80s Marvel

Amazing Spider-Man #199 Writer: Marv Wolfman Pencils: Sal Buscema Inks: Jim Mooney Letters: Joe Rosen Colours: G. Roussos Spidey's final appearance of the decade in Marvel Comics sees the wall-crawler facing off against the devious Mysterio in a complex story that leads into the anniversary issue #200 with a rare appearance from the burglar who shot Uncle Ben. As our story opens, Pete believes that his beloved Aunt May is dead, and he is chained to the bottom of a swimming pool full of water. All is not what it seems, of course. And where Mysterio is involved, it never is. I suspect that this storyline was a major inspiration for the recent Spider-Man: Far From Home movie. We see Mysterio at his best. His illusions part stagecraft, part hypnosis. Spidey has to battle through a hallucinatory sequence, unable to trust even his Peter-Tingle (or Spider-Sense, as it was properly called here.) There is a rather charming sequence in the middle of the book, whe...

Uncanny X-Men #128 December 1979 The Action of the Tiger! Chris Claremont: Writer/Co-plotter John Byrne: Pencils/Co-plotter Terry Austin: Inker Tom Orzechowski: Letters Glynis Wein: Colours Well here's a treat. Claremont and Byrne X-Men. Comics in this period rarely came with a pedigree like this. What can be said about this epoch-shaping, genre-defining, nailed-on classic run that has not been said already? We find ourselves here on the road to the original Dark Phoenix saga, and of course, as this is Claremont, events are very much already in motion. Every mention of Jean's powers seems charged with foreshadowing, even though the Dark Phoenix story proper is still some way off. For the time being, Jean is simply Phoenix. For now, the merry band of mutants find themselves up against the reality warping Proteus, the mutant son of Moira McTaggart, formerly held under the codename "Mutant X". The story takes place in Edinburgh. Claremont was born ...

Captain America #240 December 1979 Gang Wars! Guest Scripter: Alan Kupperberg Plot: Paul Kupperberg Pencils: Alan Kupperberg Inks: Don Perlin Letters: J Rosen Colours: G Roussos Cap takes on some old-school hoodlums down at the Coney Island arcade in this by-the-numbers filler issue. Back in the day, comics editors would sometimes commission filler issues or inventory stories. These were self-contained, one-off tales that could easily be inserted into a long running title if the writer or artists were for any reason unable to get the regular book out on time. It was a good way for writers to break in, but the restrictions of the format meant that the stories themselves were rarely memorable. You often get the feeling that these kind of stories were written without a specific hero in mind, and had been tailored to fit the character. Gang Wars suffers from the worst of these issues. We get Captain America, but no Steve Rogers, no regular supporting cast at all. He spend...

Just a quick note to catch up on where this is all going. The idea was to use the December 79 titles as a run-in, to allow me time and space to develop how I want to write and present these things, to let me get a real feeling for what exactly this thing is that I am doing. So far I am hitting the schedule of posting every Tuesday. I feel that when I get to the real stuff, the Jan '80 material, I will probably want to increase the frequency of these posts. Marvel were not producing anything like as many monthly titles back then as they are now, but I would prefer to keep close to a real-time format, covering about a month's worth of comics every month. That seems manageable, without this becoming a major time-sink. If I could find a way to make this thing pay for itself, of course, then I would be happy to post a lot more, and a lot more often. There are a few other thoughts. I would like to extend this beyond 80s Marvel. Whether that means 80s DC, or more contemporary...

Master of Kung Fu #83 Warriors of the Golden Dawn pt 1: The Phoenix and the Snake Writer: Doug Moench Pencils: Mike Zeck Inks: Gene Day Letters: Diana Albers Colourist: Benjamin Sean Shang-Chi is a character I have never really read before. And this issue barely features him. Originally conceived as the "son of Fu Manchu", Shang-Chi seems to be part homage, part pastiche of a variety of pulp and martial arts sources. Dr Fu Manchu is the starting point here. Sax Rohmer's deeply racist villain was a caricature of Orientalist tropes, embodying the cliche of the "yellow peril". When Marvel tried, and failed, to secure the rights to adapt David Carradine's Kung Fu tv series, they instead bought the rights to Rohmer's problematic supervillain. Reportedly Jim Starlin, who helped design and introduce the character of Shang-Chi left the book when he realised just how offensive Rohmer's books had been. But at this point, all of that is long ...

Machine Man #12 Where Walk The Gods! December 1979 Script: Marv Wolfman Art: Steve Ditko Letters: Irv Watanabe Colours: Bob Sharen It is funny how quickly these comics start to become significant on a personal level. Last time, we looked back at Marvel Two In One #58, a comic I had never read before, but had been reading about for decades as it played a pivotal role in the early career of Quasar, one of my favourite Marvel characters. And this Machine Man story is one I had actually read before, when it was reprinted as a backup strip in the pages of the UK Transformers title. Beginning life as a character in the Marvel adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey of all places, Machine Man was created by Jack Kirby but here appears written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Steve Ditko. As a "living robot", Machine Man often brought a philosophical outlook to the superhero business, exploring questions of identity, morality, power and ethics. Here, the renegade androi...