Amazing Adventures - Something Inhuman This Way Comes!

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. The Inhumans were the creation of Jack "King" Kirby and he'd wanted to do a feature with them for a long time. Just before he left Marvel he got his chance to both write and draw these intriguing characters. The problem was that ten pages was a small space to tell a large story. After four issues he was gone. 

And for a brief time, the great Neal Adams drew the feature, replacing Kirby just as he had done on Thor. Those Roy Thomas-Neal Adams 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 in Amazing Adventures looks impeccable. 

(John Buscema and John Verpoorten)

In the very first issue Black Bolt leaves his Royal Family members inexplicably. They find Maximus in a weird box and both Gorgon and Karnak work to free him. But Maximus has a new secret power and immediately on his release sends a mental bolt which robs Black Bolt of his memory just as Black Bolt was reaching civilization in the form of San Francisco. Black Bolt takes off his costume to blend in and that proves to be a terrible mistake. 

(Neal Adams)

Realizing their mistake Gorgon, Karnak, Medusa and Triton battle against Maximus who has taken mental control of the rest of the small Inhuman population. Robbed of his memory Black Bolt has hooked up with a boy he rescued from abuse. Later, not knowing his immense power begins to speak and destroys a ship in the harbor. Neal Adams does a great job of rendering this chaotic event with the help of inker John Verpoorten. Verpoorten does some outstanding work on the work of Adams in all these Inhuman stories save the first one inked by Tom Palmer, and I'm sorry they didn't do more together. 

(Neal Adams)
The Royal Family has crashed on a remote island where they have stashed a ship. They get the ship. Black Bolt and the boy Roscoe are taken prisoner by a black man name "Mr. Dibbs".  The Royal Family gets to America and land on the beach, but an attack by humans causes Triton to run interference while his family escapes and seek disguises. The story ends when Mr. Dibbs leads an uprising with the seeming assistance of Black Bolt. 

(Neal Adams)
In the last issue by Neal Adams (four just like Kirby), the Avengers look to intervene but Thor waves them off and takes on the Royal Family and Mr. Dibbs. It's a hectic battle and in the end the imposter in Black Bolt's costume is killed by lightning. The real Black Bolt and Roscoe watch on TV. 

(John Buscema and Joe Sinnott)

(Mike Sekowsky and Bill Everett)

In the next issue Thomas and Adams are gone. Replacing them is the team of Gerry Conway and Mike Sekowsky with Bill Everett on inks. The chaotic storyline is made even more confusing when Magneto and a weird gang of mutants take on the Family. He also kidnaps Black Bolt and reunites the family save for Triton. 

(Gil Kane and Joe Sinnott)
This confusing mish-mash rumbles along with Frank Giacoia inking this time. Black Bolt gets his memory back and finally he and the family are able to stop the deadly schemes of Magneto. Having put the threat down, they prepare for the next assault. Meanwhile Triton is missing and Roscoe got swallowed up by three weird lights called the Trikon. 

(John Buscema and Tom Palmer)

(Neal Adams and Tom Palmer)

Neal Adams and Roy Thomas welcome back their old partner Tom Palmer to take the Inhuman story back again in the pages of The Avengers. Triton finally returns and Maximus is still up to no-good, and we are presented with a strange event for Marvel when the Conway-Sekowsky issues are ignored, and the story picks up from when Thomas and Adams left the series. But more on that tomorrow. 

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The Mighty Thor - When Gods Go Mad!

It was interesting to me at the time, that when Jack "King" Kirby opted to go to DC Comics at the beginning of the 70's that DC's top artist Neal Adams was brought in as relielf. These two titans did a one-for-one swap on The Mighty Thor. 

Kirby's last issue was #179 but the cover for that issue was by the newly arrived Adams. It was the first of a three-issue story arc. Now Stan had seen what Neal had accomplished with Roy Thomas on final issues of The Uncanny X-Men the year before, and hoped the Adams magic might strike again. Not so much. 

In that story Asgard is celebrating a victory of Surtur and Loki, who had once again snatched Odin's throne. The latter disappears when his scheme goes tits up, and Thor is sent to find him on Earth. He does and Loki immediately turns the tables using magic to switch bodies with the Thunder God. 

While Neal Adams drew the interiors of both of the next two Thor issues, he did not get any more covers. The cover for issue #180 seems to be a combination of John Buscema and Marie Severin.

You can see the artwork that Adams produced for a version of the cover. Apparently, this wasn't finished until years later.  Part of the Adams cover DC magic was that he had Carmine Infantino helping with designs. It's possible Marvel was disappointed in his work. 

In the next issue Neal Adams debuts on the interior artwork. He is assisted by Joe Sinnott on inks. Sinnott is a master, but not all teams blend well, and I don't think he was ideal for Adams. The story continues as after a skirmish with Sif and Balder, Thor (who is now Loki) is whisked away to Asgard to face judgment before Odin who doesn't let him speak but sends him directly to Hell. Mephisto thinks he's gotten a compadre, but soon discovers what all-knowing Odin failed to find out. The battle is on. On Earth Sif and Balder confront the evil Loki (now Thor). I've always wondered why Marvel didn't make more of the fact there was Adams art inside. DC advertised the bejeezus out of the arrival of Kirby, but Marvel was pretty mum about Adams. 

Marie Severine is back for the cover for issue #181 and it's never been one of my favorites. The stories in these issues were pretty dang good and not at all well-served by some mediocre covers. I love Marie's work and she knocked out some blockbusters, but these Thor covers were just weak to my eye. I suspect they were both last minute efforts. 

Neal Adams wraps up his exceedingly brief Thor tenure with the story "One God Must Fall!" as Sif has recruited the Warriors Three to help save Thor from Mephisto's clutches. The battle rages, Odin gets a clue and bing-bang-boom the story is resolved with Thor as Loki fighting Loki as Thor and the former getting the tar beat out of him. When thanks to a certain sixty-second Uru hammer spell, we all know all too well, they switcheroo and Loki is one who wears the bruises he just inflicted. It's my favorite thing about this story. And it's all wrapped up. 

In the next issue John Buscema steps in as the regular penciller of the title and remains as such for many years. Aside from Conan the Barbarian, Thor was the title that fitted Buscema's talents and interests best and that showed. I think Thor was a poor fit for Adams, or maybe it was the inking, but I never got any real sense that the material seemed to meld. This is the only time that I remember that Adams worked with Stan Lee at Marvel and not Roy Thomas. Adams was a strong personality as Roy has documented more than a few times. I've never heard of a dust up between Adams and Lee, but it wouldn't surprise if the boss might have had enough of the new guy. 

Or was it the plan for John Buscema to take over the series from the beginning with Adams only filling in. That seems unlikely to me as an original plan. Neal Adams would replace Jack Kirby again, this time on The Inhumans feature in Amazing Adventures. That would lead him to eventually do work on The Avengers. More on those later. 

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The Uncanny X-Men - What Is...The Power!

I knew of Neal Adams before. I'd run across his work at DC on a few issues of Strange Adventures starring Deadman and in some issues of The Brave and the Bold with Batman and his co-stars. But it was when he jaunted across the avenues to become (briefly) a Marvel artist that I really came under the spell of this most important artist of his generation. It was when Neal Adams joined Roy Thomas on a little project already headed for cancellation, a little project dubbed The Uncanny X-Men. 

It always seems it's when books are doomed that sometimes real creativity can be tried, and characters revived. Of course, as long as a formula sells, there's little incentive to change the status quo, but that can be a problem too. The X-Men under the lush art of Neal Adams and inker extraordinaire Tom Palmer became a compelling commodity, at least for critics and fanboys. Sadly, the sales of the title didn't save it, but as we all know that would change in a few years when another artist, Dave Cockrum in league with writer Len Wein, revived the title yet again. But what about this famous run?

In the Adams run we were treated to the menace of the Living Monolith, the return of the Sentinels, the revenge of Magneto with his Savage Land mutants in tow, and the debuts of Havok and Sauron. Not shabby, and then there was the resurrection of Professor X and a full-scale alien invasion to boot. The first Neal Adams issue wraps up the Living Pharoh storyline in which a likely mad Egyptian scholar found he had the ability to absorb great energy but learned that Alex Summers could do so too and that stunted his power. So, he kidnaps Alex, locks him in a box which allows the Living Pharoh to transform into the enormous and deadly Living Monolith. Eventually Alex gets free, and the Monolith is no more. 

Tom Palmer really shines up the work of Neal Adams and they have become a legendary team.   Below are the covers of the issues involved. All feature Adams work save the last which is graced with a Marie Severin illustration. I've also included some snapshot summaries of the stories inside. 

The X-Men defeat the Living Monolith only to face the threat of the revived Sentinels, giant robots designed specifically to capture and kill mutants. They were launched by the son of the original creator of the Sentinels who died had the hands of his metallic creations. It's a furious battle against the Sentinels and during the struggle we are introduced to Havok, the codename Alex Summers chooses for himself. We also are treated to a fantastic costume designed by Adams. Ultimately a secret is revealed, and the X-Men use logic to defeat these unbeatable robots. 

Alex Summers is hurt during the Sentinel battle and the X-Men seek out an old colleague of Professor Xavier's named Dr. Karl Lykos. Lykos though has a secret, and that is he requires the vital energy of other beings to survive. This vampiric need is fed by humans, but when he gets a dose of the energy in the mutant Havok, Lykos turns into a human-pteranodon hybrid, and he chooses the name of a famous literary villain and dubs himself Sauron. The Angel goes to fight this winged foe and gets himself hypnotized. Eventually Sauron needs more power and returns to the distant South American territory in which he was first attacked. The X-Men follow for the finale. 

After the confrontation with Sauro, the X-Men follow the fallen Angel into an underworld territory which turns out to Ka-Zar's Savage Land. The Angel has been found and healed by the "Creator" who claims to want only to find mutants among the savage tribes and give them succor. But his greater scheme is revealed when his real identity is uncovered. The I remember the last panel of the first half was a real shocker. The X-Men battle Magneto and the Savage Land mutants he has created

After a fantastic fill-in issue drawn by Don Heck, Neal Adams returns to the X-Men for one more issue. This time he is teamed with writer Denny O'Neil (his new-found writing ally at DC), and they give us a whopping tale about invading aliens and the desperate need for the X-Men to work together to fend off the threat. It feels more like a Justice League story to me, but it does give us a great surprise when Professor Xavier is revealed to alive and well. 

I've traded away my original X-Men comics, but I since picked all these issues up again in the tome from 1996 called X-Men Visionaries 2 - The Neal Adams Collection. The coloring is a bit wonky, but it's juicy to have these grand stories in color once again. I also own these in the Epic volume dedicated to this era of the Merry Mutants. Here is the cover to the second printing of this volume.

Next up is The Mighty Thor. 

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The Magic Of OZ!

The Magic of OZ - A Faithful Record of the Remarkable Adventures of Dorothy and Trot and the Wizard of OZ, together with the Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, and Cap'n Bill in their successful search for a Magical and Beautiful Birthday Present for Princess Ozma of OZ

The title and wildly elaborate sub-title rather say it all -- almost. The story begins on Mount Munch on the far reaches of OZ and at the top of the mountain live the Hyups. One young Hyup is the boy Kiki Aru who grows restless and when he learns a powerful magic word of transformation (Pyrzqxql) leaves his home and seeks adventure. He meets Ruggedo the Gnome King who had been banished from OZ and together they hatch a scheme to return to OZ and encourage the wild animals there to revolt against the rule of Ozma. 

Meanwhile Dorothy and Trot and others start to wonder what they can get Ozma for her upcoming birthday. Dorothy wants to make a cake with monkeys hidden inside. Trot learns of a magical flower from the Glass Cat which is on a remote island. So, they head off to look, the Wizard with Dororthy as they ride the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger and Trot and Cap'n Bill on foot. The former turn up in the forest at the same time the two baddies are pitching their scheme and get changed into various animals. The latter get trapped on the island of the flower literally when they take root. Of course, eventually they are all saved, but it's a wild ride. 

Now I'm not the target audience for these books by any stretch of the imagination, but Baum's constant fault in my estimation is that he's always adding characters and never taking them away. And apparently his readers expected to have their favorites at least name checked. I think every OZ character is at Ozma's party at the end of the story save perhaps for the elusive glass cat. I found I liked the Eureka the glass cat a lot in this one as her stuck up attitude was fun and very catlike. 

The Magic of OZ was the last OZ book to be published in his lifetime. The authorship of the next one is open to some speculation. We'll get into that next with Glinda of OZ. 

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The Phantom - The Assassins!

The Assassins is the fourteenth installment of "The Story of the Phantom" and was written by Carson Bingham for a 1975 release. Under George Wilson cover filled with arcane images, this was adapted from "The Thuggees" by Lee Falk and Wilson McCoy from way back in 1949. 

This one begins with wee a bit of humor when the Phantom finds a young woman dipping her toes in the waters around the Skull Cave and finds out that Guan has plotted to arrange for him to get a mate. This prompts the Ghost Who Walks to head to America to find his true love Diana Palmer who it turns out is flying to meet him. Her flight is hijacked by a baddie named Kali with the intention of kidnapping her and just as soon as the Phantom arrives, he's on the case of rescuing her from a murderous gang called "The Assassins", a remnant of the ancient Thuggee cult from the Middle East. She is taken to a remote island and held captive in an ancient Crusader castle. The attempts to collect a ransom for Diana are foiled by the Phantom, but just as soon as that happens a new wrinkle appears. 

Prince Tydore of Tydia and his daughter Naja are the next victims of the cult, and the Phantom tries to stop these predations in hopes of finding a clue to Diana's whereabouts. There is much hemming and hawing and a great deal of plotting by the assassins who we know by names such as Curly, Crewcut, and Pinhead. Eventually the Phanom takes Naja to the Skull Cave for her safety then he pretends to be the King and is mistakenly kidnapped by the villains and taken to the island where Diana is being held. But before he can rescue her, he must confront a deadly gorilla named Toto and survive the blades of a demonic idol.

The Phantom in this story is quite fallible, quite unlike his presentation in other stories. In fact, he makes so many mistakes in his tactics that I began to wonder if Diana was doomed myself. Nesting the one kidnap story inside the other created a pacing problem in the small novel in that we lose track of Diana's story for a very long time. And the "Assassins" for their part seem only capable of killing their own when captured. Often, they capture people when it seemed to me killing them would have been more prudent. I know that in a novel of this kind such random murder would be difficult to promote, but it does undermine the real nature of their threat. This is a swift breezy read, ideal for a single sitting But, it's low on the list of Avon novels to date.

There's one more to go when the Phantom must confront Lee Falk's own The Curse of the Two-Headed Bull in the final of Avon's "The Story of the Phantom" novels. 

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The World's Greatest Moon Landing!

Fifty years ago today, we as one nation, as one world watched the glorious moment when Neil Armstrong first set foot on another world, the Moon. It was a splendid shining chapter in the whole of human history, but we did not know when we watched out television screens on that July day that we were not privy to the whole story.

It seems that the Apollo 11 crew needed the help of another team of explorers, the Fantastic Four created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby no less. The secret origin of the moon landing is revealed a few months after the grand event, in the pages of Fantastic Four #98 dated May 1970, where it is reported for the first time that while the brave American astronauts approached their appointment with destiny, the team of Reed Richards, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm worked together here on Earth to defeat Kree Sentry #9168 bent on stopping the American moon landing from his craggy island base.

Thankfully the Fab 4 were successful and the Kree plot to quicken an ancient living force buried under the Moon's surface was extinguished and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed safely on the silent surface while Michael Collins orbited above. The Fantastic Four saved the day, as they had so many times before. The Earth's heroic astronauts never knew how close to disaster they had come.

Here's a look at the original cover art for this one-shot epic, featuring Jack Kirby's and Joe Sinnott's lush artwork. This sadly is the last truly dramatic cover they would create together. It's a gem.

Nearly a decade later in 1978 this tale got reprinted for some reason the cover image gets flopped, and there seem to be a few other touch ups as well. Al Milgrom is credited for the alterations apparently needed to freshen the image for its second outing.

Allowing the space program to settle into a calm productive ease with the Space Shuttles was perhaps prudent, but it lacked the romance which lit us up with pride that day so long ago. Tragedies have torn at our wonderment, but pioneers always face dangers. We just have to be strong enough to follow.

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