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...

The Fantastic Four #213 December 1979 In Final Battle! Script: Marv Wolfman Illustrations: John Byrne & Joe Sinnott Letters: J Costanza Colours: Ben Sean In the last post (Thor #290) I mentioned that the ongoing story in Thor at the time had started life in Jack Kirby's Eternals series, and was moved over to Thor when that book was cancelled. Something similar was happening at the same time with the Fantastic Four picking up on a story from Nova, which ended its original twenty five issue run in mid 1979. While Nova himself had left the stage by this point, we join the Four here at the climax of a battle between Nova's arch-nemesis The Sphinx and the planet-devouring all powerful being Galactus himself. The Four have been aged by Skrull technology, or at least three of them have. The Human Torch is still very much his old, or young, self. And also in the mix is Terrax, who at this point is the Herald of Galactus. Both Terrax and the Sphinx would ...