Marvel 1989 Week--Iron Man #241!!

And so we reach the end of Marvel 1989 Week.

One of the constants of this week has been (relatively) radical change. An all-new, all-different line-up of Avengers; a crazy-ass different line-up in the FF; retcon city in the X-Men as they try to clean up their continuity muddles (no, she was a clone who became the Goblin Queen!! Really!!); and Hulk completely changing his circumstances.

But the more some things change, the more others stay the same:

Ahhh....comfort food.

Brought to us by:

As I discussed in Marvel Week 1978, Dave Michelinie and Bob Layton had two great runs on Iron Man, an this is during the second.

Where's Iron Man at in 1989? Well, he had just finished the "Armor Wars" storyline (which, interestingly enough, was never called Armor Wars at the time. The stories were all titled Stark Wars. It was only later when they were collected or referred to that they took the title Armor Wars. You learn something new everyday here at Slay Monstrobot!).

Stark had learned that some of his tech plan were stolen, and Iron Man went on a rampage to destroy the armors of everybody, good guy or bad guy, who was using it. He was kicked off the West Coast Avengers, hunted by the law (hmmm, this is seeming familiar...). He (rather convincingly) faked his own death, and Tony Stark was somehow able to persuade everyone that the old Iron Man had been acting on his own, and now a new guy was inside the armor. Really. Trust me. Plus, it was a pretty good excuse to get rid of the damned ugly red and silver armor...

Man, the people of Marvel-616 are gullible maroons, aren't they?

But back to #241, where we start in media res:

We don't know what's going on yet, but we do get to see Iron Man catch the perp. Except...

OK, that was kind of unusual. What's the scoop?

What, you mean Stark Enterprises didn't already have a branch in Hong Kong?!?

Hmmm...You're in China, dealing with a "shadowy figure" who controls everything, his group is called the Hand, and his minions wield enormously powerful rings. And all you can muster is "familiar"?? Geez, sometimes I think Tony Stark is the Hal Jordan of the Marvel Universe.

Meanwhile, back to our villain, who's about to give us a S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-style killing of a disloyal minion:



Yeah, that's the Mandarin, all right.

Stark also has to deal with a stalker:

In a few issues, she shoots him!! Holy J.R. Ewing!!

It's time for a meeting with our strangely different Mandarin--who is now a pretty sharp dresser:


It turns out that an accident with his "mento-intensifier" ring mostly wiped his memory...so now he's a Gordon Gekko style 1980's evil dude, with an evil proposal:


So, Mandarin sets out to kidnap some of Tony's people...by sending out motorcycle-riding monks wearing super-powered rings!!


And then the Mandarin preps his people for the inevitable Iron Man response:

And they ambush him (so much for fighting with honor, eh?).And get creamed.



And apparently, they've never seen Bugs Bunny cartoons.



But of course, it's all a ruse:

Which leads to a full-page cliffhanger business proposition!!

Uh, Tony, technically, maggots don't spawn, you see, they're the infant version of...oh, never mind. Next?

POW indeed.

SPOILER ALERT: Stark wins, and...gets his permits to do business in Hong Kong. Really? That's what we were fighting over??

Earlier I mentioned Iron Man's faked death. Here's one letter writer's reaction:


So...don't bring Tony Stark back to life, and don't give anybody else the armor?What's your suggestion, Joe Engledow Jr. of Abilene, Texas? Cancel the mag? Than who's going to print your letter? Joe must have been pretty ticked by what was coming up in the near future...

Should I point out that they're running letters about #230 in #241?? Talk about snail mail...

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Well, technically, not in the Marvel Universe...

It was the last gasp of the New Universe, as D.P. 7 reached issue #30 (only 2 left before cancellation). The New Universe was sort of Marvel's New Coke...no one was really buying it. Various peeps have tried re-jiggering it, playing around with aspects of it, but nothing seemed to catch fire. Even the then-magic touch of John Byrne couldn't turn things around. Marvel readers just didn't want non-616 superhero titles. Perhaps they would have done better today...

D.P.7 was one of the better and more consistent of the New Universe titles, benefiting from the same team for all 32 issues--Mark Gruenwald and Paul Ryan.

Friday Night Fights--Fantastic Four 1989 Style!!

It's Marvel 1989 Week here at Slay Monstrobot, but that leaves us with a peculiar problem. There just aren't a lot of good one panel punchfests available from April 1989. Some good fights, but no really impressive rock 'em sock 'em single panels. So we go with the best I've got--Mantis vs. the Master of the Priests of Pama:

Don't need no oaths of celibacy now, eh?

Maybe Spacebooger can figure out why Mantis was facing the Priests of Pama and the Cotati in an issue of Fantastic Four...

Unexpected Kung Fu mayhem happens in Fantastic Four #325 (1989), by Steve Englehart, Rich Bucler, and Romeo Tanghal.

A few brief notes about this issue after the post-fight jump.

THE JUMP

We're talking about this issue:

This was the very last issue of Steve Englehart's nearly two year run on the FF.

[CORRECTION: Commenter Aardsy alerts me to the fact that Englehart actually stayed on board for the next 8 issues, but used the pseudonym "John Harkness" because he was pissed at Marvel's editorial demands for the title]

And he was racking up some big, radical (but not destined to be long-lived) changes. Reed and Sue left (only to later join the Avengers for 12 nanoseconds). Crystal rejoined the team briefly. And Sharon Ventura, aka Ms. Marvel, joined the team.

In due course yet another dose of cosmic rays transformed Ben into an even craggier Thing, and Ms. Marvel became a...well, She-Thing.

And she and Ben became romantically involved, which led to cringe-inducing scenes like this:

Watch those hands, Ben. Kids, please DO NOT let your imaginations run wild.

The Human Torch's flame was permanently stuck on and in overdrive, thanks to the magicks of the Inferno crossover event:

And, this being Steve Englehart writing a Marvel title, you just know who's going to show up--Mantis and Kang!!

Anyway, there's lots of fighting and stuff, The Silver Surfer shows up, and Englehart ends his run on a happy and joyous note:

No, she's not dead, she's just transferred her mind to the Cotati level of consciousness to find her kidnapped son and...oh, never mind. Next issue Reed and Sue come back, they fight a revamped Frightful Four, and in 6 months Walt Simonson would take over.

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Speaking of the Silver Surfer...

Englehart was writing that one, too, so of course Mantis and Kang were showing up. But this issue had him facing off with Ego, the Living Planet, which gave us a pretty cool double-pager by Ron Lim and Tom Christopher:

Cosmic, bro.

Marvel 1989 Week--Incredible Hulk #354!!

If you want to make some changes, make some bloody changes!!

Because let's face it, by the late 1980s, the Hulk was a tired, tired concept. It's frankly surprising it succeeded as long as it did, because infant talk "Hulk smash" leaves you limited opportunity for character growth. And every attempt to shake up the formula--Hey, let's give the Hulk Banner's brain! Hey, let's separate them and make the Hulk a completely mindless brute; Hey let's exile Hulk from Earth!!; Hey, let's make Rick Jones the Hulk for awhile!!--was short-lived and never quite a real departure from the status quo. Now the military's pursuing Rick Jones instead of Bruce Banner...la dee da.

Even Al Milgrom's reversion of Bruce Banner to the gray Hulk, who was reasonably intelligent but cranky as hell and who only came out at night, was merely an excuse to give Rick Jones someone to fight and Thunderbolt Ross someone to hunt.

Then along comes Peter David. And after a year or so of noodling around and putting young Todd McFarlane through his paces, suddenly one month we open the latest issue of Incredible Hulk to fins, with no warning or foreshadowing:

*Hulk had a new secret identity, Joe Fix-it!
*Hulk had a steady home--in Las Vegas!!
*Hulk had a steady girlfriend...not Banner, but Hulk!!
*Hulk had a job...that's right, a j-o-b, as an enforcer for a casino owner.

Wha' the??

That's not just rearranging the deck chairs, is it? Which brings us to:

One of the more interesting aspects of the current sitaution was the power struggle between Banner and the Hulk.

You see, Hulk has a good thing going in Vegas, and he doesn't want Banner to queer things. But, Banner's in charge during daylight hours.


(That was a dream sequence, by the way...) The reality, it was even more interesting:

Hulk would do things like lock himself in a cave, or a hotel with no clothes, so when Banner woke up he couldn't just leave Hulk's nice life and travel the back roads of small towns as melencholy piano music tinkled in the background (oops, that was the TV show).

Our problem this issue? The Maggia is trying to muscle in on his boss' casino.

The who??

I never figured out why Marvel didn't just say mafia. Were they afraid of being sued for trademark infringement?!? Or did some arcane clause in the Comic Code prevent mentioning mafia, so we had a zuvembie situation?!?

Meanwhile, Banner decides to investigate why Hulk is so invested in the status quo. And meets the gray goliath's hot girlfriend.

Did I mention there was a hot girlfriend??

And Bruce realizes that he has the power...for now, at least.



Meanwhile, our zuvembie gangster organization is laying down the law...but Joe Fix-it isn't having any of it.


Which of course, leads to a fight.

Now, zuvembie mafia leader, if Man-Mountain Marko is really your best example, maybe you shouldn't be bragging up this little program of yours.

Now, before the battle royale, we do have to acknowledge one little reservation that many have about Peter David's writing. Specifically, his humor.

David can be a pretty funny guy. The problem is, he knows that. So sometimes he ends up trying to play up that aspect of his writing, and unfortunately sometimes it seems as if he's structuring entire scenes and conversations just to get to a particular punchline, which is often not quite as funny as he seems to think it is. Even back in 1989, we saw examples of this:


So when we get the climactic battle, rather than show the fight, we get the set-up for the comedy bit:

And then, of course, because it's set in Vegas, the betting gets out of control...

...and the odds keep shifting based on how many goons Fix-It is throwing through the wall...

...and even the cops get in on it...

...and then we get to the overplayed and not really twist "make it look like the Hulk lost--but surprise them by showing that he actually won!" ending:





So, yeah, David's timing, and emphasis, and originality in his jokes isn't always the greatest. At least when he tries so hard, instead of letting the humor unfold naturally.

But I've got to give the dude mad props, because instead of just giving us the same old same old in a gray color, he decided to really shake things up and make the Hulk fresher than it had been in years. He took a chance, he committed to it 100%, and by Odin it worked pretty darn well.

There's a lesson in that for a lot of today's comic creators, methinks...

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Apparently, it was Unofficial Sub-Mariner Month at Marvel, because Hulk's old partner from Tales To Astonish was all over the place in April 1989.

He had a back-up story in Solo Avengers #17...

...a coverboy stint as Pirate Namor (whom we really, really need to see more of) in Marvel Fanfare #43, in a story by Bill Mantlo and Mike Mignola!!...

...and his own 12 issue mini-series going on, written by Roy Thomas!!

That's a whole lotta Subby going one. But, as with Aquaman, it never seems to stick. Can sea-dwelling heroes just not succeed, or what??