Marvel Treasury Edition #8

December 23, 2011

This is one of two “Giant Superhero Holiday Grab-Bag” editions of the Marvel Treasury series. Both issues were full of reprints wrapped in a Christmas cover, but at least some of the interior content was holiday-related. I was fortunate enough to snag them both a few weeks ago, so let’s take a look at them, shall we?

Title: Twas the Night Before Christmas (Reprinted from Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #10)

Writer: Gary Friedrich
Pencils: Frank Springer
Inks: Johnny Craig
Letterer: Artie Simek
Editor: Stan Lee
Publisher: Marvel Comics

On Christmas Eve, Nick Fury is summoned to stop the Hate-Monger, a nasty Nazi remnant who has a plan to cleanse the Earth of “inferior” races, unless Nick can stop him. Fury being very much a World War II holdover himself, this sort of story was par for the course for him at this time period. The story itself was fine, but I wasn’t terribly impressed with Gary Friedrich’s script – clunky dialogue like “Save the sobs, sister! I ain’t dead yet!” permeate the story. The artwork isn’t the best either – odd poses and weak faces throughout. But at least this was a Christmas story… not the case with the next one.

Title: Spider-Man Goes Mad (Reprinted from Amazing Spider-Man #24)

Writer: Stan Lee
Art: Steve Ditko
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Publisher: Marvel Comics

In this early Spider-Man tale, J. Jonah Jameson gets the idea to start running anti-Spider-Man testimony from the man on the street, thus removing himself from the equation and making his paper’s bias against the webslinger seem more legitimate. (It just goes to show you the media hasn’t really changed that much in the last 45 years.) When the stories appear, a psychiatrist offers Jameson a medical analysis that says Spider-Man is going mad… and to make matters worse, Spidey starts to believe it. Nice, classic tale from the Lee/Ditko era, fun to read, if not one of the greatest.

Title: Jingle Bombs (Reprinted from Luke Cage, Hero For Hire #7)

Writer: Steve Englehart
Art: George Tuska & Billy Graham
Letterer: John Costanza
Colors: David Hunt
Editor: Roy Thomas
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Set in the days before he partnered up with Iron Fist, on Christmas Eve Luke cage runs into a trio of odd types with a pretty violent vision of Christmas. When Cage stands up to each of them, he discovers a different kind of villain is really behind the whole thing. The story is pretty good here – it’s a different kind of story, not just another Christmas Carol redux, as it seemed it would be. As he often did, though, Steve Englehart got a little preachy with the message of the story. Overall, though, it wasn’t bad, and it was a decent fit for Cage.

Title: Heaven is a Very Small Place (Reprinted from Incredible Hulk #147)

Writer: Roy Thomas
Art: Herb Trimpe
Inks: John Severin
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Editor: Stan Lee
Publisher: Marvel Comics

This story, on the other hand, is just… weird. On one of his many self-imposed exiles in an effort to be just left alone, the Hulk sees a strange little town appear out of the ether. At first, it seems like a paradise, like a place where he could finally be treated like everyone else, but as he continues his journey through the town, things turn out to not be what they seem. It sounds like the set-up for a Christmas story but it isn’t, it’s just plain confusing. Some very nice Herb Trimpe artwork helps, but this is definitely not one of the best efforts from the great Roy Thomas.

Title: Eternity! Eternity! (Reprinted from Doctor Strange #180)

Writer: Roy Thomas
Art: Gene Colan
Inks: Tom Palmer
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Editor: Stan Lee
Publisher: Marvel Comics

This is a much better Thomas story. On New Year’s Eve, Stephen Strange has a strange vision of Eternity, embodiment of the universe, locked in battle against the maniacal entity called Nightmare. He shrugs it off and tries to ring in the new year with Clea, but it soon becomes apparent that his dream was much more than that. It’s a good story with great art, but it ends on a cliffhanger. Considering the stories in this book that had nothing to do with the holidays, one really has to wonder why Marvel didn’t cut those and finish this story.

Overall it’s not a bad little collection, but it could have been better.

Rating: 7/10

Spider-Man Family (2007 Series) #3

June 8, 2007

Spider-Man Family #3 (Marvel Comics)
By Paul Tobin, Pierre Alary, Fred VanLente, Leonard Kirk, Roy Thomas, Jim Craig & Yamanaka Akira

This issue of Spider-Man Family is something of a mixed bag. The focus is on Spidey and the Fantastic Four, which is always an entertaining pairing, but the lead story is kind of weak. Spidey and the FF team up to fight a giant mummy (which is definitely fun), and then again against Electro. There’s a lot of the standard misunderstanding-then-team-up stuff, which is really somewhat out of place considering the relationship between these characters even relatively early in their careers. The personalities are off as well. While it’s true that many of the earliest FF stories made Sue subservient, this issue goes too far in the opposite direction, making her more aggressive than she’s ever been painted. We also see the Scorpion drawn into battle with her former namesake, Mag Gargan, the current Venom — a pretty good story, and certainly a logical one. Next is a reprint of What If? Vol. 1 #1, “What if Spider-Man had joined the Fantastic Four?” This is one of my all-time favorite What If? stories, and it’s a welcome addition to this book. The story ends with a new “Spider-Man J” tale (does the “J” stand for “Japanese?”), a reprint of the Japanese Spidey title. This is the first of those titles I’ve read and, honestly, I wasn’t impressed with either the story or the artwork. This isn’t a bad issue, but except for the classic reprint, there’s really nothing to get excited about.

Rating: 6/10

Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #1

June 27, 2006

Quick Rating: Great
Title: The Pluto Syndrome

The Zoo Crew comes together with the Man of Steel!

Writer: Roy Thomas
Pencils: Scott Shaw!
Inks: Bob Smith
Colors: Carl Gafford
Letters: Bob Smith
Editor: Dick Giordano
Cover Art: Scott Shaw!
Publisher: DC Comics

Here’s an old guilty pleasure of mine, Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw’s classic superhero comic Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew. Thomas established that all of DC’s classic “Funny Animal” comics of the 50s and 60s took place on this alternate world of Earth-C, which (in this issue) was pounded by meteors sent to Earth by the old Justice League foe Starro the Conqueror. The meteors transformed many of the animals into super-beings, including Rubberduck, Alley-Cat-Abra, Yankee Poodle and Fastback. The old comic star Peter Porkchop became Pig Iron, and mild-mannered cartoonist Roger Rabbit (his middle name was later revealed to be Rodney, and that became his form of address to avoid litigation) became the super-powered Captain Carrot just in time to meet Starro’s foe from Earth-One, Superman.

Superman, in this issue, aided Captain Carrot not only in defeating Starro, but in forming the Zoo Crew from the animals irradiated by the meteors. Although Captain Carrot’s series had bid farewell by the time I started reading comics heavily, just a few back issues found in yard sales and the like hooked me, and I eventually tracked down the entire run. This comic was one of the great underrated gems of the 80s, a superhero book with old fashioned sensibilities, funny animals that transcended the genre and lots of great pastiches like their journey to “Earth C-Minus,” home of the Justa Lotta Animals (including their leader, Super Squirrel) that parodied the classic Justice League/Justice Society crossovers. Even the parodies in this title worked as serious superhero stories, though, ranking this title right up there with Roy Thomas’s greatest works like The All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc.

Cap and the Crew recently reappeared in the pages of Teen Titans, but that only whet my appetite for more. I hope like hell that brief glimpse we got of Earth-C isn’t our last… I can’t wait to see the Zoo Crew again.

Rating: 9/10