Marvel 1995 Week--Silver Surfer #106!!

Good lord, I hate the living heck out of this cover.

Oh, there's nothing wrong with the cover itself--Tom Grindberg did a nice enough job. And it's nothing against the Silver Surfer...well, actually, I do have something against the Surfer, but that's not why I hate this cover.

Nope, it's just that I really really really REALLY hate covers that are spoilers for what is supposed to be a last minute reveal. See, that part where the captions tell you that the Surfer has freed himself of the burdens of cosmic power?? Well, that's what really happens in the very last panel, as we'll see. And it's something that the Surfer spends the entire issue debating and opining about. So, we have to spend an entire issue watching Whiny McWhineWhine struggle with this "difficult" decision, but we already know the outcome. So what is the point of the issue?

Then, of course, there's Doctor Doom. Look, they spend the entire issue trying (none-too-cleverly) to conceal the fact that this "mystery" guy is Doom. It's not "revealed" until the very last panel!! So why would you blow it buy telegraphing on the cover, in big capital letters, "IT IS DOOM, DUMMIES!!"

Seriously, why blow the reveal on the cover what's the point? If the reader has read ANY Marvel comics whatsoever, he'll recognize that that's Doom--so there's no point in being coy. You might as well put Doom full figure on the cover, and not make it a mystery. But, if the reader is not familiar with Marvel, and doesn't recognize the armor and green skirt, well, then the cover really does nothing to attract him, does it?!?

Of course, this far from the only comic that has pulled such a bonehead move. But it is the one in front of me right now, so grrrrr...

Anyway, the scoop is, Norrin Radd has been much, much whinier than usual lately (as if that's possible). He thinks that he misused his power to kill Mephisto (SPOILER ALERT: It was a trick by Mephisto. Duh). He went home to Zenn-La, and found Shalla-Bal shacked up with his half-brother. He tried to fix up the biosphere of a dying planet, but oops--he accidentally destroyed it!! He was attacked by the Super-Skrull, and the Surfer almost killed him!!

So Surfer Dude came to the obvious conclusion that he can no longer be trusted with his powers, so he went to Galactus to get them removed. Galactus told him to grow a pair and move along. So, Radd has been moping around, pitying himself for his freedom and godlike powers. It's a rough life.

So, he comes upon a struggling planet...

Oh, yeah, this story is courtesy of:

Yes, the same Tom Grinberg who drew the story drew the spoiler-riffic cover. Sigh...

Well, this planet is in anarchy mode:

And these peeps ain't respecting the Surfer's oh-so-painful sensitivity:

So he goes into angry-3-year-old mode:

But Norrin can't win--he can't force everybody to cooperate for survival, he can't move them all off-planet, and he's afraid to use his powers to their maximum effect to fix things. So, what to do?

Wait for a ship from Earth to arrive!! And the mysterious telepathic voice that offers to save everybody--for a price!!




Gee, that doesn't look anything like Doom. Not at all. Nope--keep the mystery going, guys, just in case I'm reading this issue without having looked at the cover!! (Oh, by the way, Doom is supposedly dead right now, so that's what the Surfer means when he's all "word has it...")

So Doom cajoles and cajoles, nags and nudges. The Surfer ponders and broods, ponders and broods...


Guys, trust me--there were pages and pages of this. You can thank me later for editing this down so much.

Anyway, thanks to our cover, we already know the decision:


Gee, whoever could that dude be??

Let's take a look at just what an asshole the Surfer is here. Unlike the audience (wink, nudge) he realizes that this is Victor Von Doom. He knows what a force for evil the man is. Doom has lied to him, twice before; twice stolen the Power Cosmic, and twice tried to use it for really, really evil things.

Yet, Norrin Radd, who supposedly cares so much about intelligent life and stamping out injustice, is so solipsistic, is so much more concerned with how "awful" his life is than helping those around him...Norrin Radd is such a narcissistic idiot that he willingly gives planet-shattering power to Victor Von Doom just so he'll feel better about himself.

So yeah, I really don't like the character very much.

Hey, and guess what?!? There's absolutely no way you could have known this ahead of time...but the process worked!!


What, we already knew this big surprise at the end? How??? Oh, yeah, that damned cover. Oh, how I hate you, cover!!

Anyway, by page two of the next issue Doom betrays the Surfer by actually destroying the planet in question ("I only said I would end their suffering, and they're no longer suffering!!" Seriously.). The villain turns out to actually be a special Doombot that Doom launched into the cosmos to track down the Surfer and steal Prince Gullible's power again. The Power Cosmic gives the Doombot sentience AND drives him mad, so he decides to go kill everyone on Earth (don't ask). It takes a couple of issues, but the Surfer gets his power back and kicks the Doombot's ass. And the he goes back to being Whiny McWhineWhine again. What a putz.

If I may quote the real Doctor Doom from Fantastic Four #156 (1975):

Amen, Victor...amen!!

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

The Silver Surfer should consider himself lucky, because July 1995 was a bad month for Marvel's other "cosmic" titles:


This month saw the final issues of both the current incarnation of The Guardians Of The Galaxy, and Warlock And The Infinity Watch.

Marvel was trying to cut back, and I guess enough people weren't buying these to justify keeping them around. Plus, they didn't involve mutants or Spider-clones, so there's a disadvantage.

It's too bad, because while I do think that (in general) Marvel has the better "cosmic" world than DC, they can't seem to keep it going, with both the latest Guardians and Nova cancelled after 25 issues. Oh, they're still giving Abnett and Lanning some cosmic mini-series to play with, because apparently they make good trades. But continuing series? Not so much, sadly.

Friday Night Fights--Iron Man 1995 Style!!

This current bout of Friday Night Fights is Minimum Clonage--we can't re-use any fighters during these twelve rounds. So let's check my list so far:

Spider-Man
Judomaster
Marl Kincaid
T.H.E. Cat
Namor
Mr. Kotter
John Carter Of Mars
Steed and Mrs. Peel
Ant-Man (Henry Pym)
Shang-Chi
The Flying Nun

Of course, I have an additional burden on me this week: it's Marvel 1995 Week, so my fight must come from a Marvel comic with a July 1995 cover date. Whatever shall I do??

Yeah, leave it to Iron Man to provide meaningful fisticuffs in an otherwise dire month!

The scoop: Tony Stark's never-mentioned-before-or-ever-again mentor, Ted Slaght, had been working for Stark Indusrties. But the onset of Alzheimer's (Slaght's, not Tony's) forced Stark to relieve him as the head of his project. Which was a good idea, but too little to late, as the usual exploding experiment has transmuted Slaght into...SLAG!!


OUCH!! Proceed, then, to witness a complete beat-down:






Voila!! Even Spacebooger's white-hot wrath cannot match the fury of SLAG!!!

This fight was brought to you by:

And more about this issue after the jump. And, please, vote, won't you??



**That FW in the logo stands for Force Works, the worst-named superhero team EVER that rose from the ashes of West Coast Avengers. That was before Marvel decided that they must have as many Avengers books as X-Men books, obviously.

**This was the final issue of Len Kaminski's 40-odd issue run. Her got out just in time...

**When Tony Stark was in college, he went to class dressed like a total douche:

Plus, he couldn't even grow his full porn-star mustache yet...

**But in 1995...he still dressed like a douche.

Bless you, Tony Stark!

**Nothing divides Iron Man fans so much as to whether or not they think a particular set of armor is "cool" or not. In 1995:

My vote is "not."

**Oh, yes, the villain. During the inevitable re-match, Iron Man tries to freeze him...

...but that doesn't work so well:

So Shellhead uses super science to frak him up good:



BEST. SOUND. EFFECT. EVER.

And at least Tony has the decency to feel bad about it...

**A constant refrain this week has been that, as bad as July 1995 might have been in Marvel, much much worse was just around the corner. This is especially true of Iron Man. Two months later, The Crossing would begin, in which:

A) It is revealed that Tony Stark has been a hypnotized sleeper agent for Kang for a number of years, and

B) Tony goes completely off the deep end, killing several allies of the Avengers (but no actual Avengers--crazy members actually killing other Avengers would have to wait for Bendis...), and

C) The Avengers bring a 15 year-old Tony Stark over from an alternate dimension, thinking to fight super-genius with super-genius, and

D) When Stark sees his young doppelganger, he realizes what a douche he is, breaks free of Kang's control, and sacrifices his life to save all of time and space, and

E) 15 year-old Stark takes over the mag and the armor.

Dear lord, I wish I were making some of that up.

That state of affairs lasted only 6 months, before Heroes Reborn and Jim Lee took over. In this one single instance, it just might have been an improvement...nah, of course not.

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Speaking of armored heroes and the Force Works family:

Here is what I have to tell you about this issue. Written by Dan Abnett, it involves a "time quake," and Jim Rhodes teams up with Captain America, Bucky, and the Howling Commandos, to prevent 1995 neo-Nazis from sending advanced armor weaponry back in time to the Third Reich.

Damn. That sounds like the most perfect comic ever...

Marvel 1995 Week--Amazing Spider-Man #403!!

OK, so, you know the old sci-fi chestnut of the superior race of beings who put humanity on trial to see if they deserve to survive, or to learn about good & evil, or some nonsense? Trek Classic did it at least 3 times, Lost In Space did it, MST3K made fun of it...

Anyway, what if, instead of an omnipotent alien race, we had, say, the Phantom Stranger as the judge? And Charles Manson as the prosecutor? And Ted Bundy as the defense attorney? And the inmates of Arkham as the jury?

It might go a little something like this:

Oy...

I wasn't a reader of Spider-Man at this time, so this issue--as much of it as I could follow--is all new to me. But it definitely is akin to what we've seen from the rest of Marvel 1995--a mini-event (that was really part of a maxi-event) in its own little fiefdom.

At this point Spider stories were locked in even tighter unison than Superman books during the "shield" days. Each story ran through all 4 books--Amazing, Spectacular, Adjectiveless, and Web Of--each with its own creative team, but each just working on different chapters of the same story. It was literally impossible to read just one Spider-Man book if you wanted to follow what was going on.

How insular was the Spider-kingdom at this point?? You no longer got Marvel Bullpen Bulletins...you got Spider-Man bulletins!!

No other Marvel mag is even mentioned (except New Warriors, which for some reason was a "prelude" to the next Spider-event). As far as the Spider books were concerned, there was no Fantastic Four, no Hulk, no Avengers...it was a hermetically sealed world. Which makes sense, because you probably needed to quarantine this mess.

Amazing Spider-Man #403 was part 2 of 4 of The Trial Of Peter Parker. Kaine (who, at this point had not yet been revealed as a clone of Peter Parker's) had been going around killing Spider-villains, but unfortunately leaving his fingerprints behind--which, of course, were the same as Peter Parker's. D'oh!!

So Peter is arrested for murder and on trial right now. Peter's other clone (sigh), Ben Reilly, is standing in for him at the trial, while Peter tries to hunt down Kaine and bring him to justice, and prevent Ben from being convicted.

Unfortunately, Peter and Kaine ran afoul of...the Judas Traveller!! Huh? Who he? As described by sometime Spider writer Glenn Greenberg, "no one – not the writers, not the editors – seemed to know who or what the hell Judas Traveller was. He was seemingly this immensely powerful, quasi-mystical being with amazing abilities, but what was the real deal with him?" Just think of him as the Phantom Stranger in Marvel drag, you'll get the idea. He would show up, offer and do seemingly impossible things, and then vanish.

This time, he ambushed Spider-Man and Kaine while they were fighting, and dragged them to the sub-basement beneath Ravencroft, Marvel's usually-forgotten attempt at their own Arkham. And then Peter wakes up, to a parade of faces...

...most of whom I frankly don't recognize--but, as we saw in Captain America #441 this week, why bother to inform the casual reader of anything?

But all is (kinda sorta) explained on our splash:

Oh, dear. Who created this mess?

Hey, I love De Matteis and Bagley--and, since the story they're telling has to tie in with the rest of the mags, it's surely not even their fault, mostly--but this story premise was a ridiculous cliche 20 years before this comic was published. There's really no way to take the stink of this turd blossom, is there?? I mean, look at this:

Aaghhh, this is a bad 1980s Batman story stuck onto 1990s Spider-Man! Does he cause the nuts to be villains, and if he died would they return to sanity?!?! AAAGGGGGHHHH!!! Combined with the quasi-mystical-mysterious stuff, this is so everything I do not want to read in a Spider-man story.

Of course, it gets stupider:

You know, for an all-powerful omnipotent type, Traveller seems pretty freakin' clueless about how to find out "the truth," doesn't he?

Kaine, for one, isn't taking this crap:

Except, of course, that you can't fight the Phantom Stranger:


At this point, I should point out that it is later revealed that Judas Traveller is really...sigh...just a mutant with the ability to alter perceptions, except that he believes all this is real, and he's just being manipulated by Norman Osborn, and....and...and my soul is shattering. Ugggghhhh...

Meanwhile, at the real trial, Mary Jane is having a tough time defending Peter while she's on the stand:


I'm not sure who Peter/Ben's lawyer is here--they never mention it in this issue, and where the hell is Matt Murdock when you need him?--but you'd think he'd object, or redirect, or something...instead of being silent while the world's meanest prosecutor shreds MJ:

I said GOOD DAY, sir!!

Meanwhile, the asylum trial goes pretty much as you'd expect--the villains whine about Spider-Man:


Kaine's cross-examinations tend to be a little bit violent:


And Carnage knows a little something he (and all the other psychos) shouldn't:

And of course, as always in this cliched storyline, the trial is unfair on its face, not letting the defense put on a case before the verdict:

And the sentence:


But Kaine won't let that happen:


And that's when the Traveller finally steps in for the "ironic god-like-being-talking-to-Kirk" reveal:

And our punchline?

AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!

So, the fact that Kaine was willing to sacrifice himself proved that Spider-Man was good?!?! What a crock of #$%^!! Peter would have been willing to leap into a dogpile to prevent any skel from getting murdered--does that prove that every villain is good, because Peter would risk his life to save him?? Plus, Kaine was essentially rescuing himself, so that's kind of invalidates your asinine theory--did the Traveller somehow not know Kaine was Peter's clone?!?!?! AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! How lame can this ridiculous story be?!?!?!

You know, after those Classic Star Trek stories, I prayed we'd get a Next Generation story where we'd go and find the Metrons' planet and blow the living frak out of those arrogant bastards...that's how this story leaves me, wanting to hurt people...

Breathe, snell, breathe...

Before he leaves, Judas Traveller does does do one solid by Parker:

And that's pretty much it. But, as we've seen this week, July 1995 was in almost every case soon followed by something much worse. Doubly (triply?) so in this case:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

OK, I'm stretching this tie-in in a little bit...but the recent Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon was run by Greg Weisman, and Greg was also the co-creator producer of THIS cartoon:

I never read these comics. I really have no knowledge of how good they were, or how closely tied in with the series. But never mind...I'm just using this as a good excuse to proselytize for the Gargoyles cartoon.

Gargoyles originally aired from 1994-1997, and was a ridiculously ambitious and wonderful animated series, with complex and sophisticated continuity and a heavy emphasis on characterization. Damn, this show was good.

Season One and the first part of Season Two are available on DVD, but Disney is being stupid and won't release the last half of Season 2. But if enough people rush out and buy it, well, they might just see the light! Trust me, these are worth it (Season 2 part 1 has 26 episodes on it--26!!). But, if you don't want to spend money without sampling first, the discs are available on Netflix. And, if you're all into the "I won't try anything unless it's free" vibe, well, all of the episodes are available on YouTube!! And Disney XD is running episodes at 4AM, which is why God invented TiVo.

Look, I don't want to oversell the show, except I'm going to. It's awesome. So if you want an insane cross between sorcery and science, evil clones and good robots, the true story behind MacBeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream with Brent Spiner as Puck (!), King Arthur, 20th century cops fighting the fairy invasion of NY, insane billionaires marrying exotic super-criminals, and more swooping than you can shake a stick at, you really need to give this series a shot.