Sunday Splash Page #338

 

"Widescreen. No, Wider," in Marvel Super Special #10, by Doug Moench (writer), Gene Colan (penciler), Tom Palmer (inker/colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

Marvel Super Special was one of Marvel's big magazines of the late-70s/early-80s. It seems to be have been mostly devoted to adaptations of various films of the time. Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Last Starfighter, Conan the Barbarian. The last issue was the Howard the Duck movie.

The only story I have is the lone Star-Lord appearance in issue 10, where Peter Quill and Ship come under attack by some mysterious beam emanating from a black hole, which pulls Quill and (separately) Ship through the other end, where they encounter the enormous civilization-ship pictured above. The people on-board are gracious, hospitable and look much like Earthlings.

They are also, of course, hiding ulterior motives. Star-Lord ends up in the middle of a civil war between the part of the population that want to continue life on their ship, and those who want to settle on an actual planet (like, say, Earth.) In a precursor to his story in Marvel Preview, Moench has Star-Lord try to insist of reasoning with the conqueror side, only to conclude it's futile. Quote, 'He rejects the pacifism which will not work. He scorns the non-violence which brings nothing but death. HE FIGHTS!'

Moench seems to conflate not killing with non-violence, which is kind of asinine for a guy who wrote comics about people in costumes punching criminals. Bushmaster probably didn't consider Moon Knight "non-violent," even before Spector cut his face off. I feel it's worth mentioning that in the last Claremont/Infantino Star-Lord story, Quill is able to defeat a civilization-battleship that is destroying inhabited worlds under the notion it's better to kill them before they could potentially become a threat. He does this without killing anyone, but fights his way through security when he has to. Non-lethal, not non-violent.

But as mentioned last week, Moench's Star-Lord is a dim bulb. Everything that's happening has to be explained to him. He doesn't figure out any of the deception on his own. The story starts with him having a dream of people first hailing him as a savior, then cursing him, but he's less a savior to the side he helps than a blunt weapon they use to overcome the militaristic faction's firepower advantage.

Random Back Issues #116 - Daredevil #154

"Sinister yo-yo?" Matt's taken one too many shots to the head.

It feels like all the recent selections have been issues focused on set-up or exposition. Not this one. It's time for violence!

Daredevil's been hunting the Purple Man (rocking a cloak he must have stolen from Dracula), but Purple Man's got Matt's girlfriend, Heather Glenn under his control, along with a prison full of guards and convicts. If Daredevil doesn't play nice, Heather will shoot herself in the head.

Which leaves Hornhead up against four of his old foes: Gladiator, Jester, Cobra and Mr. Hyde. Oh come on, at least half those guys are total losers. What, the Enforcers weren't available? There's also no teamwork between the villains. Daredevil catches the sinister *chuckle* yo-yo and chucks the Jester Hyde's direction, but Hyde just backhands the moron away. Cobra tries to shoot Daredevil in the back, Matt simply ducks and lets the darts hit Gladiator.

Hyde's through fooling around and starts choking the life from Daredevil, shrugging off the best hits DD can throw. A mysterious shot knocks Hyde flat, courtesy of Paladin?! Who is also rocking a cape. I guess if you got Gene Colan drawing the book, everybody gets capes.

Paladin's after the bounty on Killgrave, but apparently he didn't read up on his target, because he gets close enough to be subject to the mind-control whammy. Still, he fights it off enough to shoot Purple Man instead of Daredevil, then seals up his costume so he's on internal air supply. Cobra and Gladiator are the only two left standing, and if they couldn't handle just Daredevil, they fold fast when the sides are even. Gladiator doesn't even get to finish saying "Great Ceasar's Gh - " before Daredevil says they've all heard that one before and gut punches him.

But Killgrave still has Heather pointing a gun at her own head. Paladin stands down, so DD grabs his gun, shoots the pistol out of Heather's hand, and now Killgrave's really up shit creek. He runs to a watchtower and tries blinding Daredevil with the spotlight. He'd learned Murdock was Daredevil, but assumed the blindness was a ruse. Realizing it wasn't, he lunges at Daredevil, screaming that he won't lose to a blind man.

Daredevil ducks and Killgrave falls into the ocean. Matt reflects it was too fast for him to save Killgrave, but also, he didn't he really try. Nor should he. Unfortunately, Purple Man would be back, repeatedly. Heather Glenn and Matt would eventually break up, and then Denny O'Neil would have her commit suicide during his tenure on the book. Because Murdock needed another dead girlfriend to self-flagellate over, apparently.

* See Sunday Splash Page #120 for a double-page depiction of the evil assemblage - Self-promoting Calvin

{3rd longbox, 50th comic. Daredevil #154, by Roger McKenzie (writer), Gene Colan (penciler), Steve Leialoha (inker/colorist), Novak (letterer)}

Saturday Splash Page #68

"Results Unclear," in Tomb of Dracula #44, by Marv Wolfman (writer), Gene Colan (artist) Tom Palmer (inker/colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

This is the only issue I own of Tomb of Dracula, the first half of his first run-in with Dr. Strange, the latter half of which got touched on in Sunday Splash Page #158. Drac fed on Wong coming back from a grocery run, and Strange needed to break the Lord of Vampires' will so he'd undo that. Didn't really work how Stephen hoped.

It's a book seemingly tailor-made for Gene Colan, with a main character who is all billowing cloak, swirling shadows and mist. Dracula's physical presence is in the damage he inflicts around him, on objects or the people he kills, while he actual body is drawn with a loose, in some ways weightless line that makes him seem more fluid. Fingers unnaturally long, or eyes glaring out of the cloak.

The book ran 75 issues, and I imagine is most well-known for introducing Blade, who does show up briefly in this comic, although he encounters unwilling vampire/paranormal investigator Hannibal King rather than Dracula.

Sunday Splash Page #253

"Sky-High Prices," in Howard the Duck Magazine #1, by Bill Mantlo (writer), Gene Colan and Dave Simons (artists), Mike Higgins? (letterer)

After Howard and Beverly beat Dr. Bong and were reunited in issue 31 of his monthly series, Marvel switched Howard's stories to a black-and-white that came out roughly every couple of months for 18 months. I only own the first issue, because it's all that's included in volume 2 of the Howard the Duck The Complete Collection.

The Mantlo/Colan team from the last few issues of the ongoing series are still the main creative team here, although Michael Golden and Klaus Janson are the art duo on the first of the three stories in here. Mantlo sends Howard and Beverly back to Cleveland with her uncle who Howard randomly met and befriended in New York, but has decided to open a cab company back home.

Mantlo brings back a couple of Howard's earliest antagonists in Pro Rata, the Financial Wizard, and the Kidney Lady. Except he makes the Kidney Lady into a sort of witch, who tries using magic first to drive Howard nuts and incite the public against him, then has a demon possess a chair of some such nonsense to try and kill the duck.

I feel like that misses the point of what Gerber was going for, that she was a mentally ill woman who fixated on Howard as the source of her fears and woes because he was different, and managed to mess with his life because she refused to leave him be. But hell, it means Colan gets to draw a possessed easy chair, so take the good with the bad.

Mantlo also writes Beverly as a bit more action-oriented than Gerber did, and I don't just mean because the last page basically says she and Howard get freaky in the sack. She seems more involved in the fighting Howard gets caught up in than she did before. Could argue that after Howard left her stuck with Dr. Bong for however long that ended up being - he escaped from Dr. Bong in issue 18, and didn't end up fighting him until issue 30, and that was more because Bong came looking for him - she doesn't feel like waiting around to be saved.

Reading summaries online, it looks like Mantlo sent them back to Howard's world for a while before bringing them back to Earth, then had Beverly break up with Howard in the last issue and the duck becomes a private detective. Which might explain where Zdarsky got the idea to go that route with Howard 35 years later.

Sunday Splash Page #251

"A Talking Duck Walks Into a Diner," in Howard the Duck #10, by Steve Gerber (writer), Gene Colan (penciler), Steve Leialoha (inker), Jan Cohen (colorist), Jim Novak (letterer)

After his team-ups with Man-Thing and some early solo adventures in Cleveland in Giant-Size Man-Thing, Steve Gerber got the go-ahead for an ongoing series for Howard the Duck.

Gerber continually gets Howard mixed-up in adventures that are somehow both bizarre and mundane. In the first two issues, a sorcerer tries to gain control of the universe, but really he's more of an accountant trying to balance - or perhaps cook - the universe's ledger to grant him that power. That adventures is also where Howard makes his friend real friend among the hairless apes, in the form of Beverly Switzler, who was there for what she thought was a modeling gig but turned out to be a human sacrifice.

From there, even as Howard and Beverly try to find some way to handle stuff like paying bills or finding some measure of satisfaction in life, he keeps running afoul of a mentally ill woman who accuses him of wanting to steal her kidneys. When Howard finally hits his boiling point and they get in a fight, it ends in court where she appears as an entirely reasonable and ordinary woman who was brutally attacked by this crazy duck. Later on it's Dr. Bong, who is really just a yellow journalist who made a career off writing headlines that weren't technically lies, but were phrased so people would take them in the worst, most salacious manner. He's also had a fixation on Beverly and resents Howard because of it.

Instead of a bell over his head, he oughta be wearing a fedora.

Howard's in a world he never knew, but one where he can recognize many of the things he (or Gerber) think are wrong with it. But he can't seem to grasp it well enough to avoid nearly constant pitfalls. Or maybe he just has too many principles to let things slide. Gene Colan, who takes over as the regular series artist with issue 4 and remains on the book up through issue 31 (minus a couple of fill-ins and a two part reunion of Gerber and artist Val Mayerick), is a good fit. With the swirling shadows and slightly distorted expressions, there's a nightmarish quality to the world Howard inhabits. It's a big, dark, crazy world full of things that try to harm a duck just wanting to get by with sanity intact.

Somewhere around the time Howard is anointed a third-party presidential candidate, I start to feel like I'm watching a slow-motion picture of Gerber having a mental breakdown. Howard grows steadily more frustrated and irritated and cynical until finally, when confronted with a nutty Canadian that ruined his campaign (now wearing a beaver-themed exo-armor), Howard simply walks away. He can't take any more, and he sort of drifts for the next year of the book. He gets sucked into things, or things happen to him, and Howard just reacts, survives, and keeps shuffling along.

It's during this stretch where Klaus Janson takes over as Colan's regular inker from Steve Leialoha. Personally, I think the book looks better with Leialoha. Janson's inks solidify the characters and the world too much, the shadows recede. Given Howard in this stretch really seems beaten, just going through the motions with his head down, content to forget about Beverly, to simply hope Dr. Bong will be content with his victory and leave a poor duck in peace, it feels the world ought to be more terrifying. Howard's surrendered, he's vulnerable.

But I guess you could argue that by not fighting the madness he's broken some of its terror on him. He doesn't care any longer, so why should it bother him? Your mileage will vary.

Bill Mantlo's actually the one who writes Howard's eventual big showdown with Dr. Bong, concluding in issue 31, which is where the collections I have ends. The way I understand it, Gerber had fallen out with Marvel by then, and he didn't write the book again, although he did use Howard during his stint on Sensational She-Hulk (which I think I prefer to Byrne's, honestly). 

Howard was I think persona non grata in Marvel for a long time, or smply didn't fit with the '90s, Image-ized Marvel. I guess after Keith Giffen, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning brought Rocket Raccoon back out of mothballs (and ignored Peter David apparently turning Rocket into a trophy, which, good call), Marvel figured, what the heck, why not the angry talking duck that hangs out with Man-Thing? Chip Zdarsky and Joe Quinones gave Howard an ongoing series as a private detective in the mid-2010s, though I only read the parts where he interacted with Gwenpool or Squirrel Girl. My impression is, rather than use Howard to comment on our society like Gerber did, Zdarsky commented on the world the superheroes inhabited.

Sunday Splash Page #158

 

"Support the Neck, Count," in Doctor Strange (vol. 2) #14, by Steve Englehart (writer), Gene Colan (artist), Tom Palmer (inker/colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

Welcome to the 5,000th post on Reporting on Marvels and Legends!

Strange got his second shot at an ongoing in 1974, although it published somewhat erratically the first 2+ years. Steve Englehart's run went covered the first 18 issues, and seems to be maybe the most highly-regarded, non-Ditko run with the character, at least in some circles of comics fandom. I only have one issue of it myself, and it's this one.

This is the second half of Strange's first run-in with Dracula (the first half of which was in Tomb of Dracula #44, which we'll get to someday). Wong got ambushed and snacked on by Drac, and Strange went hunting for him, planning to destroy him so Wong's soul could resume possession in his body. Except Strange lost and got bit himself. His astral form's free, so he uses it to mess with the vampire's mind for a bit, torment and goad him with illusions of his deceased wife to lure him out over the ocean. 

Except he let the ruse slip a little too soon, and Dracula evades the sun.

They fight it out, and Strange wins by calling on the power of God to not only kill Dracula, but bring Wong back to life and make himself not a vampire anymore. Pretty slick. 

The color printing doesn't do Colan's art any favors. It tends to wash out or obscure too many details, especially in faces. I doubt that's on Tom Palmer so much as the limitations of the technology of the day. One thing I notice here is that, in contrast to a lot of artist who draw Strange's Cloak of Levitation like a living, responsive thing that almost floats off his shoulders, Colan draws it as a limp cloth that drapes and clings heavily on him. I'm guessing because Strange isn't himself, even when he's up and moving, with the taint of vampirism on him. 

Dracula's cloak, in contrast, has more of that living energy to it. Billowing out as he leaps, hanging loose to help him almost blend with the shadows. Although, since he can change into a bat or mist, then change back in the same outfit, I'm not sure what his clothes are actually made of.

As it turns out, Dracula actually tricked Strange into thinking he destroyed the Lord of Vampires. But he's not interested in continuing the fight either, so he lets it drop. And that's largely where things are left, for the next seven years.

Sunday Splash Page #157

 

"Swirling Mists and Starry Skies," in Doctor Strange (vol. 1) #183, by Roy Thomas (writer), Gene Colan (artist), Tom Palmer (inker/colorist?), Jean Izzo (letterer)

Welcome to Master of the Mystic Arts March (and April)! Starting off with the one and only issue I own of Strange's first ongoing series. This book was originally Strange Tales, which for its last couple of years had mostly become Dr. Strange's book by default, but also sometimes featured Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD. Then they went ahead and changed it to his book officially at issue #169, and it remained that way for 15 issues. 

This is actually the final issue. I own because it's the very first comic in Essential Defenders Volume 1, because Roy Thomas kicks off the battle against the Undying Ones, which moves through Namor and Hulk's books, and that eventually Steve Engelhart would use through the first several issues of Defenders, once that book actually exists.

That said, there's not much to that in this issue. Stephen gets a telegram from an old friend, and when visits finds the man under the control of three minions of the Undying Ones. Strange defeats them by - pulling open the curtains and exposing them to sunlight. Credit for lateral thinking, I guess.

Possibly the more significant development in this issue is the Stephen returns home from a big adventure trying to save Eternity to learn that the manifestation of reality has tried to do him a solid. Strange had to publicly do magic to save someone, and so Eternity has changed his identity to Stephen Sanders, which will presumably keep people from tracking him down to bug him about magic and/or try to kill him. Not that it has much effect on this issue, other than leaving Stephen awed that Eternity can do something so intricate to such a minute detail with seemingly no effort.

Gene Colan's art is the real draw here, and I think the lack of color lets it show off a little more. You can see all the wavy mist and shadows and the full contrast in a way the color printing of the time probably didn't allow (next week's entry is also Gene Colan-drawn, but in color, and I don't think it looks nearly as good). When Stephen visits his friend, Colan uses these tall, narrow panels with thick borders to show Strange is hemmed in with the threats. Once magic starts getting thrown around, the panels tilt and almost topple as Strange is pushed on the defensive. Magic takes the form of either wavy lines or bizarre whirlpools, like doorways to other realms are just casually being tossed around.

Strange wouldn't get another solo book for about 5 years. We're going to spend a few weeks on that one, though, starting next week.

Sunday Splash Page #120

"The Good Old Days Weren't So Good," in Daredevil #154, by Roger McKenzie (writer), Gene Colan (penciler), Steve Leialoha (inker/colorist), Novak (letterer)

I only own one Daredevil comic from the pre-Miller years, and I don't remember how I ended up with this one. Someone gave it to me, but the identity of the person is lost. But hey, Gene Colan art, I couldn't pass that up, right?

I feel as though the broad strokes history of Daredevil is that he was a cheerful swashbuckler type until Frank Miller threw him into a world of ninjas and dead girlfriends, and that's largely where he's stayed ever since, minus the occasional creative team that goes against the flow in one way or the other.

Don't know if that's true or not. This issue is about Daredevil being forced to fight several of his worst foes or the Purple Man will make his girlfriend, Heather Glenn, kill herself. Daredevil spends the entire issue being desperate and furious. Paladin, of all characters, ends up coming to the rescue. It's the only time I've ever seen that guy wearing a cape. The Purple Man knows Daredevil is Matt Murdock, and deduces that Murdock really is blind after his attempt to use a spotlight on him proves ineffective. Purple Man even falls to his "death" by lunging stupidly at Daredevil, because he can't accept losing to a blind man. The enemies are more brightly colored and grandiose in their speech than Miller's, but the broad strokes are kind of similar. If there's any swashbuckling in here, it's Paladin, whose a cocky merc.

This issue does end with DD and Heather walking off together, so that's a bright spot compared to how things went with the whole Bullseye/Elektra thing.

Heather Glenn seems like the forgotten woman in the long string of Murdock's failed relationships. It's always about Karen Page, or Elektra, or maybe the Black Widow (the only one to survive largely unscathed). But I think Heather got engaged to Matt, then forced into breaking it off, and then the late Denny O'Neill had her commit suicide about 65 issues after this one. In that one, she calls Matt up, drunk, and pretends to be in trouble to get him to come visit. He ignores a domestic disturbance as a result, the woman ends up being killed, and then Matt yells at Heather when she calls again. You'd think the time a deeply depressed woman reached out to Daredevil for help, only to get shoved over a cliff instead, would get more play. More guilt for the good Catholic boy.

That comic might actually be the first Daredevil comic I owned. If not, it's the second behind the issue of Born Again where Matt loses it, tries to fight the Kingpin in plainclothes and gets his dick kicked in.