Thursday, May 20, 2010

Tales From The Quarter Bin--Marvel Chillers #7!!

Why was 1976 such a grand time in the Marvel Universe?

Because where else could you get...

...a Tony Isabella/John Byrne story starring Tigra and Red Wolf...

...which turned into a Jim Shooter/George Tuska slugfest pitting Tigra and Red Wolf against the Super-Skrull and a jumpsuited robot, in a battle to the death for a mystical Indian totem stick known as the Soul Catcher...with a cover by Jack Kirby, to boot!!

Sadly, this was the last issue of Marvel Chillers, as by 1976 it seems the world was either not ready for such awesome radness, or the time was rapidly passing for anthology titles starring non-stars. The first two issues of Marvel Chiller starred Modred the Mystic, for crying out loud!!

Tigra soon turned up in the pages of the Fantastic Four, and a couple of years after that, she joined the Avengers, where she's led a quiet, controversy-free career ever since...

Red Wolf? He turns up once in awhile, most recently as part of the Texas team of The Initiative...and it turned out that his wolf Lobo was really a Skrull. (Yes, I know that's the same stunt they pulled with Amadeus Cho and Kirby. Reason #6,457 that Skrullapalooza stunk...)

It is interesting...in these two issues he's referred to as "The Indian Avenger" 4 times. Given how much time Marvel has spent trying to build up the Avengers brand, you'd think that somebody would latch onto that and give him at least a back-up series or something (re-branded as something more politically correct, of course...)

Oh, and the Super-Skrull got sucked into the Soul Catcher, only to get released the following year to fight Spider-Man, the Human Torch and Ms. Marvel in Marvel Team-Up by Claremont and Byrne.

Like I said--Marvel circa 1976: pretty rad place.

1 comment:

Abe Lucas said...

"and a couple of years after that, she joined the Avengers, where she's led a quiet, controversy-free career ever since..."

Oh, really? She's positively frightening in this post! ;)

http://slaymonstrobot.blogspot.com/2010/05/avengerspalooza-1-i-guess-tigra-didnt.html