Marvels!

There are good comic book series, great comic book series and then there are transformative comic book series. Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross is the latter. One can look back and see comic books before Marvels appeared and after and nothing is the same. To me 1994 seems not that long ago, but then that happens as one gets older. We are nearly twenty-five years into the 21st century and still the 90's feels like last week. Marvels covered a time period from 1939 to 1974, some key years in the development of the Marvel Universe. The series brings at once a warmth of nostalgia and a shock of the new, bringing fresh ways of seeing all-too-familiar yarns by great writers and artists from earlier decades. The story is almost literally told through the eyes of Phil Sheldon, a rather reflective news photographer who is on the spot when the superhero age began. 

"A Time of Marvels" takes us back to the Golden Age, to the very beginning when the Human Torch is first exhibited by his creator Professor Horton. We see him ignite and we see the reaction of fear spread across the room of reporters called in to witness this new creation. Sheldon himself is terrified of this new thing. Later the Sub-Mariner appears, and the world is turned upside down as he brings mayhem to the streets. He and Torch battle across the city, the average citizen represented by Sheldon is helpless, reduced to being a witness as beings not unlike gods battle overhead. Captain America comes to lead the fight against the Axis powers and before you know it a squad of mystery men have gathered. 

The story "Monsters" skips ahead to the 1960's and Sheldon and his wife Doris have two daughters. The "Marvels" have not stopped, the latest being the popular Fantastic Four who live largely public lives and are hailed as heroes by the people. Less understood are the Mutants, specifically a band of mutants dubbed the X-Men who seem fundamentally different and herald change, a change which the regular man and woman dread and fear. Sheldon falls victim to this bigotry and fear, as he tries to glean a living working for J. Jonah Jameson's The Daily Bugle and other newspapers. When a frightened young girl comes into his life thanks to the kindness of his daughters his attitude changes. 

In arguably the most bombastic of the installments is the story "Judgment Day" which shows how the world almost ended at the hands of impossible gods from space. The people of the world have become inured to superheroes, treating their presence casually, often with disdain as much as reproach. But things change when a gleaming silver figure arrives from out of space and behind comes a giant being who wants to destroy the entire world the people merely to satisfy its hunger. Sheldon like so many is terrified as he watches from a distance and struggles to remain confident the Marvels can save the day. His trust is warranted, but no sooner have the heroes saved the city than the citizens return to their old ungrateful attitudes. Sheldon is disgusted. 

Shifting forward to the 1970's and Phil Sheldon is a man looking to retire. But in the story "The Day She Died" he is bothered that the heroes he celebrates in his book of photographs titled Marvels are again treated with a casual disdain. His own confidence is shaken when a beautiful young girl he encounters dies during a battle between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. He rejects his own life's work which documents the rise of the superheroes, though his young assistant pleads with him to appreciate that work. In the end he decides that his time documenting the "Marvels" is done and hands the task off to the young woman he'd trained. He and his family prepare to leave the city to enjoy their golden years. 

In 2019 Alex Ross and Kurt Busiek revisited the Marvels project with another story in which Sheldon and his daughters see the battle between the X -Men and the Sentinels in Rockefeller Center. 

I have not actually read this story, but it's apparently available in the 25th anniversary edition of the series. Like the Beatles, the boys and girls at Marvel are always trying to jerk another quarter or two out of my pocket. They are really good at it. 

As I said at the beginning this was a transformative series when it first appeared. I had never seen anything like the work Alex Ross was producing. His more realistic presentations of the heroes I was so familiar with made them much specifically human in my eyes. The idea of a normal human being feeling in awe of them had been dealt with, but never with such clarity and soulfulness. Through the lens of Phil Sheldon we were able to see the Marvel Universe again for the first time, and it was glorious. 

But there were imitators, and some were often okay, but rarely has an artist been able to bridge the gap between the fantastic and the mundane as effectively as Alex Ross. That's why he was Kurt Busiek's perfect choice to fashion the covers for the series Astro City which he produced with the help of Brent Anderson. The trio of Busiek, Anderson and Ross went on to give us ever more fascinating insights into the secret minds of heroes and those who live beside them. More on that tomorrow. 

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Spider-Man 1967 - Season Three!

This is easily the weakest of the Seasons by far. As I said there's very little new here, but a whole lot of vintage stuff often squeezed into tighter timeframes and with little sense a lot of the time. Motivation for crime seems to be an afterthought as villains show up do really offbeat things, but then get captured and we get no background on them at all to explain why they adopted the method they did. That's the interesting part dang it. The first season of the series had been produced by Grantray-Lawrence, the same outfit responsible for the syndicated Marvel Super-Heroes show. But this third season as well as the one before were produced by Krantz Films, the outfit which would later bring us Bakshi's Fritz the Cat movie. 

This Season even reuses one earlier cartoon twice. The episode with the villain the Master Technician is re-worked, and he's made into a "new" villain from Atlantis (they added pointed ears and a fin on his head) who does pretty much the same thing save that instead of NYC getting lifted into the sky it gets dropped into the ocean. Later the "Master Technician" shows up again but renamed the "Radiation Specialist" he repeats his crime from before lifting the NYC skyline again. So essentially, we get the same cartoon three times in three seasons with slight variations.

Here is a list of a half-dozen things I learned watching this season (I cut it in half since the season was so short):

1. Snowmen are inherently angry, so you better not accidently bring them life. They want to kick your ass!

2. Comets have antennae.

3. Despite all aerodynamic principles, biplanes can still outfly jets and even shoot them down with rays and stuff.

4. Peter Parker will give anyone a lift, even villains.

5. Captain Stacey looks completely different, even in the same episode from scene to scene. Sheesh!

6. Mysterio is a hipster who wears glasses and though he lost his pointed ears from the First Season, his skin has gone green for the Third.

This set of cartoons also looked muddier on my DVD set. I assume that had to do with the original source materials as the rest of the disk is fine in that regard. It's only Season Three that has the slight glowing effect in the backgrounds.

I did like the episode culled from the Rocket Robin series, "Revolt from the Fifth Dimension". It was strange and had some great images, though as a Spidey tale it was pretty limited. The Mysterio story was dandy and I think is based on a classic Spidey comic though again Mysterio looks different. Mary Jane shows up but she's Captain Stacey's niece time. There is also a keen interest in the Universal Frankenstein movies, but I'll have more to say on that in a separate post.

One other thing I did notice was there was a lot of mind-gaming in these episodes. Whether it was the Swami (a somewhat pointed racial stereotype for the time) or Mysterio or Infinata of Dementia-5 or the Kingpin with his brainwashing, the human mind was getting twisted a bunch in these episodes. Surely this had nothing to do with the "high times" of that era. 

All in all, I didn't find this Season as much fun, though it had high points. After watching them all now, I have to give the nod to Season Two and despite its endless web-swinging, I still think it's the most compelling in terms of story and art.

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Spider-Man 1967 - Season Two!

It's definitely a change, but I have to say I prefer this second season to the first. The stories were slightly more complex and had a vaguely more adult feel to them. This is especially so of the origin story in the first two episodes of season two. The art on those was pretty good and the story very much like a Spidey comic. I love the backgrounds in this series, the colors are vibrant and intoxicating often making up for admittedly lackluster animation.

Now after that beginning things get strange. But knowing that fantasy masters like Lin Carter on the writing and Gray Morrow on the art design are at the helm I can't be surprised all that much that Spidey spent most of the season out of the city and in some vague jungle/alien setting up to his webs in plants and weird bat-things. One thing I noticed was that many of the stories really threw curveballs, in that Spidey would begin his adventure normally enough with crime and thugs but then there would be a shift and he'd find himself in the future, underground, or on a bizarre island somewhere.

I consider these adventures to be similar to the kinds of adventures that Spidey would have in Marvel Team-Up in which he'd often venture into territories radically different from the classic big city crime story he's rooted in. The MTU Spidey would travel in time, go into space, venture into lost worlds and do all manner of things bizarre by his standards. This second season had that kind of feel to it.

Here a dozen things I learned watching this second season of Spider-Man:

1. The sky is often green and always dramatic as if a storm is about to erupt.

2. Purple gorillas are seen by the criminal set as effective disguises for some reason. Maybe it's a DC thing.

3. Spidey can pilot experimental jet planes and has ready access to them on a whim, and no one misses them when they fly away.

4. Mole Men are ridiculously stupid, getting duped by the same criminal in two episodes. And they like to gong a lot.

5. Giant doors are common in many alien landscapes, as if Kong himself were on the other side.

6. Spidey loves to swing and swing and swing and swing and swing though the city, often attaching his web line to no discernable object.

7. Villains are most often green, the sure sign of villainy in the Bakshiverse.

8. Peter Parker plays baseball.

9. Parker sure hangs out with a lot of different girls, but I'm guessing he's not a FWB (Friend with Benefits), accounting for that gloomy puss he wears most of the time.

10. Manhattan is a remarkably sturdy cityscape and can survive multiple sinkings of various buildings and even detaching from the earth and flying into the sky.

11. Martians look amazingly like ancient gods of Norse and Greco-Roman mythology.

12. The power of flight is achieved by putting a blender on your head.

Ralph Bakshi produced a wacky cartoon, that's so bizarre that I wouldn't mind watching it again in a few years. The stories are at once patterned and unpredictable. Spidey seems mostly trusted by the police, even admired by them save for the last episode when inexplicably he's seen as a baddie and a threat. The villains are cackling madmen, but interesting looking by and large.

Things happen in the Bakshiverse that require no explanation, they just are. And in the context of these stories, I can accept that. You might even dub this season of Spidey stories his "Weird Adventures" and be very close to capturing the feeling they have.

Tomorrow it's Season Three.   

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Spider-Man 1967 - Season One!

I have enjoyed again the 1960's Spider-Man TV show. It's a hoot. This cartoon, along with the Hanna-Barbera Fantastic Four and the Marvel Superheroes in syndication were my first windows into the Marvel Universe and the comics in general. I have great fondness for them, despite not having seen most of them for decades.

The first season of Spidey is a pretty formulaic affair. There are plenty of baddies from the comics series. There was Dr. Octopus, Elektro, Sandman, Mysterio, Lizard, Vulture (called Vulture-Man for several episodes), Rhino, Scorpion, Green Goblin and a few others. Notably missing was Chameleon though there was a make-up villain named "Charles Cameo" in a few episodes. Most of the villains got two episodes with a few getting into three. The most fun in that category for me though were the "new" guys they invented. Dr. Noah Boddy ("Nobody" get it) an invisible guy, The Human Fly twins (named "Stan" and "Lee"), some guy named The Phantom, and my personal fave - Parafino, proprietor of a wax museum and fabulous baddie. Also, I assume that the Aussie hunter named "Clivendon" is a stand-in for Kraven the Hunter. This change along with the Chameleon one I don't get, as they originals are perfectly fine characters.

The other side of the coin was pretty thin. Betty Brant starts out as a pretty good character, but as the episodes roll on, she becomes a cypher, merely a friend of Peter Parker's who stands up for him with J. Jonah Jameson. JJJ is in just about every episode and frankly it gets a bit tiresome, as way too many plots revolve around the Daily Bugle or its publisher in some way. JJJ seems to be the mayor of NYC the way the act in this cartoon. Aunt May shows up maybe once or twice at most, though we do see the Parker home many times.

The stories are pretty simple affairs. Spidey becomes aware of a threat usually by chance, intervenes and encounters the villain, we get the title of the episode, then Spidey loses the initial conflict. After that he goes to see Jameson for some reason or other, then fights the baddie again and usually loses. Then in the last battle he wins, typically by throwing webbing over them, a scheme that often doesn't work earlier in the story.

Here are a dozen things I learned watching this cartoon:

1. The streets of NYC are largely deserted save for a few villains, their victims, and at most five cops at any given time. Cop cars show up in threes and most of the cops are of Irish extraction.

2. The Rhino looks hilarious when he runs, picks the lamest hideouts, and his motivations for his crimes are ludicrous. A golden statue? Really!

3. The Green Goblin is a really little guy and wants to master real actual magic for some reason despite his many gimmicks of science.

4. The pictures in the Daily Bugle are not hung all that well and constantly shift when doors are slammed, or maybe that only applies to those featuring Jameson's mug.

5. Spidey's webbing has some really curious properties such as functioning as small motors for no discernable reason. He makes fans and propellers and all sorts of things. I love that he whips up special webbing on a whim.

6. The police really trust Spidey, but I can't really tell why. Maybe that's why he seems to know all sorts of classified stuff he really shouldn't know.

7. NYC has a Conservatory of MOD Music.

8. Dr. Connors has two arms on TV all the time.

9. Spidey spends quite a bit of time at the docks and more time in and around the water than I'd have expected. As a consequence, he fights way too many gators.

10. Giant robots like to eat cars and appear for no reason in the middle of the city.

11. Pluto is inhabited by ice men, perhaps they are time-lost members of Martinex's race.

12. It always bugged me as a kid wondering where exactly Spidey's web lines were attached as he swung through the city, and after watching the full first season, I don't have any more idea about it than I did then.

As always in these stories, if the villains just used their intellects for good they'd make a lot more money than they do with crime. The Phantom could use his shrinking machine to revoltutionize shipping for instance.

The first season was fun, but after the thrill of seeing Spidey actually swinging across the city it gets a bit weak. I love the few shots we get now and again of actual comic art, especially the few images of Ditko Spidey books.

Good fun. Next up is Season Two!

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Favorite Covers - The Mighty Heroes!

The Mighty Heroes were created by Ralph Bakshi when he worked for Terrytoons. The story goes that the guys at Terrytoons were making a pitch for Saturday morning shows and nothing was going over with Fred Silverman, one of TV's big kahunas at the time. Then a young and brash Bakshi jumped in and whipped up this superteam on the spot. It sold and they got a show, albeit not for all that long. The cover above by Rurik Tyler and Larry Mahlstedt is the best in the very short comic book career of the Mighty Heroes. This is cover from a 1998 one-shot which featured new stories about the team. 

For the record the members are Diaper Man, Strong Man, Tornado Man, Rope Man, and Cuckoo Man. 

Beginning in 1967 The Mighty Heroes had rated a four-issue series from Dell Comics. They shared the book with other Terrytoon characters such as Mighty Mouse and Hector Heathcote. No information is available that I can find on who worked on the feature. Here's a link where you can find the fourth issue. 

This new team of superheroes also appears as a back-up feature in the pages of Mighty Mouse in issues #170 and #171 after their own title ended. 

In 1987 during the black and white comic book glut which savaged the direct sales markets, the team rated a single issue from Spotlight Comics with a new story. Jim Engel's cover is pretty good. Joe Gill is credited with the story. 

 

The Mighty Heroes have never been released on a sanctioned DVD, an easy thing to package since only twenty-one episodes were ever made. But a fan can get a slim volume dedicated to the team. It's pretty comprehensive given their brief existence. I recommend Ralph Bakshi's The Mighty Heroes Declassified to any fan of the team, which I surely am. Bakshi did participate in this production. 

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The Phantom Novels - The Slave Market Of Mucar!

The Slave Market of Mucar was actually written by Basil Copper, though as with all of the Avon novels the credit will be given to the Phantom's creator Lee Falk. Copper is best known for his horror stories and such. This is a particularly dark tale as it deals with slavery. It does give the reader a great look at the Bangalla Jungle Patrol of which The Phantom himself is the mysterious Commander. 

The story is about a prison in which the prisoners are duped and then marched to the distant city of Mucar at which time they are sold into slavery. This secret trade is operated by the leadership of the prison in cahoots with the Arab slavers. We follow one member of the Jungle Patrol as he goes undercover to infiltrate the prison. The mysterious Phantom is furious that such vile trade persists and uses this opportunity to stop it, at least in Mucar. 

As with the previous Phantom novel which detailed his origins, this one is a brisk read and the Hermes reprint of the Avon original is exceedingly well bound, and the size has been upscaled to make for ease of handling and ease of reading. As a chap who now depends on glasses to enjoy his textual pleasures, this is a detail well appreciated. 

The next novel on the list is The Scorpia Menace which is the second of two novels in the series written by Copper before he hands the reins over to Ron Goulart. 

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The Phantom - The Complete Gold Key Years Volume Two!

Gold Key continues running The Phantom in adventures drawn just for the comic book pages, though the stories are familiar ones from the famous comic strip itself. Bill Lignante is still the artist in charge, though the scripting chores change up from time to time. And most importantly to the sales of the comic in my estimation, George Wilson continues to crack out fantastic covers for the comic every three months. Bill Harris was the scripter save perhaps for issues eleven, twelve, and thirteen which might have been written by Dick Wood. 

We begin with the ninth issue of The Phantom and a story titled "The Sixth Man". The Phantom is in his street disguise (how that works is anyone's guess) when he's shanghaied. With five other men he is taken to the island where they are enticed to engage in a competition by running a deadly gauntlet for the vile entertainment of a malignant queen. Of course, the Phantom prevails, but this is an exciting one full of action.  We also a get a one-page glimpse of the Phantom's origins and another which focuses on Dian Palmer. 

"The Sleeping Giant" is all about a treasure guarded by a giant statue-like totem. A nefarious treasure hunter finds a giant man who pretends to be the totem to cow the natives in order to find diamonds he suspects are buried all over the area. The Phantom has to fight all sorts of superstitions to bring these two thieves to justice. "The Patrol" is a two-page look at the Jungle Patrol and one member who doesn't quite obey his orders. 

The tenth issue gives us "Blind Man's Bluff", a story in which the Phantom is blinded in a battle with some pirates when a flare goes off in his face. He is dependent on his horse Hero and his wolf Devil along with his other keen senses to survive and even bring the battle to the villains to some extent and later survive natives. Needless to say, he does recover. We are also treated to an inside-the-back-cover glimpse of the Skull Cave. 

"The Beast of Bengali" is in fact a man, a ferocious giant of a man who calls himself "Baron" and who dominates the local tribes with his seeming power to control wild animals. The Phantom is pretty much all alone in this struggle against a very dangerous foe. He is forced to retreat and use some splendid trickery to win the day. We get an ad for the Revell model for The Phantom as well. Lignante's artwork is very consistent throughout these issues, with a great depth.  There is a workmanlike quality to this stuff that wins me over in the end. 

Behind this exciting George Wilson cover is a story in which today's Phantom must help solve a case his ancestor was unable to solve. It is a battle of brains between the Phantom and a man who seeks treasure in the name of his ancestor. This one is a wild back and forth and might just be a tad too long. 

Issue fourteen gives us "The Historian" in which a man who pretends to be an historian but is actually a spy attempts to uncover the secret of the enigmatic "Commander" of the Jungle Patrol. He gets remarkably close to the answer by tricking basically good folks to do his bidding. To be honest I can't see why this is such a hard mystery to solve, but like Clark Kent's glasses the gimmick works over and over. "Grampa" refers to Diana Palmers grandfather who tries to find a more respectable companion for his granddaughter than a strange, masked fellow who enters the house through an always open window. Seemed a bit odd to me as well. 

The Phantom is hard on the trail of "The River Pirates" in this story which has a ton of action. The pirates are pretty confident when the raid the villages and burn down the mission, but they discover they are no match for the Phantom and that he's much harder to kill than they'd imagined. The ending of this one is pretty satisfying I thought. "The Tournament" refers to an annual event in which the Phantom must wrestle and defeat a local champion to maintain his command of the local tribes. The problem comes when an escaped convict steals his outfit and stands in for him and is defeated. 

"The Chain" is a more involving story than most when the Phantom despairs and is prepared to quit his role when his work to create even a temporary peace between local tribes seems to fail over and over again. A wizened advisor named Wuru tells the Phantom of a chain he still has and how it demonstrates how unrelenting will is required to overcome a problem. He tells of the Phantom's father and how he had to work tirelessly to free his beloved future wife and mother of the current Phantom. "The Champ" is a one-page story in which Kit Walker has a boxing match with the world champion. "The Milk Drinker" is a one-page story in which the Phantom proves to some men in a bar that perhaps milk is a worthy beverage after all. "The Crescent Cult" is out to kill a local queen and it's all the Phantom can do to defeat this determined bunch of killers. "The Diggers" is a one-page yarn in which some explorers finds ancient evidence that the Phantom might just be immortal. 

The Gold Key run of Phantom comics ends with issue seventeen and a wild story about a three-hundred- year-old immortal queen named Samaris. She is cursed to live eternally but she can never love. When she learns the Phantom is four hundred years old, she is quite attracted. It doesn't turn out well for her, but she is a worthy opponent for the Ghost Who Walks. "The Waterfall" is a one-page effort about the mysterious entrance to the Phantom's abode. "The Bandar" is a one-page item on that tribe so loyal to the Phantom. 

The Gold Key folks had the Phantom from 1962 until 1966 when King Features decided they might want to make comic books themselves and withdrew permission for more. More on them next time. 

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