Avengers (1963 Series) #221

February 4, 2012

Title: New Blood

Plot: Jim Shooter
Writer: David Michelinie
Pencils: Bob Hall
Inks: Brett Breeding
Letters: Janice Chiang
Colors: Christie Scheele
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Publisher: Marvel Comics

If there’s one thing I’m a sucker for, it’s an old-fashioned “Who’s going to join the Avengers?” issues, and this is a really fun one. Following some dastardly doings by Moondragon, the Avengers are down to four members. Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and the Wasp each set out to look for recruits to join the ranks of Earth’s mightiest heroes.

Shooter and Michelinie really used the personalities of the Avengers they had well here, picking the new members based largely on how the others would go about finding them. Cap and Iron Man attempting to bring back Hawkeye makes sense, as does the Wasp throwing a garden party of sorts to invite some super-powered femmes who may be ripe for membership. The only thing that feels a little off is Thor’s attempt to recruit Spider-Man, but even that is easily justified with a quick conversation with Jarvis, who inadvertently points Thor in that direction.

Bob Hall and Brett Breeding do distinctive 80s art – the textures on the floors of Avengers mansion, the decorations at the Wasp’s house, the clothing and hairstyles of the characters involved… it’s all the sort of thing that you only saw in comic books of this particular time period. The book is quite a nostalgia trip for me as a reader.

The resulting team isn’t necessarily one of the legendary line-ups, but all six of the Avengers we’ve got at the end of the issue are characters who really define the team. Each of them feels like a classic Avenger, and four of them are actually going to be in the upcoming movie. What’s really amusing to me, though, is the list of “potential” Avengers we see on the cover (many of whom don’t appear in the issue at all). Of these 15 characters, only two of whom had previously been members of the team, eleven of them have been Avengers at some point in the 30 years since this issue was published. Funny how the Marvel Universe works, isn’t it?

Rating: 8/10

Spider-Man, Firestar, and Iceman at the Dallas Ballet Nutcracker #1

December 7, 2007

Quick Rating: Fair

Spider-Man and his amazing friends take in a little culture!

Writer: Jim Salicrup
Pencils: Jim Mooney
Inks: John Tartas
Colors: Stan Goldberg
Letters: L.P. Gregory
Production Supervisor: Sol Brodsky
Cover Art: Jim Mooney
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Scouring the quarter bins of comic shops across America can really unearth some hidden… well, “Gems” may be too strong a word for this comic book, but it’s certainly an interesting enough book to be worth the 25 cents. This was a one-shot giveaway comic that Marvel published to be released by the Dallas Times-Herald newspaper back in 1983. This book put together the cast of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends for a rare comic where they actually hung out together (the friendship was basically manufactured for television).

Angelica (Firestar) Jones is moving to Dallas, and her buddies Peter (Spider-Man) Parker and Bobby (Iceman) Drake join her a few days after Christmas to celebrate the move. (Which I know makes it sound like they were just happy to get her out of New York, but I didn’t write it.) As they get ready to enjoy a seasonal performance of The Nutcracker, they see a group of workers in the loading zone packing up a moving truck – which strikes them as odd, as tonight is the final performance of the ballet, so why would they be packing up already? They guys leap into costume and jump on the burglars, only to run across their boss… the greatest supervillain in comic book history…

…Daddy Longlegs.

Sadly, Iceman, he is not.

Daddy Longlegs, you see, was a Ballet dancer who was too short to get work. In desperation, he attempts to replicate the formula that turned Hank Pym into Giant-Man (a reference that you just know all of the Times-Herald readers understood). I’m not really sure how this was supposed to be a bonus – sure, maybe five feet is too short to be a ballet dancer (or maybe it’s not, I don’t know), but where did he think they would find costumes for a 12-foot giant? Ah well… it doesn’t matter either way, because instead of turning into a nice, proportionate giant like ol’ Hank does, Daddy comes out looking like Mike Teevee after Willy Wonka sends him through the taffy machine. Now, bent on revenge (because it was the ballet’s fault that someone who failed at his dancing career is also a failure as a biochemist), he’s trying to ruin the run of The Nutcracker (by attacking the last show, rather than disrupting the show when it began its run).

Well, our heroes beat up on Daddy using a variation of the ol’ “you distract him while I tie his shoelaces together” routine – seriously – and settle in for a performance of the ballet, after first giving us this brief culture lesson…

I hear Firestar got dibs on Moe.

Here’s where the book really gets bizarre. You see, this is only the halfway point of the comic. The second half of the book is actually a full-on comic book adaptation of The Nutcracker, the story of a little girl who falls in love with her Christmas doll and winds up shrinking down to join in a battle against the insidious Rat King. If only she knew Spider-Man and his amazing friends were in the audience, it may have saved her some trouble.

The adaptation was fairly entertaining, but definitely odd. I mean, we’re used to movie adaptations in comic books, and they’ve been adapting novels since Classics Illustrated, with a new renaissance in that subgenre brought on recently by the Dabel Brothers. But a comic book based on a ballet… well, that’s a new one on me.

The comic is fun, and the kitsch factor is increased by the fact that the book is packed with ads for what are obviously Dallas-based businesses, rather than the nationwide ads you usually see in a comic. Even though I’ve never lived in Dallas, I find it amusing to see Spider-Man trying to sell me a refrigerator from Walt’s TV and Appliance Supermarket, an ad for the Channel 21 cartoon line-up (including Superman and Batman) and the news that you can buy Marvel Age magazine from Lone Star Comics and Science Fiction for only 25 cents. My favorite ad, though?

“BUY AN RCA STEREO VIDEODISK PLAYER… GET 6 FREE VIDEODISC ALBUMS.” Am I amused by an ad for this forgotten precursor to Laserdisc? Am I amused by the fact that the choices include “hit movies, the best of TV, sports, children’s favorites, rock concerts, the fine arts” and “how-to programs”? Do I just find it funny that “Videodisk Player” is spelled with a “K” and “Videodisc Albums” is spelled with a “C”? The world may never know

I’ve got to imagine this is a fairly rare comic, since it was only distributed in Dallas and you’ve got to imagine most of those copies got thrown out with the paper or used to wrap Christmas ornaments as they were put away to be used the next year. This was the last of five specials Marvel and the Times-Herald released together over a two-year period, and if the others are as good as this one (including two issues where Spidey fought the Hulk, one where Spidey and the Hulk met the Dallas Cowboys and a previous Christmas special where Spidey fought the Kingpin), I’d like to find them just for kitsch value. This is as unusual a comic as I’ve read in a long time.

Rating: 6/10

Marvel Two-In-One #74

December 14, 2007

Quick Rating: Fair
Title: A Christmas Peril!

The Thing and the Puppet Master face some terrible toys!

Writer: Mark Gruenwald
Pencils: Frank Springer
Inks: Chic Stone
Colors: George Roussos
Letters: Michael Higgins
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Now here’s something fun – a blast from 1981 and the old Marvel Two-In-One title, which featured Benjamin J. Grimm, the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing, in a team-up with a different hero every month. Well… almost every month. This issue, as you see, Ben’s partner wasn’t one of his fellow heroes, but in fact, a villain! Yep, Benjy had to team up with his old enemy (and stepfather to his girlfriend Alica), the Puppet Master for a Christmas adventure!

When the Puppet Master is released from prison just in time for Christmas, he realizes that his supply of the supernatural clay that he uses to sculpt his mind-controlling puppets has gone bad during his incarceration. In order to get back to the old country where he found it, he feigns a reconciliation with Alica, casually mentioning that all he really wants for Christmas is a trip back “home.” Ben is coerced into playing pilot and takes Alicia and the Puppet Master to the small country of Transia, not knowing his foe’s real goal. Of course, even for the FF, things get ridiculously complicated when Ben and Alicia encounter Bova, one of the High Evolutionary’s experiments in evolving animals to sentient creatures – and her young (and mind-scrambled) ward, Modred. Oh, and during the night Ben and the Puppet Master get shrunk to the size of toys and wind up having to duke it out with an army of Nutcrackers, roller horsies and fire-breathing beasties.

This story, to be blunt, is just kind of weird. Fun weird, mind you, but weird nonetheless. Ben, to his credit, is immediately and consistently skeptical of the Puppet Master’s “change of heart,” and Gruenwald does a good job of selling him as the chauffeur for this little adventure totally against his will. In the end, though, the whole thing is kind of screwy, relying entirely too much on the coincidence of encountering Bova.

I’m as big a fan of Ben Grimm as you’ll find, but I couldn’t get totally engaged in this comic. Not bad, but just strange. Especially once you remember the fact that Ben Grimm – star of our Christmas adventure – is actually Jewish. (Granted, this wasn’t established for many years, but it was always in the subtext.)

Rating: 6/10

Tales From the Crypt (2007 Series) #2

September 4, 2007

Tales From the Crypt #2 (NBM/Papercutz)
By Neil Kleid, Steve Mannion, Fred Van Lente, Mr. Exes, Jim Salicrup & Rick Parker

The new Papercutz version of Tales From the Crypt has drawn fire from a few corners, and I don’t think it’s quite fair. The original Tales have become so enshrined in our memories — not to mention in the HBO series — that people forget the original comic was intended for kids, and in fact, many of the stories are relatively tame by today’s standards. The stories in this book are perfectly in line with the old William Gaines/Al Feldstein comics. Kleid and Mannion’s “The Tenant” is a wonderfully spooky tale of a slumlord who gets a taste of his own medicine, and Van Lente and Exes’ “The Garden” is a gruesome little story of someone whose ideas of paradise turn to hell on Earth. If there’s any respect in which the comic is lacking, it’s probably in the artwork, particularly in the second story. It’s not bad art, but Exes’ lines may be a bit too stylized, and the coloring is definitely a bit too bright for a horror comic, even one aimed at kids. Still, this is a fun book, and I think Papercutz is doing an admirable job holding up the EC Comics tradition.

Rating: 7/10

Tales From the Crypt: Ghouls Gone Wild

October 15, 2007

Quick Rating: Good
Title: Body of Work and other stories

Four new creepy crawly, Tales From the Crypt!

Writers: Mark Bilgrey, Rob Vollmar, Neil Kleid, Don McGregor, Jim Salicrup
Art: Mr. Exes, Tim Smith 3, Steve Mannion, Sho Murase, Rick Parker
Colors: Laurie E. Smith, Carlos Jose Guzman
Letters: Ortho the Great, Mark Lerer, Bryan Senka
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Cover Art: Mr. Exes
Publisher: NBM/Papercutz

After long decades with no new comics on the shelves, NBM brought back the legendary Tales From the Crypt series earlier this year as a bi-monthly comic book. Complimenting the comic is this series of quarterly digests. Rather than simply collecting the stories from the comic, though, these digests appear to be a mixture of reprints and new material – of the four stories presented here, three of them were printed in the earlier issues, but the fourth story is new.

The real question, though, is are they any good? Despite its reputation (and the gory, high-cursing-and-sexual-content HBO series of yore), Tales From the Crypt was originally intended for children. Is it creepy? Yes. Is it too creepy for kids? Not for well-rounded ones.

Jim Salicrup and Rick Parker handle the framing sequence, starring our old pal the Crypt-Keeper (in his original incarnation, of course), and they do a solid job. Bad puns and ghoulish art are pretty much all the job requires, after all. The first story is “Body of Work” by Mark Bilgrey and Mr. Exes, and it’s probably the best story in the book. A couple finds out their reclusive neighbor is a famous artist and they hatch a scheme to steal some of his paintings and cash in. As always happens in these stories, their greed proves to be their undoing. “For Serious Collectors Only” is by Rob Vollmar and Tim Smith 3, and it’s a story that geeks can hold near and dear. A bitter action figure enthusiast sees a new figure he simply has to have, by any means necessary. “The Tenant,” by Neil Kleid and Steve Mannion, shows a ruthless landlord getting his just desserts, and the new tale – “Runway Roadkill” by Don McGregor and Sho Murase, details a fashion maven whose thirst for a competitive clothing line leads her to doom.

The stories in the new Tales From the Crypt are as sharp and entertaining as ever. Each story has a classic feel to it, with the bad people getting their comeuppance, and often with a suitably dark and macabre twist.

The real fault with the series lies in the artwork. While none of it is really bad, much of it is too bright for this sort of comics. Vibrant colors and cool computer washes are all well and good, but when you’re trying to establish the tone for a horror comic (even one with so much dark humor) you really need a darker, bleaker palette, or at the very least a heavier inking style.

So in short, the stories are strong, but the art doesn’t quite fit. Still, it’s a fun book and worth getting, especially for a kid with a taste for the dark side.

Rating: 7/10