Bold Fashion Choices--Supergirl Yet Again!!

Apparently, kids in the 1970s didn't have enough homework...because all they did was think up clothing designs for superheroes and mail them in. Which brings us to Superman Family #174 (Dec/Jan 75-76)...because as long as people would keep sending them in, DC would keep printing them:

Let's take a closer look. The first three sets are by the team of Jean Leiser (Age 19 3/4) and Elizabeth "Liz" Harllee (age 18 1/2). Ladies, a note: once you reach adulthood, you should probably stop listing fractional years in your ages, because, well, adults don't do that.

First up have...oh, dear, isn't a skirt supposed to go all the way around? Or is that just a red butt towel for her, like NFL centers have?

Next up, we have to note that Supergirl is either playing coy, or is just too embarrassed to face us in this outfit.

You know, if Supergirl ever showed up during the Mike Grell days in the Legion, I can see her in these:

Our final entry is by Scott Cassman, apparently envisioning Kara in the Mod Squad:

In case you can't read it, the "captions" behind her say, "This costume isn't actually practical, but it sure looks nice." You have to love a designer who critiques his own work...

Manic Monday--Creepy, Creepy Butler

Uhhhhh......

Alfred's totally hitting on Dick here, isn't he?

While the Bat's away...

Frederic Wertham would have a field day with Detective Comics #851, by and Denny O'Neil and Guillem March.

...To Write me Down An Ass

There's a pretty good scene for Black Canary as team chairperson in JLA #27 this week (or is it last week already? I was kinda lost in 1978...).

Stars and Garters shows you the page, and I won't reprint it here, so I don't crib his act. But I do want to show you the page before, which COMPLETELY undermines the scene:

Really.

Black Canary is about to have a big leadership moment, we're supposed to take her seriously as JLA chairperson, and Ed Benes introduces the scene with a page specifically designed to make you ignore everything else, designed to draw your eye right to her buttcheeks.

The JLA is essentially a broken book, a damaged concept right now, and I'm not sure what it would take to fix it. But of all the things wrong with it, nothing is more dire than having an artist who directly undermines the story points the writer is trying to establish, who undercuts Dwayne McDuffie's attempts to build up Black Canary with his immaturity and his fetish for close-ups of female body parts at inappropriate times.

So maybe instead of worrying about the Big Three undermining her, Dinah should worry more about the idiot they have drawing her, which does far more damage.

(Although I praised McDuffie's scene above, I have a couple of quibbles about his script.. One, Dinah never lays out any specific grievances about the Big Three, except that they're meeting in private. And since she establishes that no one else knows about the private meetings, it's not clear how they're actually "undermining her authority." No example of orders countermanded, or secret plots, or anything. A good manager always has specific examples when laying down the law. Given that just a meeting is ticking her off, I shudder how Dinah is going to respond to Trinity.

Secondly, they get a distress call from Dr. Light (the good one) on a JLI communicator...and they take a Quinjet (or whatever they call it) to Metropolis? They have a freakin' teleporter. Zatanna could just magic them there. Superman or Flash could certainly get there more quickly. It's a distress call, she might be dead or dying...and they don't take the fastest way there. Good show, League.

So it's not just the art of JLA that's broken.)

Marvel 1978 Week--Captain America #228

Sometimes when you go back in time, you find a comics franchise that's just a little bit lost.

Case in point: Captain America.

After the end of the 1970's Kirby run, it quickly became evident that the Marvel Powers-That-Be had no real idea of what the hell to do with Cap. It was the late 70s, still post-Watergate and beginning to invest heavily in the "malaise" of the Carter years. What to do with a patriotic hero, the symbol of America?

The first couple of post-Kirby issues were fill-ins or reprints, re-capping Cap's origin and history. Then, under a seemingly endless rotation of writers and artists, we proceeded on "The Search For Steve Rogers." Cap, it seems, suddenly realized he had no memories of his life before he took the super-soldier serum. So he begins a long...and long...and long quest to find out the truth about his roots. 9 issues (plus another fill-in) were spent canoodling around doing nothing (except for a couple of truly bizarre issues by Steve Gerber, which still accomplished nothing but were so nutty you didn't notice).

At the same time, Falcon had left Cap to train the "S.H.I.E.L.D. Super-Agents," and then had gone missing. And a mysterious evil organization known only as "The Corporation" was trying to destroy Cap and S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Corporation?!? Really, that's the best you could come up with? I guess to some in those days, a faceless corporation was the epitome of evil. Whatever floats your boat. Me, I would have at least given it a flippin' name...

But the bottom line is that, by December of 1978, Captain America was essentially floating aimlessly, and had become a big whiny dope. Which brings us to:

This issue has been brought to us by:

Roger McKenzie had just come on board--this was only his third issue--and he'd hang around for 8 more, leave for a while, then come back for about 4 more, establishing a pretty sad post-Kirby record. Sal Buscema we all know, and "Espo & Tartag" are Mike Esposito and John Tartag, the inker with a Klingon name.

And since this is 1978 Captain America, we start with him brooding like a teenager with his first Cure album:

It's pretty sad days when Tony Stark has to be the one to give Cap a pep talk about how to have a happy private life...

But Steve is so mopey, he even invents the first Geico commercial:

Oh, Steve...Iron Man takes Cap outside in the rain, and basically kicks him in the seat of the pants, telling him to grow up. Does it take?

Heavens, no. Cap has gone from staring out the window brooding to standing out in rain brooding. Yup, this is why I read Captain America--for maximum emo!!

Well, perhaps because McKenzie realizes that this is a super-hero comic and absolutely nothing has happened yet, we then get a three page sequence--THREE PAGES!!--that consist entirely of Cap saving one child from being hit by a truck. Yes, 3 pages for the "save the kid from getting hit" shtick. Lord, talk about padded...

I won't reprint those panels here, because they bore even my computer to death. But at the end we get an interesting bit:

That's right, Rogers--Falcon is missing!! And you're standing around feeling sorry for yourself!! Great Googly Moogly!! "Busy with your own problems?!?" You were standing around brooding in a storm like Slash in the November Rain music video!!

By the way, I can pretty much guarantee that' this is the only blog post you'll ever see comparing Captain America to Slash. You're welcome.

So Cap takes off for the secret entrance to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s NY HQ, which owes more than a little to Get Smart and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.:


Surprisingly, the base is deserted--except for the obligatory robot guard...


...whom Cap destroys with the wussiest sound effect in comics history:

Really? He goes "Squee" when you destroy him???

So why is the HQ deserted??

Apparently, unannounced, massive demolition activity in the middle of the night is OK in New York City? I guess if you're S.H.I.E.L.D. it is.

Because of this stupidity, Cap is trapped:

And he's not alone!!

Who could it be? Well, if you happened to miss looking at the cover:


We get a couple of shots to establish how tough (chortle) the Constrictor is...


...before Cap turns the tables on him with simple acrobatics:


But it was too late...

SPOILER ALERT: They survive.

I shouldn't be too harsh on this issue...it's just the latest in what was over a year of time-killing and belly-scratching because nobody at Marvel seemed to know what to do with the Star Spangled Avenger. (Here's a hint of what you do with Cap...who says I never have anything nice to say about Geoff Johns?).

Everything was so meandering and navel-gazing and broody that even I wasn't buying Cap, and I was a Marvel Zombie by this point. Which is rather a shame, because Cap was actually getting better treatment in the pages of the Avengers, so we know it could be done. Happier days would come, but not for awhile.

It's too bad I didn't do Marvel 1978 week a few months earlier, or I could have done this issue:

Yes, that cover scene really happens, 30 years before Umbrella Academy. Also in that issue, Cap is chased through his apartment by a remote controlled Volkswagon Beetle. And no, his apartment wasn't on the ground floor. Oh, Steve Gerber, you mad genius, you.

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #25 was, well, nuts. There wasn't a terribly strong continuity between the 2 Spidey titles back then, and Bill Mantlo just ran wild, in a fun way. As you can see from the cover this issue featured the Masked Marauder and the Tri-Man (don't ask). Unseen on the cover are the fact that it guest stars the White Tiger, and more significantly, it was the debut appearance of Carrion.

Sure, Carrion was a decrepit clone of Professor Miles Warren, who had been the Jackyl and made clones of Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy, so Carrion is a step towards the madness of the Clone Saga. Forget about that. What's most significant is that Carrion got me a post card from Mantlo, which was a pretty big thrill. They had a letters page contest to guess Carrion's identity, and even though my guess was wrong, I got a postcard in the mail. All it said was "Nope," with Mantlo's signature...and for all I know he had some intern do them...but it was still a pretty exciting moment in my young life.

So that's Marvel 1978 week. Hope you had as much fun as I did...

Friday Night Fights--Spider-Man 1978 Style!!

As we here at Slay Monstrobot Central are spending the week wallowing in the decadence of Marvel 1978, we have to ask ourselves: when is a surprise villain not a surprise villain??

Given that pretty distinctive silhouette, and the fact that his name is on the cover in Electric font, you wouldn't think that Electro's presence in the story would be a big surprise...and look on the splash page:

His name is the freakin' title to the story, in HUGE letters. So there's no way they'd try to hide the villain's identity, right? We'll see.

30 years ago irony department:

Thank "goodness," Webhead?? I think not-- bwa hahahahaha....oh, never mind.

Anyway, Spidey is investigating why S.H.I.E.L.D. has quarantined an entire small town in upstate New York. And who turns up to drive him away?

Spider-Man is a little ticked off at getting the runaround, so he unwisely lashes out at Cap:

And you know how that's going to end, don't you?

Ouch. Spidey pretends to learn his lesson and leave, while Cap storms the local power plant. It turns out a millionaire's sick child is being held for ransom there. By whom? Well, just pretend you didn't see the cover or the title page, because the creators are going to pretend it's a surprise:

Oh, come on, Marv--you already told us twice that it was--

Shocking. Positively shocking.

But of course, Peter Parker didn't really leave, so...




But that's not the end. Why all the urgency, why the quarantine?

You're not serious. Oh, you are? Oh dear...

Anyhoo, Electro freaks:

...and you just know that's not gonna end well:

So remember, kids, when your town is threatened by the plague, just blow up the power station, and everything will be well.

One final question: How come we've never had a story featuring both Electro AND Elektra?!? Talk about a natural...perhaps Spacebooger knows the answer!!

The story that probably should have been in Marvel Team-Up comes to you from Amazing Spider-Man #187 (1978), courtesy of Marv Wolfman, Jim Starlin, and Bob McLeod.

Marvel 1978 Week--Uncanny X-Men #116

You can tell the youngsters all about rotary telephones, 8-track tapes, full service gas stations, and having only 3 or 4 channels available on television, and they'll believe you. It may take some explanation, and they look at you with incredulity, but eventually they'll buy it.

But just try to explain to them that the X-Men once weren't popular. That, they won't believe.

It's one of the more incredible transitions in comic book history. As we discussed back during Marvel 1968 week, the X-Men early on not only weren't popular...there was actually a 5 year period when they were downgraded to a bi-monthly reprint book!!

Now, of course, the X-Empire is so large that if Marvel were to spin it off into its own company, it would outsell Dark Horse, Image and Wildstorm combined (note--I didn't do any math, just roll with me here). Wolverine alone has more titles being published than Batman. Scrolling the the X portion of Marvel's solicits every month takes hours.

What happened? How, exactly, did the X-Men transition from being the sad sack franchise that even Lee & Kirby and Thomas & Adams couldn't make successful, to the unstoppable juggernaut it is today? Was it just that the comic public was more receptive to the idea in the late 70's than it was in the late 60's? Was Chris Claremont just that much better at tapping into the zeitgeist of a mutant book than Stan and Roy? Were the X costumes of the 1960's so godawful that they physically drove readers away (hint: YES)? Were Cockrum and Byrne & Austin that amazing? Was it just "right place, right time," or was there something more?

Which brings us to:

The time was December, 1978. The Uncanny X-Men had only leapt from bi-monthly to monthly a few months earlier. Phoenix wasn't yet Dark, and was still Jean Grey; there was only one team, and no Factor, Young, or New; Scott Summers didn't have 8 or 10 real and/or hypothetical future children running around, and the X-Men didn't yet have 6 or 7 members from various alternate futures or various sundered What If? universes hanging around; Magneto was still a bad guy, as opposed to a good guy turned bad guy reformed into good guy than turned bad guy again and then...; there was no Brood or Mojoverse; no four-issue miniseries or spin-offs or sprawling and interminable crossovers. In short, it was a simpler time.

How simple?

Hee hee. Tying the X-Men (and Ka-Zar!!) to a stake. How quaint.

There's no need to introduce them, but here are our creators:

This team, usually together with letterer Orzechowski and colorist Wein, strode the Earth like a behemoth for what seemed like eons, simultaneously creating and riding the growing tsunami of X-popularity. It was a strong, confident, ridiculously ambitious run, meticulously planned, rarely mis-stepping. So what's going on this issue?

To set the scene: our mutant heroes escaped from a deadly battle in Magneto's Antarctic fortress and ended up in the Savage Land, where they found that Garokk (which is also spelled Garrok on occasion this issue!!) , the Petrified Man, was setting himself up as the Sun God who will unify the Savage Land (and destroy it, in the process, of course). Which leads immediately to a patented Byrne/Austin two-page spread:

Whereupon our heroes are set upon by primitives riding pterodactyls...



...and several homo so-called superior get captured by cavemen. Brilliant.

A lot of this issue's little focus moments are for Wolverine. Again, this is going to be hard for you kiddies to understand, but in the early days of the All-New, All-Different X-Men, fans HATED Wolverine. Really--Wolverine was unpopular. He was a rude little jerk who didn't play well with their clean, squeaky heroes. Byrne has said that one of his goals when he came on board was to make the fans like Logan, without softening his character. Here we can see some of the work to that effect.




Rapport with savage beasts, check. Vicious killer (as vicious as you could be as a hero in a Code book, at least), check. Tough badass? Check! And all of that was in the space of 3 pages, so Project: Make Wolverine Ridiculously Popular was well under way.

So our heroes reach the arena where the others are to be sacrificed. Question: how do you execute a man made of living metal?

Fortunately, Nightcrawler frees Cyclops before things go too far.



This last panel encapsulates, in part, why Byrne/Austin worked so well--they know how to draw team action. Yeah, there's not much background in this panel, but everybody is doing something: Nightcrawler is wrestling with a goon, Cyclops is using a precision shot to free Banshee, Colossus is burst free with Kirby-like power. They always had a lot of things happening in their panels, even if it was just showing various people's various reactions. Without making the art overly busy or cluttered, they managed to give a "three-dimensional" feeling to their art. This was fairly unique to team books of the day, which all too often just focused on one character acting, while everyone else stood flat-footed and watched.

Anyway, Garrok takes off:
Why? To "re energize himself" from the city's power grid, of course!

But Scott can't let that happen:

Which of course results in:



Sean rescues Scott...

But Ororo is less successful rescuing Garrok:


And there you have the best and worst of Claremont in a nutshell. There was definitely a deeper level of characterization at work in the X-Men than was being seen in most contemporary comics books, even at Marvel. But there was also a...shall we say, lack of subtlety in applying it...a hammerhead approach, as if he didn't trust his audience to follow what he was doing, or the artist to explain it. You could never have Storm feeling claustrophobic without Claremont having to explain, in detail, her childhood trauma, again and again. You could never have an emotional scene without one of his characters serving as a narrator, pontificating to the audience on what emotion we were seeing and what it meant. At times it could feel very condescending to the reader, particularly the older ones whom the good characterization was attracting.

Well, the X-Men pack up and leave the Savage Land...in a wooden boat. Not smart.

So Storm's ability to sense weather works like Deanna Troi's ability to sense emotions: state the freakin' obvious. And isn't the point of having a "weather goddess" around her ability to control things like that??!?

That's the end of our issue. It's not the greatest story by any means. Garrok is really a crap villain, who doesn't do much...Ka-Zar is not really used at all. Claremont and Byrne were not quite at their peak yet. But they were getting there.

The X-Men globe trot a bit next, to Japan and Canada, make it home, deal with Arcade, go to Scotland to fight Proteus, face off with the Hellfire Club, deal with the Dark Phoenix saga....

Did you notice anything about that list of stories? There's not a ton of "human vs. mutant" angst stories, are there? Yes, earlier they had had a Sentinel story, and of course Byrne would leave the X-Men with Day of Future Past. But there wasn't the over-arching obsession with "us versus them" stories, of "our persecuted species" tales. It was still there, in the background of many stories...but it didn't dominate. The X-Men were mutants, but that wasn't their exclusive concern. We weren't constantly deluged with "humans are going to wipe us out" stories, with an increasingly bleak world view. We weren't getting visitors from 17 alternate futures telling us how much life was going to suck for mutants, or the constant dread of genocide. I mean, I got the metaphor, you're preaching to the choir, bro. Can't we just fight a super-villain once in awhile??

Unless, of course, that super-villain is the evil clone of the son you had with a demonically transformed clone of your dead lover. Oh, too late.

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

You know, I never got into Ghost Rider...just not my cup of tea, I guess. But when I see this cover...check out this synopsis (from GCD):

Johnny is trapped in a ghost town when he is confronted by a prospector with amazing powers and the two are captured by a giant ship spouting motorcycle riding robots.

Wait a minute--a cover shout-out to Close Encounters, with a giant space ship spewing out motorcycle riding robots? AND prospectors with amazing powers??

Hmmm, I'd better find this book...