Sunday Splash Page #333

 

"Lethal Voyeurism," in Marvel Fanfare #10, by Ralph Macchio (writer), George Perez (writer/penciler), Brett Breeding (inker), Petra Scotese (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

I don't know what the thinking was behind Marvel Fanfare. It seemed like a book to showcase one-off stories by well-regarded writers and especially artists, without trying to fit them into whatever ongoing book those characters might have at the moment. Or maybe they were just inventory stories that Marvel figured they might as well use. It wasn't uncommon to have two stories in one issue, by different creative teams, with different characters.

Sometimes an entire issue was devoted to one story, like #47, a Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden story where a sick Spider-Man tries to survive the crossfire between a berserk Hulk and an incompetent SHIELD guy and his malfunctioning killbots.

Other times, the story runs across multiple issues, such as the Black Widow story above, or a 4-parter near the end by Steve Gerber and a variety of artists, focused on Shanna the She-Devil. That's one that makes think it was a story filed away for a rainy day, because it has 3 different artists, and it had been sitting so long, Gerber didn't remember the original ending and had to try and come up with a new one for the finale.

Which means it's also a book that definitely lends itself to a selective purchase of back issues, at least for me. The book ran for 60 issues, and I own 16 issues. The reasons vary between who's the creative team and who the story stars, or sometimes just the concept. Half of issue 29 is a Hulk story John Byrne did in all splash pages because - if we can trust the "Editori-Al" cartoon Al Milgrom did on the inside cover - Byrne saw Simonson's all splash page issue of Thor and wanted to do one, too.

So I buy the issue to see that, or I buy an issue because the second story has Norm Breyfogle drawing Captain America, or Ann Nocenti writing Moon Knight.

Random Back Issues #24 - Avengers #19

With all these panels of reporters, I thought for a second I wandered into an early issue of Spawn. Captain America and Iron Man being bad at handling the press played up a lot in this run in the early going. I'd think Stark would be better at it, but this was after he wiped the fact he was Iron Man from most people's minds. Without, you know, asking anyone if it was OK for him to fuck with their brains, demonstrating Tony Stark's usual level of consideration for anyone other than himself. Also, got to love the reporters complaining about not enough minority representation, but also, that there are too many stinkin' muties. The Marvel Universe press is just as stupid and useless as our own!

Anyway, we're looking at post-Heroes Return Avengers, by Kurt Busiek and George Perez, and this is the start of what I think is most people's favorite story from that run, Ultron Unlimited.

Ultron himself doesn't appear until the final page, as his forces are busy killing every person in the fictional country of Slorenia, but the wheels are turning. The Big Three Avengers are saved from the very awkward press conference seen above by the Wasp smashing through the window. She brings word that a bunch of robots with a familiar face busted into Hank Pym's lab and abducted him.

Jarvis brings more bad news to the party - although he does it as politely as possible, bless him. Something composed of adamantium is attacking the Wakanda Design Group research lab in Long Island. The Avengers haul butts over there, ready to throw down with Ultron, and find. . . Alkhema?

Sorry, Alkhema-2, the second version of Ultron's second attempt to create a wife, this one with a mind based off Mockingbird's brain patterns. She doesn't like him any better than any of his other attempts to create a family do, but she does like the idea of killing all humans. She just wants to do it one at a time and savor the experience. Which makes me a little uneasy about Mockingbird.

She and the Avengers throw down, which mostly doesn't go well for the heroes. Vision tries his old "increase density to maximum and fall on her" trick, but she just grabs his ankle and throws him into Thor. Firestar tries to heat her up enough to melt something inside, but has to be pushed out of the way of an energy blast by T'Challa at the last second. Scarlet Witch ends up saving the day by using her powers to mess with the "molecular rearranger" that keeps Alkhema and Ultron's adamantium insides from locking up. I thought they were only adamantium on the outside, but OK, sure.

In other developments, Justice and Firestar moved their stuff into the mansion, although Vance's leg is in a cast from him dumbly rushing into battle with a concussion a few issues earlier to help Carol Danvers fend off the Doomsday Man. Kind of sad that Vance wanted to be an Avenger for years, and his stint with the team never really went anywhere, while Firestar really stepped up during the same stretch.

Also, Wanda and Wonder Man visit a restaurant from the area she grew up, and Wanda finds out Vision has been coming there a lot in his civilian identity. I wasn't aware he even had one of those. Wanda thinks this is a little fishy, since Vision had told her he didn't retain any of his memories from when they were married, before he got dismantled and turned emotionless or whatever by John Byrne.

Man, between insisting Wanda and Vision couldn't really have kids, and that Namorita was really a clone of Namora, late-80s Byrne had a real thing about who could and couldn't procreate.

{2nd longbox, 27th comic. Avengers (vol. 3) #19, by Kurt Busiek (writer), George Perez (artist), Al Vey (finisher), Tom Smith (colorist), Wes Abbott (letterer)}

Sunday Splash Page #97

"No, Quack is a Fowl Noise," in Brave and the Bold (vol. 3) #7, by Mark Waid and George Perez (storytellers), Bob Wiacek (inker), Tom Smith (colorist), Rob Leigh (letterer)

The third volume of Brave and the Bold started up some point after 52 wrapped, with Waid and Perez as the creative team. The first year of the book had an overarching story, something about someone named Megistus who was after some MacGuffin or another. Sometimes the stories were set up so that one of the heroes from one issue carried over into the next. Like when Batman teamed up with the Blue Beetle, then was in the future with the Legion of Super-Heroes the next month.

Waid knows how to play characters off each other (although he writes Power Girl as hyper-aggressive in this issue, even by her standards), and works some humor in some issues. Bruce Wayne being stunned at Hal Jordan's success gambling. Brainiac being kind of pissed when Batman uses an ordinary old smoke bomb against them, and it works. Perez' style would be considered more old-school even by 2007, I assume, but it works for me, and I think it fits the tone of the book, which is a very old-school team-up book.

Perez left after issue 10, with Jerry Ordway taking over the art chores for three issues. Waid left after issue 16, and the book rotated through a series of creative teams, each doing a story or two, until it landed in the hands of J. Michael Straczynski and Jesus Saiz for the last 9 issues. The only other issue I own besides this one is the very last issue, a Legion of Substitute Heroes/Inferior Five team-up, which occurs in and around the Legion of Super-Heroes/Doom Patrol team-up the month before. 

It's actually not bad, works as a funny issue, which makes it the high point of JMS' run on the book. Low praise, considering this was when he wrote that story where Zatanna has a premonition of Barbara Gordon's fate in The Killing Joke, and when she confides in Wonder Woman, they. . . take Barbara out for a fun night on the town rather than, you know, do anything to stop it. I guess because Wonder Woman figures it's fate, and you can't interefere. Then why did Zatanna have the fucking premonition then?

Sunday Splash Page #47

"Those Comic-Con Crowds Are Out of Control," in Avengers (vol. 3) #22, by Kurt Busiek (writer), George Perez (penciler), Al Vey (finishes), Tom Smith (colorist), RS & Comicraft (letterers)

I had a few issues from after Roger Stern's run - the Acts of Vengeance tie-ins and one other random one - but decided to skip 'em and jump right to this. The Kurt Busiek/George Perez, Heroes Return run (I was blessedly unaware of the Heroes Reborn version when it happened, and have read nothing about it that would make me go check it out now.) We'll touch on the latter half of Busiek's stint next week, the issues after Perez had left the book.

I didn't actually start buying this title until about five issues after the Ultron Unlimited storyline, when Marvel did a 100-page "Monster" issue around a roster shake-up. It wasn't actually 100 pages of new comics, but a new story and then reprints of older issues that also dealt with lineup changes. Which was fine. Those back issues were new to me. That's how I first learned about Cap's Kooky Quartet.

The run has this nice mix of big threats that you need a whole team of super-heroes to combat, plus a lot of character subplots that either continue in the background as a way to flesh the cast out, or eventually come to the forefront. There's a long-running one with a religious organization called the Triune Understanding that plays out in various ways, a lot of them involving the Avengers losing a PR battle with the seemingly-benevolent group, but also some friction between them and thier new Security Liason, and one of their team members, Triathlon. Or there's the Scarlet Witch-Vision-Wonder Man triangle. Or Justice struggling to adjust to actually getting to be an Avenger. There's always stuff happening, and even if you aren't interested in one subplot, there's probably another that'll hook you.

And there's big action. This Ultron story, there's some big fight scene in almost every issue, but they work in service of the story and the characters. The Avengers following a false lead, or Ultron catching a small group of them while they're separated because they're the particular Avengers he's most interested in. Hank Pym getting to try and face down his demons over creating Ultron. Perez seems a little rushed by the end of this arc - the work looks quite a bit rougher, less polished than normal - but there is a lot of rubble, robot parts, and damaged costumes for Perez to handle in his typical, lovingly detailed style. And besides, the Avengers are pretty trashed by the time they actually get to Final Boss Ultron, so maybe the rougher look actually fits.

As I said, we'll be back to this book next week, although with a different artist.

All-Father's Always On Thor About Something

So I was flipping through my copies of the Kurt Busiek/George Perez "Ultron Unlimited" storyline on New Year's Day, as one does. I get to the "Ultron. We would have words with thee." panel. You know the one:

Yeah, that's it.

Anyway, for the first time I noticed that Thor's helmet is missing one of its little wings. Which is not a type of battle damage I've seen Thor's outfit take before. Lose the helmet entirely? Sure. Happens all the time. Happens on the very next page, actually.

(Interestingly, Captain America still has both of the little wings on his cowl, although one got colored blue in the panel above. I guess that comes with being willing to actually dodge attacks sometimes.)

For some reason, I figured Odin would give Thor a lot of crap about this when he gets back to Asgard to get his outfit patched up. Probably because Odin is kind of a dick. I don't think Odin cares if Thor gets dirty fighting frost giants, but I can see him finding it vaguely insulting Thor would have that much trouble with any threat he'd face on Midgard.

"My son, surely thou hast not allowed the mortals to see thine raiments in such a horrid state?"

"Father, the mortals' eyes were very much focused on the indestructible killer robot I was smashing to a pulp."

Thor's lying a bit there, of course. He tried smashing Ultron in the face. Ultron, like me on New Year's Eve, refused to get smashed. Odin doesn't have to know that. And he won't, as long as Heimdall keeps his trap shut. Considering Heimdall probably knows half of the times Odin goes into his "Odinsleep", he's really just hungover or trying to get out of visiting his in-laws, the All-Father probably doesn't want him blabbing too many secrets