Machine Man - Mister Ditko!

After the departure of Jack Kirby from Marvel for the last time in the late 70's, he left two projects behind. Devil Dinosaur was cancelled and Machine Man was put on hiatus. It returned from hiatus following a high-profile guest-star appearance in The Incredible Hulk.

The series also returned with a new and talented team of creators. Steve Ditko is the other artistic pillar of the early Marvel era and along with Marv Wolfman as a scripter Ditko took on the Machine Man and made him distinctive Ditkoesque.

The first thing the team does is de-power Machine Man, taking away some of his gimmicks and presumably limiting his powers. As it turns out they largely ignore these changes going forward and as with the Kirby books, the Machine Man does pretty much what he needs to do to defeat the villain of the day such as the Binary Bug, a classic Ditko burglar type came with a then trend-setting computer motif.

In a story which can only be considered weird, X-51 gives oddball birth to a quintet of humans/gods who attempt to enlighten their "father" before ascending into the heavens.  As I said, this one is weird all the way through.

More standard is the battle Machine Man has with Khan the master of the dirigible home dubbed "Xanadu". The crime lord wants X-51's body for his own purposes to evade mortality, but things don't go as he'd planned.

In the last Wolfman scripted tale, Machine Man has to battle a man pretending to be him (he's green on this cover so it doesn't make sense here)  and working to defend the city and his own reputation.

Tom DeFalco steps in as writer with the fifteenth issue and there is a feeling of greater pace almost immediately. Machine Man matches wits with the Fantastic Four (at least Thing and Torch) while battling a woman who has undergone a terrifying transformation.  We also meet Gears Garvin, a mechanic who comes to X-51' assistance when his legs are damaged.

Gears returns in the next issue when Machine Man must battle a full-blown super-villain named Baron Brimstone, a user of magic maybe and his two henchman who form the Satan Squad. This trio has a real old-fashioned Ditko feel to them.

In the next issue we meet Madam Menace, an arms dealer who covets Machine Man's body for profit. She schemes to get hold of him and loses. Rich Buckler is handling covers on the next few issues.

She returns in the next issue as X-51 comes into conflict with three members of Alpha Flight (Sasquatch, Northstar and Aurora) who are manipulated into the fight by the forgotten Senator Brinkman. This is his swan song as his role comes out and he is disgraced.

Issue nineteen is the last one and sports a handsome Frank Miller cover. Machine Man battle a new villain named Jack O'Lantern who reminded this reader mightily of Green Goblin. This is another slam bang action issue and at the end we have Machine Man reflective about his future.

Machine Man though was now firmly ensconced into the Marvel Universe and he'd show up in sundry places for many years. The final story by Ditko appeared of all places in Marvel Comics Presents and it features art by the great man which was slightly more exotic than his late 70's style. A robot wants access to Machine Man's parts and it's a hoot.

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Timely Returns - Post-Modern Edition!

Several years ago during Marvel's 70th anniversary celebration the company issued a great many one-shot issues which called back to their Timely roots. The books as are typical of the modern era of comics are wildly uneven in their quality, some with artwork which is lovely to behold and some with art that requires more patience. The covers though by and large are very handsome. I have not bothered to read these again since gathering them up and I do not have the complete collection pictured above. For better or worse here are the covers from this event.

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Bring Out Your Dead!

The success of the Avengers has led to many offbeat trade collections, none more so than Legion of the Unliving showcasing some of the most curious and decrepit opponents the Assemblers ever faced, the Walking Dead. Not those Walking Dead, but various gangs of deceased heroes and villains from Marvel's sprawling continuity.

The first delegation of  the dead showed up in the middle of Steve Englehart's most memorable 1975 run. It time lord Kang himself who gathered up some of these desperate souls from the great beyond to battle the Assemblers. This first team illustrated by Sal Buscema and Joe Staton consisted of Baron Zemo, the Frankenstein Monster, Midnight, Wonder Man, the Ghost, and the original (android) Human Torch. For more on this original gaggle of the gone, look here.

The deadly dead returned many years later in the 1987 Avengers annual written by Tom DeFalco and drawn by a who's who of Marvel's Bullpen of the era. This time the unliving were assembled by the Grandmaster for one of his gambits and was a veritable army. Picked to battle both the regular Avengers and the West Coast team they were comprised of Swordsman, Nighthawk, Green Goblin, Terrax the Tamer, Red Guardian, Bucky, Executioner, Hyperion, Drax the Destroyer, Captain Marvel, Baron Blood, Death Adder, Michael Korvac, and the original Black Knight. Here is more on this enormous expired ensemble.

Immortus trotted out a batch of beyond-the-grave types to take on the West Coast branch alone in 1990. The dead this time were Iron Man 2020, Grim Reaper, Oort the Living Comet, Left-Winger and Right-Winger, and returning for another belated bow were Swordsman, Human Torch, and the Black Knight, though this time it was the villainous Silver Age model. Here is more on this rotted bunch.

The Grim Reaper, still rather dead himself, scratched up a team of the unliving for his ownself. In three 1992 issues of the Avengers we get to meet the deceased Nebulon, Star Stalker, Count Nefaria, Ahmenhotep, Inferno, Necordamus  for the first time, with longtime deceased Red Guardian, Baron Zemo, and Black Knight creeping up again. Here are the cadaverous details.

And finally during the 1998 epic run by Kurt Busiek and George Perez we meet the latest rendition of the deadest enemies with Thunderstrike, Doctor Druid, Hellcat, and Mockingbird joining regular undeadites Captain Marvel, Swordsman, and Wonder Man. This cadre of the decrepit was led by the Grim Reaper yet again, and oddly enough Wonder Man got better as a result of this encounter. Look here for more deadly details.

And to my knowledge that's the whole bunch, unless in the myriad Avengers titles littering the stands today, this concept has crawled from the tomb yet again. It well might have.

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The Man, The Machine!

Machine Man was one of those happy surprises that pops up in comics from time to time. Originally created by Jack "King" Kirby during his run on the 2001 A Space Odyssey comic book, Machine Man (originally named "Mister Machine") proved to be a concept with "legs". He got his own book, again written and drawn by Kirby and the adventures were what you'd expect, full of energy, power, and bristling with technology.


The book gets canceled, Machine Man does a few guest-star stints and then suddenly he's back again, this time featuring artwork by Steve Ditko. This is an interesting distinction, that such a minor character should have been drawn by the twin titans of Mighty Marvel's early history, and at a time in both men's careers when they had come back to the house of mostly their ideas for a few more paychecks. The Ditko run features writing by Marv Wolfman and Tom DeFalco and is much more a character-driven notion than the high-tech rendition by Kirby. But it too got canceled.


I've always found it interesting to compare the two debut issues by Kirby and Ditko, as it shows not only the difference in the handling of this character but also the fundamental differences in the approach of both of these great talents to handling character in general. Kirby's figure is power and energy barely contained and focus is on the "machine" and Ditko's figure is reflective in its stance and clearly this is mostly about the "man". Two different takes, both valid, and both interesting. But alas not commercially successful.

Then comes 1984 and the limited market is ravenous for product. Limited series pop up like mushrooms in the dark and practically any hero you can name at Marvel and DC gets a title of some kind. Machine Man returns in a very exotic story with fabulous artwork by Herb Trimpe and Barry Windsor Smith. This story by Roger Stern projects Machine Man into the future and really makes the most of the characters artificial nature. The covers by Barry Smith though still shine as some of the most innovative and compelling I've ever seen. And I can think of few limited series that made better use of the cover designs not only to showcase the main character, but to drive home the theme of the story to boot. Beautifully rendered, these are very smart comics, implying a narrative as they are viewed in succession. (See above.)


Machine Man has been around since in the Marvel Universe, going by the name of X-51 sometimes. He will always be around. Heck Disney might even make an animated feature with him some day. It could be very neat. Few of Marvel's second-tier characters have been as well served as X-51 (Aaron Stack) the Machine Man.

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