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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 5, 2023 9:52:32 GMT -5
FLASH #135 (March, 1963) By Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson
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Post by MWGallaher on Apr 2, 2023 6:38:22 GMT -5
Here's what I bought in the month after I turned 13:
100-Page Super Spectacular DC-18: I was tiring a little of Superman, but I didn’t miss any superhero Super-Specs if I could help it. The backups would have included my second solo Hourman reprint, my introduction to TNT and Dan the Dyna-Mite and Captain Triumph, and The Atom, an established favorite of mine. The Superman stories included important classics “Superboy’s Last Day in Smallville” and “Superman-Red and Superman-Blue”, key components of Superman lore. Adventure Comics #428: I wasn’t going to pass up the debut of a new hero, with a bold logo: Black Orchid restoring Adventure back to its proper superheroic roots. The Dr. Thirteen backup was a nice bonus for this young Phantom Stranger fan.
Flash #222: I liked the Flash but wasn’t buying it regularly. Green Lantern made this a team-up title for one issue here, so that was the biggest draw. Jungle Action #5: Black Panther’s first solo series got my attention, but I recall being disappointed to find this was really an Avengers reprint, and that the series would really start next issue. Justice League of America #106: I may have been one of the few readers for whom spotlighting Red Tornado on the cover was a huge draw. JLA was usually an easy ‘yes’ for me anyway, though. Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth #7: My second Kamandi, and the King Kong riff may have been part of the draw.
Legion of Super-Heroes #4: I was loving this reprint series! Of all DC’s new batch of reprint titles, this is one I wished they’d have continued, but this was instead the final month of that experiment.
Marvel Team-Up #11: I liked the Inhumans, and I remember digging the Inhumans logo whipped up for their co-starring role this issue, but I’ve got no memory of this Conway/Mooney effort.
Metal Men #44: Another in that last gasp of DC’s attempt to counter Marvel’s reprint flooding tactic with one of their own. I was fond of the team, and enjoyed them well enough. Secret Origins #3: Arguably a part of DC’s reprint initiative that did linger, but I never counted Secret Origins, or its counterpart, Wanted, along with the likes of LOSH, Metal Men, Doom Patrol, COTU, Johnny Thunder, Inferior Five, Trigger Twins, and Four Star Battle Tales. I wasn't so interested in Wonder Woman's origin, but Wildcat fascinated me, thanks to his B&B appearances. Shazam #4: I was determined to like this, but the juvenile quality was disappointing me. Special Marvel Edition #11: My first “war comic”, but I only bought this Sgt. Fury reprint for the guest-starring Captain America and Bucky. And I was disappointed. Swamp Thing #5: The monster of the month is a witch; not the most exciting for me, but I loved every issue of Wein/Wrightson, and I got a big kick out of Swampy regrowing a severed arm!
Sword of Sorcery #3: This series still reigns as my all-time favorite S&S title. World's Finest Comics #218: I didn’t usually like WF, I’m pretty sure I bought this for the Metamorpho back-up by Haney and Calnan.
Worlds Unknown #2: A fine pair of SF tales with twist endings I can still remember. Total Cost: $3.50
Cover of the Month: No real stunners for me this month, but I do really love the spotlight on Red Tornado on Cardy’s JLA cover. Comic I Don’t Have But Would Most Like To Have: Given my pick, and with no consideration of resale value, I wouldn’t mind having a copy of Charlton’s Haunted Love #2, thank you very much.
Comic I Wanted Real Bad But Only Obtained Years Later: Tales of the Zombie #1. Man, Marvel’s house ads really had me hyped for this one, but I could never spot a copy on the racks!
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Post by MWGallaher on Mar 28, 2023 11:16:31 GMT -5
kirby101
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Post by MWGallaher on Mar 28, 2023 7:38:12 GMT -5
Icctrombone, I never saw that book, and now i am intrigued. No criticism of the cover entry should be inferred, but that actual comic was one of the few comics I've ever actively loathed. Eclipse Comics made an offer in CBG where you could send in any comic book you didn't like and they'd send you one of their publications, and that POPEYE was what I mailed them. (I've wiped my mind of most of what annoyed me about it, but one aspect is right there on the cover: in an attempt to evoke Popeye's unique speech patterns, they cutely subtitled it "Borned to the Sea" instead of "Born to the Sea", which doesn't work since even Popeye would have to unconvincingly strain to accentuate any audible difference between those two phrases. As I recall, the issue was filled with failed attempts to capture that distinctive Popeye voice, as if the writer never read any of the dialogue out loud to see if it sounded right. So when the readers are mentally voicing it to themselves, almost everything Popeye says "sounds" wrong.)
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Post by MWGallaher on Mar 23, 2023 10:46:21 GMT -5
Dell Four Color #1091 Cover by Jack Mendelsohn based on his King Features Syndicate comic strip Jacky's Diary:
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Post by MWGallaher on Mar 13, 2023 6:29:14 GMT -5
The first literal 1st issue I bought of any comic was: I liked THE DEMON a lot, but not enough to commit to every issue. My dimes were judiciously allocated as a kid, and this title often had to be cut from the budget. The first issue 1st issue I bought and then bought the entire run of off the stands was: SWAMP THING was simply a must-buy for me. The final days were a sad disappointment, but I had to stick with it. The first issue of a comic that drew me in for the long haul, resulting in my buying every following issue (including the Giant-Size run, Annual, and related issues) for over a decade was: Somehow, this became my first long-term committed relationship with the comics racks. I wasn't a particularly big fan of any of the leads, but I was fascinated by the dynamics of this "non-team". This one was, obviously, not the literal first issue, but my first. You can of course be sure that I eventually picked up the first three issues and MARVEL FEATURE 1-3! (This cover, by the way, was one of my proudest accomplishments in our weekly Classic Cover Contest. For a while, I gave myself the challenge of entering covers that satisfied both the current week's contest and the prior week's contest. I thought I would have to give it up when Favorite John Buscema Cover and Favorite Jim Starlin Cover were back-to-back topics--in some order, I can't recall which came first. But I managed to find this one, which is John Buscema finishes over a Jim Starlin layout. It's not only the sole instance I could find of a Buscema/Starlin cover collaboration, but was literally a true favorite of mine: a great cover with personal significance to my comic book collecting hobby!)
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Post by MWGallaher on Mar 7, 2023 5:59:07 GMT -5
EdoBosnar
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Post by MWGallaher on Feb 27, 2023 22:27:52 GMT -5
The question of what defines a “jungle comic” has been a struggle throughout this little project; it’s a genre that doesn’t have boundaries as clear as I thought at first. I’ve stayed alert to subgenres of the jungle comic: jungle war, jungle superheroes, jungle kaiju, jungle horror. And with this entry, we see another: the prehistoric jungle comic. These comics, which a reader would probably rush to label as “caveman comics”, or something similar, can justifiably be viewed as jungle comics. We see settings, tropes, and conflicts prominent in the most stereotypical of jungle comics: an environment of dense vegetation, caves, volcanos; primitive tribes with brutal traditions, superstitions, laws, witch doctors, and chieftains; battles with rival tribes, wild animals, and nature itself. Prehistoric jungle comics have an advantage over those set contemporaneous with their publication dates, in that the primitive nature of the cultures depicted are more believable. There is no nonsense like the Africans of B’Wana Beast calling airplanes “iron birds”. Granted, part of the appeal of the jungle comic, as produced in the middle 20th century, was the notion that uncivilized savage societies still existed out there in the wild, where modern men and women could encounter them, or, cliched though it is, become worshipped as a god or goddess by the ignorant primitives. There aren’t all that many prehistoric jungle comics of which I am aware. There are some prehistoric comics that are fair to exclude from the subgenre, since they take place in clearly non-jungle environments, such as the American Southwest, but in this installment, I’ll take a look at those comic book Neanderthals who spent much of their time in the overgrown jungles of a mythical land before history. I’ll forego detailed plot descriptions this time, let’s just see how jungle-overgrown these prehistoric comics can get! First up is NAZA STONE AGE WARRIOR #1, from Dell, dated December 1963. Read this issue at comicbookplusNAZA is drawn by the ubiquitous Jack Sparling, a.k.a. “Dell’s Darling”, Dell’s go-to adventure artist following Western Publishing’s departure from producing Dell’s content in favor of their own Gold Key line. NAZA is a pretty tedious product, but its primitive tribes, witch doctors, crude weapons, and heavy vegetation make it blend it well with jungle comics: There is plenty of threatening jungle wildlife to contend with: …including giant ants fighting off barely-drawn mastadons: NAZA does make it easy on me, with the writer explicitly describing the setting as “the jungle”, thus supporting my contention that this is a valid subgenre of jungle comics: …but I can’t count this as a Jungle Gem. I can’t bring myself to declare it Jungle Junk, either, though. It’s not offensively bad enough to rank that low, it’s merely unengaging. I hesitate to be too harsh on Jack Sparling, who did some stuff that I really liked, but I can’t help but picture Dell editors in the early 60’s being so out of touch with the state of the art that they figured Jack Sparling represented top notch adventure comics. And maybe Dell’s readers were undiscriminating enough to take Sparling’s work--which here is indisputably rushed, crude and often ugly—as plenty good enough. ANTHRO #6, July-August 1969, was the last installment of Anthro’s Silver Age feature. Its one year, bi-monthly run followed a debut of the feature in SHOWCASE #74, May 1968. After its cancellation, Anthro would not appear again until the massive team-up in SHOWCASE #100, May 1978, the tenth anniversary of the character’s debut. ANTHRO was the creation of writer/artist Howie Post, who produced all seven installments. In this final installment, he was joined by inker Wally Wood, whose unmistakable style brought quite a sheen to Post’s rough but appealing approach. I don’t know if Wood was brought on to save the comic under the hypothesis that Post’s own finishes were out of touch with what the modern comics reader expected or if there were other circumstances that dictated another hand contributing this time around, but I’m grateful that ANTHRO served to showcase both Post’s unadulterated vision and Wood’s lush rendition during its short life. ANTHRO was a fun adventure series with a light-hearted, often humorous tone. As the story opens, Anthro is riding a horse into the Forest of Giants to find the missing Embra, the girl he loves. As the caption box informs us, “his bon voyage is an ominous warning!”—“Fool! You will die in the forest!”, shouts a white-haired caveman! The Forbidden Forest of Giants looks plenty like a jungle to me: The Forest is, to no surprise, a dangerous place, as we’d expect in any good jungle comic. The fight against a lion is a classic jungle adventure trope, and Anthro does it: Anthro defeats the white lion with the aid of an Asiatic-looking stranger, one of the “Giants” of the forest. A comical exchange of friendly gestures—such as the generous tossing of a substantial slab of meat into Anthro’s chest—caps off an unexpectedly peaceful encounter. But it’s an adventure comic, so soon Anthro is facing other dangers familiar to jungle comics readers, such as a drop into a pit trap, where he is rescued by the very subject of his mission—Embra, and her wounded father. Anthro nurses the delirious dad, claiming that Pop gave his blessing for Anthro’s marriage while in his weakened state. But of course, every primitive jungle tribe has its unusual laws and customs, and Embra’s tribe requires that her older sister be wed first, so Anthro brings dad and daughter home to his tribe, where a truce between tribes is secured, and where Anthro hopes to find a bride for older sister Ita. Ita proves not to be the lovely lass her sister is, but she still finds a mate, and Anthro’s finally on the verge of marrying, when his fellow member of the Bear Tribe, Nima, challenges the wedding. Thanks to the complex set of rules one expects from jungle tribes, the potential brides must battle it out: When the fight ends in a draw, another tribal law comes into play: Anthro must marry them both! And it is on this cultural cliffhanger that Anthro’s story came to an end! There was no Next Issue, thus no “The Stranger!”, and Anthro’s conjugal conundrum was never to be resolved. But folks, this is a definite Jungle Gem or, if you prefer, Troglodyte Treasure. ANTHRO has a well-deserved reputation among knowing comics fans, and Howie Post did some delightful work here. Few successes spun out of the late-era SHOWCASE comic, alas, depriving us of more of this, a worthier work than concepts like the Creeper and Hawk & Dove, who, although just as unsuccessful, had the benefit of superhero trappings that would allow them to return to the stands again and again, while Anthro remained in the mists of pre-history. KONG THE UNTAMED #2 was published by DC Comics in September 1975, produced by writer Jack Oleck and artist Alfredo Alcala. Berni Wrightson drew that gorgeous cover, but that super-cool logo looks to me to have been the work of Alfredo Alcala himself (letterer Todd Klein contends that Alcala only did the “Kong” part, so I’ll bow to his expertise, but I’m proud to remember having identified Alcala’s unique style of lettering back in 1975). In this story, Kong fights off wolves and finds himself surrounded by hostile “Beast Men” as he sits at his campfire, deep inside the jungle: Kong’s rival from issue 1 helps him to escape, as Kong’s boldness earned the respect of the brutish Gurat. We see another defense often seen in jungle comics: lighting a fire in the grasslands: By the end of the issue, Kong and Gurat are blood brothers, and the young man has his first true friend (and supporting character). In FINAL CRISIS, Grant Morrison depicted Anthro as “the first boy on Earth”, to contrast with Kamandi, but really, Kong would have been the more appropriate choice; Anthro was a young man, Kong was a boy. KONG THE UNTAMED, part of DC’s mid-70’s attempt at launching a Fantasy sub-line, lasted only five issues. Gerry Conway (sigh) took over as writer, but by the end Alcala was gone, replaced by newcomer David Wenzel (who would become a highly-regarded fantasy artist) and old pro Bill Draut, competent but unremarkable (and, evidently, unreliable). Still, though, I’ve got to rate KONG THE UNTAMED a Jungle Gem, a treasure for those of us who love the forgotten short-run features that popped up in the 70’s. TOR was a Joe Kubert creation, initially published in 1953. DC featured a combination of new and reprinted material in a 6-issue run beginning in June 1975. Our sample is issue 3, from October 1975. This issue reprints “Isle of Fire”, a story reminiscent of the South Sea Islands offshoot of jungle comics, with savage tribes and the ever-popular volcano: “Danny Dreams” reprinted another Kubert feature of the past, one that focused on a modern day boy who dreamed himself into fantastic adventures, and in this issue, he dreams himself into an island jungle of prehistoric days, where he befriends a primitive pygmy-like tribe: I didn’t really love TOR, but I’ll rank this as a Jungle Gem on the inarguable high quality of anything Joe Kubert ever produced.
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Post by MWGallaher on Feb 23, 2023 17:51:15 GMT -5
ASTONISHING #25, June 1953, Atlas art by Russ Heath (Odd blurbage here--doesn't "starring" usually imply a character, not a story title? And can Atlas be held to a "guarentee"?)
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Post by MWGallaher on Feb 21, 2023 7:37:53 GMT -5
MDG gets my vote for featuring one of my favorite characters (Red Tornado) and showing the kind of hammer-blow slam I was thinking of with the topic. Fun covers all around, gang!
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Post by MWGallaher on Feb 17, 2023 17:17:10 GMT -5
TARZAN #25, June 1979, Marvel Comics “The Wages of Fear!” was written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Sal Buscema and Bob Hall. The cover is by Rich Buckler and Bob McLeod. This issue starts fresh, with Tarzan returning to the jungle after an arc in Pellucidar, the land at the Earth’s core which had run for the previous 11 issues. His monkey friend (“Manu” in Great Ape language!) is filling him in on what’s new in “Tarzan’s jungle”, and, as far as the monkey’s concerned, that’s not much. As Tarzan approaches his homestead, a little worried about how Jane will react (Tarzan has no idea how long he’s been gone, because time runs differently at the Earth’s core), he sees his son, Jack “Korak the Killer” Clayton getting some bad news: his mom was investigating a huge jungle fire when she was charged by a rhino and plunged into a river gorge! They were unable to find a body, so Korak—and the newly arrived Tarzan—are off to search the gorge. Tarzan takes to the trees, and Korak follows by car, worried that Tarzan took off before learning that the fire was deliberate. That fire was set by a trio of white poachers: Roger Tory, a pig of a man who isn’t worried about having killed Tarzan’s wife (although he’s going to blame the rhino), Ian Chalmers, who doesn’t want to kill a human, should Tarzan butt in, and Miss Lyle, apparently Roger’s girlfriend. The trio has capture Tarzan’s own Golden Lion, Jad-Bal-Ja (with his unique black mane!) to take back to “Roger Tory’s Bring ‘Em Back Alive” show. Off they motor to the base camp, before Tarzan can catch up. Next stop, New York! Jane, to the readers’ relief, crawls up from the gorge, alive and angry. She eavesdrops as the villains pack their catches for the trip overseas. Jane has questions: Why did they set fire to the veldt, and how do they think they can smuggle this many animals out without Tarzan or the British Coastal Patrol catching them? Just then the vengeful Tarzan arrives, freeing some of the captured animals and fighting furiously. The Golden Lion, through the bars of its cage, takes out one of Tory’s men with a paw-swipe to the back while Tarzan heads for the top dog, Roger Tory. Jane, still lurking, discovers why they set the fire: to create a landing field for the cargo planes that will smuggle the animals out. Tarzan is threatening to kill Tory, but Miss Lyle interferes with a cattle-prod; not even Tarzan can handle that kind of shock! Tarzan drops Roger, then quickly recovers and continues the fight, but now that Roger has the cattle-prod, he’s got an effective weapon to take Tarzan down. A few more jolts and Tarzan’s out, leaving Roger Tory with the brilliant idea to poach Tarzan himself for exhibit back in “civilization”! Jane shows up to free her husband, but she gets captured and kidnapped, too, and Korak is left behind, vowing to follow them to New York. Lackluster stuff here. Marvel obviously had high hopes for their TARZAN comic. Kicking it off with the team of Roy Thomas and John Buscema adapting Edgar Rice Burroughs stories, it seems like they hoped to recreate the success of their CONAN comics. As a far more familiar property, they may have expected TARZAN to exceed Conan’s success. Sure, DC hadn’t made a strong seller of it, but they didn’t know how to do this kind of stuff like Marvel, Marvel was going to do it right. Rather than spread the ERB thin, Marvel would focus on the two biggest ERB properties, Tarzan and John Carter. No Korak series, or Carson of Venus, or Pellucidar. Put the guys who were currently making CONAN great on the job, going back to the source, spinning the Marvel Magic, and this was a sure-fire hit! Well, maybe not. Starting out with adaptations of “Jungle Tales of Tarzan” may have seemed like a good idea, with self-contained stories ensuring a satisfying completion for each issue, but a young Tarzan growing up in the jungle talking to animals wasn’t the Tarzan most readers expected, and the faithful adaptations were based on creaky, out-dated material. Marvel quickly moved on to flashier material to adapt, “Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar”, and finally started cranking out new stories, using Pellucidar to introduce the kinds of monsters and sci-fi elements more appealing to the typical Marvel fan of the time. But with Thomas and Buscema not making this book the hoped-for hit, their talents were redirected elsewhere, and the book turned over to greener writers…and Our Pal Sal. Sal was, of course, about as close to brother John as you could get, in superficial ways, and I’m in no way a Sal-basher—I adored his DEFENDERS—but putting Sal on the book was perceived by many as a sign that Marvel wasn’t going to put much effort into making this a centerpiece of their line. And Bill Mantlo? Heck, why not? With this issue, Marvel went briefly back to the classic African jungle environment, but only to set up their own retread of one of the most beloved Tarzan films, with Tarzan and Jane going to New York City. I respect that Mantlo portrayed Jane as a highly capable woman, as well she should be after all the adventures and challenges of jungle life with Tarzan, and I always liked Korak, so it’s great to have him join in. But it’s a 40’s serial kind of cheat just to have Jane climb back up after showing a clearly deadly fall into a deep gorge, and the dialogue setting up the bad guys is disjointed and confusing, so, from a technical perspective, it’s not especially well done. To little surprise, Marvel’s TARZAN didn’t continue much longer. TARZAN and JOHN CARTER WARLORD OF MARS would be cancelled as of October 1979. With DC and then Marvel unable to turn ERB’s most famous creation into a success, there were no American publishers to bite on the license, and the Lord of the Jungle would go into comic book limbo for a while now. Marvel would take another shot—a single shot—in 1984, with MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL #29, printing a story by Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle, and I suppose I’ll have to get to that later: even though it’s a bit past my intended time frame, it’s got two of my favorite creators. Most of the jungle comics I’ve been reviewing here have had text stories, but this is 1979 at Marvel, so we’ve got a letters page. This one has some interesting content: Howard Kinyon earns a No-Prize for correcting a violation of Burroughs’ lore in the Pellucidar material. David Boyington objects to Tarzan using the term “Numa” for a saber-tooth tiger, when it means (male) lion. No No-Prize for David: since the Ape language doesn’t have a word for “tiger” (and logically, why would it?), Tarzan used the closest equivalent term. Makes sense to me! There’s a big drawing of Tarzan on the page, the original of which is to be awarded to whoever wins the contest to rename the letter column from the boring “Tarzan’s Jungle Drums” to something snazzier. They’ve already received a few entries, and even though they didn’t make the grade, the lettercol is going to share them. For example, “Jungle Lore” is suggested by one Billy Myers. Hey, that reminds me, I went to school with a Billy Myers. We were in band together, him on clarinet, me on trombone. He was a couple of years behind me, so we weren’t good friends, but the band was always tight, it was quite a bond in high school, your bandmates were always your friends, no exceptions. I haven’t thought about that kid in years! I wonder whatever happened to him? He’s not one of the many Facebook friends from Frayser High. Oh, sorry for the divergence, folks! Where were we? OK, more suggestions from the next writers include “Cry of the Ape Fans!”, “Through the Jungle Vine”, “Mangani Mailbag”, … Hold on a second! Did I just see what I thought I did? The address I skimmed past? Billy Myers, 1484 Haywood, Memphis, IN 38127 !?No, there’s no Memphis, Indiana--that’s a Tennessee zip code. In fact, it’s a Memphis, Tennessee zip code. In fact, it’s a Frayser zip code. In fact, it was my zip code. By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, that’s my Billy Myers! It’s 1979, Billy would have been a junior at Frayser High School, and yeah, I’m pretty sure he lived on Haywood, just a few blocks north of the school! I didn’t even know he was a fellow comic book fan! Lemme see if any of my Facebook friends have him on their friends list…yep, they sure do, and darned if he doesn’t have a Black Panther cover picture! Ain’t that a corker? OK, then, entirely unearned, I’m going to have to call this a Jungle Gem just for the Billy Myers factor. If you ever have the unexpected pleasure of finding a forgotten friend show up in a 45-year-old comic book, you’d probably call that a gem, too.
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Post by MWGallaher on Feb 15, 2023 10:57:29 GMT -5
I'll go ahead and post before the formal announcement of results, since I've got a busy morning ahead of me... This week, let's see covers with characters smashing--or at least slamming, not necessarily breaking--inanimate objects with a hammering drop of their closed fist! The standard rules apply-- - Post one, and only one, classic cover that fits the theme of the contest. - Cover must be from a published comic book or collected volume published before February 2013. - It's helpful if you include the title and the issue number of the comic in bold, in case some posters cannot see your image. - Covers must be posted before voting begins. - Voting takes place on Tuesday, February 21, beginning at 12:01am PST and ending at 11:59pm PST. - Vote by posting the name of the poster whose cover best fits the theme or that you simply like the most in bold. - The winner of the contest is the entrant with the most votes after the voting period ends. - The winner chooses the theme for the next week's contest. - If you don't think the cover fits the theme, don't vote for it; please don't post disparaging remarks about it. - If a cover is more recent than the classic time frame (currently February 2013), kindly point it out to the poster, who may then choose an alternate before voting begins. Have fun! Here's my example entry, KOBRA #6, 1977: (Gotta love 70's cover dialog--how does it follow that destroying a bridge is the final step in conquering the world?
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Post by MWGallaher on Feb 8, 2023 12:57:56 GMT -5
BRAVE & BOLD #197, by Jim Aparo
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Post by MWGallaher on Feb 8, 2023 12:50:30 GMT -5
ASTONISHING TALES #12, June 1972, Marvel Comics If the United States could be considered to include a jungle—by one definition, an area of dense forest and tangled vegetation, the Florida Everglades would surely be the most widely acknowledge. It has, of course, served as a convenient substitute for African jungles in many an American film and tv show, and it is to the Everglades we go for a sample of the adventures of Ka-Zar, “Lord of the Hidden Jungle”, for this tale from his sojourn in the States from the early 1970’s, one that incorporates a very special treat: the pages from the previously-unpublished second Man-Thing installment intended for Marvel’s black and white SAVAGE TALES #2, left homeless when that legendary publication was cancelled as of its first issue. (SAVAGE TALES would be revived the following year, but initially as an exclusive vehicle for Robert E. Howard properties, not Marvel creations like the Femizons, Man-Thing, Ka-Zar, and Black Brother, who had backed up Conan in the debut issue.) Roy Thomas wrote and John Buscema and Dan Adkins drew the new Ka-Zar pages for this issue, with Len Wein writing and Neal Adams drawing the Man-Thing sequence in ASTONISHING TALES #12. The amalgamated story is titled “Terror Stalks the Everglades!” It opens with Zabu, Ka-Zar’s sabretooth tiger companion, breaking out of a cage as he is being unloaded from the hold of an airplane landing in Miami. Ka-Zar, who was onboard with his human companions, prevents the airport police from shooting the beast, who is obedient to the Jungle Lord, but the cops still try to take them in, forcing Ka-Zar and his government-sponsored crew (including Barbara Morse, who will later become a costumed heroine known first as The Huntress, then as Mockingbird) to flee to the waiting helicopter, to head off to the top-secret mission for which Ka-Zar has been recruited. That mission is to track down the missing scientist Ted Sallis, who was working toward a “bio-chemical breakthrough” before disappearing in the Everglades, possibly because of a female companion, Ellen, who is thought to have been a spy for AIM. AIM is indeed active in the swampy rainforest, and they fire on the chopper, forcing it to land in the waters. Ka-Zar and Zabu get everyone out safely, but the two of them have to battle off a mob of hungry alligators, re-enacting a classic jungle hero trope. They make their way to the government complex, where the crew are watching over an ailing Dr. Calvin, a nearly comatose old woman whose only words for the weeks she’s been under care have been “Ted Sallis” and “Man-Thing”. That very “Man-Thing” happens to be lurking outside the window, helpless to tell them the truth behind the local rumors of a horrible creature that burns faces and may have killed Ted Sallis… And here comes the Man-Thing insert… Neal Adams’ pages were intended for black and white publication, and Marvel wisely limited the new coloring to yellow tints and blue caption boxes, distinguishing them as flashback scenes. (The first panel is fully colored; this depicts Man-Thing lurking outside a window, and the main story was constructed to mesh with that to allow this single panel to be “current time”.) The Man-Thing sequence quickly recaps the character’s origin: Ted Sallis injected himself with the Super-Soldier formula he was there to develop, causing his transformation into the mute Man-Thing when Ellen betrayed him, and Ellen paid for her treachery at Man-Thing’s burning touch, while Man-Thing was left to roam the swamps seeking revenge. A local yokel happens upon Man-Thing while hunting for a “witch-woman” reputed to be building “monstahs”. When he tries to shoot Man-Thing, the swamp monster’s grip burns his arm, causing him to drop his pistol and flee in pain. Man-Thing happens upon the “witch-woman” and follows her to the government facility where she is revealed to be Dr. Calvin, working in a high-tech facility. I suspect the dialog has been altered to make reference to AIM and Bobbi Morse, in order to more closely align with the main story, but anyway, a mob shows up at the place, holding Bobbi Morse hostage, reporting that Jasper Petrie (the previously-seen yokel) has just had his arm amputated thanks to the “research” that the mob presumes Dr. Calvin is responsible for. (As an interesting aside, this page served as the inspiration for Man-Thing’s cover corner box image, after a single issue using a less moody head-on body shot on Man-Thing’s first color feature installment!) Morse shouts that the ringleader is an AIM agent stirring things up, and she tries to escape, but the AIM guy grabs her and carries her away into the swamp. (Again, I wonder what the original dialog indicated here, because there is likely some cobbling going on here. The hostage girl now identified as Bobbi Morse looks more like one of the townspeople, but appears to be sympathetic to Dr. Calvin. Perhaps some pages were deleted?) Man-Thing suddenly appears, killing off and/or burning many of the mob members and saving the girls. The Man-Thing is able only to grunt unintelligibly, but Dr. Calvin recognizes some humanity, and runs fearlessly to the monster, suspecting some connection with the missing Ted Sallis. Dr. Calvin, though, is shot from behind by the dying ringleader, and Man-Thing flees back to the swamp. Back to present time and Ka-Zar, who hears the creature lurking outside, and pursues Man-Thing into the swamp. The Man-Thing falls into a pit trap dug by AIM agents in their highly-recognizable bee-keeper gear, and when Ka-Zar reaches them, he knows somehow that he should be protecting Man-Thing against the AIM agents, and begins to fight. One AIM agent falls in the pit, where he’s burned to death, but eventually Ka-Zar, himself, ends up tossed into the pit, and his face shows fear as he faces “the most startling swamp-creature of all” (as Marvel would tag his comic in later years). And as we know now (but didn’t know then), “whatever knows fear burn’s at the Man-Thing’s touch!” But that’s a matter for ASTONISHING TALES #13, because we end on this cliffhanger! While this is something of an aberrant installment of the Ka-Zar feature, I’ll get to his more typical environment, the Hidden Jungle of the “Savage Land”, when I sample the character’s solo series. This will also serve as my only consideration of Man-Thing; if the Everglades is indeed a jungle, that makes the Man-Thing feature a jungle comic itself, or at least a twist on the genre worth recognizing in this thread. My fondness for Man-Thing, and indeed, the entire microgenre of swamp monster comics, elevates this issue into a Jungle Gem for me, boosted even further since it is also an example of another thing I always get a kick out of, comics that mine leftovers from cancelled comics. But no, this isn’t a fair look at Ka-Zar, an out-of-place Jungle Lord in long trousers for this stretch of stories. It's not really a great comic, though, and not it’s an exemplar of the jungle comic, so my rating is admittedly subjective. The construction is one of insignificant events assembled to accommodate the Man-Thing pages. There’s no suspense to fighting off a few cops, alligators, and AIM agents, it’s all about arranging a face-off between Ka-Zar and Man-Thing for the next issue. The Man-Thing sequence is the real highlight, and it’s a fairly trivial and unsatisfying installment. I can’t honestly heap much praise on the John Buscema artwork for this issue. It meets his usual standard for competent comics, but his ubiquitous presence in Marvel’s 1970’s comics was fatiguing to me. I know many comics fans among us can never get enough of his work, and it’s an exaggeration to say he would eventually show up drawing an issue of everything (I can’t remember him drawing any issues of Iron Man or Spider-Man or X-Men, for instance), but seeing him on everything from bottom-rung features like The Golem to middle-of-the-pack comics like Nova to top-tier books like the Fantastic Four became tiresome to me, and his stock poses, composition, and expressions began to bore me. Adams’ work, though, is just the kind of thing I most enjoyed seeing from him, moreso than his overwrought superhero material. It’s moody, rich art, and Buscema and Adkins’ rendition of Man-Thing looks a bit laughable in comparison. At this point, Marvel hadn’t figured out how they were supposed to color Man-Thing, and what works in the (almost) black and white of Adams’ pages looks awkward in four colors, with Man-Thing looking like a hairy brown gorilla with orange warts and a small green face with short tentacles. They were on their way to refining it, though; the next issue of ASTONISHING TALES would promise the start of a new Man-Thing feature soon to begin in one of their “presently feature-less” monster mags, from Gerry Conway and Grey Morrow. That mag would turn out to be FEAR #10.
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Post by MWGallaher on Feb 3, 2023 20:29:43 GMT -5
It just struck me that Spidey's dialog on that 121 cover--which was the first issue I ever bought, by the way!--makes it sound like his spider-sense is straight-up clairvoyance. We all know that it really triggers immediately before an imminent threat, he can't really look at a bunch of pictures and sense that they're going to die soon and he won't be able to save them, right? Of course, covers like these are never meant to be taken literally, and I never have been one to do so, I'm just surprised that it never hit me how wrong this cover copy sounds when you think about it.
(Not to mention that in the comic itself, his spider-sense never told him any such thing; finding that the victim was actually dead came as a complete shock to him.)
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