Way-Out Mummy...

When Marvel's first stab at boiling up their own line of horror books fizzled, the Bullpen reverted to a variant of what it did best.  Instead of superheroes with problems, it would be - monsters with problems.  Their candidates - a Marvel variant on the Universal monsters - Frankenstein, Dracula, a werewolf, and a mummy (actually, there was a zombie, too.  We'll get to him another time) (oh and a golem, and some others.  We'll get to those another time, too).

The Living Mummy made his entrance in Supernatural Thrillers, for my money, the best of Marvel's short-lived anthology titles.  ST, instead of the usual watered-down EC riffs trotted out in most other titles (DC, Marvel, Gold Key or anyone else), published full-length adaptations of classic spooky stories and novels - Classics Illustrated - with monsters.  Most of them were pretty damn good, too.

But, I'll get to that too another time.  For now, we're here to talk about The Living Mummy.

The Living Mummy was N'Kantu, chieftain of the Swarilis, an African tribe enslaved by the Egyptians 3,000 years ago.  For leading a slave revolt, N'Kantu finds himself mummified alive and buried in a sarcophagus.  He ends up breaking out and running on a brief rampage through Cairo, where he encounters Dr. Skarab, a descendant of the Egyptian sorceror Nephrus, who was responsible for N'Kantu's mummification.  This was followed by another rampage in NYC, before N'Kantu found himself spirited off to the alien dimension of The Elementals, godlike beings with elemental powers who enslave N'Kantu and send him back to Egypt to retrieve a mystic ruby scarab that has power over them.  N'Kantu ends up rebelling and, with the help of Dr. Skarab, uses the scarab to destroy them.

In truth, N'Kantu was one of the least interesting of the Marvel monsters, story-wise.  After a couple issues helmed by madman Steve Gerber, the series was taken on by the more workman-like Tony Isabella, and later, newcomer John Warner.  Val Mayerik drew all but the first and last stories, and his scratchy, erratic art was sometimes very effective, and sometimes not.  

Despite a decent start, and a few good issues (8,9, and 10, bascially), Isabella didn't really exploit the atmospherics of the mummy milieu, instead letting the whole thing devolve into a rather weird superhero title (a common problem with the Marvel monsters).  In the end, its a small footnote of the brief Marvel Horror Bust.  But I had issue 9 as a kid, and it remains a sentimental fave.

Nova

Nova makes his 1976 debut

Nova made his first newsstand appearance in the summer of `76 (aaah... Bicentennial Minutes), but his origins are actually older than that.  Marv Wolfman  cooked him up as far back as 1966, for a fanzine he published in his pre-Marvel days (Super Adventures).  Wolfman would polish up the basic concept and character design over the years, and finally in the mid-70's he got a makeover via Wolfman and John Romita for appearance in an actual Marvel title (interestingly enough, Nova got his own book from day-one, bypassing the usual appearances in Marvel Spotlight or Marvel Premiere, or guest-shots in other books).  I guess someone musta believed in Nova.

Nova is the story of high school kid Richard Rider.  Richard Rider is a putz.  When we first meet him, he's losing an important high school basketball match - to the girls team!!  Bullied by the Brom Bones-like Mike Burley (all he can do in response is apologize), and permanently mired in self-pity.

Moping around the local ice cream shop, Richard is suddenly hit by a force beam from space and lapses into a coma.  While unconscious in the hospital, Richard learns he's been nominated as "Centurion Nova Prime," and that he's inherited powers from the former champion, an alien being of unknown origin.  Oh, and he's supposed to beat down something named Zorr. 

(Am I the only dork who notes a rather profound resemblance to the origin of Ultraman in the now-legendary Japanese sci-fi series?)

After becoming conscious and releasing some laser beams from his eyes, Richard goes home, apparently no worse for wear.  But the next day, he undergoes a startling transformation.

As such, Rich learns that, as Nova, he can fly, has super-strength, is near-invulnerable, and can do complicated math problems(!).  Oh, and pick up police radio signals though his helmet.

Well, soon enough Zorr - "the most inhuman creature this universe has ever known" (weren't there already several contenders for that title flitting about Marvel's outer space?) shows up.  He turns out to be a rather uninteresting big galoot.  After a rather pointless battle, the original Nova's last act is to disintegrate Zorr from his spaceship, in orbit around earth.

This doesn't exactly make a lot of sense (why didn't the original Nova distingrate Zorr BEFORE he tore up part of Long Island and knocked Richard around?), and it doesn't exactly make for an interesting hero (deus ex machina rarely does).  Nova was off to a shaky start.

Issue 10 features almost all of Nova's rogue's gallery

Issue 2-3 wasted little time in introducing some new menaces for Nova to fight.  There was The Condor, basically a knock-off of The Vulture, only black, and the more interesting Powerhouse, a young guy with the power to drain life energy and turn it into super-strength.  Actually - power-wise, Powerhouse wasn't interesting at all - his saving grace was that he was unusual - an amnesiac who was largely in thrall to Condor and challenged by his own moral doubts about taking part in criminal capers.  Next there was Diamondhead, a typical tough-talking Marvel thug, who happened to be literally constructed of diamond - making him well-nigh invulnerable and stronger than the average nebbish.

With issue 6, the title took a bizarre turn with the introduction of The Sphinx, a vague sort of knock-off of Jack Kirby's menacing and complex Darkseid, whom, it seems, Nova's rogue's gallery (Condor/Powerhouse/Diamondhead) needed to dispose of in order for Condor to become "emperor of crime".  Exactly why this was so was never made very clear, since The Sphinx didn't seem to be particularly involved in any criminal activities - he mostly sat around brooding and yelling at his underlings while (apparently) planning world domination.  Or something. Mostly it seemed he was just a bored immortal.  

In any case, Nova's battles with Condor/Diamondhead/Powerhouse AND The Sphinx took up several issues until The Sphinx ended it by (a) burying Diamondhead in a mountain (b) wiping Powerhouse's memory even more than it had been and teleporting him to London and (c) turning The Condor into an actual condor.  Finally, he and The Sphinx slug it out, The Sphinx being convinced that Richard has some information in his mind (via the Nova takeover thing) that he needs to become un-immortal (had Marv been reading Kirby's Fourth World books?  Nah...).  He finally gives Nova a pass, impressed by our hero's never-say-die spirit, but vows to return. So much for the rogue's gallery I guess.

In between, there's the bizarre "Nega-Man" story, in which Richard's friend Caps is kidnapped by his own uncle, who's been killed, then resurrected, by a weird polyhedron-shaped critter from the far future, which has transformed him into a faceless, energy-bolt throwing whatsis. This strange little interlude is probably the series high point, storywise.

The inevitable Spidey cross-over

Next up came the near-inevitable Spidey cross-over (Thor had shown up in issue 4), a two-parter which carried into Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man, featuring a mystery centered on the murder of Richard's never-before(or again) mentioned scientific genius uncle.  Nova and Spidey had the expected dust-up before finally joining forces to solve the less-than-gripping mystery.

I remember being very excited about Nova as a kid.  A new Marvel superhero, and me getting in on the ground floor.  I intended to collect it, but over time I found myself passing it up in favor of other titles, and not missing it.  When I did check in again, late in its run, I wasn't being drawn back.  Re-reading it today, its easy to see why my interest faded - and why the title never really took off.

It had promise.  The premise was to do a simple superhero comic, free of much of the increasingly complex Marvel backstory (to this end it was set in Long Island, away from the main stream of Marvel superhero action), and reminiscent of DC's 60's titles, such as Green Lantern (an obvious influence) and the early days of Spider-Man (it was marketed as "In the Tradition of Spider-Man").  Intended partly as a way to introduce new, younger comics fans to the Marvel universe, a kind of Marvel gateway drug, if you will.  That notion was increasingly downplayed in the latter half of the run, with numerous tie-ins to the larger universe.  And while it might have hosted a high-school kid hero, the title never even came close to capturing the old Spidey magic.

There's the villains.  Superheroes need strong and memorable antagonists.  By way of contrast: the first two-dozen issues of Spider-Man introduced The Vulture, Dr. Octopus, The Sandman, The Lizard, Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, and The Green Goblin (among others) - all classic villains who are still around in some form to this day.  The best Nova could come up with was The Sphinx (who as already mentioned was a pale Darkseid riff), and the conflicted Powerhouse - who's only interesting quality was that he was conflicted.  Once The Condor was gone, there was nothing left for him.

Rich Rider: The Spectacular Sad Sack

Big problem: the main character - Richard Rider himself.  As Nova he's engaging but bland.  Out of costume he's completely colorless - a nice kid, but without any distinct personality whatsoever.  His only distinguishing trait is self-pity, which he wallows in constantly.  This has the effect of making him thoroughly unappealing. Yes, Peter Parker in the early days was a dork who, yes, often hosted his own personal pity party.  But it's worth noting that, while Peter P could fall into self-flagellation, he was also often angry, frustrated, vengeful, and occasionally puffed-up with self-confidence after a victory - enough that he sometimes shot himself in the foot.  P.P. was a junior scientific genius with an unusually burdensome home life.  In his alter-ego as Spider-Man, he was a cocky wisecracker and funny as hell, even when he was fighting for his life.  His character also developed over time: in later issues, he not only became more confident - standing up for himself against bullies from Flash Thompson to J. Jonah Jameson - and more attractive to girls, in large part because of his growing self-confidence and pride.  This was an interesting, even realistic, touch.  Having fought for his life again and again (and condemned in the media), obnoxious jocks and flighty girls weren't likely to intimidate him much.

Conversely, Rich never seems to gain much confidence, constantly putting himself down for his less-than-spectacular victories.   Often he screwed up, making errors in judgment or fumbling his powers, then berating himself for not practicing his skills more. This actually could have been developed into something interesting - a young superhero learning to handle his powers.  But not much came of it.

The supporting cast needed work, too.  Rich's girlfriend Ginger Jaye was the perfect girlfriend every nice high school guy would want - but she didn't have much personality (and it was hard to understand what she saw in a sad sack like Rich).  Bernie, a wisecracking Jewish kid who dropped Yiddish phrases a lot, actually had some color to him.  School bully Mike Burley was later revealed to be an emotionally abused kid, pushed by perfectionist parents - a novel and realistic idea vs. his being merely a typical thug.  Rich's younger brother was a pest - but that was intentional.  His dad was an overbearing tyrant.  The others were all ciphers.  Characterization was one of Wolfman's strengths on Tomb of Dracula, but here there was only a hint of it.

There's an overall feeling with Nova that there wasn't much investment in it, by anyone.  Marv Wolfman was one of the more prolific comics writers of the 70's/80's. Some of his stuff was excellent (much of his run on Tomb of Dracula).  Some of it was outright bad.  I suspect his prolificacy had something to do with that. Wolfman has said that he loved writing Nova, but  there's a lack of passion to the whole thing.  

The first two issues were indifferently drawn by John Buscema (Buscema never liked superheroes anyway).  With issue 2, his brother Sal took over.  Sal was a prolific Marvel artist in the 70's, drawing many titles, and while always professional, he was never very interesting or inspiring (though he did do some nice stuff in the late 60's/early 70's).  One got the feeling was largely phoning it in; the artwork on Nova is generally workmanlike and no more, and frequently rushed-looking.  Details get dropped or forgotten. Rich's friend Caps (so named for his ever-present baseball cap - baseball caps were less de rigeur back in the Disco era) is supposed to be a fellow high-schooler, but looks about 12.  He's also supposed to be overweight, according to certain comments, but isn't drawn as a fat kid.

Later, Buscema was replaced by the legendary Carmine Infantino on art chores.  Infantino is one of the great comix artists, having been the Main Man on The Flash for years, and bringing high-quality work to Batman in the late 60's. The kind of clean, bright work he brought to The Flash might have worked great for Nova, but he didn't bring that to this or anything else he did at Marvel).  His characters often looked crude and even grotesque.  Dark, moody inks by the normally very fine Tom Palmer didn't help.

A disappointing Diamondhead, depicted by Carmine Infantino

 I think in many ways that sums up Nova: no one involved really seems to have brought their A-game.  Reading through the series, there's an air of - "ho hum - another Marvel superhero - let's trot out the tropes" about the whole thing.  No one really seemed to have their heart in it.

After issue 12 (the Spidey team-up), Nova began to noticeably run out of steam, fast.  The stories became less and less interesting, potentially compelling sub-plots went nowhere.  New characters who were even more underwhelming than the earlier ones were introduced.  Everyone stopped growing.  Old villains such as The Sandman, Dr. Sun (a Wolfman creation from ToD, and hardly a welcome return) and the hoary and racist Yellow Claw (yeesh) did nothing to help.  The series was finally euthanized with issue #24, as Wolfman folded the storyline into the gawdawful intergalactic epic he'd been running in Fantastic Four.  The Sphinx was finally (and temporarily) laid to rest.  Nova went on to become a guest star in the popular toy tie-in ROM, where, in issue 24, Rich Rider was suddenly, and rather unceremoniously, stripped of his powers and transported back to earth, to pick up his boring teenage life.  Wonder how that went?

There have since been other Novas, with different identities.  I must plead ignorance at this time.  For better or worse, the Nova I knew was poor little Rich Rider.  At least someone remembers him.

 

Nova says goodbye in his final issue, with a great cover by Rudy Nebres.  Win a no-prize if you can spot the joke here...

Some links....

The Nova Prime Page -  here's a page for the true Nova-phile.  Issue summaries and all kinds of info on all the various Nova incarnations.

The complete run of 70's Nova can be had in b&w as The Essential Nova, or the 3-volume Nova Classics in glorious color.

The World's Greatest (?) Comic Magazine ...?

You see, there was this old cardboard box, that was stored up in the loft of our house.  And every summer it would get taken down, and I would be allowed to get into it.  And what it was, was a treasure trove.  A box of silver age comics.

Now, for those of you who don't know, the "silver age" covers the years from the late 50's to early 70's or so.  Basically the second coming of superheroes, beginning with The Flash being reborn in Showcase comics in `56, the rise (and fall) of the "Batman" TV series, and the birth of Marvel comics as titan of the industry.

Most of these comics, and there might have been a hundred, maybe a couple hundred, dated c. 1966-1968 - the years of my brother's childhood, and zenith of his comic book-buying days, obviously.  The overwhelming majority were DC's - Superman, Batman, the Legion Of Superheroes, the Justice League, The Flash, Green Lantern.  A scattering of other, lesser lights (Metamorpho!).  There were a bunch of Gold Keys (Turok Son Of Stone!), some Dells and Charltons.

And these...

My god - just look at them!

To my tiny little mind (I must have been around 6 or 7), even then, it was obvious that these were something special.  Compared to the staid, dull, and often jokey covers of the DC titles, these nearly exploded with action, violence, and menace. The flaming figures flying around in the foreground (while that arm guy reaches out for them, intervening) ... and who's that orange, rocky-looking creature standing in the lower left, looking alarmed? That hairy beast blasting some kind of power at the poor sucker hanging onto the rock (with an arm that wraps around it, no less), and the mysterious figure emerging from the left..And #70 there - a cover I found both exhiairating and terrifying - that huge, green, semi-faceless figure, looking out of the night, over the bodies of three (unconscious? dead?) figures, and the terrified woman in the foreground... no, there was NOTHING like these.

The interiors delivered the goods, too.  The stories were confusing, exciting, and full of life.  I would soon find out that the fellow with the elastic arms was Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic; that the blonde was his wife, Sue, also known as The Invisible Girl.  The young guy who could turn into a flaming figure was her brother, Johnny Storm, aka The Human Torch.  And the pile of orange rocks?  Well he was called The Thing, or to his friends (and that became just about everyone who read the mag) Ben.

The FF's story has been told (in various versions) many times before.  The truth may be lost to history, but this much we do know: c. 1959-1960, DC, then-reigning champeen of the comic book world, had hit paydirt by reviving several 1940's era superheroes, with newer, sprightlier costumes, backstories, origins, and identities, and then combining them with their existing successes - Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, in a team book called The Justice League of America.  Marvel publisher Martin Goodman, sensing profit, gave the go-ahead, or green light, to a Marvel superhero team book.  This was a big step, since Marvel hadn't published any superhero books since the early 1950's, and was currently engaged in mostly cowboys and goody sci-fi comics full of absurd monsters.  Head writer Stan Lee and main artistic workhorse Jack Kirby, in some combination, cooked up The Fantastic Four.

Fantastic Four was probably the most ground-breaking comic book of the 1960's, at least till the undergrounds came along.  It's the foundation of Marvel's whole milieu and practically everything that Marvel is, was, or will be flows from there.   That being said, by today's standards, the stories are often ludicrous, the artwork, despite being from Jack Kirby, the Michelangelo of comics,  rushed and crude looking.  To anyone brought up on the slick, adult-aimed comics of the 90's on, it's probably hard to see what the fuss is all about.  To get the FF now, you have to have context. 

In those days, before they too got Marvel-ized, Superman and Batman and all of the Justice League were a bunch of square stiffs, painfully dull and boy-scoutish.  (The Flash did at least seem to have a sense of humor).  The FF, on the other hand, were a different story.  Reed Richards was a stuffed-shirt scientist, albeit from the beginning an effective leader who had the despicable virtue of being 100% right all the time.  Johnny Storm aka The Human Torch was an-all-too-typical teenager - obnoxious, self-centered, emotionally unstable and headstrong.  Sue Storm was your basic helpless female (they later powered her up, but she remained a background member through most of the 60's and 70's).  And then there was Ben Grimm, aka The Thing, a lumpy humanoid monster. In the earliest issues, Ben was morose and misanthropic, with a hard-on against the human race and especially Johnny, who pissed him off no end.  For a brief time, he was positively disturbing, full of the implied threat that he might one day turn on his teammates.  While he soon mellowed into a big-hearted wiseacre, he retained an element of tragedy and suppressed rage that stayed with the character from then on.  These were anything but typical superheroes.

They shattered every cliche and trope they could find.   They had no secret identities and initially eschewed even costumes (they adopted uniforms early on, but were still often seen in action in street clothes).  Their names and their headquarters were well known to the public at large.  After the first year or so, they rarely referred to each other by their superhero names.  Reed and Sue were an actual item, not an interminable coy flirtation - but, in the first few years, Sue would be torn between Reed and Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, a revived anti-hero from the 1940's who was, in the beginning, the FF's arch-foe.  Ben would soon be paired off with a delicate, blind sculptress named Alicia.

I should digress and mention the FF's rogue's gallery - in point of fact, it wasn't terribly impressive. Most of their recurring baddies were second-stringers.  However, the Skrulls, a race of green BEMs who appeared as early as issue 2, have remained a menace in the Marvel U ever since.  Initially merely a failed (and illogical) invading force, they were eventually revealed to be a warlike galactic empire.  More importantly, the Skrulls had the interesting ability of shape-changing, and could assume the appearance of any human or animal they chose.

Dr. Doom, arch-foe of the FF and foe in general of the entire Marvel scene

And then, most importantly, there was Doctor Doom, aka Victor von Doom, half mad scientist, half medieval sorcerer, with a touch of Josef Stalin thrown in for good measure. Doom, forever bent by his rivalry with Reed Richards, would return again and again in increasingly potent stories, becoming not only the FF's arch-foe, but soon tangling with every other hero in the Marvel pond.  He was eventually revealed to be the monarch of the Eastern European postage-stamp nation Latveria, and an ally of NATO (he kept the Soviets at bay, via his own nuclear arsenal PLUS armies of androids, and numerous other goodies). He lurks in the background of the entire Marvel line, a dark menacing shadow, to this day.

The theme of the FF, it has been said, was family.  And that's how they functioned - not as a team of professional heroes but as a family (which, technically, they were eventually) who incidentally had superpowers and saved the world.  They rubbed each others' nerves and bickered and fought constantly.  They were regularly depicted engaging in domestic activities (eating, shopping, going out on the town or on vacations, etc) and, in time, most of their adventures began with them going about mundane day-to-day business, interrupted when latest menace arrived.

Lee and Kirby tore up the superhero rulebook issue after issue.  Nonetheless, again, out of context, this may not mean much.  The stories remained entertaining but crude and absurd for most of the first two years.  Then something began to stir.  In issue 25, an epic battle between Ben and The Hulk ended with Ben beaten down to the ground, hauling himself up for another, likely futile, try.  The story spread into the next issue with a disastrous "collaboration" with the newly-minted Avengers.  The stories began to take on a more sophisticated emotional tone, and more complex characterization and storylines over the next year.

By late `65, Kirby, who had been gradually decreasing his workload (at one point he was drawing probably 90% of Marvel's titles) and increasing the detail and quality of his work, began to take over more and more of the plotting and stories (though Lee continued to hold the byline and take the credit).   Kirby's drawing, even at its roughest, had always resonated with energy and power, but now that ante would be upped more and more, and with the addition (finally) of a sympathetic inker in Joe Sinnott, it became a thing of beauty - vast expanses of cosmic vistas, outrageous technology, beautiful characters and action that seemed to practically explode off the page.

The stories, too, gained both in sophistication (Reed and Sue married, and eventually she became pregnant and gave birth to a son), and complexity. With Kirby at the helm and soon pared down to three titles (FF, Thor and Captain America), the book exploded with mind-blowing concepts: godlike alien beings; a secret race of super-powered mutations, and the advanced alien race who had created them in prehistoric times; s hidden African kingdom, on the surface a backwater, but, in fact, a repository of off-the-charts technology; an entire anti-matter universe.   In that period (roughly issue 39 til Kirby's departure after issue 102), it really was something special (and let it be noted here that Kirby was doing equally mind-blowing things with Thor, and that Captain America wasn't far behind). Storylines routinely stretched across 4 issues or more, while equally exciting subplots might carry through a dozen issues, as Kirby's imagination stretched the form to its limits.  The FF became less a superhero comic and more a science-fiction title, concerned with exploration and discovery.

As the decade came to a close, Kirby, fed up with Stan, Goodman, and Marvel in general, began keeping his best ideas to himself.  His artwork remained stunning, possibly even better than before, and the stories remained exciting and entertaining, but the edge was missing.  He stopped bringing in new characters and concepts, and largely worked in well-trod territory (though sometimes still quite successfully - even lesser Kirby packs a mighty punch).  With 102, Kirby left the company.  The FF would never really recover.  The title mostly tread water for a decade until John Byrne managed to breathe a little life into it (mostly by bringing back in Kirby-like elements that had fallen by the wayside), but even his (acclaimed, overrated, but still worthwhile) run never scaled the heights of the series heyday.  For me, the FF begins and ends with those 102 issues.  It would be unfair and wrong to say there was never another good FF story, post-Kirby.  But it would be fair and honest to say, Kirby's run on the FF is something the like of which we will never see again.

This being the internet and dorks love lists, here are my Top Ten FF stories from the One True Era.  Note these stories are based on their own merit and their ability to push my buttons, without regard for their "importance" to the Marvel milieu, and ranked in order of affection and perceived excellence...

"The Hulk vs The Thing"/"The Avengers Take Over" Issues 25-26, April-May 1964

Picking up a story from the then-fledgling Avengers title, an enraged Hulk makes his way to NYC in search of his old team-mates and sidekick Rick Jones, intent on tearing the town up until he finds them.  With the Avengers looking for the Hulk in the Southwest, the FF are left to intervene.  Problem: Reed's exposed himself to dangerous viruses in an experiment and is incapacitated.  After Greenskin makes short work of the Torch, its up to Ben to hold the fort.  The two beasts battle across page after page - maybe the most epic fight ever seen in comicsdom and that's saying a lot.  It finally ends with Ben beaten to the ground.  But, in a great moment, he forces himself to his feet, vowing to fight on till the end.  This was grand melodrama and the point where Stan's writing and Jack's plotting turned from mere comic-book stories to phenomenal comic-book stories.

In the second half, the Avengers show up.  Rather than a fruitful collaboration, things quickly disintegrate into a comedy of errors as the two teams dick-wave and step on each other at every turn.

Having managed to screw everything up, the FF and The Avengers bicker about placing the blame

"And A Blind Man Shall Lead Them"/"The Battle of the Baxter Building" Issues 39-40, June-July 1965

Having survived an atomic explosion set off by enemies The Frightful Four, the FF find themselves without their powers.  Bad timing. As they try to replicate their former abilities, a particularly-enraged Doctor Doom invades their HQ and begins attacking the now-powerless FF with their own weapons and equipment.  Aided by then-newcomer Daredevil, they play cat-and-mouse across NYC before returning to reclaim their powers and confront Doom.  Doom was never more unhinged, esp. in his brutal hand-to-hand with Daredevil, and Ben's unwanted transformation back to Thing-hood leads to the most punishing beat-down Doom would ever receive at the hands of his arch-enemies, not to mention melodrama even grander than in the Hulk story, and a downbeat ending that must have dropped kids' jaws back in the day.

"This Man, This Monster" Issue 51, June 1966

Coming down off watching the world get saved in the celebrated "Galactus" storyline, a morose Ben wanders the streets late at night, in the rain.  Taken in by a mysterious stranger, who turns out to be yet another mad inventor, who this time manages to transform himself into the Thing, at the expense of leaving Ben back as plain old Ben Grimm again.  Infiltrating the FF with the intent of bringing down Reed, whom he considers a rival, the nameless mad inventor learns something about his nemesis, and himself.  In a title known for its epic, multi-issue storylines, here's one single-issue tale that showed us comics could be not only exciting, but moving as well.






















"His Mission: Destroy the Fantastic Four"/"By Ben Betrayed"/"When Fall the Mighty"/"...And So it Ends"   November 1967-February 1968

The Mad Thinker turns up in disguise to assist Reed in a plan to turn Ben human again once and for all.  Instead, he sabotages the treatment, turning Ben into a raging maniac hellbent on killing Reed and the rest of the FF.  Ben is depicted as genuinely and scarily homicidal in these issues, with a penultimate climax which appears to leave 3/4 of the FF as corpses.  The wrap-up is a non-stop slugfest between the revived FF and The Thinker's truly frightening android.  This was scary, intense stuff as a kid, and even Ben's sudden return to normal in the last issue doesn't quite take the unsettling taste out one's mouth.

Ben moves in for the kill at the climax of issue 70

"The Black Panther!"/"The Way It Began!" July-August 1966

Now, I did say these stories were chosen and ranked for their merit, not their "importance", didn't I?  Well, here we have a case where the two happily go hand-in-hand.  Kirby and Lee may have created T'Challa, the Black Panther, for marketing reasons, but who cares?  Instead of producing a token black superhero, they gave us one of the coolest heroes in the whole Marvel galaxy who just happens to be black - but not incidentally so.  His African heritage is, in fact, a defining feature.  And while his origin may be loaded with pulp jungle adventure ("I read all the Bomba the Jungle Boy books awready" gripes Ben, growing bored with T'Challa's tale), it's still grand jungle adventure.  Throw in the hidden kingdom of Wakanda, a technological mecca hidden beneath the veneer of a poor, ultra-tradition-bound African kingdom, one of Kirby's greatest and most enduring creations.  The Panther's been one of my top favorite super-heroes since I was about 7 years old, and his intro vindicates that all the way.

"The Name is Doom"/"Within This Tortured Land"/"The Victims"/"The Power and the Pride" issues 84-87  March-June 1969

En route back from another encounter with The Inhumans (see next entry), the FF are press-ganged by S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel's super-CIA, to infiltrate Latveria, in order to investigate evidence of a sophisticated android army Doom is developing. They find themselves held captive in a storybook European hamelt, stripped of their powers via hypnosis and mind control, and ultimately made lab rats in an apocalyptic test of Doom's new toys.  the final issue of the story promises "the most off-beat ending of the year", and for once, Stan was as good as his word, delivering, instead of the expected action-packed blow-out, a long dying fall of a climax that ends on an ambiguous note.  Kirby was watching Patrick McGoohan's late 60's cult-favorite, The Prisoner, and drew on it both for plot and setting, but also a series of  references any Village devotee will pick up.  Doom is depicted at his most menacing, a murderous devil hiding (barely) behind the mask of a benevolent dictator.  

Doc Doom gives Sue and Crystal a real surprise.  Ya think George Lucas might've had this issue?

"The Gentleman's Name is Gorgon"/"Among Us Hide The Inhumans"/"Those Who Would Destroy Us"/ "Beware the Hidden Land"/"The Coming of Galactus"  Issues 44-48, November 1965-March 1966

Although the celebrated "Galactus" storyline, which picks up right where this one ends, gets all the attention, this run, which introduced The Inhumans, a super-powered hidden race that have lived among us in secret since prehistoric times (The Inhumans would remain a major part of the FF storyline for the rest of Kirby's run).  This was where Kirby's imagination went off the charts.  Its also the beginning of Joe Sinnott's run as inker, which caused a quantum leap in the artwork (Kirby had been burdened with inappropriate inkers through most of his run to this date).  Johnny meets his love interest Crystal, only to lose her when the Inhumans are sealed behind an impenetrable barrier, shutting them off from the world.  High melodrama and even higher sci-fi mind-fucking.  This is how I remember the FF best.

"The Origin of Doctor Doom" Annual #2, September 1964

Though Doom had been kicking around for a couple years by this time, and the basics of his origin (disfigured in an accident involving black magic and quantum physics, now with a hard-on for the world and Reed Richards in particular), this was the first time his backstory had been dealt with.  Stan once said he was aiming for the feel of some 1930's period classic film.  He got it.  Gypsies, sorcery, mad science - an origin tale worthy of Marvel's greatest baddie.

"The Sentry Sinister" issue 64, July 1967

Ben, Reed and Sue take off for a much-needed vacation, and choose a deserted South Pacific island. Their destination just happens to be the exact spot where an archaeologist and his guide have unearthed the hidden outpost of the Kree, an alien race who settled Earth in prehistoric times.  They've also unearthed a Kree sentry, a gigantic android guard determined to protect the outpost.  Here's a story that anticipates themes Kirby would explore throughout the next 15 years, in titles such as The Eternals, and the Kree would go on to form a bedrock of the Marvel Universe.  Meantime, it's top-notch Kirby-Sinnott thrills, with a surprising, odd, even poignant (?) ending.

"The Torch That Was", Annual #4, November 1966 

The Mad Thinker revives the android Human Torch of Marvel's 40's, and sends him off to take out Johnny Storm.  A sentimental fave to be sure, but it was my first favorite comic, introduced me to the FF in one fell swoop, and is loaded with stunning Kirby-Sinnott art.

"What Lurks Behind the Beehive?"/"When Opens the Cocoon" issues 66-67 September-October 1967

Ben's beloved Alicia is spirited away by a mysterious figure who can walk through walls.  While Reed tries to solve the mystery, Alicia finds herself a "guest" in a remote technological complex called "The Beehive", where a team of renegade scientists are attempting to create a new life form, one meant to dominate mankind and protect him from his worst instincts. Ben, Reed and Johnny (Sue was mostly sitting adventures out during this period, being as she was preggers) arrive to save the day, but the super-heroics are an afterthought compared to Kirby's flights of imagination, Alicia's quest to learn the nature of the Hive's offspring, and the final revelation of what they've created.  The FF as sci-fi comic.

"Enter ... Doctor Doom"/"The Dismal Dregs of Defeat"/"Doomsday"/"The Peril and the Power"  Issues 57-60 December 1966-March 1967

The most spectacular of the FF's run-ins with Dr. Doom.  This time, Doom has stolen the Silver Surfer's seemingly unlimited "cosmic power", and is flying around the world, laying waste to anything that takes his fancy, toying with the FF.  After managing to (barely) avoid being wiped out several times, Reed finally finds the trick to outwit Doom.  Barely.  Again, this is mostly a showcase for over-the-top action and glorious Kirby-Sinnott art.  Isn't that enough?  Anyhoo, for good measure Kirby throws in The Watcher, the Panther (again) and finally wraps up the Inhumans subplot that's been running since issue 49.

"Prisoners of Kuurgo, Master of Planet X" issue 7 October 1962

Okay, this isn't one of the best FF stories ever done by a long shot.  And if I'm dipping back to the series first few years, there's any number of other choices I could have made, all of them more "important" in the development of the Marvel milieu. But I wanted to cram at least one early issue on here, and it's my list.  "Kuurgo" was the first early FF I encountered, and while it was clearly cruder and rougher (and sillier) than the late-60's gems, it had and still has for me a raw power that practically leaps off the page.  Add to this a story that practically vibrates with the same mood as the 50's era sci-fi epics I watched religiously on Saturday afternoons throughout my youth.

The Torch flies out of control in issue 7

Dracula Has Risen from the Bullpen

In honor of Halloween, I thought I’d start off with a look at Marvel’s horror line from the 1970’s, specifically, the flagship of that line – the longest-running, and most respected, Tomb Of Dracula.

To backtrack a bit: at the beginning of the decade, DC had started to score with a series of new or revivified horror/mystery anthology titles: House Of Mystery, House Of Secrets, (Tales Of The) Unexpected, et al.  Part of what made this possible was a loosening of the comics code, which now allowed the long-banned use of classic monsters and some G-rated grue.  DC’s so-called “mystery” line is worth a story itself, and some day I’ll write one.  But for now, suffice it to say, DC pounced on the chance and hit paydirt.

Needless to say, as they had done in `61, Marvel looked at DC’s success and quickly moved to do their own version of the same boogie, launching a bunch of horror anthology titles.  Unlike DC, Marvel’s all flopped.  This too is a story to be told, some other time.

Undaunted, Marvel also took a stab at horror comics with continuing characters (DC had also scored with The Phantom Stranger and Swamp Thing, after all), and thus unleashed what was essentially their own take on the classic Universal monsters roster: Frankenstein, a mummy, a werewolf, and not one but two vampires – Morbius, the Living Vampire (a sci-fi vampire who had done a few turns in Spider-Man’s titles), and the granddaddy vamp of them all, Count Dracula.

As usual, Jack Kirby had the idea first: 

Jack had this idea to do a book called Dracula, which he thought was going to be very commercial. His idea was to do Dracula at different time periods, an anthology book. One story might have had him in the present day, one story might have him in the past, another would have him in the future. He made the presentation to DC, and Carmine said, "Yeah, we'll get to it, we'll get to it." Then Marvel announced the same idea [with Dracula Lives!]. (Mark Evanier, reported by John Morrow in Jack Kirby Collector 13)

Whether Marvel got wind of Jack’s Drac book, or came up with the idea themselves, regardless, Tomb of Dracula hit the racks in April `72, with a story by Gerry Conway and art by the very fine Gene Colan.

ToD 1 is a fun little romp that pretty well illustrates the pros and cons of the title from its inception.  Frank Drake, an American playboy and son of wealth has blown his family fortune, and his down on his luck when his bud Clifton points out that the old diary, the one written by one Prof. Van Helsing, that’s in Frank’s possession, is the clue to a potential goldmine.  You see, Frank Drake is, in fact, a descendant of the famous Count himself, and there really is a Castle Dracula in Transylvania, and Frank owns it.  If they were to restore the old bat trap, turn it into a tourist attraction ….Off go Frank, Clifton, and Jeanie, the girl Frank stole from Clifton (uh-oh), to Transylvania….

Which turns out to be straight out of a Universal or Hammer film, complete with 19th-century-style village and villagers, and even a horse-drawn coach ride to Castle Drac, in the midst of a storm (of course the villagers tell them not to go.  Of course the carriage driver leaves them out in the storm to walk the rest of the way to the castle, cuz he won’t go near it).  

So, stumbling around in the castle, which is all kinds of spooky and full of (of course) bats, the three get separated.  Clifton falls through some rotted floorboards into a crypt, where he finds Drac’s stake-impaled skeleton, resting in a coffin.  

Now Clifton, assuming that this is merely the remains of some poor sucker who fooled the local populace into believing he actually was a vamp, and got a stake through his heart for his trouble - for absolutely no explicable reason, pulls the stake out!

This, it turns out, is all it takes to bring Drac back to death, so to speak.  And soon the ol’ Count is all over the castle, terrorizing Frank and Jeanie.  And, despite Frank’s desperate and not-entirely-believing-at-first efforts, Jeanie ends up vamped.

So, you can see, we have, as I said, a fun little romp in the Universal and Hammer mode, with some nice, atmospheric artwork, and, frankly, a pretty healthy dose of the preposterous (why in god’s name would Clifton have pulled that stupid stake out?  Why does Jeanie fly off instead of vamping Frank at the end?).  I’ve seen worse starts.

Issue 2 carries on, with Drac and Jeanie trailing Frank to London (where he’s run off, taking Drac’s coffin with him.  Apparently Gerry hadn’t studied his Stoker, since Drac always had plenty of coffins).  There’s some nice business with Drac stalking early 70’s London, of a sort I would have liked to see continued (Drac actually tries to pass himself off as a normal, albeit eccentric, contemporary man.  This approach was later abandoned completely).

The issue ends with Jeanie staked and Drac fled, after another confrontation with Frank.

#3 is the series first milestone, as new writer Archie Goodwin introduces the all-important supporting characters, Rachel Van Helsing – descendant of Prof. Van Helsing, obsessed vampire hunter, and hot babe; her mentor, Quincy Harker, son of Jonathan and Mina (bound to a wheelchair loaded with Bond-ian vampire killing gadgets), and Quincy’s good right arm, the silent Hindu giant, Taj.  

It also introduces a regrettable, all-too-frequently-recurring trope for the series – the Big Showdown, in which Frank, Quincy, Rachel, and Taj (or some combination of some of the above), confront Dracula.  This inevitably leads to the following scenario: each member of the group attacks Drac, one at a time (the idea of all ganging up on him at once is apparently too strategically sophisticated for this bunch), while spouting tiresome variations on statements such as: “you may think I’m just a weakling, but this time I’m going to kill you, Dracula” (Frank) and “this time you will not escape, evil one!” (Rachel) and “this is our final battle, Dracula!” (Quincy).  (Fortunately, Taj, being mute, is spared such a speech).  Drac, meanwhile, knocks them around, inevitably spouting variations on: (to Frank) “spineless jellyfish, how could you be descended from me?!?” (to Rachel) “cold-hearted witch, your crossbow will not help you!” and (to Quincy) “old fool – this time I will finish you!”  

This scene is repeated throughout the run of the series.  Inevitably it goes nowhere – Drac always bails uninjured and never manages to do any serious harm to his opponents.  The “this time it will be different” speeches they keep making at each other quickly become comical through repetition.

Gardner Fox held the writing reins until issue 7, when it was taken over by Marv Wolfman.  Now Wolfman has written just about every title in the Marvel canon, as well as devising a few of his own.  He has written many comics – some have been quite good; a few have been embarrassingly bad.  Wolfman’s writing on the title has been praised to the heavens, but it is not without its flaws.  Prose-wise, it was consistently very good.  The characterization was very strong.  Wolfman shared, in fact, probably improved upon, Stan Lee’s concept of fleshing out characters by giving them believable, relatable motivations that worked no matter how absurd the context.  Thus, he began to put meat on the bones of these characters.  And what was notable was that they were deeply flawed, deeply troubled people. 

Frank Drake is tortured by feelings on inadequacy, constantly trying to prove he was something more than a pampered, broke playboy.  Rachel is so driven to kill Drac that she has nothing else to live for – not even her alleged love for Frank.  Quincy worries about his age, and wonders if he hasn’t wasted his life, having spent the entirety of it hunting Drac.  And silent Taj turns out to have a horrible secret – a son of his own back in India under the vampiric curse.  As for Drac himself, he turns out to be the most complex and interesting character of all – a sinister, ultimate narcissist, convinced of his own rightness and superiority, yet despite all his selfishness, Drac turns out to have other parts to his personality.  Oh and lest I forget, Wolfman also introduced the knife-wielding Blade, a character who would prove very popular (though I myself never cared for him).

Still Wolfman made several mistakes.  Early on, he established that Drac had been alive and active throughout history.  Pretty soon it seemed there were very few years that Drac hadn’t been up and drinking.  This rather undercut the whole concept of his being revived at Castle Dracula (he hadn’t been dead more than 4 years, tops, in 1972).  Making Drac that easy to kill and revive rather cheapened the whole thing.  Also, many of Wolfman’s early issues suffer from some truly dumb plot turns.  This reaches its nadir with issue 19 (“Snowbound In Hell”) in which Drac and Rachel are stuck in the midst of a blizzard in the Carpathians after her helicopter crashes.  This starts off on a bad note (when the copter took off at the end of the previous ish, Frank had been in it.  Now he had inexplicably vanished, and was back in London with Quincy.  Huh?) and gets steadily worse, as Drac keeps a broken-legged Rachel alive, even finding food for her and intending to return her to civilization, while she continually tries to kill him.  Ostensibly Drac keeps her alive in order to feed on her later, since he expects it to be days before they can get out of the blizzard.  However, despite being entirely capable of using his oft-demonstrated hypnotic power on her, or simply biting her and enslaving her (another trick he’s done numerous times before), he simply lets her keep trying to stake him until, finally fed up, he tries to kill her, but is stopped when he is attacked by a ….flesh-eating mountain goat.  Yes, you heard it here first, folks.  Ish 19 is an embarrassment.

The series carried on its way, getting even dumber with the introduction of Dr. Sun, a brain-in-a-tank which captures Drac and the vampire hunters.  The less said of Dr. Sun the better, but Marv apparently liked him – he returned in other Wolfman-penned titles.  By this point in reading the series, I’d started to rule ToD to be a rather overrated bummer.

And then, something happened.

Issue 22 kicked off with a new story, “In Death Do We Join,” the story of a violent, abusive man who returns as a vampire to haunt his long-suffering wife.  This ends in a cemetery-set showdown between Drac and this new, arrogant vamp.  And the story is remarkable.  After so many duds, I confess to picking up this issue with a certain sneer, only to have that sneer wiped off by a genuinely powerful, and haunting tale that will stay with me for a long time.   “In Death Do We Join” is one of the finest tales, and easily one of the finest horror tales, Marvel would ever produce.

What follows is a series of very strong issues.  Dracula takes possession of Castle Dunwick, wherein he finds one Sheila Whittier, a fragile young woman who is being terrorized by her father’s ghost.  Drac, for reasons of his own, exorcises the ghost, and he and Sheila begin a strange relationship, Drac surprised by his own ability to care for the delicate mortal woman, Sheila by the contrast between what she knows to be Drac’s nature, and the way that he cares for her.  The vampire hunters, thinking Drac to have died in a train crash several issues back, go their own separate ways.  In issue 25, Wolfman introduces another vampire – Hannibal King, a hard-boiled detective who hunts vampires and, is himself, a vamp.  This too is completely successful issue and widely  (and rightly) considered a classic

Issues 26-28 involve the search for, and acquisition of, a powerful magic artifact called “the chimera,” which can be used for good or evil (guess which one Drac wants it for?).  This is a strong and satisfying storyline, similar to ones Wolfman would pursue less successfully in his later Night Force series.  It ends in a surprising epilogue in which Drac, enraged by Sheila Whittier’s rejection (she turns away from him when his cruelty and evil nature become too apparent for her to ignore during his quest for the chimera), seeks revenge on her.  Sheila manages to deny him even that, though she loses her life.  The jealous, bitter and twisted Dracula that appears in this epilogue has never been more despicable … or more painfully human.  The equally-remarkable following issue is a kind of epilogue to the epilogue, in which Dracula reflects on previous defeats and frustrations: a noblewoman who engaged him to kill her husband in order to help Otto Von Bismarck take power; a blind child whose abusive father Dracula murders as an act of vengeance on the child’s part for murdering her mother.  The girl does not appreciate this act.  An early encounter with Blade is also recounted.  

During this period, Colan and Tom Palmer’s already quite-decent artwork also climbed to a higher rung – full of detail and atmosphere, the comic was as much a joy to look at as to read, and Colan’s realistic, down-to-earth approach was perfect for the mature, psychological stories Wolfman was telling now.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t last.

With issue 37, Drac arrived in America (Boston, to be precise), and the title started to slide downhill.  First, we’re treated to the spectacle of Drac and Blade fighting a U.S. army platoon mind-controlled by Dr. Sun.  This tiresome Captain America-reject plot took five goddam issue to play itself out.  Secondly, Wolfman introduced the painfully unfunny comic relief character Harold H. Harold, an irritating nebbish who spent most of his time whining and generally behaving like a twelfth-rate Woody Allen character.  Wolfman seemed to like him, though.  He stayed around to the end of the series.  

From here, the series became hit-and-miss.  A one-off riff on TV’s “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” was rewarding.  A long story involving Drac’s takeover of a satanic cult, and finding actual love with one of its members, a woman named Domini, with whom Drac would in fact, father a child, had much of the series previous glory in it.  But an unexpected appearance by the Silver Surfer was an unfortunate and unwelcome direction for the series.  It seemed no sooner had the series peaked, then it declined precipitously.

Around issue 60, Wolfman began to right the ship a bit.  Domini gives birth to Drac’s son, who is killed by deposed cult leader Anton Lupeski.  Domini, using strange magic, and opposed by Dracula, resurrects their son, Janus, who is apparently reborn as some kind of angel (though he looks like a third-rate superhero), who, while professing his love for Drac, still fights him (potentially) to the death.  The series becomes weirdly metaphysical, with Janus making vague pronouncements about Dracula’s demise being foretold by destiny, while Drac has a confrontation with Satan himself, pissed off over various foolish deeds of Drac’s.  Drac ends up banished to earth as a mortal.  Desperate, he hunts down his daughter, Lilith, to re-vamp him.  Lilith, still pissed over Drac’s murdering her mother several hundred years prior, refuses and chases him all over New York instead.  

In its final few issues, the series got back on the track of its best moments.  Drac flees to Transylvania, where, beaten and battered, he surrenders to the vampire hunters who have tracked him there (not before treating us to yet another confrontation scenario – yawn), begging them for death.  Having humbled himself, Satan makes him a vamp again.  Drac flees, pursued by the vampire hunters and a horde of pissed-off local vamps who resent his centuries-long domination over them.  He takes shelter in an isolated home, inhabited by a group of children, left alone by their mother as she rushes their sister to doctor.  With the vamps battering at the doors, Drac is forced to fend them off with a large crucifix, saving himself and the children, though burning his hands to a crisp (“Cross Of Fire, Cross Of Fear”, ToD # 69, Apr 1979).  It was a classic story, the best Wolfman had produced for the title in years.  

It was also pretty much the end.  In that issue’s letter column, Wolfman announced that both he and Colan would be leaving the title with issue # 72.  In fact, there would no issue 72.

The 70’s horror boom in comics … in fact, in entertainment, was over. By `75, all of Drac’s fellow Marvel monsters had been cancelled.  Their reprint titles, which had superseded their failed anthology titles, had gone by the end of `77.  DC had mostly retracted as well, though their horror anthologies would continue to limp along till 1980.  Tomb had carried on for an unusually long time, but its sales were falling steadily.  

In fact, it would be 4 months before issue 70 appeared, in a bastardized version – the final three issues had been written and drawn.  Jim Shooter forced Wolfman to cram the material into one double-sized final issue.  Though somewhat compressed, the story, which covers Drac's return to vampiric form, his trial-by-combat with the ersatz leader of the vampire tribe, his final showdown with Quincy Harker and, finally, an aftermath in which the characters try to prepare to move on with their lives.  It was a worthwhile end to an erratic but often impressive series.

 It was not quite the end of Dracula as a Marvel property.  He continued for another year in a b&w magazine-size spin-off called, again, Tomb of Dracula.  It lasted six issues (there was also the Dracula Lives b&w from `73-`75, and Giant-Size Dracula, a comic-size annual that produced five issues.  I'll talk about those some other time, as well as the b&w Tomb, some other time). The horror boom was off.  Drac faded from the scene other than sporadic guest appearances. In 1983, a Doctor Strange story had all vampires in the Marvel universe wiped out - which I guess tells you how far the vampire star had fallen for the House Of Ideas.

In 1991, spurred in part I suppose by the Francis Ford Coppola film, Marvel reprinted several key Drac stories, and ran a four-part miniseries entitled Tomb Of Dracula, with Wolfman and Colan at the helm again. It was an unsettling piece, with Drac being resurrected yet again, this time by an overzealous, and foolish, occult researcher hoping to achieve vampiric immortality.  The mini-series was reminiscent of Wolfman/Colan's 80's Night Force series, what with its campus cultists and attempts to raise massive amounts of psychic energy to achieve some nefarious goal.  It was darker - we learn that Rachel died an embittered alcoholic and Blade has become a near-homicidal maniac.  Only Frank seems to have found happiness, with a new wife - until she's kidnapped, possessed by the spirit of the dead Rachel, and drawn into Drac's plans for revenge and domination.  Freed from the restraints of the comics code and the mores of an earlier decade, Wolfman/Colan indulged themselves in all the sexuality, violence and gore they could only hint at in the original run - to the point where it became ludicrous (Drac tearing apart a strip club, gouging out eyes and tearing off faces).  Colan's was not the draftsman he once was, and here he let himself go with wild, twisted panels and montages - he was no doubt aiming for surreal, but the effect was often more sloppy and grotesque.  But it was a good story, with a spectacular ending.  It wasn't a bad epilogue.

What's left to say?  ToD was a good horror comic - probably Marvel's best horror comic, overall.  But it had as many failures as it did successes.  The first three issues (mostly to set the scene), issues 22-36, and 60-70 - and a few scattered winners - slightly less than half its run.  It was a good series, but, given its rep, I wish it had been more.