Whatever Happened To Starhawk?

Back in the late 60's Marvel used Marvel Super-Heroes (formerly Fantasy Masterpieces) as a Showcase-style tryout book. New characters like Phantom Eagle and The Guardians of the Galaxy debuted in those pages, and others like Ka-Zar and Medusa were given solo stories to test the waters. But it all ended abruptly with a new Doc Doom story in issue twenty, but not before a tantalizing one-page ad heralding the coming of a new hero by the name of "Starhawk" appeared. 

This was a new sci-fi hero by Roy Thomas and Dan Adkins. The ad showed immense promise, but the Marvel Super-Heroes turned to reprints of The Avengers and The X-Men with the next issue, and Starhawk alas never appeared. (Let me add that my disappointment was somewhat moderated by the truly excellent stories in that MSH issue.)

It would be several years later when the cover art graced the issue #3 of Marvelmania Magazine. (See above.)

Later the pages already produced by Thomas and Adkins were published in Marvelmania Magazine #6 under an unrelated Neal Adams cover. The story is incomplete, literally a cliffhanger, but I for one was exceedingly happy after nearly forty years to at long last get a closer look at the hero who ignited my imagination so long before. Here are those pages.

Here is another Starhawk image from The Comic Buyer's Guide where some Adkins art was adapted.

  This is a fun image. 

The "Mandroid" name was dusted off and used again in an issue of Captain Marvel, ironically enough an issue written by Roy Thomas and inked by Dan Adkins over some Gil Kane and John Buscema pencil art.

 

And believe it or not, the "Mandroid" name gets used yet again by Roy in an issue of The Avengers during the famous Kree-Skrull War. This time the Mandroids are SHIELD agents in armor. I've lost track of such things, but it's possible these "Mandroids" are still extant in the Marvel Universe.

The name "Starhawk" of course was revived and given to a totally new character who hooked up with The Guardians of the Galaxy (who as noted debuted in Marvel Super-Heroes) and is still around as far as I know. So alas the original Starhawk is lost to ages, but some of us remember. 

NOTE: This is a Dojo Revised Classic Post. 

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Jack Goes Wild!

It will not a visitor long at the Dojo to see my adoration for the work of comic book master Jack"King" Kirby. I do believe that Kirby has more references here at the Dojo than any other individual talent. Well I was able to lay my hands on some reproductions of some important Kirby work, specifically the posters he created once upon a time for Marvelmania International, the second of Marvel's "club" operations. According to reports it was a lack of proper remuneration for these efforts that added yet another reason for Kirby to walk away from the "House of (mostly his) Ideas". 

But the fact Jack didn't get his just reward for these doesn't make then any less handsome and compelling to look upon. I craved them from the moment I saw them in an ad for Marvelmania, but I rarely used such mail order to get things like that. I didn't have the patience for the delay. It says in the to "allow 2 to 3 weeks" for delivery but my experience pushed that to six weeks most often. 

I now have versions of all three of the Kirby posters from that ad. I only needed to wait four to five decades to get my mitts on them. 

Marvelmania came forward with a second wave of posters and Kirby alas was only represented once with a fantastic Doc Doom effort. It turns out he'd also done posters for Spider-Man and The Hulk but his efforts were turned over to artist John Romita and Herb Trimpe who worked up their own renditions of Kirby's original offerings. This transformation without his permission was yet again a bit more reason for Kirby to skip off to DC to make the "Fourth World". 

I have gotten that Johnny Romita poster now and its so very handsome and slick, just the very thing that Romita brought to the Web-Slinger. 

Kirby is an artist who lies at bedrock of comic books as we know them. His influence is felt today by folks who don't even know that they follow in his steps. The success of Marvel's movie empire would be impossible without the work of Jack "King" Kirby. Stan too of course, but Jack made such handsome pictures that tingle the imagination still after all these years. 

If you want these for yourself I recommend the Marvel Classic Sticker Book which has them. 'Nuff Said!

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Cap Goes Wild!

This is ferociously action-filled in-your-face poster from Marvelmania International featuring the artwork of Jack "King" Kirby and "Fearless" Frank Giacoia was part of the initial 1969 membership kit from the short-lived fan club operation. The lettering is by "Swingin" Sam Rosen.


I never owned this poster sadly, but I well remember the image from this ad which appeared in many a Marvel Comic of the time.


The poster of course was re-used artwork from the cover of 1968's Captain America #106. The story pitted Cap against an evil Communist LMD of himself. Here's a link with the details.


And just for fun here's that same artwork flipped for use as the cover of Marvel Super Action #8 a decade later in 1978. You'll note that Cap is no longer "Wild", but merely "Mad".

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Marvelmania Magazine!

Here to go along with the F.O.O.M. covers I posted yesterday are the Marvelmania Magazine covers. I have all of these save for the debut issues of both the regular run and the catalog. These aren't as lovely necessarily as the F.O.O.M. books, but they do offer up some real treats such as the Starhawk story in issue three. I posted about that here some time ago.


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