Here's a surprising solicitation for this summer I stumbled across:
"BLACK BOLT: SOMETHING INHUMAN THIS WAY COMES
ROY THOMAS and GERRY CONWAY (W) NEAL ADAMS and MIKE SEKOWSKY (A)
Cover by NEAL ADAMS
• Black Bolt, monarch of the Inhumans, wanders the streets of San Francisco — his memory stolen and his identity forgotten!
• Maximus the Mad has usurped the throne — and Medusa, Gorgon and Karnak are forced to flee the Inhumans’ hidden city!
• What strange new force has wiped Black Bolt’s mind?
• When he’s targeted by criminals, revolutionaries and the mutant called Magneto, will his fellow Inhumans find him in time?
• Guest-starring Thor and the Avengers!
• Collecting AMAZING ADVENTURES (1970) #5-10 and AVENGERS (1963) #95.
104 PGS./Rated T …$7.99"
This is a most curious reprint package. The Inhumans have a most curious publishing history and no small part of that was their stint as the front half of Amazing Adventures which was an early 70's attempt to recapture the magic of the classic split books of the Silver Age. It was somewhat successful, but eventually gave way as one feature, in this case the Inhumans eventually took over.
For a brief time the great Neal Adams drew the feature. Those adventures are the focus of this reprint as the story blends weirdly into the Kree-Skrull War being waged at that time in mighty pages of The Avengers. This skirmish informs our understanding of that greater conflict in a small way, and this collection will go nicely next to a gathering of that now famous Marvel epic.
Neal Adams gave way eventually on this saga handing the art chores to longtime DC pro Mike Sekowsky. Sekowsky did very little work for Marvel, this stuff along with a few issues of Super-Villain Team-Up as I recall. But with covers by the likes of Adams, John Buscema, and Gil Kane, the artwork on this storyline is impeccable.
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A local sport memorabilia store has these issues in a box for sale...maybe I'll go take a second look....
ReplyDeleteThey're worthy back issues, some of the most entertaining of the era. The Inhumans seem to attract some really dandy talent. The Black Widow stories ain't bad either.
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I haven't ever been able to read these, so I'll definitely buy that collection.
ReplyDeleteIt's nicely priced, just the kind of thing for a pleasant afternoon.
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The Adams work in these issues is as impressive as the samples here indicate, and the Sekowsky issues are a real change of pace...but I wonder why they omitted the Kirby written-and-drawn Inhumans stories from issues 1 through 4? These are among the last (if not the very last) work Jack did at the House of Ideas before launching the Fourth World, and at least in retrospect they offer subtle hints as to what was coming next.
ReplyDelete(They also have the Mandarin in them as a villain; you'd think Marvel would expect there to be greater interest in him after Iron Man 3, but maybe not...)
Those Kirby issues are sweet indeed. I don't really know why they aren't included though likely the emphasis on this package seems to be the work of Neal Adams. They just include the Sekowsky stuff because it's needed to complete the story.
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The storyline from 5 to 10 was totally-separated from the first four Kirby tales (which were some of his earliest Silver/Bronze Age scripting work).
ReplyDeleteOf course, the Thomas/Conway/Adams/Sekowsky stories introed things like the Trikon that weren't resolved for decades...
True that. Kirby's artwork in those few pages he had is really striking.
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I really prefer Sekowsky to Adams.
ReplyDeleteAlways wondered we know Black Bolt cant speak but why no thought balloons , surely he thinks?
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