Sometimes you buy crap, and find chunks of gold embedded in it.
I shouldn't be too harsh...after all, it was just a TV show-based comic aimed at the younger set. And just look at that cover...the prospect of Mr. T facing a sumo is just so delightful I gladly dropped a quarter on this one.
But what was really going on inside?? I was so unprepared for this...
Let's not get bogged down in the main story. For reasons too complicated/silly to explain, Hannibal is forced to battle a "master" of the nunchaku:
Gee, that guy looks a little familiar...sorta like Shang-Chi, the Master Of Kung Fu. With the eyepatch, kind of a mirror universe, evil Shang-Chi. Ah, it's just a coincidence, though, right?
Then we get to the main event: B.A. fighting a sumo. And a glorious fight it is, too. Yet, maybe it's because I'm such a nutsy MOKF fan, but I couldn't help but notice a resemblance between the layouts of Mr. T's fight with a sumo...
...and Jim Starlin's layouts of the very first appearance of Shang-Chi, in Special Marvel Edition #15, where Shang fights--a sumo:
And B.A.'s coup de grace...
...is amazingly similar to the one Shang used:
Well, well, well.
The corker comes at the end, when the reclusive millionaire reveals why he secretly kidnapped himself (I warned you not to ask about the plot!):
"Games of deceit and death," of course, was Shang's pet phrase for describing the MI-6 shenanigans he always ended up involved in. Which pretty much seals that this was a deliberate bit of hat-tipping.
And when you look at the date of this issue--April 1984--you realize it came out just a few months after the final issue of MOKF.
So, it seems pretty clear (to me, at least) that Jim Salicrup, Jim Mooney and Joe Giella ("based on a suggestion by Bill Salicrup") decided to do an MOKF homage. In a kiddie comic based on a goofy-ass TV show. And I found it in the quarter bin.
That's why I love comics, dammit.
Interestingly enough, Salicrup did not write the 3rd (and final) issue of Marvel's A-Team. I hope he wasn't put on the bench for his little tribute...or perhaps it was a fiendish plot of Fu Manchu...
But what was really going on inside?? I was so unprepared for this...
Let's not get bogged down in the main story. For reasons too complicated/silly to explain, Hannibal is forced to battle a "master" of the nunchaku:
Then we get to the main event: B.A. fighting a sumo. And a glorious fight it is, too. Yet, maybe it's because I'm such a nutsy MOKF fan, but I couldn't help but notice a resemblance between the layouts of Mr. T's fight with a sumo...
The corker comes at the end, when the reclusive millionaire reveals why he secretly kidnapped himself (I warned you not to ask about the plot!):
And when you look at the date of this issue--April 1984--you realize it came out just a few months after the final issue of MOKF.
So, it seems pretty clear (to me, at least) that Jim Salicrup, Jim Mooney and Joe Giella ("based on a suggestion by Bill Salicrup") decided to do an MOKF homage. In a kiddie comic based on a goofy-ass TV show. And I found it in the quarter bin.
That's why I love comics, dammit.
Interestingly enough, Salicrup did not write the 3rd (and final) issue of Marvel's A-Team. I hope he wasn't put on the bench for his little tribute...or perhaps it was a fiendish plot of Fu Manchu...