a longbox or two full of books for sale - including every X-Men comic and spinoff they'd produced since I was in short pants.

The shop owner was happy, gave me a good price, and therefore I was happy too. Walking out of the store that day, I carried only two things: a check worth a couple months rent and living expenses, and a bag containing the six-issue miniseries Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, which the owner declined to buy.

"No problem," thought I, "It's an X-book. I can sell it eventually."

Anyway, it's damn near ten years later and here it is. I can't GIVE these issues away - literally; every Halloween I give out comics as well as candy to the neighborhood kids, and some of those little shavers have REFUSED this book.

Once I'm done with this article, I'm gonna light these issues on fire.

If you were anything like most readers of this crappy miniseries, you spent every month waiting for the next issue - - - so Wolverine could do something COOL! Apparently, that happened in issue seven. As for the first six ...

Okay, the back story. KP&W was one of the first few X-Men related miniseries - I believe it was preceded by Magik, Wolverine and X-Men/Micronauts, the latter of which sounds like I made it up, but I didn't. This was back in the day before EVERY comic on the stands was an X-Men spinoff, so it actually seemed kind of special.

Magic words were provided by longtime X-Men scribe Chris Claremont and, boy, can you ever tell it. Claremont's trademark "hiccuping dialogue" peppered the book. "Are you hurt, punkin?" New balloon "No" new balloon "Only" new balloon "my pride" I wish I could talk like that.

Art was inexplicably provided by longtime Marvel staffer Al Milgrom, who I guess wanted to buy a houseboat or something; back in those days, a Wolverine or Batman miniseries or one-shot was a veritable Golden Ticket, considering the going page rate and commission. So, even though Al's style is … well, let's be kind to him (After all, the man's a hell of an editor and
cleanup inker) … unsuited to the fan-favorite, industry leading X-Men,
his brush gets to brutally assault two of Marvel's most popular characters.
I'm assuming he pulled some rank.

Claremont's often serpentine plotlines were never so impenetrable as when he indulged his Wolverine-as-Samurai angle, and - oh goody - guess what the plot of this series was? Goes something like this --- but only "something like" …

Kitty Pryde - perennial perky phantasmic pre-teen (sorry, she's "thirteen and a half") of the X-Men and one of Marvel's more popular mutants - returns to her home in Illinois for a Winter break and a heartfelt musing over her current, dire situations. To start with, she's a mutant, and in the Marvel Universe that seems to be most mutants' major problem: you know, being hounded and hunted and hated and such. If that weren't bad enough - and for many of Marvel's underdeveloped legions of homo superior, it has to be - add the fact that her parents are getting a divorce AND that her long-time love interest Colossus - the Russian X-Man and statutory rapist six years her senior - apparently finally fell in love with someone his own damn age.

This means Kitty is free to choose between Bill Wyman, Jerry Lee Lewis or Jerry Seinfeld.

Anyway, Kitty's banker father falls behind on a loan from the Yakuza, and gets kidnapped to Japan. Kitty follows the nefarious stereotypes to their headquarters, only to eventually be captured by Ogun, an ageless, supernatural samurai who once was mentor to Marvel's number one marketing tool, Wolverine.

So while Ogun is hypnotizing Kitty into being his ninja-slave-assassin, Logan comes to Japan to join in the fray. And if Wolvie is in Japan, that means one thing and one thing only - absurdly convoluted cast of supporting characters and backstory! Let's go!

So there's some evil samurai and Yakuza, Logan's old fiancee Mariko and her adopted daughter, plus olvie's old dorobo flame Yukio, plus some plotlines presumably from the Wolverine miniseries, but even research couldn't penetrate the smoky veil of this story.

The end result is that Kitty Pryde goes grim(mish) and gritty(ish) in the guise of ShadowCat (for some damn reason) which she still holds this day, and Ogun is defeated and Kitty's dad is … I don't know, I couldn't make heads nor tails out of the embezzlement/money laundering plot. In any case, it's also obtusely hinted that Wolverine was in fact the famous Japanese ronin Miyamoto Mushashi. Which makes him something like four-hundred years old, Japanese, and dead.

Which is what I wish these comics were. BURN! BURN!

KP&W is universally the most loathed of all X-men books, especially to judge by the survey results which list it as the NUMBER ONE comic most folks wanted to see here. Green Team
came in second. A distant second.

•One of the thematically bisected covers for this crap
•Kitty stabs Wolverine through the heart, and makes Al drop his brush
•The sacred blade is drawn ... poorly.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: US 1

"Hi friendly friends! My name is Bat-Mite, but you can call me by my real name ... Delirium Tremens."

"I've got solid money down that most of you remember me - yep, I was that pesky imp who idolized Batman and would cause no end of hilarious hi-jinks when I'd teleport in from my magical Fifth Dimension to aid my pointy-eared buddy in his unending fight against crime."

"HAHA! No, seriously, I'm just the natural result of an obsessive personality's inevitable slide towards mental enfeeblement. I'm an hallucination of the highest degree! Batman's been so on edge ever since that Parricide thing that you can bet he's seeing little, magical, floating Truman Capote's in every shadowy corner. Yeah, the guy's nuts. Never mind that thing he's got, dressing like Dracula and scaring the Hell out of derelicts and hobos - you should see some of the stuff he's totally repressed about Robin ... all three of 'em."

---

Amazingly, this book was NOT written by Gerry Conway. I know. I can hardly believe it myself.

So come take a little journey with us. It's 1983 and Marvel Comics - flushed on the success of top-selling fan favorite X-Men, critically accalimed Epic titles and a string of lucrative liscensed books - is adroitly attempting to cash in on the trucking and CB craze which swept America .... five years previous. Ten-Four good buddies!

Running twelve issues, US1 follows the adventure of U.S.Archer and his amazing cybernetic big rig US1 as they travel down US Highways and USe restrooms and the USual stuff all across the USA. U See?

US1 was something like Speed Racer with wide loads, from the assortment of vehicle-oriented villains right down to the family connection. In fact, like Speed's brother Racer X, US's brother Jeff was a mysteriously-clad driver whose path continually crossed with his brother's. The only difference was that, in his disguise as the Highwayman and driving the "devil-truck" Blackrig, Jeff was trying to off his brother.

The rest of the cast included US and Jeff's adoptive folks, the tragically nicknamed "Wide-Load Annie," and her husband "'Poppa' Wheelie.' Get it? 'Poppa' Wheelie. HAHAHAHA. Also part of the crew were US's dense mechanic friend Retread (No, not Retard), short order cook and love interest Mary McGrill and femme fatale Taryn O'Connell....

Hey, waitaminnit. Taryn O'Connell? What does THAT name have to do with BIG RIGS!? Whu- why - it's not a lame pun at all! It's -- its .... oh wait, sorry ... her nickname is "Taryn Down The Highway." My mistake.


As to the story, following a near-fatal run-in with his disguised brother and that darn "devil-truck," US has a metal plate installed in his skull - turns out the thing can pick up and receive short wave broadcasts, and so US1 disturbingly christens it his "CB Skull." With that and his rig, US takes on adventure all across the nations, including more run-ins with the Highwayman, races with competing drivers (inlduing Taryn) and a confrontation with the deadly, "hypno-whip" wielding Midnight - secretly a possessed Mary McGrill turned evil.

In between attempts by the legal team of Clutch, Grab and LeGreed (sigh) to foreclose on Poppa and Wide Load's diner (The Short Stop), US is visited by the representative of an alien federation seeking an Terran trucker to represent our humble little world in civilized space. In a final issue blowout, pencilled by guest artist Steve Ditko, US and Jeff race for the privilige of being the first intergalactic errand boy (eat THAT, Futurama). Ultimately, and obviously, the race ends with US as the victor and the entire cast - minus a suddenly repentant and solemn Taryn O'Connell - moving to the fringes of known space - where I would have stranded them at the beginning of the first issue, but that's just me.

Never mind the more curious parts of the final story, such as US1 being fitted to operate as a space vehicle, or the inexplicably savage and totally unjustified sibling rivalry between Jeff and US, or the alien with the barely perceptible but often mentioned trucker-lingo-laced accent; I'll always remember US1 for one line of dialogue, uttered by Jeff as he pilots into space, and one which I feel describes the greater portion of comics published annually:

"No! I don't like it! It's too big, too dark! And it makes my stomach hurt!"

• An ending like you never expected
• This is pretty much pure Ditko
• The Majesty of space. Gosh!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: 2001

Note: Keep in mind, I originally wrote this one in early 2002 - Your Humble Ed.

Hello earth-dwelling mud worms, I am MODOK ... no, wait, sorry, the air's a little thin this high up in the stratosphere, and it makes me loopy every now and again. I meant to say that I am the super-evolved 2001 Space Baby, not to be confused with the 2001 New Year's eve baby. First off, I am not a chubby cheeked cherub bedecked in diaper and year-bearing sash whose youthful ebullience seems to portend an upcoming year of renewed hopes and dreams. Secondly, I can destroy your brain with my space rays! BAM! SPLAT! Haha, I love that bit.

Anyway, with the closing days of the year upon us, I bring you
one honkin' big monolith of a weird-ass comic. And speaking of monoliths, I've been meaning to tell you - me and the other super-omniscient mysterious
forces of universal inscrutability must've left about a MILLION of those freaking monoliths lying around your planet, all over the place, just waiting for you to stumble across them and get all evolved and shit. And you dirt-jockeys DIDN'T FIND A SINGLE ONE! I personally put on
in the Mall of America with my own two hands, so I don't know what your problem was.

Anyway, 2001's over, so you lost out. Enjoy not being an all powerful Space Baby, I'm off to peek into the girls' shower on Rigel-4 ...

With the last few days of 2001 looming upon us - and no damn monolith in sight yet, screw you for lying to us, Arthur C Clarke - I thought it was a good time to get on to that review of the comic version of 2001 I'd been telling myself to do all year. SO I hunted down the individual issues - briefly puzzled over why I had three copies of the first ish - and set down to read them, coming across my first crisis of conscience in the history of this feature.

But first, to the backstory ... It's 1976, and Marvel releases the first issue of 2001:A Space Odyssey, with Jack Kirby helming the project. Thankfully not a movie adaptation, the series is actually some sort of thematic spin-off, initially telling stories
revolving around human beings who are suddenly and unexpectedly visited by the Monolith, and later telling the story of a purple robot with stretchy arms - which is SO Clarke's vision for the concept, I bet. Vive le difference.

You KNOW that Kirby had to be drooling at the idea of tackling this project, which admittedly fares a lot better than some of his other work for Marvel around the same period (Anyone want to debate for the Eternals? I thought
not). Here we've got a story about an enigmatic and omnipresent force which visits humans in the midst of important turning points in their personal and social evolution, and MAKES 'EM INTO SPACE BABIES! That's Kirby writ large, my friends.

So I read these things, and it leads to my earlier-mentioned
crisis of conscience - specifically, that they're not that bad. In fact, on more than one occasion, while ENJOYING the stories, I had to remind myself that I was reviewing these to lambast 'em on the site.

Such is my burden.

The stories work pretty well, particularly if you look at them as dipping into the tradition of the pulp era of Science Fiction stories and such writers as Ray Bradbury of Arthur C Clarke himself. The driving theme of the book - for most of its run, until Machine Man appeared and the feel of the book changed dramatically - was of human beings driven by desire and a deep sense of destiny meeting the monolith, and thereby becoming space babies. Vive le space babies.



The series is a fun read almost entirely because it's Kirby at the wheel, but this stuff is honestly not his best. Most hampering to the whole project is the fact that the dialogue keeps swinging back to the monolith, and to how human beings chase larger destinies, and then how eventually they change to space babies. In fact, the story keeps kind of changing course every five pages, I guess to simulate the format of the last few minutes of the film which inspired the stories. On top of that, Kirby had a way of using stilted language to emphasize that you were dealing with cosmic forces, and that way was to be fucking bizarre and confusing and to sort of make you feel small in comparison to the universe by the tried and true method of being largely baffling and non-euclidian.

This book was indeed space baby intensive. It was also, despite the fact that I DID enjoy it in the long run, really-hard-to-understand-intensive. And what made it even more confusing was that I started to read that one ad where Spider-Man and Captain America ride giant toy cars through a fakey net to save the president, or something, and I TOTALLY DIDN'T REALIZE THAT WASN'T PART OF THE STORY! Save us, Cap and Spidey! Break the web that covers Washington DC, and touch the monolith, and become space Spider-baby and space Captain America-baby!

Anyway, besides what can be called "occasionally trying dialogue," it also hurts the story a lot to compare it to the original film and book. When I read about Harvey Norton, citizen of New York 2040 AD, and about how he spends his free time pretending to be a super hero in a live action theme
park, then becomes an astronaut after a disappointing day at Coney Island, and rescues a big headed alien lady from big headed alien men and they go to a place where there's a thing, and then she goes far away and he dies, and he becomes a real super hero and then he gets real old and he dies, and then he's a SPACE BABY ... well, it makes me reminisce about Clarke's moralistic epic, and any comparison drawn is not flattering.

2001-the-comic didn't have much in the way of a regular cast, if you exclude the monolith and - you know - space babies. One issue would feature a clever neanderthal (in Kirby-speak, NEO-MAN) who hunted alone from his pack, the next a Bronze Age warrior seeking domination of a world, and the next CAPTAIN AMERICA AND SPIDER-MAN RIDING ROCKET CARS! VROOOM! All seeking the monolith to push them to the next stage of their evolution ... well, except Spidey and Cap, who sought Hostess Fruit Pies with which to beat villains.

Eventually, the book grows its very own recurring character,
just in time to end the series as a whole.

The series both picks up and starts to fall the hell apart around about the point they decide to change the format, switching it from a charmingly incoherent series about people talking to closet doors into a series about ... well, a Kirby hero. With all the glory and gaudiness that represents. God bless
'em.

Mister Machine debuts, known better to us now as Machine Man and not known to us at all back then whatsoever. The long and short of the story is that Mister Machine is actually military destroying-things-robot X-51, the last one of his project to be destroyed. They have to be eliminated, you see, because they tend to start questioning their purpose in existing, and then start beating the holy fuck out of everybody, making them dangerous. Indeed, I did the same during my first few weeks of Western Philosophy 101, Freshman year.

X-51 is special and totally-not-apeshit-and-killing-everybody because he was taken into the home of Professor Stack, head super-genius (but not space-baby) of Project Create-Robots-That-Destroy-Shit. Prof. Stack gives X-51 an identity, a warm and loving home, a sense of purpose, and a shiny purple jumpsuit. Despite his not-killing-everybody-and-being-apeshit status (and I think that'll be the last time I use the 'joined by hyphens' gag in this article), the military decides that X-51 better be blown up, but good, and begin pursuing him as he rushes into the real world.


Formula abounds as X-51, now calling himself Mister Machine ("I'm in mechanics," LOL) is sort of adopted by a young boy named Jerry, becomes part of a small family unit, and is pursued by an obese Green Hornet lookalike and devil-worshipper by name of Hotline. In fact, the series SO takes a twist away from the 2001 premise that X-51 actually tells the monolith to go jump in a lake, or words to that effect. Well, by
"to that effect" I mean "Not at all like that," but the message is clear:

"The monolith better go soak its head, Machine Man's on the scene!"

So the monolith disappears, Machine Man takes over the book, and there's no longer any reason to call the book by its current name, but we can't change history (We just become phantoms if we go back and try. And if you get the joke, you're a fucking geek). Eventually, Mister Machine ends up fighting - of all things - SATAN, who wants his ... mechanical soul .. .to learn how to ... subvert everyone's will ... and Mister Machine is dissected ... but his body parts attack his captors ... and ... um ... the ellipses represent that I don't understand what the hell is going on in this comic whatsoever.

And this is 2001:A Space Odyssey, the comic book. Much like 2001:The Real Goddamn Year, it started off fine, then made no sense, totally baffles everyone who lived through it, and sort of makes everybody sad until they realize that irony really isn't all that dead. Or at least, that's how I came out of it, you all may have different stories. And those stories may end with
you becoming space babies, which is great for you, but please resist the urge to share ...

•Your sticktuitiveness is your most admirable quality, Roy.
•The Con turns ugly.
•HUG ME, YOU RAT BASTARDS!
•Split!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Contest of Champions

What do you think of when you think of the Eighties? Big hair? Skinny ties? Family Ties?Awakening to strange, new urges while watching Van Halen's “Hot for Teacher” music video?Well NOT ME, no sir, I think of MARVEL SUPER-HERO CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS!(Haha, no I don't, I think of the Van Halen's “Hot For Teacher” video. Just like you)

Ooooh, it's one of those orange-flavored
chocolate balls! I love those things!

Contest of Champions was Marvel's premiere super-hero gangbang long before Secret Wars and the inevitable, all-inclusive, annual X-Men crossovers. Released in the Summer of 1982, the series was actually originally intended as a Marvel Treasury Edition (you remember those things, don't you? Oversized comics which were largely reprints and stood about half-as-tall as the average comics reader of the day. You could build a tree house with a half-dozen of the damn things and a stapler) meant to coincide with the 1980 Olympics. Or, you know, to replace …

For those of you weak on your Cold War playground politics, the USA (and five dozen other countries, but we're not talking about their self-indulgent comic book crossovers here) boycotted the Olympics, which were taking place in Moscow that year. In return, the Soviets and more than a dozen of their frat brothers boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Besides upending the playing field in favor of the host countries and earning each super-power enough gold medals at their respective events to make Richie Rich wet himself and fall down weeping, it also sort of soured the plans to release Contest of Champions as an unofficial Olympic tie-in.

"...Flamboyant Atomic Samurai?" Did Sunfire
write this himself?

So the whole thing got re-imagined as this self-proclaimed innovation called a “Limited Series!” There's an eidtorial blurb in the back of the first issue, touting Marvel's ingenuity at bringing the reading public a dynamic new series of comics which run a “finite” number of issues. This is as opposed to those comics which are running an infinite number of issues (PS - I understand that Fantastic Four #309,876,291 will be a special nine-cent promotional issue).

So YAY Marvel ingenuity, YAY dynamic new concepts, YAY - hold I, did I say Dynamic Concepts? I must've, cause to be fair, Marvel's competitor DC had already DONE the mini-series, as early as 1979, when Contest of Champions was only a glimmer in Marvel's editorial eye. The Distinguished Competition (I always hated that smarmy, too-clever moniker) had already released World of Krypton, as well as The Krypton Chronicles, The Phantom Zone, The Untold Legend of Bat-Man and Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes by the time C of C hit the stands.

Would ... would one really be better
than the other, Iron Man?

Oh, but wait, those're MINI-series, not LIMITED series! My bad! Carry on, Marvel …

So anyway, enough geo-political swaggering and funny book semantics, this isn't some sort of retarded McLaughlin Group (Actually, yes, yes it is).

C of C comes to us courtesy of the Dudley Boys of early Eighties comic writing: Steven Grant, Bill Mantlo and cruiserweight underdog Mark Gruenwald. This might be a lot of cooks for one stew, but outside of Roy Thomas, I can't think of anyone I'd rather have handling this glorious mess.

After a splash page exposition (and there will be a LOT of splash pages in this thing), letting us in on the fact that cosmic muck-a-muck The Grandmaster and a mysterious peer of his are engaging in a high-stakes game using the super-heroes of Earth, we find ourselves at Avengers Mansion. The local roster of Earth's Mightiest Heroes are about to get swept off, along with the rest of Marvel's superheroic spandex set, to the cosmic waiting room set up by Grandmaster and his pal in the floor-length hoody, but for now they're working out. Wonder Man's lifting weights, Beast and Wasp are jumping around, Vision and Iron Man are jogging …

Hold up.

Comics were stupid before this, and continued to
be stupid afterwards, but this moment of stupidity
holds a very special place in my heart, no doubt.

This one always stops me cold. See, Vision's an android, right? Mechanical, pretty much. So he doesn't really have muscles or a cardiovascular system, so jogging can't do much for him. And Iron Man, that peckerwood's got a robot jumpsuit that does all his heavy lifting for him. Thus I ask: JOGGING? Come the fuck on, people.

Anyway, the Avengers and all of Earth's other heroes are swept up by cosmic rays and transported to the Grandmaster's Cosmic Game Dome (renamed OfficeMax Arena two years ago), and apparently in such a way that it appears to have made the Falcon cry.

What follows is several pages of characters walking around and introducing themselves to each other, and the readers. Since there're so many goddamn super-heroes in this story, we get some wonderful dialogue exchanges, as everyone tries to find an excuse to use each others' names. It goes a little something like this:

Captain America: “IRON MAN, what's happened?”

Iron Man: “I don't know, CAPTAIN AMERICA. THE VISION and I were going to ask MACHINE MAN if he knew!”

Vanguard: “DARKSTAR, URSA MAJOR and I, VANGUARD, of the SOVIET SUPER SOLIDERS would also like to know! Let's ask our friends IKARIS and FIREBIRD!”

Ant-Man: “Sure, NAMOR, SPIDER-WOMAN, HAWKEYE, DR.STRANGE and THE THING were just asking SASQUATCH, RED WOLF, THE TEXAS TWISTER, BROTHER VOODOO and the pre-natal POWER PACK if they had any ideas!”

Iron Man: “And what was their answer ANT-MAN? Or didn't even REED RICHARDS of the FANTASTIC FOUR know?”

Thundra: “I, Thundra, have mighty strength greater than any man's!”

All: (pause)

Thundra: “Uhh … oh, such as THOR, STINGRAY, or … shit, I dunno, THE PROWLER! That guy, in the cape, whoever he is! That's the Prowler, right? Sorry guys.”

Whoops, Hulk farted!

Eventually, Hulk neglects to go apeshit and kill anyone, and the meet-and-greet settles down. Grandmaster and Darth Vader spill the rules, which are that each of them will pick twelve representatives from the gathered heroes of Earth, who will compete against one another in contests to locate the four segments of some big damn magic space-globe. Four segments. So it's best … three out of four, I guess, and in the case of a tie, it comes down to dodgeball.

Daredevil, you ASS!

So we're off to the races, and the entirety of the next issue and a good part of issue three are spent following eight teams of heroes at the four corners of the globe searching for galactic lemon wedges. We start off with Invisible Girl, Sunfire and Iron Fist up against Daredevil, Darkstar, and an aboriginal Australian superhero name of Talisman. You ever notice that Australian super heroes tend to be aboriginal? Considering what little I know of certain problems in that part of the world, I'd be one nervous white Australian if all my super-humans had been here before great-grandpa's ship docked. Imagine if the only folks who could chew steel and spit nuts and bolts in the U.S. were the same folks wondering who the pasty people in the funny hats at Plymouth Rock were …

Anyway, this first battle led me to repeat a mantra over and over in my head: namely, SHUT UP DAREDEVIL! The Man Without Fear is also The Man With Too Much Exposition Going On. His thought balloons, through the course of the story, fill us in that he's no longer in the space arena, Darkstar's a young woman, Sunfire's taking off, having people around confuses his radar sense, he's blind, he HAS radar sense, it's cold in the arctic, his dad was a boxer, the ice confuses his radar sense, the ice no longer confuses his radar sense, the water confuses his radar sense, SOMETHING confuses his radar sense, he has to concentrate, the prize is being lifted from his hands, and SHUT UP DAREDEVIL!

Well ... maybe I wanna

be your friend, baby,

know what I mean?

First round to Grandmaster's team, now we're off to some western Ghost Town where She-Hulk, Captain Britain and El Defensor face off against Sabra, Iron Man and the Arabian Knight. Sabra and the Knight get into a little snit here, because of the historic differences between Israel and … Arabian. Notice, however, that Sabra apparently has no problem being on the same team as BLITZKRIEG, a German superhero actually named after a Nazi war tactic! SURE WHY WOULD SHE??

Anyway, this one's got the hotbed of poltical and social activism at work, which is sort of a theme running through the series - you'll note, of course, the rather famous (as far as this site's concerned, anyway) casual confrontation between Shamrock and Captain Britain on the waiting room floor. Well, this chapter not only has Arabian Knight and Sabra acting like an old married couple, but Arabian Knight and Captain Britain through a few back and forth, and for the heck of it, She-Hulk and Sabra wax on male chauvanism. For an eight-year old, this is heady poltical awareness. Also, it's killing a couple panels before someone gets zapped by mind lasers POW POW BAWOOOM!!!

Arabian Knight colects one for "The Unknown's" team, and we're in China with Vanguard, Angel and Black Panther up against the Thing, Le Peregrine and Wolverine.

What's French for "Tool?" Le Tool?

Now, Grandmaster, he's supposed to be the universe's consummate gamer, right? Like, there's no sentient being in the universe with more strategic and gambling experience under his belt, he really knows how to pick his players and hedge his bets, right? So he had his pick of all of Earth's heroes - Thor, the Eternals, the Inhumans, all the Avengers, Fantastic Four and X-Men - and he chose for his team -- the French guy who can fly, Le Peregrine.

CAN'T THEY ALL FLY? I mean, like, EVERY SUPER HERO EVER? Even the Atom can FLOAT, MAN! Sure, the Unknown picked the Angel, whose sole power at the time was ALSO flight, but why would you need to merely balance out the flying guy? Nighthawk has wing lasers, Dr.Strange can shoot mystic bolts out his ass, Namor's got super-strength, as does Wonder Man and Quasar and and and ... so anyway, yes, Peregrine and the Angel sure do indeed fight one another, and their sole contribution to this match was to get out of the way and let the other four GOOD PICKS do their job.Batroc the Leaper would've been better ...

Anyway, Thing wrecks a Chinese landmark for the sake of the Grandmaster, and we're off to the Amazon where Sasquatch, Captain America, and the wonderfully named Blitzkrieg - who I'm sure was really popular at those international gatherings of super-heroes - face off against Collective Man, Storm and Shamrock.

"...which I will do over here, far away from you two maniacs."

So, yeah, one second. Why exactly, I have to ask, did Grandmaster put the enormous shaggy creature who actually lives and operates in the frozen tundra of Canada - that's Sasquatch I'm talking about - in the fight in the AMAZON, while he sent a blind dude and a near-naked Australian magician to the North Pole? And for that matter, wouldn't the Collective Man, China's national hero, actually have had a home field advantage in the battle in China? Like I find myself asking most Monday nights, WHO BOOKED THIS CRAP?

Collective Man, for you fans of state-controlled birth allowance facts, has a really amusing power for a Chinese national - he's actually five identical quintuplets who can merge into one being. My guess is, you're a set of Chinese quintuplets, you LEARN to merge into one solitary baby boy FAST.

So anyway, besides being a national embarassment for all of Ireland, Shamrock also proves her use by basically dooming Captain America to death, and then grabbing the last magic lemon wedge for the Grandmaster's team! HOORAY! We were all rooting for the Grandmaster the whole time!

We get back to the intergalactic Staples Center where Grandmaster, having won, gets to have his brother The Collector brought back to life, as a prize. Well that's nice. Oh, but it turns out his unknown peer is Marvel's persistent cosmic hottie DEATH, and the only way she'll allow Grandmaster to return his brother to life is if he sacrifices his own life!

This image is ... disturbingly erotic,

and I really can't put my finger on why...

And the heroes of Earth react to this by ... standing back and letting it happen. hey, I'd be reluctant too, probably more than a little pissed off. Imagine, especially, if you're the Eternals or Inhumans, and you got sucked all the way across space just to sit in a room with a bunch of roid-tards in sweaty spandex and the Hulk babbling about kitties or bubble gum or something, and Machine Man's trying to get everyone to sing-along or have a dance party because he's trying to understand our difficult human concept of 'rocking out,' and in the end it's all only to just be sent home at the end. Yeah, fuck you too, Grandmaster, I'm glad you're dead!

So anyway, that is legitimately the end of the story - the super-heroes I guess esort of in their own way if you kind of look at it askew and squint a little .. WON! I guess. Ah, what the hell, it was neat to see Wolverine almost kill whole bunches of folks ...

In the back of each issue, there were abbreviated biographies for Marvel's super-heroic roster of the time, from Acroyear to Wonder Man. Most likely the larvel stage of information available for the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, which follows a year or so after C of C, the bios are cursory but pretty complete. They've generally got the hero's real name, civilian profession, nationality, very very brief description of their origin and powers, current whereabouts and first appearance. Indispensible stuff for the obsessive comic geek of the day, it was. Take a look here at a sample entry:

H - hold on. Black American? Well ... hey, Black Goliath kind of sounds like a bad guy at first glance, so maybe it's necessary to indicate that the "Black" didn't refer to his character, right? Like, other black heroes weren't identified as ...

Okay, now ... I mean, I'm sure the ethnicities of other super heroes are mentioned. Sure, Golden Girl is listed as Japanese-American, White Tiger is clearly identified as Puerto Rican, and the caucasian heroes must have ...

Oh, now, hold on for realsies.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe #3

The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe - Deluxe Edition

One of my favorite comics of all time is issue three of The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe - Deluxe Edition. Seriously, it's right up there with that superhero toy catalog comic drawn by the Kubert Academy, so it's got illustrations of velvet Frank Frazetta blacklight posters and Mego Star Trek figures as rendered by Steve Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch.

I like it because it contains - moreso than any other volume of this series - some of the most appalingly horrid costume and character designs I've ever seen in comics. Let that sink in. EVEN BY COMIC BOOK STANDARDS, THESE DESIGNS ARE FUCKING HORRIBLE!

Admittedly, there are some classic designs in there, like the elegance of Daredevil's lines - uncomplicated by an embroidered pleather jacket, for crying out loud - or the regal imperiousness of Doctor Doom. And Darkstar of the Soviet Super Soldiers has a downright elegant, military-esque design - cause I gotta love me the vertical strip down the side of the leg.

But beyond those few selections, this book is amazing. I scanned in ten of the most outstanding freakshows - not all the bad costumes, just the ones which stood out, if you can believe it. I left out guys like the Controller, the Collector, and the Corrupter, who actually looks a lot like Nightcrawler at the Renaissance Fair. I even left out Doctor Demonicus, who is sort of all around - costume, character, gimmick and nemesis (Godzilla) - a total mess.

Cloud

Just so you know, you are indeed looking at what you think you're looking at here: A naked, underaged girl with wisps of tow obscuring her netherparts. If it makes you any more comfortable, though, she later one becomes a naked, underaged boy with cloudy protruberences hovering about his twig and berries. Or maybe the other way around, I can't recall. In any case, what's important to remember is that Cloud is actually for realsies an immense nebula of pre-stellar gasses which took human form to fight crime. Mm-hm, really. A magic box told him/her to do it. Mm-hm.

You know how sometimes I say hate comic books? Well, (A) I do and (B) that's why.

Adds my wife: "Man, that's a killer queef." Bam. haha honey, you win.

Colossus

Colossus is most famous, in comic book circles, for repeatedly nailing a 13-year old girl. Not to worry, he was only 19 at the time! Fuck! Chris Claremont, you retarded fuck. You know, the only time the other X-Men gave Colossus any shit for mowing that particular lawn was when he LEFT Kitty for a woman HIS OWN AGE. They gave him that retarded "You better not hurt her, bub" speech, meaning somehow after committing dozens of acts of statuatory rape and forcibly imprinting all over that kid's psyche, he should watch out for her feelings now...

So anyway, of COURSE this steel-plated pedophile has the dog collar outfit. Let's do a count - Neck, that's one, one on each knee and ankle, that's five, I think we can count the hefty bag plastic ties on his wrists as two ... that's seven ... you've been a bad girl, underage ladies, let Big Pyotr show you some discipline ...

Cottonmouth

Is it just me, or does calling a black guy "Cottonmouth" just SEEM like a racial epithet? I can't get over it ...

You have to love any costume which picks a theme and sticks with it til it dies or Jesus comes back. Cottonmouth's theme is "snake yaps," which he's got on his little purple beret, repeated in the flares on his gloves and boots, and then he's got a big evil snake face on his torso. I wonder if it looks like it's chewing gum when he does situps?

Cottonmouth's power, by the way, is that he can dislocate his jaw and eat you. SWEAR TO GOD! DC may eat a lot of shit for Matter Eater Lad (who I'm pretty sure was a Jerry Siegel creation, so to all his detractors allow me to say "Eat MY matter, you fucks!"), but at least Matter Eater Lad JUST ATE STUFF! Not people! Cottonmouth's OHOTMU-DE page even goes as far as to show a three-panel progressive diagram of his power in FULL EFFECT:

Notice that his little beret is designed to look like a snake with its mouth open. And then he ends up looking like a snake with his mouth open on his own. So what you end up with, at the denouement, is what looks like a big purple snake eating a black guy who's eating Captain America.

Crossfire

This guy's name is Crossfire. His real name is William Cross. I don't know if you can pick up on this really subtle character device, but this guy is really into crosses! It's totally his thing. It's what he does. He loves-a the crosses.

Major points to his nickel-chrome crucifix codpiece. "Protect me, o Lord, from all matter of groin injuries and savage Nut Monkeys, amen!"

Cyclops

Looking ... looking good there, Cyke. Very ... very leadership duds you got there. It's nice that your mom sewed in patches to keep your inner thighs from wearing out so fast.

SPECIAL FUN FACT: This is the only place this costume ever appeared - Cyclops was preparing for a run in X-Factor, and they hadn't quite settled on his new garb yet. This was used as an interim piece. MORE SPECIAL FUN FACTS: As there was an absence of images of Cyclops in this costume to use for his entry, images of Cyke in OTHER costumes were edited to reflect this monstrosity. Except the ones which John Byrne drew. That MEANS something, Gil Kane gets edited but John Byrne don't ...

Dazzler

Can you believe she was headlining her own book in this costume?

I'm no fan of Image Comics, but the one thing they DID do for the industry was put youth-aimed hipster costume and character design into the hands of people who were, y'know, actually young and hip. How many years prior to this were we getting the latest fashions for as perceived by 45-year old suits who had homes in Connecticut? This is why we still occasionally have common street thugs in comics dressed like the Fonz, or Johnny Rotten.

Anyway, nice asymmetry. If there's one thing the kids really like, it's spandex and assymetry. And fingerless gloves. And a headband. Oh, and that red band around her calf, it's not distracting, no-o-o-o-o.

Paul Chadwick didn't design this, did he? I have to punch my copies of Concrete if he did ...

Death-Throws

Man, check it out, just when you thought the Circus of Crime had covered all the clown super-villains you can manage ... These guys are jugglers, by the way. Criminal jugglers. One of them's even apparently a dwarf or something. I'll let you drink them in. Plus, you get a bit of Deathlok, the bugshit cyborg/mummy thing, as a bonus bad costume design up there in the corner...

The Scarlet Cameltoe

Haha, okay, she's actually "Diamondback," your 2001 World Series champs. I like how this costume has been specially created to make her hips and shoulders look enormous, while it makes her head and tits look like floating spheres. Also, nice stilettos. And flared gloves. Jesus, all that pink and sharp angles, you look like a gay street sign, honey.


Doc Samson

Speaking of which, how is it that Leonard Samson is a legitimate psychiatrist, but he doesn't know that he's flaming like a sack of crumpled newspaper? HOLY SHIT, NICE COSTUME MICHAEL JACKSON!

What makes it even better? That ain't short hair - that's a mullet! A corporate Eighties mullet! A coke dealing Yuppie fuck mullet! IT'S IN A PONYTAIL! YOU SUCK!

At least back in his original days, he had a corny retro-kitsch going on. I mean, he still looked like a total tool, but at least he looked like a tool who had a modicum of a sensayuma. Probably rocked out to Nugent in his van with the Frazetta painted on the side, and ten years later he's carrying a celphone and a briefcase and getting sucked off by prostitutes on a trading floor men's room stall ...

And finally ...

Doctor Druid

Only his footed pajames and indigo poncho could take Anthony's mind off of his tragic Male Pattern Baldness ...

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Marvels Unmasked

Your Humble G&F Editor, in his not-so-secret identity (Thanks, This American Life!), maintains hisself an online journal. Although the journal rarely touches on the topics of comics, I DID have an opportunity to dedicate an entry to a much-delayed and generally unintentional review of Marvels, the ground-breaking miniseries from Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross.

Before we get knee-deep in it, I'd like to point out that I considered myself quite a fan of the book, owned both the trade paperback collection and duplicate copies of the individual issues, and had pored over it extensively up to this point. What I hadn't done is take a look at it as hypercritically as I do the poor saps who end up on G&F.

Fatigue, a long weekend and enough alcohol to down a mule deer contributed to putting a new spin on what is arguably Busiek's defining work as a comics writer. It also contributed to the tone of the article. The not-nice tone. I called Busiek some names.

I swear, I'm really not a mean drunk. I just happen to be a bastard when sober.

In any case, the review proceeds, my apologies to Kurt and all offended for the whipping he takes, but the interpretation of the series stands. Ahoy, and enjoy ...

---

Had a chance this weekend to re-read Marvels, the much-ado-about comic which Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross helmed, back inna early 90's or so. It's not exactly Watchmen, or even "The Watchmen of its day," but I suppose it's still correct to call it "pivotal" since it spawned so many superhero stories told from the everyman's perspective (By which I mean "Everything Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid wrote after that, pretty much.")

For those of you who missed out, the book follows photojournalist Phil Sheldon through more'n three decades of living alongside and photographing super-heroes in action. Oh, and being outraged - OUTRAGED, I TELL YOU - at the lack of gratitude felt among the steak-and-potato set for the cape-and-cowl set.

I was impressed as hell when I read this thing the first time around. Alex Ross art aside (though I still think it woulda looked better on newsprint, retro-billy as I am), they did some interesting things - like the fact that Phil Sheldon's photographic portfolio is composed largely of famous covers and splash panels from assorted Marvel titles down the years, thus retroactively inserting him into these famous scenes and making him an essential element to their history. Also, that the mutant girl in issue two or three, I forget, is from this old EC Wally Wood story, but that's neither here nor there.

In any case, rereading it now, I find it pretty weak. Characters are one-dimensional, dialogue is flat, and I think it's inarguable that the whole story could have been told in a single issue. Mostly, though, this story is more of a superhero porno than Hustler comics ever was. If you'd like to see a comic fan whack off over his childhood idols (and adulthood idols, for that matter), this is the series for you.

Marvels spends an inordinate amount of time in abject idol worship. Whereas the dynamic established is between normal human and superhuman, the basic message of this book is "Anyone more powerful, glamorous or ostensibly superior to you should be lauded and glamorized without question or criticism." Or at least, "Fail to question authority, kids, anyone who claims to be working for your best interests deserves your undying gratitude!"

Let's face it, I love me some goddamn super-heroes. But in comic books, not real life, and there ain't no two ways about it. If they REALLY existed - and I'm talking about even established, captured-the-hearts-of-a-nation super-types existing, here - I'd be up in arms about 'em, presuming I found time to leave my bunker.

I mean, why exactly would I be head over heels for masked, anonymous vigilantes whose basic concept of 'justice' involves superceding or downright abusing three amendments to the Constitution? And should I be even more excited about the ones decked out in costumes promoting an ideology, or who represent the interests of a non-populist institution, all the while participating in public displays of force which one could only call "A tad intimidating?"

Top of my head, take Iron Man for example. Metal-headed motherfucker in question is the 'private bodyguard' of an old money playboy billionaire, and the head of security for his pet pocket multinational industrial munitions corporation - you know, the one with all the government contracts for developing weapons to be used by the top secret and wholly unaccountable espionage/anti-espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D.

And hey, not only is he this corporate errand boy for a war profiteer, he's also a member of an organization which has access to classified government documents worldwide, and on which he serves next to a ranking American military officer and living symbol of the national policy. Oh, but hey, he saved New York from that guy who erases stuff with his magic gloves, so I shouldn't suspect his motives.

Put any of these guys in real-life analogs, and is it any surprise that the hoi polloi in Marvels give no love to the Avengers? Say you had a team composed of a one-man arsenal under the employ of Haliburton, a jingoist military figure, a representative of the same pantheon routinely invoked by batshit neo-Nazis, and then a pair of Westchester WASPs with a trust fund and a federal grant keeping them living la vida Kennedy, all of whom have the power to bust into your secret crime lab-slash-birthday party and arrest your ass ...

At one point in the story, Sheldon yells at superhero detractors in the street, something like "What do you want - THE WORLD TO ACTUALLY END?" Wow, good point Phil, except ... yes, the superheroes save the world from being destroyed, but the folks who're trying to destroy the world are pretty much the flip side of their coin. Even having lost an eye early in the story, I can't believe that Sheldon somehow neglects to notice that there are just as many super bad guys as there are super good guys. Shouldn't a trained, experienced journalist be able to draw from that a notion that the powers and costume alone do not make a saint of every one of these psychos?

But then, Phil Sheldon isn't a character, he's Kurt Busiek's personal science fiction fantasy twin. Sheldon is passionate, respected, experienced and widely-traveled, he's reported from the front lines in Europe, he's waded into riots and natural disasters, he's even sacrificed a part of his body to be 'where the action is.' What better waldo to send into a 'fictionalized world' where nobody respects super-heroes, am I right? Is Kurt Busiek writing a story about heroes and their role in respect to the common world, or is he writing the ultimate foot-stomping fanboy assault against a community which still thinks any man in his thirties who reads "Spider-Man" is a virgin, a loser and a 'tard whose home address leads directly to his parents' basement?

Clue: It's the latter. Phil Sheldon isn't proselytizing to his neighbors and peers, he's yelling at your mom.

Superheroes in comics are a fucking fantasy world, where noble actions are rewarded with glory and warm fuzzies, or at least they are when you tell the story from the superhero perspective. Tell the story from the perspective of the common man, and ... jesus Kurt, why didn't you just ask Ross to draw Sheldon sucking superhero cock. He can start with the C-List, Iron Fist and Ant-Man maybe, then move up to Captain Mar-Vell and Ghost Rider, the fan favorites. Issue four, it's a World's Greatest Superheroes/Largest Gangbang at the Baxter Building! Prince Namor, eh, and you say you're on the list? You're a friend of Magneto, you say? Mister Magnus didn't leave a guest pass for you ...

I sound like I'm angry at the book, which I sort of am. Maybe not at the book itself - which is, at the worst, a pale counter-humanist fable - but at the legacy of "realistic super hero" comics it created, and the collective insult to the intelligence which followed.

Mark Waid is the greatest offender, as the few normal human beings who manage to make their way into his comics (thanks for destroying the best supporting cast in comics, Mark, Flash became so much better when every issue guest-starred every fast super hero ever and a mouthful of pathetic psuedo-science about 'speed forces' ...) do little more than reassure the hero that he is loved, admired and necessary. Rain as much destruction on a city as you like, all the citizens care about is that you saved the day, Fantastic Four! Let's give them a standing ovation, we'll clear the bodies later.

Maybe this sticks in my craw because America, as a mass, seems to be losing its ability to generate even the merest spark of common humanity, empathy or community. Everyone thinks they're goddamn Stone Cold Steve Austin, that they're a loner badass and that common ethics and manners ain't nothing much more than the setup to the joke where they cram a beer can in your eye as a punchline. And when this cavalier irrelevance of humanism starts to infect the escapist fantasy which - in my youth, anyway - is supposed to ennoble selflessness, responsibility, and flat-out heroism in the minds of kids...

Well, man.

And Marvels. Man, Kurt, whatever it is you were trying to do, I have to ask ... "What have you done?"

(Coupla things I wanted to add, but I couldn't fit them in:

First, during Kurt's run on the Avengers, he added this character named Triathalon, who was a member of an Eckanckar-like organization called "The Triune Understanding." and even went as far as wearing their symbol as his insignia. And the crowds loved him. Nice one, Kurt - that'd be like having a Scientologist super-hero with ... whatever symbol a Scientologist would have, the head of L.Ron Hubbard or a dollar sign or something, on his uniform. How do you think the crowds would respond to that?

Secondly, Mark Waid did a Superman story, a few years back, in which Superman is mind-controlled by Braniac, then proceeds to entrap the city and wreck a bunch of stuff. At the end of the story, Superman goes on TV and says "Whoops, I was brain controlled by an alien, everyone, but I'm back to normal now!" and then everyone cheers, and goes back to work without a single one of them ever being concerned that this all-powerful maniac might drop another skyscraper on their heads. Killing tons of people and wrecking stuff is okay if you're a super-hero folks, and also this is why I just couldn't stand Mark Waid.)

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Planet Terry

Battlestar Pederastia.

Planet Terry, along with about a dozen other books, made up one of the first attempts of a major comics publisher (our old pals at Marvel) to create "imprint" presses with similarly themed books meant to attract a wider audience. They messed it up. Big time. More than Impact.

Marvel had already had a great deal of success with their Epic line, a series of creator-owned books aimed towards a more mature audience (which, back then, usually meant 'soft-porn.' But I digress). Rushing to the other end of the scale, Marvel made an attempt to corner the kids market (and we mean corner, inasmuch as several of these titles deliberately aped the successful and popular Harvey line of books - Richie Rich, Casper, etc.).

Star actually gave a good accounting of itself, and survived for something like two years - largely on the strength of their licensed properties. Nonetheless, they're a big joke to comic collectors and fans everywhere - the low and derivative quality of the stories left a lot of fans in the cold, and even kids couldn't get into the amateurish product. Beyond that, the storylines were often a bit on the heavy side - Terry, for instance (along with Irona the Maid, earning some extra dollars during the Summer lull acting as Terry's robotic sidekick Robota), was searching the roughest corners of the universe for his missing parents. Wally the Wizard routinely struggled against demons and devils, and Top Dog was concerned that should the government ever discover his heightened intelligence, they'd -- well, they watered it down, but the implication was that they'd imprison, dissect or kill him. Ew.

Among the other products of the Star line were a comic book version of the popular syndicated strip Heathcliff, toy licenses Strawberry Shortcake and Thundercats, Peter Porker - the Spectacular Spider-Ham (which holds a dear place in my heart), Star Wars' licenses Droids and Ewoks, and probably some others that I'm forgetting but frankly don't give a rat's ass about. Hoo-ha.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Killdozer

"Although I'm CALLED Killdozer, my real name is 'Gene'"


WORLDS UNKNOWN PRESENTS THE THING CALLED ... KILLDOZER

I don't know if you've ever had the chance to catch this ... this movie, but if you did, it probably means that you wake up really really early on Sunday morning with nothing better to do than watch the local unaffiliated station's lame sci-fi movie show. Film stars Clint Walker as some guy who gets harassed by a Bulldozer, and Robert Urich as I don't remember what,because I haven't bothered to watch this heap of failure a second time 'round.

The front cover of this book shows a glaring, sharp-toothed, flame red bulldozer screaming vengeance and lunging at Clint Walker with death in his voice. The book had no scene whatsoever like this ... and neither did the movie. Mostly, it's a bunch of jump cuts and a bulldozer lumbering around while people lamely run and occasionally bellow. The later part, the comic captures perfectly.

I think this must have been one of Marvel's first attempts at an official movie adaptation - I'm sure you've seen those, where the plot and dialogue are condensed in a ratio of one minute of screen time = one panel roughly a sixth of the size of the total page. Official movie adaptations could reduce "Gandhi" to a two-issue miniseries with a backup featuring "Wings of Desire."

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Champions

Stan Lee Presents ... The CHAMPIONS

And stay down!

Actually, the "Champions of Los Angeles," and you can see by them running down a black man that they are indeed authority figures in L.A.

I really suppose this book doesn't belong here - most comic fans remember the Champions at least by name, if not having read the series altogether. Thing is, I was a big fan of this comic when it first came out - and it's sheer "D-List" quality still attracts my attention these days. The team roster included former Avengers Hercules (Marvel super-hero based on the Steve Reeves film version of the legendary Greek demi-god) and the Black Widow, former X-Men Angel and Iceman, and solo star Ghost Rider (to my knowledge, the only super-hero ever based on a common biker tattoo).

Right there is a great reason to love this team - it's got one Greek god, one female Russian spy, two mutants and a demon from Hell! Baby, these ain't your daddy's Fantastic Four! At the time, having a team without five male WASPs and their token girl was like having cake and no frosting. I, personally, loved it. Especially later when they added former Soviet Super Solider Darkstar to the mix, raising the roster to having TWO female Russian spies.And THEN Black Goliath palled around with them for a while, adding a black guy - dude, where have all the angry white men gone? (Black Goliath wasn't REALLY a team member, but he was in three consecutive issues and a cross-over, which totals like 20% of the total run of the Champions, so I'm saying he counts. By that logic, so does Godzilla.)

Along those lines, the Champions' two crossovers make my nose crinkle with hilaritiositude. Usually, crossovers are supposed to happen between a book that sells well, and a book that doesn't sell as well. So I don't know what went wrong at Marvel central, but they actually paired fourth-string book Champions with fifth-string book Black Goliath!! And then and then and then ..... oh, one of my favorite issues from Marvel's history, the Champions actually appeared in third-string liscensed property GODZILLA:KING OF MONSTERS! Bwa-HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Sadly, they didn't live long enough to show up in Shogun Warriors, Micronauts or Werewolf by Night.

Other fondly remembered moiments from the Champions - John Byrne, at the peak of his powers, drew them for a while. Plus, the Champions introduced one of Marvel's greatest villains - Swarm! The man made of bees! See, he was made of bees, and when he'd get angry, he'd shoot bees at you...heh. Also, there was RAMPAGE, the Recession Raider, who was basically a disgruntled-ex-employee-turned-villain stereotype, but with more psychoanalysis. Other great moments of the Champions included ... nothing whatsoever

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Rob Liefeld's Captain America

"Welcome to the First Printing, Chromium cover edition of Gone and Forgotten, February edition, signed and numbered by me, Michael Flagherty..."

"Face front, true believers! Nuff Said! Ha Ha! I'm the good-looking, self-assured 'buddy' character from the truly awful comic The Amazing Wahoo - which you'll definitely see here in the next month or two. Although I look just like the All-American boy, I AM a mid-eighties comic book geek ... so as soon as I'm done here, I'll be off to masturbate to the pictures of She-Hulk in the Marvel Universe handbook. You can also bet your bottom dollar that I cried like a little girl when John Byrne killed off Vindicator in Alpha Flight."

"Enough about me, here's a really cool comic! I bought twelve copies of the first issue, both variant covers, and the signed and numbered copy through Dynamic Forces. It's Awesome! Excelsior!

---

When Captain America throws his mighty shieeeeeeeeld!
All those who chose to oppose his shield must yieeeeeeeld!
And they fight with the white and red or blue
with the blue has the through to the blue on you
When Captain America throo-oows his mi-ghty shieeeeeeld!

Those aren't the real lyrics.

Yes, well, you knew I would get around to it ONE day ... and today is that day! Couple years back Marvel Comics - at the time the market leader in comic book sales - decided to inject some life into properties which they feared were threatening to lose their competitive edge in the face of more 'modern' (and almost by definition, more cruel and less heroic) superheroes being published by such novice companies as Image Comics.

So Marvel lured Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld back to their company (They had left to form the very Image comics company that was giving Marvel the heebie-jeebies).

Keep in mind that it was an experiment. Marvel is a major entertainment company these days, with its multitudinous mitts dipping into television, motion pictures, interactive media, cards, CCGs, toys and action figures, as well as apparel, collectibles, art prints, and ... my personal favorite ... theme restaurants. They have subsidiary companies to handle all of these interests - except for comic books! Comic books are still written and drawn right in the Marvel offices. It's really their only tangible output not managed by a satellite company.

So Marvel wanted to test the waters. They put a handful of their traditional properties (Along with Cap, thus went the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the Avengers, and a dozen or so auxiliary characters) in a "pocket universe" and left it entirely to the devices of the Lee and Liefeld's respective studios.

The stories were poorly-received, and even the large body of fans who stated that they liked the work had to qualify it as not being the best either creator had produced. But it DID bring new readers to the titles while taking the busy day-to-day management of the books' publishing out of Marvel's otherwise-occupied hands. In those terms, Marvel was thrilled with the results
and has again begun farming out some of its titles.

Ah, but onto the stories. I wish I could spend some time on Avengers, as well as Cap, since Avengers was ALSO under Liefeld's purview - but of the two, Cap is the greatest tragedy. Even before it got out of the gate, in fact ...

Liefeld was committed to drawing the story - Lord knows why - so previous artist Ron Garney had to go. Writer Mark Waid, recently wooed away from DC Comics, has no love lost for Liefeld and 'his ilk,' and so declined an offer to continue scripting the title. Other folks offered a spot on the title included Chuck Dixon and George Perez - both of whom reconsidered and passed on the offer. Reportedly, Avengers re-scripter Jim Valentino was offered to go on after eventual writer Jeph Loeb left the title, but ran into some money disputes with Liefeld's Extreme Studio.

THEN the first issue came out! Wow!

The story, in brief - dreary, fey factory worker Steve Rogers is plagued by dreams, dreams in which he bucks wild on what might be Nazi soldiers, only we can't really tell because their uniforms were so poorly researched. Meanwhile, some damn kid worries about her brother who loves Nazism and has a really stupid hairstyle. Then a size-changing black man gives Steve a "Ford in '72" button, and everybody breaks into a riveting post-apocalyptic dance routine while Steve's wife removes her face to reveal that she is --- Maskatron! Action Figure villain from the Six Million Dollar Man toy line.

And supposedly we're supposed to be freaked out by the tired villainy of an Aryan Superman named MasterMan, and his legions of malnourished idiots.

Right, that's it for the story! Let's check out this "Arte" (A trademark of Extreme Studios, not to be confused with 'Art,' an industry-wide standard of quality not subscribed to by Extreme Studios and its management). Here, one of my favorite scenes, the soon-to-be Bucky (Designed to look a heck of a lot like Carrie from Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns) confronts her brother and his friend, a tremendously-huge freak ... and no one seems to think this is weird. Check it out, looking at where 'John's' feet would most likely end, his pal is probably buried about three feet in the sidewalk. Not to mention that his gargantuan arms would easily scrape pavement were they ever in a relaxed position. AND on top of all of this, the stoop on which Bucky sits appears to go up about one story, officially making it the largest stoop I've ever seen ... and if that IS the entrance to their building, then having the stairs go up to the second floor kind of defeats the purpose of having first-floor apartments.

Here's another scene where MasterMan works his "crowd" into a furor. Notice, however, that not only did the artist choose to represent the crowd - a crowd numbering, as a whole, about fifty, maybe sixty people - in silhouette only, but he reused the silhouettes ... yes, folks, he just photostatted the same three or four silhouettes and repeated them among the page. That's laziness on an Olympic level.

Here's the best part, though. Captain America's shield, integral to the character's look, is apparently made of silly putty; from panel to panel, the shield changes size in proportion to its assorted wielders - I'm guessing Liefeld's compass is broken on one setting.

So, check this out: In the hands of Steve Trevor's ... no, wait, Steve Roger's dimunitive black stalker, the shield isn't much bigger than a record album, but WAIT! After enduring a surprise attack, Steve's shield fits comfortably in the space between shoulder and forearm, maybe 15 inches in diameter. Steve gloriously swings into high and starts hurting people, and notice that his shield is now as wide as the distance from the knuckles
of his hand to his shoulder - about 2-and-a-half feet in diameter, or so. Then Steve lets fly at some enemy agents, and his shield has ballooned to an impressive FOUR or FIVE feet wide - almost as tall as the guys it's knocking over. But if Steve was worried about somehow storing his gargantuan shield when he gets home - no worries .... It's just as big as a small pizza! Personal Pan Shield!

There's so much more crap in this comic, but I can't go on. Stories differ as to the exact reason why Liefeld's run on this book was ended prematurely, but it all comes down to a messed up product that was an embarassment overall for a number of people involved ... and even moreso for those who shelled out cash money for the product.

---

• "Can't talk now, honey, I have to balance carefully on the invisible tightrope in the middle of our kitchen"
• Steve Rogers eats lunch like a real American - with a SPOON in EACH HAND!
• Steve throws all limbs akimbo whenever his son's right leg inexplicably vanishes into his pelvis. It's family fun!
• What the hell is up with these two?
• 1st Spectacular Issue!!
  

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Godzilla

"Wanna join our gear team?"
Considering the promotional mania which surrounded the release of the fairly reprehensible Summer "blockbuster" Godzilla film, I'm amazed that Marvel Comics didn't offer a bound, hard-cover, collector's edition trade paperback of these original Godzilla comic book stories. Then again, I'm amazed that Marvel hasn't turned half of their female characters into porno comics. Marvel blows my mind, sometimes.

Right about the time that Asian cinema was making its big fad crash here in the States, Marvel opted to cash in on the dough with some thematic books. "Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu" was their ... um ... kung-fu book, and a well-written, well-drawn (The Day Brothers, Paul Gulacy, etc) book it was. Godzilla was their Japanese monster book, and it was poorly written and poorly drawn. Thing is ... same writer on both books! Weird, but not impossible. I suppose mastery at the complex philosophies of Eastern spiritualism doesn't necessarily translate into city-stomping thrills.

One of the delights of the old Godzilla book was that it was completely unafraid of being garish; the cover colors on these things were astounding. Note the above example, featuring bright yellow and red. My favorite was the pea green and deep purple cover which stood out like a bocchilism accident from across the room.

The plot was that Godzilla (monster with a heart of gold) was wandering around the world, foiling the machinations of the gene-freaking Doctor Demonicus (who wore a purple and white costume with a deep blue cape and silver devil horns on his head. How come geneticists of our world don't dress like that?). Mind you, Godzilla wasn't doing it intentionally, but he was smashing Doc's stuff all the time anyway. Alongside this drama, Marvel's superspy organization SHIELD and their not-terribly-Hasslehoffesque leader Nick Fury were flying around trying to bag Demonicus and neutralize Godzilla. The Champions also got in on the act. I still think Godzilla should be an honorary member of the Champions.

Also worth mentioning here: Shogun Warriors - based on the Japanese children's toys - was a contemporary of big G's book, but just as horribly written and drawn. Ick.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Fun & Games

Presenting another brief mini-GAF filler piece, originally appearing in your Humble Editor's off-site online journal for the amusement of whatever thirty or forty trained monkeys who've been hooked up to university computers have managed to access by picking corn pellets out of a chute. I bring you ...

Fun & Games! This is a Marvel Comics product released in 1979, and which not only (A) was a constant distraction and a part of my allowance-eating hobby at age eight, but (B) fills an important hole in my "First Issues of the 1970s" collection (Beowulf: Dragon Slayer, Starfire, Ms.Marvel and Hanna-Barbera Presents Scooby's Laff-A-Lympics welcome you!) and (C) I just recently found at my fave local comic shop, Charlie's.

As an aside, Charlie's business card and sign have this sort of austere, antiseptic-future style logo, with his face in the middle of the O in Comics. This bothers me, because when I say "Charlie's," I want it written in swoopy Cheers-like font, evoking the notion of a neighborhood hangout, where the beer is always cold, the music hot, and the twenty-five cent bin not kept on the floor so that my knees hurt when I rifle through it.

And speaking of typography, lookit that lowercase "a" in "and." That is a goddamn designer's nightmare, that's the kind of thing that you mean to fix before production, but you sort of forget until early the day the presses are running, and you wake up scared to death that you forgot to paste the correction over the damn thing, and then you write it off as being just your proclivity to worry, but then you see the cover and OH SHIT THEY REALLY USED THAT HORRIBLE LOWERCASE 'A!' And then you get fired.

Anyway, the magazine's aimed at the lesser intellect of your average juvenile comic reader, i.e. me in 1979. Or now, possibly. Most of the puzzles had to do with trivia brain teasers like "Match the secret identity to the Super-Hero" or "We've mixed up the costumes of fifteen Defenders! Can you tell which costume part comes from which hero?" and even I'd get lost, except that the guy would have Dr.Strange's cloak AND Nighthawk's wings and one of the Hulk's feet.

As an aside, there's a two-page spread in this first issue littered with ugly-ass pieces of typically poorly-designed Marvel super-hero costume accroutement, with instructions to cut them out and paste them to pieces of construction paper, then cut them out again and assemble them on a generic figure in long underwear in order to make your OWN Marvel Superhero! Who wantsta Shockwave code that thing once I get all the disparate pieces scanned in?

Personally, I'm surprised anyone could keep their quiz-taking cool when confronted by the ghostly, splotchy spectre of Stan Lee's grinning maw greeting them in garish, muddied yellow right on the splash panel. Jesus Christ, Stan!

Nu-u-u-u-u-uff Sa-a-a-a-aid!

Outside of the trivia questions, F.a.G (hahaha) also marshalled up a few word finds, crosswords, what's-different-in-this-picture pages (which was always difficult, because Marvel's then-sloppy on-newsprint printing process blurred so many of their pages to the point of unreadability - in fact, that was why I liked Daredevil, I think, cause I got the FEEL of being blind!) and some other traditional brain teasers and time wasters. And inside the trivia questions, it's too dark to read.

I used to subscribe to GAMES magazine, and I'll tell you, I feel I could sit through some of the world's most frustrating puzzlers without a problem. I'[m not sure how I ever found myself with the time to find the 34 iterations of "HULK" in this four-way-mini-wordfind. FINDING ONE SHOULD BE ENOUGH! Also, the real challenge should be finding how often KHULUH appears in this thing, for the cheap Lovecraftian giggle ... here, try for yourself.

I have GOT to get all of these things scanned ... and then we can form a league. And then, later, kill ourselves as retribution for wasting so much time in drawing lines through mazes made up of Dazzler's costume sequins or Nightcrawler's ass-fur or whatever. MAKE MINE MARVEL!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Oh, Good Christ, It's The Power Pachyderms!

Raaaaargh, I am ICEBERG HEAD, and let me show you a little icebreaker I know of. Ho ho, ho ho.

\

No, seriously folks, it's great to be here tonight ... shoving my ghastly and stretched out mug abruptly through the greenish ice of this frozen lake or whatever. Greenish ice? Don't the folks around here dispose of their antifreeze in the proper recycle facilities?

Anyway, my life's been pretty quiet since I last surfaced ... ha ha ... to force Mera and Aqualad to give me tasty Hostess snack cakes. And you know what? THEY DID! You can pretty much force Mera and Aqualad to do ANYthing, cause what're they gonna do to you, spit? Splash? Screw
'em, I wanted pastries and they didn't have a thing to say about it.

Tonight, I bring you a much-belated edition of Gone&Forgotten featuring big elephant superhero idiots! Here's a scientific fact, 'pachyderm' means 'thick-skinned.' Here's another one, "Iceberg Head' means 'has the head of an iceberg.' And 'hack comedy piece' means pretty
much what it sounds like ..."

Comic books, despite what the name implies, are just not funny.

My UNDENIABLE evidence of this is "POWER PACHYDERMS," a 1989 Marvel
one-shot, coming to us discourtesy of writer Roger Stern and artists Adam Blaustein and Jon D'Agostino (Gotta love that Dag!) ... oh, and Tom Defalco had a hand in creating the concept, so kill yourselves now if you'd like to be spared his venomous touch.

Each time Marvel attempts a humor comic, it becomes harder and harder to remember that this was the same company which produced "Not Brand Ecch." Since the days of Charlie America and Spidey-Man, sadly, Marvel's taken a downturn in the humor department. A handful of What Th-!? stories have managed to keep pace, but for the most part, Marvel's humor comics (and hell, most self-referential comic book parody in general) have been sad, sad, SAD amalgams of context-free pop culture references, poorly executed sight gags with origins at the turn of the century, and self-aware jokes which not only break the fourth wall, they stumble through it drunkenly and spill red wine on your carpet before scratching your car on the way out of the driveway. At least Mad Magazine could throw in some useful Yiddish when the formula started getting old, SCHMUCK! DRECK!

The story dribbles over the pages like so: We open on a circus train, wherein the car holding the troupe's elephants falls off the train and rolls down a neglected side-track. Their detour takes them straight through a gamma bomb test site and a completely unconvincing 'comedic' revamp of the Hulk's origins, and two panels later, the elephants on the train give birth to MUTANT
SUPER ELEPHANTS. This takes us up to the end of page three and the better part of the origin, and so far, NOTHING funny has happened ... which is a theme with this book.

The elephants grow into super hero parallels to Colossus, Cyclops, Elektra and Wolverine - and why these four? I have no idea. I'm already asking for a lot given that the name of the book APPEARS to be a spoof of "POWER PACK," but that there are no Power Pack elements anywhere in the comic ... I guess making it a stilted, unfunny parody of one of the most popular X-Men and two of the oft-neglected background characters AND ALSO of a Daredevil character cast through the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lens MUST MAKE SENSE! Mostly to Tom DeFalco, curse his soul.

Fast forwarding through a painful routine where the Pachyderms meet up with martial arts monk versions of the Three Stooges (well, four of them as Curly and Shemp co-exist. And as we all know, basic Physics tells us that if Shemp and Curly were to simultaneously co-exist in the same space, the resultant explosion would destroy all life on Joe Besser) where we’re treated to not one, not TWO, but THREE separate “We’re reading from the script” gags! Yes, not funny the first time, let’s give it two more shots and see what happens.

Past that, the team assembles, forms a crime-fighting organization with their headquarters well established in the middle of a harbor on a dilapidated boat, and go through a series of personal interactions that mock the ever-popular ‘angsty team dynamic’ of the day. Actually, parodying the angsty team dynamic was ALSO a common phenomenon of the day, but did we get parodies of that? No. Thank goodness.

At this point, I still haven’t found a joke in the entire book, despite the fact that the Wolverine character - Rumbo, by the way , L O L - keeps breaking kayfabe by telling the readers that the characters are fully aware of being in a comic, oh the high hilarity of it. We’ve also been through
a half-dozen swipes from ‘famous’ comic scenes at this point, mostly from Frank Miller’s Elektra and Wolverine stuff. Now, I’m actually admitting there MIGHT’VE been some jokes in there, but I have to confess that my taste for humor was absolutely murdered dead a few pages into the book … because they KEPT PUTTING THE LADY ELEPHANT INTO SEXY POSES!
Fucking AAAAH!

Seriously, a peach-colored anthropomorphic elephant WITH TITS strutting sexy over the joint or hopping around naked in the shower … I’m not going to go as far as to say it’s put me off sex forever, but at the very least it’s put me further off of sex with anthropomorphic elephants than I've ever been before. For the time being anyway, winky face, LOL, a/s/l. type ‘1’ if
you like Limp Bizkit.

Now here’s where the book goes wonky, and I sure as hell know what I just said, but I stand by it. The team gets on the case of Clarinetto, leader of the Brotherhood of Evil Musicians and a neo-Nazi, for some damn reason. Apparently feeling they’d drained every bit of life out of the already dead super-hero parody, your creative team turns to POP SINGERS for further so-called lampooning, as the Pachyderms fight weakly-represented clones of Prince, Cyndi Lauper, The Bruce, Willie Nelson and Madonna. And hey, goddamnit, Willie’s been through enough lately, let the man rest.

Even as I’m trying to figure out the POINT of the damn celebrity spoof - what are they trying to SAY here, why THESE singers - the book throws me another curveball as Electralux - did I mention that’s the terribly clever pseudonym for the lady Elektra Elephant? Cyclops’ analog is called Trunklops, so count your lucky stars Electralux - falls into a vat of radioactive MAKE-UP!

Yes, radioactive make-up, in the basement of a Musical Academy … OF EVIL!

So, at this point I kill myself, which is why I miss it when Elctralux becomes ROGUE ELEPHANT, a crap Dark Phoenix gag enhanced by singing snippets of ‘women power’ songs, and then the team decide to beat up the Three Stooges and take their places as all-wise Martial Arts masters, and Rumbo does another fucking self-aware gag about being in a comic. I miss all of that.

I’d love to wrap this one up in a quick summary of sheer derision, but I’m dead, remember? Power Pachyderms did what Kitty Pryde and Wolverine couldn’t. Congratulations, and MAKE MINE MARVEL!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Daredevil vs Vapora

DAREDEVIL VS VAPORA - RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE WITH THE FUME OF DOOM!

I have decided that the double-D on Daredevil's chest must stand for DISCO INFERNO, except without the “Disco” part and I don't know what the second D means. This is not my finest hour, as far as the association of meaning to initials goes. And to think, I once took State.

"I have a NAME, Daredevil. It's Henry."

Going all-ll-ll the way back to 1996, we join scripter Mindy Newell, artists Mike Harris and Don Judson, super-hero Daredevil and football fields worth of burning children in a PSA comic brought to us by the caring individuals at the Gas Appliance Manufacturers Association (with a little boost from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, CAN I GET A HELL YEAH FOR MY DAWGS AT THE CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION?! COME ON, PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR! THE ROOF IS ON FIRE!).

This book touts ol' Hornhead* facing off against one of those 'embodiments of evil' with which I'm so chronically unimpressed. Making it even worse for her PR agent, the villainess Vapora – called, in the book, “The Fume of Doom,” HAHAHAHA - isn't even the embodiment of something like fear or angst or desperation. She embodies “insufficient ventilation.” To clarify, before we continue, the Gas Appliance Manufacturer's Association produced a book about the dangers of gas. This is like AIM producing a book about the dangers of MODOK.

*As a point of order, only high-ranking officers of the Merry Marvel Marching Society are allowed to call him Hornhead. Enlisted men and civilians should address him as “Boy, what the fuck was with that godawful goddamn Ben Affleck movie, man? I wanted to beat the director's MOTHER with my bare hands.”

The book balances between Matt Murdock defending a landlord who's accused of whatever crime it is you get accused of when you're a landlord and your building sucks and it burns down. Negligent burnination, a class 3 felony, I think. The rest of the book finds Daredevil encountering Vapora – one of the few villainesses I believe to have ever gone around in an off-the-shoulder muu-muu – at the sites of assorted buildings which have burned down owing to the tenants' careless misuse of gasoline. Which basically makes this comic more like “Daredevil vs the Darwin Awards” than anything else.

Boom Boom Boom, Up in My Room!

Like, take this as an example: Halfway through the book, we join a young mother who is cleaning gum off her carpet using gasoline. Oh, and she's left the cap off the ENORMOUS FUCKING CAN OF THE STUFF, which is – by the by – within arm's reach of her toddler's playpen. Yes, I'll take a moment while you draw that map in your brain. I should point out that the gum-removing in question is happening about a foot away from her increasingly dain-bramaged carpet ape, AND THEN SHE SITS UP AND LIGHTS A SMOKE!

I'm not a heartless man, but I can't help but think that maybe her gene pool ending in a greasy smear in a three-bedroom walk-up is probably best for all involved. What's next on her list of nightly chores, lullabye the kid to sleep with a bag of mothballs? Balance the baby on the fire escape railing? If I were Daredevil, I'd forget about the Fume of Doom until I'd made a hasty phone call to Child Protective Services.

"And I enjoy long walks on the beach."

Other folks who're genetically predispositioned to catastrophic self-immolation with errant uses of gasoline include a father taking the tiles off the kitchen floor, and a couple of kids washing their bike down. And if this book has a failing, it is this: I DIDN'T KNOW GASOLINE COULD BE USED FOR SO MUCH STUFF! Getting gum off the carpet? Removing tile? SPRUCING UP MY RAD BIKE?? MAN, note to self, BUY FIFTY CANNISTERS OF GASOLINE ON WAY HOME! I'm gasoline's number one fan, now!

Getting back to it, even our hero himself succumbs to the dizzying prevalence of gas fumes in this story. Investigating the site of one of the deadly fires, Matt Murdock's enhanced senses lock in on the underdressed form of the cackling villain. “It's some kind of vaporous thing – “ he exclaims to the fire official escorting him onto the site, “A Vapora!”

Whoa, a “Vapora?” Nice one, big red. Did that radioactive canister also cripple your sense of not giving things really stupid names?

Not that Vapora's a poet either, as all her dialogue is that rambling, crammed together mishmash of gibberish that passed for “Crazy talk” in comic book shorthand. “DIEdieDIEdiePAINpainDEATHterrorHURTpainPOWER!” and so on. Basically, it all sounds like Superbaby trying to order a LOT of ice cream, REALLY quickly.

Well-played, Counselor.

Daredevil only gets one real shot at Vapora, which doesn't go anywhere in particular except that DD saves a little girl from being COMPLETELY burned alive (Vapora just claims a char-black hand). Frankly, this particular nemesis should've gone to a hero with more ventilation-based powers, like Storm, or Torpedo, or Wolverine with a box fan.

This particular PSA has the SINGLE MOST DEPRESSING ENDING out of any dozen or so I've read. “How's the little girl doing?” asks the landlord, following his Not Guilty verdict on the charge of Excellent Burnination. “Well,” replies Murdock, “They're going to wean her off the respirator ... doctors can do surgery to reverse some of the scarring ... she'll need physical and psychological therapy.”

“But she'll live?” the landlord asks, smiling. “She'll live,” a grinning Murdock replies.

...

"SHIT! We got SMURFS!"

JESUS! Kids in those anti-drug comics NEVER end up this fucked up, and THEY were the ones who made conscious decisions to shoot weed or snort crack or whatever it is you kids do these days! All this girl did was have a TRULY RETARDED FATHER who crossed “While You Were Out” with a Great White concert. For Pete's sake, even that Mitch kid in the Captain America drug story only came out of it with internal bleeding and a coupla cracked ribs...

On the back cover of the book, along with an illustration of Daredevil playing “Keep-Away” from Vapora with a urinal cake, the Fume of Doom (hahaha) herself spouts off official trivia from her upcoming autobiography. “I can travel from room to room, finding an ignition source,” she says, “I'm heavier than air and travel along the ground. I love to leak out into a closed room.” Hey, lady, so do I, but you don't see me bragging about it.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Captain America vs DRUGS!

Captain America vs DRUGS!
SPOILER WARNING: Drugs lose.

"When Captain America throws his mighty shie-e-e-e-eld, all those who chose to smoke lots of weed and snort blow off a hooker's ass must yi-e-e-e-e-eld ...!"

And the red and the white and the blue smoke crack, when Captain America stars in his very own PSA comi-i-i-i-ic! Which he has, folks, back in 1990 Captain America starred in an anti-drug awareness comic produced in cooperation with the FBI.

This is the smartest super-villain in history. He should be running AIM

(Speaking of which, under the Patriot Act, I believe I risk federal prosecution for making fun of this book. Get your "Free Humble G&F Editor" bumper stickers while they're fresh! Or just cross "Mumia" off of your already-existing bumper sticker and write me in, you dirty hippie)

The one-shot is titled "High Heat," which sure makes me want to slap someone. Most likely, that would be Peter David, author of this particular fable. Additionally, I believe this comic was conceived as a challenge between David, Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada – all three create their own PSA comic, and if Peter David's book doesn't convince all kids everywhere to stop using drugs, he's fired. All Jemas has to do is convince kids to eat pizza and drink beer. Quesada's book has been pushed back to 2008, but you still aren't allowed to cancel retail orders for it.

The story starts off on the observer spaceship of the alien Tzin, of whom we only ever see their nasty, caterpillar-lookin' fingers. The aforementioned digits are exclusively shown fussing around with the big, suborbital DirecTV hookup with which they size up the human race.

Planning an invasion of Earth, they wonder whether even their superior alien firepower can overwhelm the indominatable human spirit. "Are you saying it will be difficult," says one of the aliens, "That we shouldn't even try?" No, never give up, silly alien! Where there's life, there's hope, even for all-conquering alien dominators! THAT'S the REAL message of this book.

What are you saying, KLXXR? You've never given up on anything in your life!

Deciding to exploit humanity's one weakness – the habit of sucking down mind-altering substances – the aliens proceed to conquer us by blowing up breweries. No, fucking wait ... they decide to pick FOUR humans, chosen specifically for their unique gifts which will eventually grow to benefit all of mankind. The Tzin will tempt them with drugs to see whether they are strong enough to withstand temptation, or give in and end up managing a Circle K.

The first kid they pick is a rising star little league baseball player name of Mitch, which was hedging their bets to be sure. An athlete using DRUGS? What kind of topsy-turvy world IS this?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mitch jumps at the chance to inhale the sugar packets – yes, to all appearances, sugar packets – offered to him by an overcoat-bedecked stranger. Concerned over his friend's suspicious behavior, Mitch's close pal Keith Wilson* does what anyone would do – he narcs on Mitch.

*Amazingly, absolutely amazingly, this is a black kid named "Wilson" who is NOT related to the Falcon. A first for everything in Marvel comics, a first for everything ...

Cap is really fucking sarcastic.

Inappropriately enough, Keith calls on Captain America to closely investigate this kid who's suspected of taking drugs. I hate to point this out, but Cap never would have existed if he himself had not been an underage kid who took drugs. The Super Soldier Serum ain't Snapple, babies, and the first one's always free. I'd suggest calling on a hero who got his powers from something a little more socially responsible – like radiation, or black magic. Something DECENT ...

In any case, there's luckily no evil or crime anywhere else in the world at the moment, so Cap's swings on by. He happens to catch up with the kid at the point when a drugged-up and befuddled Mitch accidentally wings a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball smack into the batter's head. "My control was off," Mitch pleads over the unconscious body of the clobbered boy, “My head was messed up!"

Parting the already-angry mob, Cap busts in and asks "Want to tell us WHY your head was messed up, Mitch? Is there something you've been putting into it?"

Wow. Cap. Way to incite an already foaming crowd. Cap's terrifically timed bon mot enrages the crowd further, but luckily nearby cops have come to investigate the scene – oh, actually, they had planned on just driving by the public lynching until Cap threw his shield at their heads. Tell me again, WHO'S ON DRUGS HERE?

"...It IS some nut in a Captain America costume!"

After enraging the crowd, Cap takes everyone who's even vaguely sympathetic towards Mitch – his parents, his coach and Keith – out of line-of-sight of the irate mob and Mitch both. Let me say that again – he turned his back on the angry mob, he turned his back on Mitch, and then he hung out with some people who were really into blaming themselves for Mitch's drug problem. ONE MORE TIME: Where was the mob? I don't know. Where was Mitch? I don't know. Where were the people who would happily defend Mitch against an angry mob? Hanging out behind the boys' showers, having a chat.

In one of those twists that make comics such exciting reading, Mitch is wandering the streets and HAPPENS TO RUN INTO THE ANGRY MOB! I guess the angry mob was having coffee together. They invite Mitch to their kaffeklatsch by way of a baseball bat to the gut, which hits Mitch so damn hard that he starts bleeding from the nose! COPIOUSLY bleeding from the nose, hemorrhaging internally! Keep this in mind, because I'm coming back to this ...

Naturally Cap shows up, beats off Mitch's attackers and quips the line that he's as strong as twenty men (because of what again? Oh yes, DRUGS!). Cap then proceeds to lecture a still bleeding Mitch on the foulness of drug use. Except when your country demands it. But seriously, Mitch, no drugs, c'mon man.

I neglected to mention that, earlier on, Mitch had been re-approached by his overcoat-sporting pusher. In a sudden paroxysm of spasming denial, Mitch smacks his pusher in the phiz, knocking off what was apparently a ceramic mask of a human face and revealing the alien features beneath. Mitch actually tries to explain to Cap that aliens gave him drugs, and Cap's response to this is to sort of pat Mitch's head and send him on his way, lesson learned.

"...THANKS TO DRUGS!"

So, at first glance, Cap UNBELIEVABLY decides that a drug-abusing teenager who spins some yarn about drug-pushing aliens just has "quite an imagination," and figures the kid is otherwise okay to walk home by himself. Me, I'd think the kid was probably tripping a LITTLE too hard to be allowed to escort himself ANYWHERE.

But hey, the Living Legend of World War II isn't a chaperone, I suppose. Even if he did drive all the way out to Butt-Fuck, South Egypt in the American Midwest merely to answer one kid's possible suspicions about his close friends potential drug use. And even if he's having Mitch walk home alone through streets potentially crawling with members of an angry mob waiting to whup his ass. AND EVEN IF Cap himself helped rile up that crowd. "N.M.P., CITIZEN! HAWKAAAA!" or whatever.

But ON TOP OF ALL THAT and thinking about it a second time, Cap has let an assault victim who is bleeding copiously from the nose and has just sustained a blunt force trauma to the breadbasket WALK HOME. Okay Cap! That was fucking sugar the kid was sniffing, you know, not radioactive spider blood or Uru or some shit.

Hell, even after Cap finds the shattered face mask of the alien pusher, he just sort of shrugs and heads back to his Americycle or whatever, never stopping Mitch to follow up on what may be an incredible alien conspiracy! Frankly, for all the good Cap did in this one – which was essentially to show up, break up a schoolyard fight and then lecture somebody – he might as well have been your Junior High School Principal wearing really fantastic pajamas.

"Let's leave my wife out of this, Cap."

So thus ends the saga of Mitch, inasmuch as he probably passed out in an alleyway and quietly bled to death halfway home. As for the other THREE specially gifted individuals whom the aliens were planning to tempt and subsequently destroy with their sugary space drugs? I ... I don't know. I'm assuming this was either planned as a much larger book, or a series, or SOMETHING because they just never get mentioned after the first time. And since Cap never investigated the suspicious alien situation, they're probably all dead now. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: PSA Comics

The cookie elves have asked the circus
freak to tell you to stay off drugs.

I think I'm speaking without exaggeration when I say that the ONLY reason anyone in my generation stayed off drugs, in school, away from cigarettes, well-fed and unmolested was thanks to the tireless efforts of the Teen Titans. Barred their intervention, I would have been left to the woefully inadequate admonitions of “Bad Dudes,” most likely ending up neither a winner nor bad enough to rescue President Ronnie.

Spider-Man is totally raising the fuck out
of your awareness about the dangers of bull-riding.

Thank you, trend towards major publishers issuing special edition Public Service Announcement comic books to little kids! You kept me out of prison and off the streets, off drugs and high on life! In fact, I don't even live above ground anymore, I have a sub-basement hovel filled to the ceiling with stacks of newpapers and jars of my own urine. I'd throw the stuff out, but Spider-Man once told me that bad men were trying to touch my swimsuit area, and I'm afraid to walk outside to the garbage can on the curb.

To fill you in on my self-indulgent rambling, DC and Marvel (among other publishers) have always been eager to lend their character to comics with charitable aims. The Teen Titans starred in a trio of anti-drug comics, Spider-Man (with Power Pack and - holy fifth-string characters! - Skids and Rusty from X-Factor) and the Hulk have both warned kids about assorted stranger danger, and Superman, Batman and the X-Men have all made their stand against famine in Africa (bravely opposing the intimidating pro-famine-in-Africa lobby). Even the Radio Shack Whiz Kids got in on the act, turning the tremendous processing power of the TRS-80 to the problem of inner-city drug use. I think they solved it, too, I should double-check that issue. I believe the resulting equation recommended hugs, rather than drugs...

"Hi there, nice to meet you, we're Power
Pa -- HOLY JESUS, KID!"

So now we're on the same page, and that page probably includes a pudgy white kid in a striped shirt crying while Spider-Man holds his shoulders and says “Tommy, you have to understand that it's not your fault!” I'm sure you got your hands on these yourself, somehow, either via a well-meaning adult authority figure who likes to say “I think these kids consider me to be pretty 'cool'” and make air quotes when he says it, OR you swiped a copy from the library and read 'em with your delinquent friends while you lit up.

Originally, this article was going to try and be a comprehensive overview of ALL the major PSA comics, but I ran into two problems. First off, if you think I'm going to make fun of a comic book about molested kids, you're nuts. What the hell kind of captions am I supposed to slap together for THAT? “Hey retard, did your daddy touch you? Haha, FAG!” If you're feeling so all-fired giddy, why don't you write up a couple hurtful paragraphs, blog it, and then sit back and watch the hate mail roll in. I get more than enough vitriol for just not liking Secret Wars II ...

For a South American anti-landmine comic,
Wonder Woman was re-costumed in a more
modest fashion. I'm amused by the idea that
kids couldn't learn about landmine safety if
they were otherwise confronted with Wonder
Woman's Amazon rack.

(Still, I would've loved to fit a “Touched by The Angel” joke in here somewhere. Ah well ...)

The second problem is that there are about a million of these things. I honestly thought there weren't more than half-a-dozen. As I hunted down copies after copies and documentation of these books, I began to wonder how so many kids could still be sniffing glue and starving in Africa. I mean, fuck, how many times do you have to be TOLD, junkies? The Living Legend of World War II is not used to repeating himself!

Even Storm and Luke Cage got to do one, although they take a back-seat to Spider-Man in their PSA comic about the dangers of smoking (Hell, they barely even got on the cover, first time around). Actually, looking at it a little more objectively, I believe the comic is less about smoking hazards and more about how Marvel doesn't have any prominent black characters who can stand on their own merits. Unlike DC, who has that guy who's the fourth or fifth most popular Green Lantern, and then also there's Spawn, who I was surprised to discover was black under the shadows, the mask and the facial scarring. JESUS, how deep do you feel like burying the brother, McFarlane?

Sorry, I'm getting off track here ...

Fun fact: Spider-Man stars in more of
these things than anyone else. Which is
why he tackles such bullshit topics as
"Literacy," a topic no comic book has any
damn right addressing.

Although their hearts are largely in the right place, I never felt these comics were a good idea. Beside the fact that half-naked vigilantes who routinely beat the tar out of mental patients in fetish gear are probably not the IDEAL spokespersons for a sane, safe, law-abiding existence – although, I could be wrong. Perhaps those anti-drug seminars they used to hold in our high school auditorium would have packed more of an impact if the attending officers had been decked out in Mardi Gras beads and bike shorts, and hauled in a wino to pummel – superhero comics are notorious for reducing even the most complex problems into black-and-white matters.

Super-heroes thrive on the morality play, which makes super-hero comics particularly well-suited to warning kids against the hazards of trying to conquer the world. As far as pinning drug abuse or worldwide famine on an individual super-villain or monster goes, I'm not so assured.

It's already a pretty spurious premise that any PSA comic is going to spark a turnaround in any of the serious issues they address, which is why the stated purpose of these books is to inform and raise awareness. Problem is, are we really raising awareness of an issue by blaming its cause solely on some mythical villain?

This poster promotes a Superman comic
which raises awareness about land mine
safety. Any joke I can make here about land
mine safety is pretty much talking shit from
a guy who lives in a country NOT COVERED
WITH LANDMINES!

(I'll take a parenthetical aside here for a moment to fill you in on a peccadillo of mine, before it rears its ugly head. Both the X-Men and the Superman-Batman team appeared in comics benefiting African famine relief charities. One was titled “Heroes Against Hunger” and the other was called “Heroes For Hope,” and no matter how often I remind myself, I keep switching those up to make “Heroes for Hunger” and “Heroes Against Hope.” Happens consistently. This is the same berserk mental twitch which makes me call any of the Star Wars sequels – assuming for some reason I feel compelled to precede it with its episode number and whatnot – as “Star Trek,” and why I constantly, unconsciously call those films “Star Trek: The Phantom Planet” and “Star Trek: Night of the Clones.” HONESTAGOD!)

In the X-Men:Heroes Against Hope book, the mutant heroes ultimately discover that the famine in drought-struck Ethiopia was being caused (or at least exacerbated) by this alien monster who fed on human suffering. OH, SO HE'S THE GUY! Gut him out hollow, would you Wolverine, and let's get back to punching the Toad in the phiz.

Take, for instance, the well-intentioned Captain Awareness comic, which is certainly trying its hardest for a very worthwhile cause. However, as the tale within the pages unfolds, it turns out that incidents of rape are actually caused by a big smoky monster which possesses men's bodies and makes them do bad things. Whereas I appreciate the sentiment that my gender as a whole is so inherently pure of heart and free of ill will that it takes an all-powerful ethereal being of gross malevolence to turn even the most sociopathic brute into a rapist, I DON'T THINK THAT'S REALLY THE PROBLEM!

"Jesus kids, I'M FLYIN' HERE!"

This trend is sort of endemic to the super-hero genre as a whole, which often makes villains out of 'embodiments' of emotional or metaphysical states, as well as the occasional elemental and whatever the heck it was Speedball was supposed to be in relation to kinetic energy. OH WAIT, why the hell didn't SPEEDBALL DO AN ANTI-DRUG COMIC? That's automatic GOLD, Marvel! “Don't do me, kids, I'll ruin your life. Say no to me.” IT'S GENIUS!

So the super-hero universes abound with what tend to appear to be normal folk in fright masks and aerobics gear, but who are secretly the universal depository of all the universe's sense of sorrow, hate, apathy, anger, bigotry, what have you. Now me, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding heart tree-hugging Leftist, but even I support executing THESE fucks. “So, this is the universal embodiment of all hate in the universe? There'd be no hate without him, am I getting this right? Okay, pardon me, Punisher, may I borrow this?” Boom, problem solved. And here I thought it took a deep understanding of the nature of man and his role in a wide and unresponsive universe to salve the wounds of the human condition, when all you really have to do is beat the guy in the Danskins to death with a crowbar.

Believe it or not, this book is about minorities
in the engineering field. Who are building
enormous, terrifying Tyrranosaurotons, or
something. I agree that this issue needs more awareness.

At least none of these books had the paucity of good taste to create an anthropomorphic embodiment of child molestation. Not that you really have to, since Marvel's currently doing a pretty good job of BEING that themselves. (Don't believe me? Hey, when was the last time you saw an eight-year old girl with a gargantuan rack and pillowy pudenda? Try X-Men:Phoenix. Like your eroticized juveniles a little more photo-realistic? No Trouble at all! And then there is, of course, the latest mutant title, X-Ploitation of Minors! Marvel! Because NAMBLA only lets you hump little boys!)

Which makes it a shame that the PSA comic trend has died down, or at least seriously put the brakes on in the last ten years. Because we sure could use a comic warning kids to stay away from anything Marvel president Bill Jemas has a hand in ... ironically, in fact, I think reading any single issue of Marville will pretty much take care of that right out of the gate.

(Hey, here's some fun: So far, not counting this one, there are nineteen paragraphs in this article. Guess how many of them will generate an angry piece of hate mail. Whatever you guess, it's two less than actually will.)

Bonus Image (I ran out of room in the article): Here to teach you about bicycle safety, it's Spider-Man and Ghost Rider. You know, Ghost Rider. The self-immolated guy with no skin whose motorcycle is on fire. That guy. He's here to teach you about wearing kneepads.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Hostess Heroes Featuring The Incredible Hulk

It was a hard and unforgiving time for everyone's favorite four-color icons, the late Seventies and early Eighties. It wasn't uncommon to see such varied characters as the Absorbing Man and a giant Flea from space fighting over a warehouse store of delicious cupcakes, or the Mighty Thor choking a Korean convenience store owner against the Doritos display, just to demand an unopened case of Fruit Pies.

Yes, the Hostess Snacks ads of the Seventies, just the tip of an iceberg of addiction which left Robin turning tricks in Crime Alley and Superman weeping in group therapy at the Betty Ford clinic while Braniac's skull-headed robot ship brazenly molested the Daily Planet building globe with none to stop him.

For a brief period during the transition between decades, comic characters were used to hawk Hostess Brand snack foods, from Superman to Spider-Man, from Richie Rich to Josie and the Pussycats, from Captain Marvel to Captain Marvel, full-page ads for INCREDIBLY BAD-FOR-YOU FOOD which still remain a favorite memory of many of us Bronze Age Babies.

Along with Batman, Spider-Man and a rare other few, The Hulk is one of the grand-daddies of the Hostess Heroes, his appearances filling volumes (you know, considering the ouvre). In this inaugural Hostess Heroes article, join your Humble Editor on an overview of a pastiche of pop culture mishmash so corny, it could as well be Quentin Tarantino's HULK SMASH Volume One …

The Incredible Hulk and the Green Thumb – This one starts as so many of the Hulk's trademark adventures, with the jade giant lured into the seemingly benevolent clutches of a mad botanist and her enormous, retarded produce. This used to happen all the time. In fact, I think that's how he first met Wolverine.

"Cousin Betsy, The Plant Lady" attempts to induct the Hulk into her jewelry-thieving trio of anthropomorphic plant-villains, charmingly named Mari Gold, Rhoda Dendron and Artie Chokes. I get that Artie, you know, can choke you, but I'd hate to see Rhonda dendron even a kitten.

The particular irony of this little adventure is that the Hulk didn't dislodge Cousin Betsy's stash when he's nanny-slapping Artie Choke …

"Yeah, don't worry about me, I'll just let my
spine get -- shattered -- augh -- enjoy those pies,
you fucks!"

The Incredible Hulk Versus the Roller Disco Devils
I guess if I were to call one super-hero to take care of a roving gang of roller-disco punk-asses who're breaking noise pollution laws, I'd call the Hulk. This is primarily because I'd be counting on old jade jaws to crush their spines to jelly and send them screaming to Hell. Seriously, I hate roller-disco.

Apparently, whatever city this is has a statute on the books which makes it illegal to prevent the purchase of snack foods by means of creating a public nuisance. I'm sure it's true, I saw it on Law&Order.

Seems funny to me that no parent in their right mind would think of allowing their children out on the streets while someone's out there dancing on roller skates, but they're okay with the kids cavorting in the immediate presence of a huge, green mongoloid who can roll asphalt like the Sunday paper.

Also, check out Hulk's hand-sign in the last panel. "HANG TEN, PUNY HUMAN!"

The Incredible Hulk Changes His Mind
Say what you want about the Hulk, he's at the very least a character so iconic that it's actually worth documenting the scenario in which he changes his mind! I don't think even Jesus gets so much as a verse where he ponders aloud "Well, on the other hand …"

But then again, let's see Jesus sell a fruit pie.

Speaking of miraculous children sent from heaven, I personally enjoyed seeing Hulk shake the baby tree in this episode. Must be late in the season, the kids're just dropping from the branches.

I'm sort of baffled by the logic introduced here, wherein strangers will NOT be intrigued by the presence of cup cakes leaping over a bush. Benevolent or no, why they don't go see, you know, who's hucking cupcakes or, more importantly, WHY they're hucking cupcakes, it's beyond me.

My real advice to Hulk is, if he wants to be alone, that maybe he should get out of the fucking park, genius.

The Incredible Hulk and the Ultimate Weapon
If one thing above all others makes this particular weapon ULTIMATE, it's that it is completely bugshit out of control and will destroy everything forever. That's about as ultimate as it gets. I suppose it's fairly true that, once everything else is destroyed, that last man on Earth whom so many ladies have said they won't sleep with will be thinking to himself "Man, that weapon sure is ultimate."

Where do you think they got the Santa's-
Bag-sized order of Hostess snacks? Sam's
Club? Probably Sam's Club.

By the time Hulk wraps up both his destruction of the weapon AND his incessant personal martyrdom – well, stop DOING them favors, Hulk! – the scientists who created the weapon are already distracted by a big pile of Hostess Fruit Pies. I think that takes the mystery out of how this machine ended up going berserk in the first place. These guys have a tetch of the ADHD …

The Incredible Hulk and the Twins of Evil
I'm guessing Wendigo and the Abomination are fraternal twins, or maybe they're just really tight with one another and they like to pull that "Brother from Another Mother" routine.

In any case, they totally put Hulk's ass through a table. It's not for me to cast aspersions on the Hulk's assertion at the end of the tale that a bellyful of fruit pies is going to tip the scales in favor of anything except a larger waistband on his big, purple shorts, but I think he'd be better off with a tummy-full of PCP and a bazooka. Honestly, I don't think Hulk gets stronger the higher his cholesterol level rises.

It's also nice that we got to see a followup to the earlier tale wherein Hulk implied he might change his mind again in the near future. Surely, he did, cause where he once wanted just to be left alone, now he just wants to fight fair. Oh Hulk, you are large and contain multitudes.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Death of Captain Marvel

The Death of Captain Marvel

As a bit of background, Captain Marvel is one of Marvel's lesser luminaries, weighing in on the scale of characters who've had their own titles or feature slots somewhere behind Ghost Rider and the Sub-Mariner¹, if only because no one's ever optioned a movie about Marv². He debuts in the tail-end of the Silver Age as a mish-mosh of prior superhero origins³ - As captain of an invading alien army bent of dominating Earth, he is overwhelmed by the great potential in the human race and turns on his masters (a la Silver Surfer). Changing his native name Mar-Vell (No relation to Kal-El, except the obviously intentional name-alike) to Captain Marvel (See that three asterisk dealie for this one), he becomes first Earth's protector and then protector of the Galaxy (a la Green Lantern) after the death of his girlfriend (a la everyone).

Although handled pretty well - albeit largely as a lesser Silver Surfer and mostly for a handful of "relevant" science fiction stories in the seventies - he's pretty much a background character, until his untimely death promotes him to Marvel Comics' first spandex-suited saint.

Like most of Mar-Vell's better adventures, this story was written and drawn by Jim Starlin. A lot of folks love Starlin and brook no shit about him, so forgive me when I say he's one of the most unintentionally hilarious creators to ever step into the field. What other creator, for instance, would have the awe-inspiring audacity to replace Jesus and Mary with a space-faring superhero and Grim Reaper in a reproduction of Michelangelo's Pieta? Jim Fucking Starlin, that's who!

The book is a retelling of the life of Captain Marvel, made particularly poignant by the good Captain having discovered that he's suffering incurable cancer. He got it from when an exploding super-villain made him stop up a leaking cannister of nerve gas with his bare hands, which is how most folks get it.

Again, it's largely a well-done story, with Cap's final hours being spent peacefully in the company of friends and family, although he DOES get to fight intergalactic space phantoms in heaven at the end. At one point, the heroes of Earth are recruited to find a cure for cancer. This is where the hilarity starts (if you don't count the cover, I suppose). First off, the damn heroes are left to explain why none of the super-geniuses in their midst ever thought of trying to cure cancer before. Their answer? They kind of don't have one.

So, lacking a good excuse, they take to the labs. At least until Cap dies, at which point they walk away and never try to find a cure for cancer ever again. I mean, why should they, Captain Marvel's dead, right? Right.

This scene kills me:

What kind of help do you imagine Thor's offering there? I mean, yes, I know his alter-ego is a doctor (ahem, A GENERAL PRACTITIONER OR SOMETHING, FOLKS!), but come on, that's Don Blake. This is the God of Thunder, and I have it on good authority that his usual means of solving a heady conundrum is to do something as understated as drinking all the seas.

"Mayhaps I might smite yon cancer with mine mighty enchanted hammer, friend Beast!"

"No, Thor, cancer's ... cancer's too small to hit with a hammer, sorry."

"Mayhaps the elves of Diggendoggenheim may forge a TINY HAMMER with which to smite yon foul rot!"

"Look, your heart's in the right place, but really ..."

"I could strike the cancer with lightning! Or, oh wait, how about I drinks it under yon table! Arf arf arf!"

"You ... Listen, you already suggested that ..."

Surprisingly, the brain trust up there fails the hell out of curing cancer, and Marv dies, surrounded by his comrades and loved ones.

Hold it, hold it, back up. Who invited the Hulk to a funeral...?

¹ That's "Sub-MARiner," not "Sub-MaREENer." Stan always gets that one wrong.

² Swear to Zod, that's what his pals in the Marvel Universe call him. Even if it does lessen confusion between him and Captain America, it's weak.

³ He also debuts as the first superhero I've ever heard of created just to take advantage of a court ruling, to wit:

Since the 1940's, National Periodical (publishers of the Superman books) kept Fawcett Publications (publishers of the original Captain Marvel, the one in the red suit who says "Shazam" all the time) in and out of litigation over perceived similarities in their two flagship characters. The real problem, of course, was that Cap shared some superficial similarities to Superman, AND was far more popular in terms of circulation and merchandising. That's how lawsuits are born.

By the time it was all resolved, National (now DC Comics) effectively OWNED the original Captain Marvel (Fawcett had largely gone under in the meantime, and DC bought their former rival out, although litigation over OTHER Fawcett-related issues continues to this day), much to the delight of fans. Rushing to put Cap back in the funny papers, DC gets stopped by relative rookie publisher Marvel, who take DC to court to prevent the possible brand confusion over a comics company other than Marvel using "Marvel" in a book title.

The end result is Marvel won, DC had to refer to Cap and his associates under the umbrella term "SHAZAM," and Marvel - figuring what the fuck, why not? - creates their OWN Captain Marvel character. Hell, they even created their own version of the Marvel family, altho it's populated almost exclusively by dames, minorities and homos.

Additional fun-fact: The original Marvel Family consisted of dames, gimps, fatties, hayseeds, micks, geezers and beasts of the field.

Extra Additional fun-fact, just to confuse matters altogether: Okay. So. The shtick was that DC couldn't directly refer to their Captain Marvel as "Captain Marvel" on any cover or advertising. They could, if they wanted, call him 'Captain Thunder,' which was Cap's ORIGINAL name when he was scheduled to debut in Flash Comics #1. Turns out there was already a Captain Thunder at another company, and DC was publishing Flash Comics, so Thunder became Marvel, Flash became Whiz, and then in the Seventies DC used "Captain Thunder" as the appellation for a thinly-veiled Cap homage, so they couldn't reuse it for the revival, if they'd wanted to. Meh. I still like the beefy, retarded Cap better than the spacey one with the untamable mane.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Daredevil #311

I've been reading Daredevil since I was seven years old - it was, in fact, the first comic I ever bought with my own money - and in the intervening years since 1953 or whenever that was I have learned to ride the tumultuous seas of Daredevil's ever-fluctuating quality.

The rule on Daredevil is that you usually have to ride out two or three years of really truly horrible stories to get to six or eight months of the book blowing your mind. Can't be helped, what with the creative teams changing every three months or so, back in the old days ... so for every Miller and Mazzuchelli page you got, you had to sit through a heaping handful of Micah Synn or the Beyonder ... for every Ann Nocenti, there's Joe Kelly or J.M.DeMatteis to deal with.

So, with that in mind, I bring you one of my favorite Daredevil covers of all time, coming straight from one of those prolonged periods of crap. I uncovered it while packing off some of my comics to exile at the storage unit, it is Daredevil Volume one number 311 ...

In case you're doubting it, you are indeed seeing a chalk-white Matt Murdock lynching a black man right up in your face. And there is NO getting away from that black guy, he is being about as lynched as you can get, right on up in there.

And here's me seeing that for the first time as a kid :O

But seriously. Man. That's really raising the anti-hero stakes. Wolverine, you need to get in on this ...

The part you probably can't see is that "Man" in "The Man Without Fear" has been scratched out and, in obnoxious purple crayon, been replaced by "Zombie." That's right, it's "The Zombie Without Fear." And then the Voodoo Queen or whatever is laughing so that the title is all but obscured by her busting up, which I totally sympathize with her for because, man, "Zombie Without Fear" is pure LOL juice.

Also, please note that this issue DOES bear a Comics Code seal, only it's facing forward and apparently doesn't see any of the horrible nonsense going on behind it.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Spider-Man and the Not Ready for Prime Time Players

LIVE! From New York, it's ...

Before we get started, there are two things I'd better cover: First, yes, I know the Avengers met David Letterman in the pages of their own comic, thanks, please send no mail. Also, by way of a pre-emptive sequel to this review, let me summarize that particular comic: Hawkeye says "WHAT?" a lot and then there's a big doorknob.

Second thing is that I ALREADY KNOW that many of you fine, comic-reading folks out there like this issue. Some of you LOVE this issue. Hell, kids, I too help comprise this legion of the probably-should-be-ashamed-of-yourselves of which we are all part. But I put to you that this task I've undertaken - this thankless task … this unrewarded task … this really, really stupid task - of cussing at crap comics is often one of sacrifice.

HELL! SHIT! DAMN! FUCK! How's
THAT for swearin', Samurai?

Today, for instance, I sacrifice my juvenile glee at seeing Spider-Man - arguably a true counter-culture icon of the fictional four-color forum - teamed up with the hallmark of cocaine culture's rebel comedians, and trade it in for pointing out that the whole affair is wrapped up in a comedy comic penned by Chris Claremont.

I really can't stand any mainstream Marvel attempt at humor. I know there are some comics out there which do humor well. I mean, of course there's always Milk and Cheese, Sam and Max, and - to pimp an Ape-Law native who's also doing the 'pair of idiots in situations far beyond their control' routine - Hsu and Chan, not to mention the regretfully unfinished Eye of Mogombo, about which I often have tumultuous, fevered dreams of desire...

Even other mainstream companies have occasionally hit the nail on the head, although the words "mainstream" and "comedy" usually mean "Julia Roberts trips on something." For its time, Ambush Bug was a riot, as a for instance, and Dark Horse and Image have hit a few comedy goldmines, the latter's bitterly self-parodying "Stupid" notwithstanding.

But Marvel? Oh Marvel, your wise-cracking superheroes are sort of grimly admirable, not hilarious, and you should stick to them. It's a whole other matter when we're discussing the abysmally unforgivable Power Pachyderms, the well-meaning Slapstick (sorry, James), and, say, THE PANEL IN THIS VERY COMIC WHERE THERE ARE TWO OLD GUYS NAMED STADTLER AND WALDORF IN THE SNL AUDIENCE AND HO HO THE JOKE IS IT'S THE OLD GUYS FROM THE MUPPETS GET IT HA HA THE MUPPET GUYS ARE REALLY REAL OLD MEN IN THIS COMIC THAT'S VERY FUNNY RIGHT??

Bill Murray reacts to his loss to
Sean Penn in the Best Actor category
at the 2004 Academy Awards...

I'm not kidding, but it's what we get when Chris Claremont pens a comedy (You know, the first rule of comedy is timing, so what kind of timing does a guy who routinely writes dialogue where single sentences are trisected into multiple word-balloons have in the first place? When Storm asks "Are you hurt" - new balloon - "From your great fall" - new balloon "Peter?" and Colossus answers "Only" - new balloon - "my pride," - new balloon - "Friend Ororo," then there's little chance of mistaking it for an Abbot and Costello routine).

So, yeah, here we have Marvel Team-Up #74, written by Chris Claremont and tackled with a Herculean effort by Bob Hall and the fabulous Marie Severin. Right out of the gate, my admiration for the artists in this particular issue could not be higher, I'm planning on naming my first two kids "Bob Hall" and "Marie Severin," or assuming I only have a single child, "Bobarie Severhall."

Seriously, you may be able to give them a little shit for some of the likenesses drawn in this issue, but barring anything else, you need to give it up for their Jane Curtain. Holy socks, their Jane Curtain looks more like Jane Curtain than Jane Curtain does. Their drawing of Jane Curtain is currently enjoying a career in film and stage which dwarfs Jane Curtain's career, and Jane Curtain often turns to the drawing of Jane Curtain for stage advice. Please look for the drawing of Jane Curtain on the next Inside the Actor's Studio.

Probably doin' you up the butt, as near as I can tell...

As for the issue itself, our story begins with a harried Peter Parker ushering his "Why does he stay with that fickle bitch" of a love interest, Mary-Jane Watson, through a greasy New York deluge on their way to a Saturday Night Live taping. Everything's already going wrong - as usual - for Spidey's schmuck of an alter-ego, and the only thing which could make it worse would have been if they were going to see the Dick Ebersol-era SNL…

Meanwhile, in the backstage area of NBC's famous Studio C, SNL's Not-Ready-For-PrimeTime-Players gather around John Belushi's dressing room to watch the fat load wrestle with a ring which won't come off. "I told you not to guzzle that last Six-Pack," quips not-yet-doughy castmate Dan Akroyd, as though presaging Akroyd's plummet from the pinnacle of "Actually being funny."

And yeah, it's six-packs that was Belushi's problem. Woodward said as much.

Anyway, the ring which torments Belushi - which he believed to have come from an admiring, overseas fan - was apparently misdirected mail intended for an agent of the criminal Silver Samurai. That agent's name? J.B. Lu-Shi. See, the comedy, it never stops …

I had some joke about the SNL cast-members
being all strung out, only I had, at the time,
confused the term with "strung up," and now
the joke doesn't work. Just like the actual joke
in the comic didn't work, either.

So the Samurai collects his gang of hired goons under the very stage on which not only the SNL regulars are performing, but also Marvel Comics publisher and the show's guest-host, Stan Lee. During his monologue - oh, my sides - he quips that everyone thinks being Marvel's head honcho must be wonderful, "but have you ever had a story conference with the Thing?" I find myself imagining that it couldn't be worse than one with John Byrne.

The Samurai and his lackeys prowl the set, looking for the cast member they believe is in possession of this ring - secretly a personal teleportation device. Under Samurai's orders, they are to keep a low profile, lest their presence bring down a torrent of New York area super-heroes. Mind you, that they then proceed to abduct the cast members of New York's most prominent, national live event RIGHT ON CAMERA possibly counts as a tactical error.

To the story's credit, Samurai DOES mention that he swore an oath to retrieve the ring by midnight, which happens to be when the show ends broadcasting. Why he didn't swear to retrieve it by, say, 12:05, I dunno. Ah, the inscrutable Oriental mind …

So anyway, in between the occasional transcription of SNL gags, Spidey - having coincidentally witnessed one of Samurai's goons take down an NBC page, which is a gag I bet David Letterman wishes he'd thought of first - and the Players themselves (many decked out in Marvel Superhero costumes for skits during the show) end up cleaning up on the goons. Belushi even manages to get his Samurai character in on the act, which I suspect is how the Silver Samurai got picked for the antagonist of this story in the first place. I bet they were rolling on the floor in the Marvel editorial offices.

You're letting me down, man.

The one routine which baffled me - okay, not counting Dan Akroyd dressing up as "Mad Dog Mulcahy, the Killer Colonel of the Crimea." I'm no SNL/Second City historian, but I have NEVER heard of this character or routine, and I can only wonder at its origin - has to do with Garrett Morris dressed up as Thor. Cause hey, I'm not alone here in immediately thinking "Oh man, IT'S JIVE THOR! GO GET 'EM, GARRETT! ROCK 'EM LIKE YOU ROCKED ANT-MAN!"
But instead, he's talking inept Asgardian. Goddamnit, I wanted to hear Jive Thor call someone a "mortal turkey" and then threaten to "put mighty Mjolnir upside yo' face, honkey." Yet another dream laid to rest in a dusty quarter-bin …

Also, dressing up like Ms.Marvel puts meat on Laraine Newman's thighs. I guess I finally see the appeal of that weird-ass boot-cut.

Suggested what? THE ANAL SEX IS WHAT!

Anyway, following an abortive attempt to capture the Silver Samurai, a soft-shoe routine with Stan (how much fun do you think Hall and Severin had with over-rendering Stan's horrible toupee? Lots, from the look of it) and a weird denoument at a nearby bar where it's implied that some guy in the SNL audience was trying to bang Mary Jane up the can or something, we end with a gag so absolutely horrible that I think it might have been the cause behind John Belushi's self-destructive behavior.

All in all, the gentle glow of nostalgia and sacred cows of both Spidey and the classic SNL cast notwithstanding, the whole issue feels a lot like a real Saturday Night skit - it's too long, it doesn't seem to know where the ending's supposed to go, and Garrett Morris got a shit part. Next time around, I'll be on the lookout for the Captain America doing the Lumberjack song, or Wolverine killing Penn&Teller.

Classic Article: Super-Boxers

Who likes boxing? And who likes things that are super? Well, then, have I ever got a surprise for you! It's ...

Okay, bear with me, what we've got here is a story about Boxers. Not enough? Okay, brace yourself … they're also Super! Super, hey? Yeah, yeah, I thought that might get your attention...
Super Boxers debuted in Marvel Graphic Novel #8, and I suspect it was the product of a last-minute script change from a 48-page story of the magazine itself actually jumping a shark. Which may seem mean, but I remind you that I end up re-reading these things four or five times prior to each article, and I'm damn near ready to kill this book with a frozen pork chop at this point (See, then I can cook up the pork chop and feed it to the cops, thus … but wait, perhaps I've said too much)

The other way that you totally know this is the future
is that it's apparently considered kind of "street" to
wear pale magenta girdle and booties with bare
legs and a pink, translucent man-brassiere.

Super Boxers takes place in the future, and if comic books have taught me one thing it's that the future is never any damn good and we need to hire someone to do something about it. ALWAYS dystopian, ALWAYS. Which shouldn't come as any particular surprise, inasmuch as the present isn't any great shakes and it's not like the past was all red hots and rollerskates either, no matter how much the cranks on the editorial page insist that the past was totally where it was at (my counterpoint is always - HITLER! It's not like there's in the future, right? Right … oh, wait, shit).
The story kicks into gear after a fairly unnecessary full-page all-text prologue explaining that (a) it's the future, (b) that corporations run the planet, that (c) everyone is a corporate slave and (d) they kind of don't like it. Which all falls squarely into that "show-don't-tell" category of literary criticism - i.e., you probably could figure as much out from reading the book, despite the searing abdominal pain such a chore would undoubtedly cause you.

Anyway, from there we're into the comic, where there's an interesting stylistic device employed for the storytelling. This device is called “talking down to the readers.” Every caption is some curt, snarky direction - “Watch this man. Watch him. Do you see how he moves? How his every move is like a symphony? You didn't? I totally did. You're a fucking schmuck, charlie. I don't even know why I bother.”

Seriously. And I'm trying to give the writer the benefit of the doubt, figure it's a narrative device that has some sort of payoff, that we'll discover we've been spoken to throughout the entirety of the story by one of the characters - maybe even an unexpected character, which boy, wouldn't that be a nice surprise. Well, no. Nothing. Except that the narration stops the same time that the one of the supporting characters dies, and now I know some of you are thinking perhaps “Oh, hey, well so that guy was the narrator all along and it's a nice symmetry,” except that the narration covered a lot of stuff that fella couldn't have possibly known, so no, let's let that thought fly free like a butterfly.

Now you're up to date: Already on the first page, we're being harangued into following disheveled proletarian behemoth "Max" as hemakes his waythrough the dystopian "Underworld" he calls home (The Underworld is basically like a ghetto, but you get to say it in a totally awesome heavy metal voice, like "The Uuuunder-guh-ROUN-n-n-n-n-n-nd!" and you waggle your tongue and make the devil sign and stuff, so it's cooler).

Max is a participant in illegal, non-sanctioned underground Super Boxing matches, aided by his withered matchstick of a manager and trainer, inappropriately nicknamed "Strap." If you'd like to submit your suggestion on how "Strap" got his nickname, please write your idea in the form of a traditional sonnet on a 3x5 index card and cut yourself to death with it, thanks.

One of the other problems with the book is that it often felt as though the letterer were scripting some entirely other story than was depicted by the artist. Y'ello, fella, who's cheering here exactly?

Max's side of the story is no big shakes, he's a straight-laced fighter who has to deal with the corrupt local officials and the regional totally futuristic equivalent of the mob (called here, "The Mob"), and he pulls narrow victories out of his ass because he's honest or something. He's also, naturally, catching the eye of representatives of the Corporatetier of civilization (cleverly nicknamed "Corpies." I won't bother to tell you what their made up name for the addictive narcotic of the future is, but it's about equally retarded, as it always tends to be in these stories. Also, there's a bar called Booz-O-Rama, so we're clearly dealing with a madman at the word processor), represented at first by this character "Rolf."

Rolf is disturbing for at least a pair of reasons - I mean, there's also an hilarious bit approaching the denouement of the book where Rolf declares to Max "I'm not Corp, I'm just a corporate lawyer. Sure I'm wealthy, but I totally root for you poor people" which frankly ought to have earned him a busted nose, but that's later on - First off, Rolf is almost always depicted looking straight at the viewer. Straight on, same pose, same lighting, every single time - chin up, eyes half closed, mouth shut. You might just get the idea that Rolf was consistently drawn from a single photo reference.

Other thing is that Rolf basically looks like John Byrne.

Oh, and while I'm holding that note, let me mention that the book itself was produced by Ron Wilson - in big letters - and John Byrne and Armando Gil in little smaller letters. Still, who handled what responsibilities exactly escapes me, all I know is they could have shifted everyone's job description over one person to the left and had just as coherent a product.

Now THAT'S writing!

Where the story ends up is that Max has come to the attention of Marilyn Hart, a Corporate power player in political struggle with another Corporate power player, whose eyes turn to Max on account of apparently the Corporations settle their conflicts and decisions by pitting their Super Boxers against one another. And that's some solid business acumen there, making major policy decisions based on which greased-up steroidal maniac in Optimus Prime underoos can beat up the other one harder. Sure, nothing's decided by the services they provide or the cash they're pumping around, but on whether one retard can knock another retard down. This was well thought out...

I should probably take a moment to mention how Super Boxing works - despite the name, the boxers aren't super, and neither is anything else in the book. Basically, the two idiots in question get dressed up in leather-padded erector set bathing suits, outfitted with boxing gloves that sort of resemble cybernetic meatloaf with teeth, and have at each other in big dusty arenas.

Add in their - I kid you not - hover-boots, and you've got what you got. What with all the racing around the shallow curve of the metal walls and the pounding violence and the global politics-meshed-with-corporate manipulation storyline, you basically end up having 1972's "Rollerball" with a smaller cast and John Houseman is made to be slightly hotter. SLIGHTLY. Just a little.Marilyn ain't much to look at.

No, Familiar Face did not win.

A lot of effort went into trying to make the Super Boxers' battles seem more gruesome than those of regular boxers - the punches send the combatans flying across the ring, they smash into high metal walls, they say enigmatic things behind each others' backs and it makes the other person wonder what they really meant, and feelings get brutally hurt - but the end result is it that the fights seem all the more antiseptic for the effort.

After even the BIG fight at the end of the book, Roman and Max walk off without broken bones, bruises, or even a little blood. Well, I should probably mention that Max ends up with a black eye, but it's only there for one panel and, honestly, it wasn't there for the panel before it. Or the panel after. And come to think of it, it might've been a shadow. BUT OMG THE INTERNET THE FIGHTS ARE TOTALLY BRUTAL. You want to know how to make modern boxing more brutal? Give the guys knives. You know what they got instead? Hover-boots.

Anyway, Max ends up falling in love with Marilyn Hart, is built up against the Corporate golden boy of the Super Boxing scene, "Roman" - who gets his own sub-plot exclusively about his terrible mopeyness and self-doubt, and in the end it's just ridiculous and has no impact whatsoever - and Max makes it to the big fight only to … win! Hooray! I didn't care.

Oh yeah, and Marilyn Hart is actually like ninety but usesfuturistic scienceto make herself look younger, which is revealed at the end of the book as if it was a major story point, but again, it actually has no impact whatsoever on the story.

Super Boxers is incredibly frustrating on a number of levels, not the least of which being that it was the unfortunate hiccup in Marvel's otherwise pretty-darn-good Graphic Novel line, any one of which may merely have read like a VERY good contemporary comic from Marvel (given that the draw of the graphic novel, at least as it seemed from Marvel at the time, was that you could totally make a comic book but it's BIGGER than usual,whichneeds be considered beside the point) but which were all better than this. All of them. Even the one you're thinking of, seriously.

One the positive side, with a head that small it must've at least been a very easy birth.

Additionally frustrating is the unnecessary artifice of the endeavor - so it takes place in the future under the tyrannical heel of rich people who treat poor people like crap and the little guy makes good? And it's in the future because ... I would assume so the boxers in question could wear those ridiculous spiky boxing gloves instead of something actually scary looking.

The story could just as well have taken place in the 1930's, a fact of which the creators surely aren't unaware - a good eighty percent of the fashion, architecture and slang are deliberately made to evoke the idea of the 1930's, and then a robot happens. It detracts from a story which, frankly, can't survive detraction. Like, for instance, I think this review may give it and everyone involved with it an aneurysm, just by virtue of it existing, instantaneously by the power of magic and also robots probably.

Also, let me step back a moment to re-address the "Booz-O-Rama." That made me put down the book - to me, not only is that indicative of a real lack of imagination (it sounds so much like a hooch clearing house that "Liquor Barn" sounds like "Studio 54" by comparison), it strikes me as the kind of a name for a bar created by someone who doesn't drink. And more than that, by someone who looks down on people who drink, yet who wants to capitalize on the inherent seedy hipness of drunk culture, despite having no damn business trying to write a scene in a bar at all.

I know, I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but considering how long I suffered, I think the Booz-O-Rama is frankly the last damn straw.

Oh yeah, and one last thing about Super Boxers - apparently they've been trying to make this a movie for something along the lines of twenty years. I wonder how Doom's IV is coming along?