If I was forced to pick only one comic book ever and that's all I ever got, Marvel Super Heroes #18 might be the one. I love this comic for its pure blend of science fiction and superheroics. I love this comic for its wonky heroes, four very different men from across the solar system fighting against a bizarre lizard tyranny.
Arnold Drake and Gene Colan were at the top of their respective games with this showcase for a new super team, each though merely the product of circumstance. Charlie-27 is my favorite, a simple man who merely seeks to save his family and who is forced to run for his life despite his great strength and speed when he can't do that. Martinex is properly shiny and knowing and weird, but he is similarly motivated.
And then there's Major Vance Astro, the thousand year old Earthman who is at once bitter and selfless, a proper blend of human characters which Drake was so adept at showing. Alongside this "Lone Ranger" (resurrected masked man don't you know) of the future is the noble native, the taciturn Yondu with his delightful Yaka arrows which act like living things and obey his commands. These are fascinating characters who were united and committed by story's end to battling against the alien threat of the dominating Badoon.
The same Badoon who had only a few months before appeared in the pages of Silver Surfer #2 in our modern day. That invasion was thwarted but now we see they returned and they have won the day conquering not only Earth but all its disparate colonies on Jupiter, Pluto, and beyond. It's a fresh dazzling world that Drake and Colan present and I was hungry for more after the first Marvel Super Heroes outing. I never got it, that is I never got it for a good long while.
More Guardians to come.
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I didn’t get to read this Guardians story until it got reprinted in Astonishing Tales some years later (due to a missed Deathtlok dealine.) I believe they clipped a page or 2 from it also…Do you recall the Captain America tale from MSH#18? (Just curious here.) Thank you Rip.
ReplyDeleteThere was no specific Cap story in this issue, but the finale of the two-part reprint of All Winners #21 which showcased the second All Winners Squad story. I fell in love with that wonky team right from the get go and loved it when they were reformed in a manner of speaking with the Invaders ret-con a few years later.
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