Saturday Splash Page #158

"Glimpse Behind the Veil," in Silver Surfer (vol. 2) #31, by Steve Englehart (writer), Ron Lim (penciler), Tom Christopher and Keith Williams (inkers), Tom Vincent (colorist), Ken Bruzenak (letterer)

When I was a kid, most of the Silver Surfer comics I got were part of grab-bag things you could get a grocery stores, and it was usually issues from Ron Marz and Ron Lim's lengthy tenure on the title. I don't know that I was fond of the character so much as I was fond of the look of him. Lim's Surfer is this impossibly shiny figure, zipping around at light speeds on a surfboard, chucking around energy blasts. He looked pretty cool.

But that was always in brief glimpses. A single issue here, part 2 of a 6 part story there, an Infinity Crusade (bleh) tie-in maybe. The only continuous stretch I've read is when I picked up Steve Englehart's 30-issue stint as writer a few years back.

Englehart starts by getting the Surfer past Galactus' barrier by having him hitch a ride with the FF in their spaceship. That's it, all it took to outmaneuver Big G was a little help from some friends, which I suppose means Galactus didn't expect the Surfer to be able to make friends.

The Surfer then ends up in the middle of two battles, which is part of a whole thing Englehart seems to be exploring about binary systems and those who fit on neither side. On the one hand, the Elders of the Universe, now safe from Death after she banished the Grandmaster for his stunt in the Avengers Annuals, are trying to destroy both Galactus and the universe itself, so they can take his spot as the eldest beings in existence, since they'll be the sole survivors of the previous universe, as he was. I'm not sure it tracks as a motive, but there it is.

That conflict concludes about halfway through Englehart's run, a few issues after Lim takes over as the regular penciler from Marshall Rogers, but the other thread, a war between the Kree and Skrulls, keeps going throughout. The Skrulls have lost their shape-changing abilities, though they're trying to keep that on the down-low, and the empire's fragmented into five factions. The Surfer wouldn't take any notice, except the Skrulls first imprisoned Galactus' current herald, Nova, to try and force him to act against the Kree, and when the Surfer rescued her, that put his homeworld of Zenn-La on the bullseye.

So the Surfer's caught between two worlds, or two levels maybe. The man that still feels things for Shalla-Bal and his home, and the. . .entity, cosmic being, whatever, that wants to fly free across the cosmos. He's not strictly a person any longer, but he's also not the personification of some universal constant, like Eternity or Death. Not quite human, or not only human, but not divorced from it, either.

The first year of the book, which is focused mostly on the cosmic struggle, is drawn mostly by Marshall Rogers. Rogers uses a lot of panels with a wide focus, the Surfer as a tiny speck against a sea of stars, emphasizing the vastness of space and the Surfer's isolation. Or to spread his movement across several tall, narrow panels, where it's like, now free of Galactus' barrier, the Surfer's moving too fast to be contained by anything. He may go across the page, then loop back diagonally and down. Space is infinite, the first issue tells us (and the 31st issue repeats), and so the Surfer can soar in any direction he chooses.

The Surfer also ends up repeatedly blindsided or just outmaneuvered in both conflicts. The Elders catch him off-guard more than once, and outside the Obliterator, the Surfer doesn't really defeat any of them. Most run afoul of the In-Betweener (meant to represent some combination of Chaos and Order, from a reality where those are the forces that hold sway, rather than Death and Eternity), and the Contemplator messes with the wrong group of telepathic plants, as well as a comic relief character turned scheming backstabber that's apparently a stand-in for Tom DeFalco, who was interfering with Englehart's stories.

And the Skrulls manage to draw the Surfer in on their side by getting him to assault a Kree fleet by, gasp, lying to him! At which point, since he's proclaimed himself as the protector of Zenn-La to the Kree, they decide the planet is fair game, and the Surfer has no choice but to throw in fully so the Skrulls will help protect his home. Basically, he's a straightforward and honest guy, which makes him easy to manipulate, and he's too noble to simply abandon people he's sworn to protect, or even those who suckered him into being their allies.

Lim draws most of the book that focuses on the Kree-Skrull War, and, related to a more political conflict, his Surfer is more human. More defined musculature, fewer panels with a distant POV. The Surfer is still fast, but his movement is more often constrained to single panels. He's locked into this struggle, and it limits his movements. He's caught at the schemes of the Kree and the Skrulls, moving in response to what they do, rather than just soaring the spaceways.

Saturday Splash Page #87

 

"Death Takes a Holiday", in Thanos #7, by Keith Giffen (writer), Ron Lim (penciler), Al Milgrom (inker), Christie Scheele and Krista Ward (colorists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

Years and years before he would be the tentpole villain for the culmination of multiple phases of a cinematic universe (I'm imagining myself reading that sentence 20 years ago and muttering something about gobbledygook), Thanos got himself an ongoing series. Jim Starlin wrote and drew the first 6 issues, where Thanos trying to chart a new course for his life, after having yet another epiphany in the Starlin-written mini-series Marvel Universe: The End. 

Having decided to try and make amends for past misdeeds committed in Dan Jurgens' Thor run by what was actually a rogue clone of himself Thanos made (because Jim Starlin doesn't like it when other people mess with his toy), Thanos saves the universe from some cosmos-devouring thing called The Hunger, which played Galactus like a chump. Because when Jim Starlin writes Thanos, all other characters become 1000 times dumber and less-competent than normal.

Because Jim Starlin has no problem messing with other people's toys. Which is why I didn't keep those 6 issues. He's got some interesting ideas, I just completely hate the execution of those ideas.

I did keep the other six issues, handled by the Keith Giffen/Ron Lim team. Where Thanos decides to make a pilgrimage to the Kyln. Which is a combination power plant/max security prison/holy site at the edge of the place where the universe is generated. I'm unclear if that puts it at an expanding edge or some "center", but whatever. Point is, it's a delicate place, and while Thanos is ostensibly there to think, he gets sucked into a mess involving some version of the Beyonder, having made itself mortal.

In the process of that, Galactus' true first herald escapes. No, not Tyrant, his other first herald. The Fallen One, who goes gunning for Galactus himself, while Big G is still worn down from that previous story arc. Thanos handles that, albeit out of desire to have a herald of his own. Especially one that apparently is powered by dark matter. 

Giffen's Thanos is patient when he wants to be. Smart naturally, able to quick figure out weaknesses in his opponent and bring them to heel. He's also got a bit of a sense of humor - dry, to the point it isn't clear if he's trying to be funny - and not above provoking someone if he thinks it in his interests. And for all that he proclaims to Death - who Lim draws as a child dressed all in black - he's done serving her, he still seems inclined to listen to what she has to say.

That arc is probably most notable for the number of things Giffen introduces that he later used in Annihilation. The Kyln and the Crunch are where Annihilus' army emerges. This frees the two elder beings Thanos encourages to take down Galactus and the Surfer so he can use them as weapons of planetary mass destruction for Annihilus. 

Most importantly, this is where Star-Lord steps back out on the stage for the first time in a long time. Ship is gone, the element gun is gone, the cybernetic eye is there. Quill's an inmate, for what he did to stop the Fallen One originally, but he's also there to make sure the Fallen One stays locked up. He's sarcastic, cynical, basically ready to die whenever. Gladiator's there on made up charges to keep an eye on the Beyonder, and even he treads carefully around Thanos. Quill basically gives zero fucks, maybe because he realizes that if Thanos decides to kill him, it could have very little to do with anything Quill says or does.

The one odd thing of note is, one of the guards responsible for sending pilgrims on through to the Kyln is an Earthling named Cole, who was abducted, then abandoned. To what end he was abducted isn't explained, possibly because Cole doesn't know. But that's pretty much the origin they gave Star-Lord in the movies, except the kidnappers kept Quill. Hard to believe, as annoying as movie Star-Lord can be.

Sunday Splash Page #103

"Cap Thought It Was Pretty Self-Explanatory", in Captain America #371, by Mark Gruenwald (writer), Ron Lim (penciler), Dan Bulanadi (inker), Steve Buccellato (colorist), Jack Morelli (letterer)

The majority of the Captain America comics I own are from the middle-third of Mark Gruenwald's lengthy tenure as writer. More specifically, a 25-issue stretch starting with The Bloodstone Hunt up through the point where Diamondback gets booted from the Serpent Society because she's been canoodling with Captain America. Kieron Dwyer as artist in the early going, then Ron Lim later on. Neither of them is exactly a flashy artist, but I'm not sure you necessarily need one for Captain America. 

Certainly not Gruenwald's Cap, who is played as pretty square mostly of the time. In this issue above, he explains to Diamondback that he's not the sort of guy who would look right going out with a girl with magenta hair. I don't see what that has to do with anything, but sure, Steve.

There's nothing revolutionary about this stretch, but The Bloodstone Hunt's an enjoyable globe-trotting MacGuffin hunt story. The Acts of Vengeance tie-ins give us Magneto putting the boots to the Red Skull before leaving him to slowly die in an old bomb shelter. The Streets of Poison's a goofy story where Cap gets dosed up on cocaine, and Gruenwald tries to draw some pretty iffy analogy between recreational drug abuse and Super-Soldier Serum. But wacked-out Cap throwing down with Bullseye is novel, if nothing else. Plus, you get the Red Skull (in a clone body of Cap's) fighting Wilson Fisk to determine whether the Skull gets to sell drugs in NYC. I really like the notion that basically all other villains hate the Red Skull.

Gruenwald introduces Crossbones during this stretch, who's kind of become a mainstay hench-villain even outside Captain America comics. The whole romance angle with Diamondback, which does provide some focus to the strain it puts on her professionally and personally. I don't know if the Serpent Society was always depicted as this sort of cliquish group of low-level villains, but this is where I encountered it, and that's kind of nice. The shifting alliances and in-fighting, jockeying for position. And Cap getting caught in the middle of it, not really sure what he's even doing there, other than trying to help a friend.

Sunday Splash Page #57

"Shocking! Yeah, I Don't Wanna Hear It", in Solo Avengers #12, by Tom DeFalco and Ralph Macchio (writer), Ron Lim (penciler), Jose Marzan (inker), Andy Yanchus (colorist), Jack Morelli (letterer)

I shouldn't get to this title for a very long time, but they changed the title to Avengers Spotlight somewhere around issue #24, and the earliest issues I bought were the Acts of Vengeance tie-ins that came after that point. So I had it filed accordingly.

Like the title suggests, the book functioned as an opportunity for stories focusing on just one or two Avengers. A lot of those star Hawkeye, which is OK by me. But you get one-shots about the Vision, Wonder Man, Moon Knight. Rick Jones gets a story one month. Hellcat gets one where her crazy ex-husband menaces her about her memoir.

No, not Damian Hellstrom, her other crazy ex-husband. The high school sweetheart, Buzz, or whatever. God, Patsy, you have the worst taste in men. It's like the inverse of Matt Murdock, who is the worst choice for any woman who ends up dating him.

Usually two stories in each issue. Issue 12 features Hawkeye alone against the Abomination. Or Tyrannus' mind inside the Abomination's body. At any rate, Hawkeye punching way out of his weight class, which I always enjoy. less enjoyable is that we're at the point where he and Mockingbird are having problems because Clint still thinks she killed Phantom Rider, and he's all "Avengers don't kill," at his wife, who was, you know, drugged into thinking she loved the Rider for several weeks. Not the time or place for that discussion, Clint.

The other story is Rita Demara, the second Yellowjacket, developing a crush on the Black Knight, while trying to fend off the Fixer's advances. Dane crashes and burns spectacularly telling the Wasp his true feelings first, though. Notable mostly for being the earliest example of Amanda Conner's comic artwork I've come across. Which is one of the fun things about these kind of books, the earlier examples of the work of people that become big names later. The second story in the first issue is drawn by Jim Lee, for example.

Plus, it's a good book to go on back issue hunts for because you can pick and choose. There aren't typically a lot of interweaving plotlines. A story might carry over several issues, but it's still it's own thing. Since the book is from the '80s, anything relevant going on in other titles will get referenced as needed.