78 posts tagged “comics”

When I was first introduced to Ms. Marvel, I have to confess I didn’t find her very interesting, and as a matter of fact, thought that the Red and Blue Captain Marvel costume looked absolutely ridiculous cut into  a bad one-piece swimsuit. But I had a friend who absolutely loved her, (and I mean LOVED her!) and insisted on sharing,  so I was exposed to her comic whether I liked it or not! This actually worked out to my benefit as I was able to filter through the stuff I didn’t like and appreciate the stuff I did, and eventually I came around and started picking up some of those issues myself!

 

The biggest part of what turned me around from a non-believer to a general fan of the comic was, of course, THE NEW COSTUME! Now THIS was what I liked! Rendered by a master of sexy super-heroine costumes was the mighty DAVE COCKRUM, and YES, the new outfit looked EXACTLY like a variation of Jean Grey’s revamped PHOENIX costume, but HEY, when you’ve got a winning formula, you don’t mess with it…

 So, anyway, gone was the horrendous red and blue outfit, in was the sleek ‘n’ sexy blue outfit with the lightning bolt and golden sash , and just in time for a  return slugfest against super baddie Deathbird (who would go on to give Hawkeye a run for his money in AVENGERS #189) then onward to my favorite arcs of the series, where Carol dukes it out with a civilization of super Lizard Men! Ah, trust me, it’s cooler than it sounds.  And THEN…

 Then the Comic got cancelled. Yep. GEEZ! All that coaxing and convincing me to get onboard the Ms. Marvel Fan Ship, and then the voyage was abruptly ended! But the best was yet to come with the aforementioned AVENGERS stint, all lovingly rendered by John Byrne, who was TOTALLY in his PRIME at this time!

 At this time we started trying to buy all the back issues of old Avengers stories, and when we got our hands of the epic KREE-WARS stories, got to see exactly where Carol Danvers had come from in the first place! It was kind of nest to realize she actually had a bit of “history” within the pages of those old Silver Age Marvels!

 So yeah,  I was a fan there…but after that surrealistic ( and highly controversial) AVENGERS issue  (196?) where she gets pregnant in some convoluted cosmic drama, I kind of lost interest and drifted away again. Next time I checked, for some reason the character named “Ms Marvel”  was a big female version of  the Thing! I didn’t know if this was supposed to be Carol Danvers or some OTHER character, and I  DIDN’T WANT TO KNOW! (Okay, I found out later it was some OTHER gal, but still, the shock…!)

  In fact, it was only with the arrival of Frank Cho’s cool and sexy MS MARVEL revival did I breathe a sigh of RELIEF, for here once again was that awesome dynamic costume, proving it could stand the test of time! The Ms Marvel of Old was back! ( and MAN, let’s hope she STAYS that way!)

  A funny side-story that always makes me smile is remembering when my friend picked up a new issue of Ms Marvel and saw that Carol was dating some dude with a beard, he mock- angrily declared war against all bearded men, and set about cutting up every picture of a bearded man in the daily newspaper. I sat on the couch howling with laughter as he jokingly destroyed all the pictures, until he got into trouble when his father scolded him and said “What are you DOING to the Newspaper? I haven’t even READ it yet!”

Ahahahahahaha!!!

 

Ms. Marvel / Carol Danvers

First Appearance: Marevel Super-Heroes #13

By Roy Thomas and Gene Colan

Ah, another one in the category of “salacious one-shot characters” that seem to spring forth effortlessly from the pen of comic maestro John Byrne, Arathaza is at once both awe-inspiring and utterly disposable!

 

Issue# 585 of Superman’s ACTION COMICS begins with a bang not so unlike the explosive opening teasers of the great JAMES BOND movies of yesteryear where we come in not at the beginning but rather the end of the last mission, and so we see Superman already engaged in battle with a new (and after, never again seen) villainess who is slowly draining the life force out of Supes.

 

Through their dialog we learn that the majestic (and slightly Tina Louise a la Ginger Grant looking) Arathaza was once only a mild mannered secretary named Barb Kowaleski until she found the means of transferring Superman’s powers to herself. It is here that he turns the tables on her, rendering himself completely passive so that there is no power to draw from!

 

At that point, he grabs her staff, which he rightly figures is the source of her powers, and she’s turned back into the frumpy looking mortal that she was. Supes sweeps her up, saving the day and delivering the coupe de grace to the latest would-be world dominator!

And  then and ONLY then did the actual story featuring the Phantom Stranger start!

This has always been one of my many, many favorite Jughead Jones stories, simply because of the free-form FUN and zaniness of it’s script! I’ve always thought that most of my fave Jughead stories seemed like could have been skits on The Carol Burnett Show, and JUGHEAD story “Oceans of Love” surely fits that bill!

 

When I first began researching information about the people behind the scenes at Archie Comics (in an attempt to figure out who drew the stories I loves so much), one writer whose name kept popping up in association with fun, zany stories was writer Frank Doyle. Descibing his stories and witty, fast paced and sharp, my IMMEDIATE reaction was, “Why, that sounds EXACTLY like those Jughead Jones comics!”

 

And just as Harry Lucey will always be THE Betty Cooper artist, Artist Schwartz is, my MY EYES, the perennial Jughead Jones illustrator, and it was his depicitions that I grew up with and always recognized as “the REAL Jughead”. It seemed like almost every Jughead story I loved and constantly re-read was drawn my this fantastic artist.

 

Now, though I’m fairly certain Schwartz drew this one, I’m still not sure if this one is written by Frank Doyle, (and If anyone out there knows for sure, PLEASE let me know!) but knowing that he was a regular writer of Jughead and was usually teamed up with Schwartz, I think there is a very good chance that it is! But WHATEVER the case, its one of my fave stories and an absolute JOY to read!

 

  The story at first seems like nothing more than a Jughead take on the “Pet Rock” fad, but once the supporting characters begin interacting with him and his pet clam, the funnier it gets!  And I love how everybody gets into it except grouchy old Veronica, who becomes more and more incensed the more the crowd encourages Jughead’s eccentric actions!

 

 Going to the beach they meet up with other regulars, and it’s clear that everybody likes Jughead, for they ALL go along with the gag, truly treating this clam like it’s Jug’s beloved pet. Things get more and more hilariously melodramatic when  Jug’s clam finds a mate, and  as the crowd dramatically comforts brokenhearted Jug, Ronnie sums it up nicely with “Weirdness must be contagious! They’ve ALL got it!”

 

Invaders #28 is one issue that I’ve always been aware of after seeing it my friends’ huge Marvel collection back in the late seventies because it featured the first appearance of Bucky’s fellow sidekick-aged counterparts in an interesting group called the KID COMMANDOS.

  That particular issue’s cover made an impression on me because of two things: One, there was a cute oriental gal in the group, and Two, there was a black kid wearing what I considered to be one of the ugliest costumes to come out of the Bronze Age! I remember thinking, wow, that girl’s got that oriental kimono thing down good, but that dude looks like he just broke out of prison!

  Well, it wasn’t until years later that I actually got down to buying that issue of the Invaders, and reading it I was even more amazed to find that the costumes the kids wore weren’t even made for them- they were “just some old theatre costumes that had been left behind”(!) Funny how they found ones that fit their powers/codenames so nicely- then again, maybe it was just luck that Gwenny Sabuki got to choose her costume before David Mitchell, otherwise, who knows? SHE might have been stuck with that green striped shirt! AHAHAHAHAHA!

 But as we know, she got her hands on the Golden Kimono first, and thus was born the blazing GOLDEN GIRL, possessor of energy light powers and cheerful disposition!

 I was hoping to read lots more stories featuring Gwen and the rest of the commandos, but after their battle against Agent Axis (who turned out to be that tricky Namor) I was disappointed to find they were largely regaled to “supporting cast”, at least in the issues I managed to get ahold of. 

 One thing that surprised me reading those issues was how YOUNG Gwen was… all those years staring at the cover of Invader #28, she always seemed to be eighteen or nineteen years old. But reading the stories as penciled by veteran artist Frank Robbins, she looked decidedly underage- more like 11 years old…(well, they WERE called the KID Commandos, after all…not the TEEN Commandos!)

 I’ve always thought that Gwen’s GOLDEN GIRL character would have been a great one to revive somehow, though I wasn’t sure just how they would bring “up-to-date” a character that was a teen in World War Two… so I was very interested to find that they HAD brought her back (in a way) in the pages of THUNDERBOLTS, as part of the V-Battalion. Not that I have any inkling what that was all about, except for what Wikipedia tells me-

 "Gwenny Sue later helped found the post-war organization the V-Battalion. Gwenny eventually changed her superhero name to Golden Woman, before she died in 1961. Her daughter and her granddaughter became the superheroines Golden Sun and Goldfire, respectively, though Golden Sun died when her own daughter was five years old."

Not bad for a sidelined secondary support character, eh?

 

Gwenny Lou Sabuki

First appearance: Invaders #26

Created by: Roy Thomas and Frank Robbins

 

Though there always seemed to be comics in our house growing up, it was of the Archie / Richie Rich variety and it wasn’t until my friend Jas living across the street introduced me to all the comics he was collecting that I finally got to see what all the hubbub was with those mysterious MARVEL and DC comics lining the racks at our corner candy store.

  Up until then, Marvel and DC comics were strictly for “big Kids”, and whenever I’d take a glance inside one of the books, I was confused and overwhelmed by the pages of seemingly never-ending dialog and utterly incomprehensible storylines. I mean, sure, I’d heard of Spider-Man and Superman, but somehow the stuff I saw in cartoons and television seemed so easy to understand, reading the actual comic seemed like reading an encyclopedia!

 He laid out some of his comics and explained to me that the comics were part of an ongoing storyline that continued from issue to issue, and that even though it might seem confusing at first, once you’d read a couple, the story would start to make sense!

 I understood. It made sense, and looking at Jas’ monthly purchases, (among them HULK and CAPTAIN AMERICA as well as BATMAN and his all time favorite, GREEN LANTERN) I thought it might be interesting to try and begin collecting a title myself! But where to start? To be truthful, I didn’t much care for costumed heroes at that point in my life. I was more won over by my friend’s enthusiasm more that any actual comic hero…but then my eyes spied a comic featuring Godzilla. GODZILLA? The famous Japanese monster whose movies I stayed up many nights and endured many “Monster Weekends” to catch? Now THAT sounded cool!

GODZILLA #12 

The Godzilla issue that I picked up that fateful afternoon was issue #12, and as luck would have it, happened to be the first chapter of a new story! The story was a tale of Godzilla being abducted and asked to battle on the behalf of an alien race against three deadly creatures called the Mega-Monsters who were due to arrive on Earth! WOW! This story was everything I’d HOPED it would be- big kaiju monsters slugging it out and even one of those giant transformer robots (a la MAZINGER Z) that I loved so much- what more could a kid ask for?! And this time, when I got to the end of the comic and it said “TO BE CONTINUED NEXT ISSUE”, I knowingly nodded, feeling very mature now that I was reading BIG KID comics, and even showed it to my mother, saying, ‘You See, unlike Richie Rich and Archie Comics, THESE comics are an ongoing series, and so they continue from issue to issue…!”

But my Mom dismissed it with a wave of her hand, saying, “Ahhh, they’re only trying to get you kids to buy more comics!” D’oh!

 

GODZILLA #13

 Three or four weeks later, I happened to be in the candy store to buy some snacks after school, and was JOLTED when I absent-mindedly glanced at the comic spinner and saw the new GODZILLA issue on the rack! Honestly, I had forgotten all about Godzilla and collecting comics, but taking one look at the cover of Godzilla fighting the Mega-Monsters and the story and excitement came rushing back to me in a flash!

The previous issue was merely a setup for the confrontation ahead. THIS issue was the BATTLE ITSELF and oh how it delivered! A city-leveling slugfest began with Godzilla versus the three Mega Monsters all culminating in a devastating end where Godzilla’s giant robot partner Red Ronin is beheaded by one of the alien Beasts! This time when the comic went to “To Be Continued”, I FINALLY understood what a “cliffhanger” was, and I was simply BESIDE myself with desire to read what happened next!!!

GODZILLA #14

I couldn’t contain my excitement when I saw the NEW issue on the stands! There on the cover stood Godzilla bravely trudging on solo against the Mega Monsters, as Red Ronin’s severed head smoked in the foreground!

 There was something special I felt seeing this cover. In a way, it was like the first time I really knew that I was actually passionately collecting this story, not because I wanted to be like my friend or because it seemed cool, but because I truly loved the strip. There was a sort of sense of pride I felt looking at that cover and already knowing EXACTLY what was going on, I felt proud to say to my cousin, ‘Look, Godzilla is fighting Krollar from the planet Mega- and that head is Red Ronin- he got his head sliced off by Triax!!!”

 Well, I ran home with THAT one, and it concluded with a big bang, with Godzilla systematically destroying all three Mega-Monsters and winning the praise of the dying Alien race who now knew their home planet would be forever safe from the evil Megs-Monsters! WOW! What a story!

It was here that comic collecting firmly took ahold of me and has never let go!

 

GODZILLA #15-16

Back in these days, I wasn’t really COLLECTING comics so much as readin’ them for enjoyment, so after I’d read the new issue, I’d just toss it wherever happened to be convenient. Then, whenever a new issue would come in, I’d have to hunt around the house and dig out the old issues.

One might be under the bed. One might be behind the television. One might be in the entertainment center stuffed in the drawer with the ‘45’s!  When issue #15 came out, I was able to find all three of them, but I wasn’t so lucky when issue #16 came out. Try as I might, only issue #12 and #13 turned up. After weeks of searching, I realized my mother had probably thrown the tattered issue #14 out! After that sobering lesson, I made a special place for my Godzilla comics- I cleared out a space on the middle shelf right next to our encyclopedias, made a little stack, and there each new issue would go, and be returned to!

 Though issues #15 and 16 (story where Godzilla heads out to cattle country and gets involved with rustlers!) weren’t as interesting as the Mega Monsters arc, by then reading the latest Godzilla Comic was like stepping into a pair of comfortable shows- a regular part of my life…little did I know my favorite storyline of them all was coming up next!

GODZILLA #17

When I first laid eyes on the awesome cover to issue#17, I didn’t give it too much thought. I simply thought the cover was being symbolic, about how S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Dum Dum Dugan was forever hounding Godzilla like an ominous presence lording over his life.

 

But when I read the issue and they ACTUALLY SHRUNK GODZILLA, you could have knocked me over with a feather! Holy Cow, Who came up with such a NEAT story?! (Well, that would be writer Doug Moench and artist Herb Trimpe, but you know how kids are…they think comic stories grow on trees!)

 

But when this issue concluded, Godzilla was INDEED shrunken, about the size of a small chicken, and BOY! My mind raced with all the possibilities that could happen in subsequent issues! So off they were to New York, with a little Godzilla in tow!

GODZILLA #18

HOLY CRAP, when I saw this cover, I just about flipped! While waiting that long, agonizing month for the next installment, my mind raced at what the next issue’s cover would look like. All I knew was that Godzy was shrunken and going to the Big City. Then Issue #18 came out, and right off, that cover just ROCKED MY WORLD!

 

I remember taking this issue to Jason’s house to show it off, I loved it so much. I remember babbling to him, “OF COURSE Godzilla would be in the sewers fighting Rats! Now that he was reduced to their level, Rats are the “monster” equivalents of the city right?!” Bonus was the fact that it was “Battle Beneath Eight Avenue”…the name of the street that I lived on! Why, I could imagine this going on right beneath me…!

 

Well, reading it we find out that Godzilla’s friend Rob Takiguchi (the boy who’d controlled the robot Red Ronin before its’ demise) had fiddled with the latch on the cage containing Godzilla, and when the cage was accidentally dropped, the box sprung open and Godzilla had escaped into the bay!

 

He'd made his way into the sewers and battled off the rodent vermin as the desperate crew split up and tried to recapture him before he could get into more mischief. Attracted by the familiar voice of Rob Takiguchi, Godzilla emerged from the sewers, but just as Rob was about to approach him, the gas stated to wear off, and Godzilla suddenly shot up to a human-sized 7 feet!

 

GODZILLA #19

I remember when I saw this issue on the stands, I reached into my pockets and came up with about 18¢, a far cry from the 37¢ needed to buy the comic! Luckily for me, I lived right next to this empty lot where people would toss their beer cans and trash, and I kicked up two 10¢ deposit bottles and ran back to the store, turned in the bottles, got my dimes, and with my grand total of 38¢ was able to purchase my GODZILLA comic!

 

After all that work, I took a well-deserved break to delve into that new comic- and it didn’t disappoint! With Godzilla now a big 7 feet tall, Rob tries to quietly get him back aboard the ship, but when Dum Dum and the others see him, they panic and rush at him, and before you know it, the lot of them are trading fists and kicks, before Godzilla gives a final solid punch and runs off again.

 

GODZILLA #20

I think I made it clear above that at this time, I really didn’t care much for costumed heroes, and was waiting for more villains like the Mega-Monsters to show up. Instead, I got…The Fantastic Four?!

 

Yes, since Godzilla was loose in New York, somebody called in the good guys, and so it was that the Fantastic Four came to crash S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Godzilla hunting Party. I just didn’t like this invasion of my favorite comic… it took the cat-and-mouse relationship between Godzilla and Dum Dum out of their hands and basically turned it into the hot-headed Thing wrestling and irritating Godzilla against the advice of everyone!  Finally someone has the good idea to use Doctor Doom’s time machine to send Godzilla back where he came from, and I hoped that would be the end of the superheroes for awhile!!

 

GODZILLA #21-22

 Sent back in time, Godzilla teams up with Jack Kirby’s Devil Dinosaur. This comic obviously meant to tie up loose ends of Devil Dinosaur’s canceled strip, and I felt like I had come in halfway through a movie with all these new characters and pre-existing storylines! Not only that, I didn’t care for Moon Boy taking Rob Takiguchi’s place. I thought there was only ONE BOY who could befriend Godzilla that way.

 

And it didn’t matter anyway, for once the task was done (and all loose ends were tied up) Godzilla was bounced back to present time, (an effect I NEVER saw happen in any of the prior (or Subsequent) “Doc Doom Time Machine” stories) once again giving Dum Dum and gang the problem of what to do with him.

 

Funny thing about issue #22- when I went up and paid for it, I placed 37¢ on the counter, grabbed my comic, and started to leave, when the lady behind the register stopped me and said, “That’s not enough. Your total is 42¢!” HUH? I hadn’t noticed that the price had finally gone up. Comics were no longer 35¢, they were 40¢!! So I had to borrow the rest of the money from my cousin, who insisted I pay her back that nickel later!

 

GODZILLA #23

Yag! More Marvel Heroes, this time Yellowjacket and the rest of the freaking Avengers. Funny how much I loved Costumed Heroes later, at this time I just couldn’t STAND them being in the Godzilla comic! But there they all were, like gnats bothering an ox!

 

After being sent back to the Stone Age, you would have thought we’d be through with New York super-beings, but it was not to be. Pretty soon it seemed like all the heroes in the city showed up for the punch-out. Using all their powers together, they use brute force to herd him to the oceanfront, but all they end up doing is pissing him the hell off!

 

GODZILLA #24

And then in the summer of ’79, Godzilla came to a close, though I did not know it.

 

Issue #24 was the final chapter in the “Godzilla Shrinks” storyline, ending when young Rob Takiguchi finally gets the Avengers to buzz off, and gently persuades Godzilla to return to the Sea. Rob gives a tearful goodbye as Godzilla walks out to the ocean, and as the sun sets, the heroes stand by silently as Godzilla growls a final farewell before departing for good.

 

And for the first time, the comic didn’t say “To Be Continued”…all it said was “Fin.”

 

“WOW!” I thought at the time. “What an Awesome ending!” I wonder how they’ll top that in the NEXT issue! But there was to be no “Next Issue”.  Because of Toho’s hefty licensing fee and lukewarm sales, Marvel had decided to cancel the book. But I didn’t know about any of this, and after this, spent MONTHS waiting at the candy store for a next issue that never came! It seemed ironic timing that just as I was about to get into more “older” comics, my beloved Godzilla was coming to a close.

 

When school began again that September, I ran across one of my classmates from Elementary School. We got to talking about what we were up to, and he said he was collecting comics, too! When I told him I collected GODZILLA, he nodded, “The Marvel one? Yeah, I read some of those.  Hey, I can give you my old issues!” COOL! We made plans to go to his house after school, and walking home that afternoon, I asked, “Say, Godzilla is my favorite comic, but what ‘s yours?” “Ah, it’s this really cool comic called X-MEN! I gotta let you see some of those!” And he did, but THAT’S a story for another time!

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

One thing we’d always loved back then were the HEMBECK strips that appeared at the back of all the DC Comics in the “Daily Planet” section, and what better way to celebrate my comic-reading childhood than to have Fred Hembeck himself recreate one of my favorite Godzilla covers?! When commissioning this piece from Mr. Hembeck, I was happy to find that HE was a big fan of Godzilla, too, AND in particular, that same “Shrinking Godzilla” that I loved!!! FANTASTIC!

 

 

When DC rebooted the LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES in the mid-nineties, it was a take-off of Frank Miller’s DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, in that it was set in the future of that character’s life. Only difference was, in Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne was now an old man, and in LEGION, the heroes, who’d been mere teenagers in their original comic, were now-gasp- responsible adults living VERY adult lives such as raising families and keeping 9 to 5 jobs!

 One of the more offbeat side stories in this controversial update was an interlude featuring one of the Legion’s more wacky members, Tenzil Kem, better known (back in the day) as “Matter-Eater Lad”. We tuned in on Tenzil as an adult and found he’d been running (very poorly) through a multitude of different jobs, including an archaeological explorer and even a space age lawyer!

  Tenzil has been called to defend Brek Bannin (Polar Boy) in court, and while I don’t have time to go into it, (Trust me, the story was wacky and funny as hell!) one of the things that I found endearing was his banter with his able assistant, a beautiful blonde named Cal. In passages, I found her name to be “Calorie Queen”, and I laughed that they had created an assistant with a name to match “Matter-Eater Lad”

 

  Little Did I Know that they HADN’T just created Calorie Queen, and that she was a character created a WAYS back! Imagine my surprise when (shopping in a comic store near Pike’s Market in Seattle) I found an old back issue of Superboy (Featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes, of course) and saw that one of the girls in the menacing super-team on the cover was none other that Tenzil’s trusty assistant, Calorie Queen Herself!! Getting that original issue with Calorie Queen as nature intended should have been a real eye opener into the character, for I now knew she had : 1) a costume, 2)a real name (Taryn Loy), and 3) a home planet (Bismoll, just like Tenzil!!!)…but honesty, it really didn’t do much for me. I simply liked the “later” Cal more! Smart and funny, cool and witty, she was the perfect foil for outlandish Tenzil Kem, and besides, If I have to choose between 70’s disco jumpsuit costumes or pretty dresses I always go with the latter. Because I do love a pretty girl in pretty clothes!

 Props to Jim Shooter and Mike Grell for creating Cal, and BIG KUDOS to Tom and Mary Beirbaum and Keith Giffen for the “Update”!

Taryn Loy

Calorie Queen

First Appearance: Superboy #212

Bu Jim Shooter and Mike Grell

I began reading Marvel Comics’ X-MEN series during the highly acclaimed Byrne/Claremont run featuring the “All-New, All-Different” team, and so had no real knowledge of the original 1960’s team. But as my love of the “Uncanny” X-men grew, my curiosity of the Lee and Kirby team grew too, til I HAD to know more about them!

This was back in the pre-internet days when access to information of most comics was almost nil. The only real way to get info on any comic you liked was to talk to the local comic shop dealer or other collectors, and in that I was lucky because I had a couple of friends who were BIG collectors of Marvel Comics, and were always ready to educate me about any Marvel History I needed to know.

So one day after telling my friend I wanted to see what the “old” X-Men looked like, he came to class and handed me a comic. It was issue #46 of a Marvel reprint title called Marvel Triple Action, and it was here I got my very first glimpse of the original X-Men: Cyclops. Marvel Girl, Beast, Angel and Iceman, and right off the bat I was blown away- WOW! How colorful, dynamic and totally COOL they looked!

The comic also introduced me to the Avengers for the first time, and I IMMEDIATELY dived into the story, relishing the interesting dialog and powerful artwork, not knowing at the time that the tale was concocted by two GREATS of the Silver Age  (Writer Roy Thomas and Artists Big John Buscema), only knowing that the story “In Battle Joined!” was the most KICK-ASS story I’d read in awhile! Begun in the pages of X-Men #45, this was a story of the Avengers and the X-Men united against mutual baddie Magneto. The X-Men have been captured by Magneto, and the Angel has escaped to get aid from the Avengers- but they arrive just in time to see Cyclops knocking out former Avenger Quicksilver…

Hawkeye, Goliath, Wasp and the Black Panther have come upon X-Man Cyclops standing over the fallen figure of Quicksilver. Not sure of the situation, they tell the youth to freeze. Cyclops, however, suspects they’re only robots created by Magneto, and isn’t taking any chances. He fires at Hawkeye, and when Black Panther jumps down to subdue him, a couple of blasts from his optic visor give Cyclops enough time to get away!

It seems that when the Angel escaped Magneto’s prison back in X-Men #45, he went directly to the Avengers mansion for assistance in rescuing his fellow X-Men. Since Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were last seem leaving with Magneto back in Avengers #49, the Avengers are happy to team up tackling the master of Magnetism.

On the Atlantic flight over to Magneto’s island, Janet discovers a miniature bugging device hidden among Angel’s wings. The Avengers now believe he’s in cahoots with Magneto, and is setting them up. While he swears he ‘s innocent, they tie him up and leave him behind when they investigate the fortress. Thus we return to our opening scene where the Avengers have just arrived to see Cyclops flee!

 Magneto is watching the entire drama play out, delighted that his plans are coming to fruition. Of course, it was all part of his plans for Angel to escape and get caught with the monitor on his wings. “ Now they and the X-Men, who might otherwise been allies- will be at each other’s throats!”

  Toad doesn’t like the idea of bringing in the Avengers…they should have been satisfied capturing the X-Men- their REAL enemies! Magneto electrocutes Toad for his doubt, and Toad questions why Magneto always abuses him when he alone out of ALL the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants has been loyal. “Because I don’t NEED your Loyalty!” snaps Magneto. He explains that he’s only kept Toad around because it amused him, and now Toad is just angering him. Wanda steps in and begs Magneto to leave Toad alone, and Toad says “One day soon, Magneto shall know who his true friends are.”

  Meanwhile, The Avengers have become antsy sneaking around the hidden fortress, and as usual, Hawkeye and Goliath start to bicker and fight. Soon the Black Panther, who initially tries to STOP the fight, is involved, and it is up to Jan to step in and remind them that there is a task at hand.

This moment of discourse is just what Magneto has been hoping to hear, and he releases a machine that unleashes crackling electronic commands upon the unsuspecting X-Men.  When the sensations vanish, we realize just what the machine has done to their minds when Cyclops states, “There was something we were going to do! Yes- We were going to find the Avengers…and DESTROY THEM!”

  Any doubt that the X-Men are on the wrong side of the good guys is gone when the Avengers confront the angry teen mob and Cyclops orders: “Kill Them! Kill The Avengers!”

  Beast strikes the first blow at Black Panther, and the others follow his lead. After fighting for a while, the Avengers they find they are having a hard time beating them. Then Black Panther realizes it is because they subconsciously think of the X-Men as heroes, not villains. With this change in attitude, the Avengers make quick work of the youths, much to the confusion of Magneto, who thought the X-Men would be the victors!

  His confusion only increases when he turns and finds The Angel has infiltrated the control room! Soon, the Avengers smash in, as well! Goliath knows Magneto must be dying of curiosity to find out what went wrong with his plans, and elucidates. “We guessed the bug on Angel was a plant, and tied his hands loosely! Wasp whispered in his ear our plans, then pretended to quarrel to lure you into an ill-timed attack!”

  Magneto knows the only option is escape, and brings down a wall of metal parts onto the Avengers, giving himself enough time to get away! He orders Toad to get the escape ship, hitting him to get a move on. “He orders me to save him - and strikes me as he does so! Thus has he EVER rewarded my unwavering Loyalty!” thinks the Toad.

  With a quick move, the Toad sets the machine generators to overload- soon the entire island will be decimated by the huge explosion!  He leads the Scarlet Witch and a still dazed Quicksilver to a waiting escape ship. As the ship takes off, Magneto reaches out with his magnetic powers to lift him to the jet, but finds that his powers have no effect! Toad reminds him that he once built an entire ship out of non-metals, just to prove he could do it. As Magneto tries to hold onto the ship, He says, “Toad…Stop!! I am Your Master!” to which the Toad solemnly replies, “No Magneto. The Toad calls no man master- ever again!!”  He steps on Magneto’s fingers and sends him hurtling to the jagged rocks below!

  Meanwhile the Avengers and X-Men (who seem to have recovered from the hypno-ray) have made it back to their ship in time to witness the Toad and his crew leaving.  They quickly shove off themselves, and a few minutes later, the very horizon rocks as the entire island goes up in a fiery explosion! Soon, the ocean is littered with smoking debris and machinery from the fortress, and among the bits of twisted metal floats the remains of Magneto’s once mighty metal helmet!

What a STORY!! I loved and re-read this issue so darn much that not only did I eventually collect all the back-issues of Marvel Triple Action featuring The Avengers (as well as Triple Action successor Marvel Super Action) but immediately began subscribing to the current issues as well -and what do you know- John Byrne was the artist HERE, too When I got older, I made it a priority to get my hands on all the ORIGINAL Avengers issues, and I was simply beside myself the day I got my very own copy of AVENGERS #53, the issue where that X-Men/Avengers story originally ran and the very issue you see scanned here!

Besides the overwhelming “pride of ownership” that came with obtaining this piece of Marvel history, there are several other good reasons to own the actual copy, and not just that they got the COLORS of Beast, Angel and Goliath right(!) in the original comic-I was ECSTATIC when I read the original issue and found there were TWO EXTRA PAGES that Marvel Triple Action had cut out! HOLY TOLEDO! This was like the Modern-Day equivalent of a DVD bonus! If I thought I loved that story BEFORE…MAN! Now it was BEYOND LOVE!!! Ahahahaha!

To this day, those Avengers issues from around issue #46-60 are still some of my favorite stories ever; Roy Thomas is still one of my favorite writers, and John Buscema one of my very favorite artists… When you consider that back then I was simultaneously reading both Thomas/Buscema stories AND Byrne/Claremont stories, there’s no wonder I call this my own personal “Golden Age” of comic reading in my life!

A while ago, my friend Gerg mentioned to me in passing that Warren Ellis (one of his favorite comic writers, don’t you know) had started up a brand new series that he was really getting into, and this particular comic was available online, absolutely free! Then our conversation got onto the topic of The Authority, and before I knew it, we were off onto another subject, and I forgot all about asking for the details of said Ellis Comic.
 
 So, recently I was online, looking for pictures of children for some project, and for some reason, my google search brought up this alluring, mysterious and striking image:

WOW! Who WAS this girl? What WAS “FreakAngels”? This bore further investigation! Clicking on the link, I was taken to the official FREAKANGELS site, where I found it was a weekly online comic, illustrated by Paul Duffield, and written by….yep, you guessed it…WARREN ELLIS! Why, this was the comic Gerg had told me about, all those many months ago!

 Well, my late entry into the FREAKANGLES story may have been a blessing in disguise, for I was able to enjoy almost two volumes worth of FreakAngels pages without having to wait nary a week, and I made sure to slowly read them and enjoy each page, and I managed to stretch my reading to three evenings, TRUST ME, that took some WILL POWER!

I got to know all the various members of the FREAKANGELS society and all their quirks and powers, and it was here that I fell in love with that aforementioned beauty from the promotion advertisements. Known simply as “KK”, she is the FIRST character you’re introduced to in the series, and- whatta gal! Depicted as a beautiful goth/rocking chick with a penchant for sleeping around with all the wrong types, how could I resist! Plus, she is shown to have an almost instinctive knowledge about the powers and engineering of steam (and in a post-apocalyptic world, that’s good as GOLD)  and that meant she had both beauty AND brains, a knockout combination!

 Through KK, we are introduced to the other members in the city one by one, and though the story gets divided up between the various members pretty well, the story never strays too far away from her, and  I still think of her as the “Main” character of Freak Angels.

In an interesting side-story showing the sibling-like bickering between her and another Freakangel named Kirk, we find that the name KK was christened with was the fantastically eclectic tag “Kolfinnia Kokokoho”, which supposedly is a mixture of Norse and Japanese for Winter Owl, her parents probably meant it as a beautiful artistic name, but in the hands of her (sort of) siblings, it’s a motive for swift death! Not since Jughead Jones’ name was revealed to be Forsythe has anyone hated a birth-given name so much in comics!! Ahahaha!

Though the comic is pretty much available for anyone with even the slightest curioustiy to check out, the series IS collected and availble in hardcover and trade paperbacks, and I’m happy to say that not only have I picked up Volume One, but also Volume Two which just came out a few weeks ago! Just Beautiful!

K.K.
FreakAngels
By Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield
Official FreakAngels Site:
http://www.freakangels.com/

 

I had a friend who was in love with a certain actress, stating she had the “most perfect and prettiest face created by nature!” Then a few months later he came across a plastic surgery site that indicated his lady of worship had had quite a few procedures done, especially in the eyes and nose department!

  Looking at the “before” shots of the woman’s “enhancements”, he sighed and said, “Ahh, I should have known…Nobody THAT perfect could have been for real!”

Although he was talking about his favorite actress, he may as well have been talking about our next Super-Vixen, the lithe and lovely Miss DELPHINE COURTNEY… This was a woman who seemed to have it all- brains, style, AND beauty…and just like my friend’s fallen angel, was a complete and utter invention… quite literally, in the case of Ms. Courtney!

In the issues of ALPHA FLIGHT leading up to the death of Guardian (who I’ll ALWAYS think of as “Vindicator”), Delphine Courtney ws the sultry smooth talker hired by Jerome Jaxon to corral ex-members of Beta and Gamma Flight into forming a team to battle Canada’s answer to the Avengers.

Delphine was always shown in the latest styles, sexy outfits and slinky dresses befitting her sylph-like features, and I was loving it! It was here that I guess I should have remembered the lesson of my friend’s tragic tale, but I was too busy enjoying the view!

We thought we were in for a helluva cat-fight when Heather Hudson (wife of Guardian) began tearing at Delphine’s face and clothes, calling her a “Harpy”- but unfortunately, under all that satin and silk (and skin!) was nothing more than cold, unfeeling metal, as Delphine is revealed to be nothing more than an android, and a darn ruthless and evil one, at that!

That Android would escape to “live” another day, and the next time she (it) showed up was disguised as The Guardian himself! While the reappearance of the character was cool, and the story really helped put a close to the Death Of Guardian storyline,  she (it) never did put back on that Delphine disguise, and I found that I really missed that old look of hers!

Delphine Courtney
First appearance: Alpha Flight #8
By John Byrne

One thing you could always count on with writer/artist Howard Chaykin’s stories were the appearance of  his gorgeously stylized Femme Fatales, and his 1984  DC Mini Series revamp of THE SHADOW didn’t disappoint!

I’d already been quite familiar with Chaykin’s work from his awesome AMERICAN FLAGG! series and CODY STARBUCK strips in Heavy Metal, and from these, knew that I could expect to see what he was best at: Extreme Violence, Gratuitous Cheesecake and a heaping helping of Noir thrown in for good measure!

Now, the Shadow strip was filled from page to page with lovely ladies, from Preston Mayrock’s lady loves and agents, (even a tough as nails police detective falls victim to The Shadow’s charms), but the one reigning Sex-kitten that flies miles above the rest of them is the invention of the deliciously ditsy and HELLA sexy MERCY MAYROCK!

Our story finds The Shadow on the hunt to find Preston Mayrock, an aging billionaire who’s  been killing former agents of the Shadow to draw him out. It seems he’s dying of cancer and wants The Shadow to take him back to the mystic village of where he believes they can transfer his brain into a healthy young clone of himself. And as an added incentive to make them do his bidding, he’s got a Nuclear Missile  in his possession which he’ll set off if he doesn’t get his wish!!

Now, Mayrock thinks he’s got his master plans all uner control, but not only has his sexy trophy wife Mercy been “getting it on” with his clone for years, she’s got an even CRAZIER plan in that she has a DEADLY infatuation with the Shadow, and her ultimate fantasy is to get down with him as the nuclear bomb devastates the city! We readers were like “WHOAA! beautiful, ditzy, conniving…and BATSH*T insane!!!”How could you EVER come up with a more interesting character!!!

Upon recently re-reading THE SHADOW series, Mercy seems horribly dated because she was supposed to be a “modern girl”, and was depicted wearing the latest fashions and sadly, this was the 80’s! Look at that image above of her in those new-wave glasses, gads, could anything look more “Cyndi Lauper”?! But MAN, dress her up in a sexy  teddy compete with the garters and stockings, and you’ve got Chaykin drawing what he does best, this is pure, timeless BABE-NESS!!!

THE SHADOW Mini-Series was so successful, it garnered a new monthly title written by Andy Helfer and illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz, but without Howard Chaykin at the wheel, it always seemed to be missing something. Chaykin’s masterful style of Violence, Sex and Film Noir really was what MADE the Shadow work, in my opinion…and there’s no greater example of ALL THREE of those qualities in Mercy Mayrock…a REAL “Dame to Die For”!

Mercy Mayrock
The Shadow: Blood and Judgment
By Howard Chaykin