Martinex1: Deus ex Machina anybody?
It was recently mentioned that characters that can change reality at
will were annoying. How about the
all-powerful objects? What gadgets made
you gag? What devices divide you? What utensils make you tense? We've got Ultimate Nullifiers, Nega-Bands, Cosmic Cubes, Gauntlets, Lanterns, Rings, Keys, and Crowns. What turns your comic enjoyment upside down?
Showing posts with label Serpent Crown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Serpent Crown. Show all posts
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Super Blog Team-Up: Things Are a Little Different Around Here...
Doug: Welcome to the 5th quarterly edition of the Super Blog Team-Up, a massive collaboration across the blogosphere and podcastosphere (say what?). We're glad you've dropped in, and if you're visiting from another site and are making your inaugural journey to the Bronze Age Babies then we say "Welcome!" Don't be a stranger -- come back often and get in on the conversations. Most importantly, leave us a comment!
Doug: This time around, the topics du jour are multiverses and alternate realities. As you may or may not know, this blog is pushing six years of publishing history, so we've dealt with these sorts of things on many occasions. As you may also know (a quick peek at our masthead should have been the first clue), we're taking our annual vacation from new material and are instead featuring some classic posts from our backlog. Wanting to stay true to ourselves, then, we're going to direct our readers to a "greatest hits" series of comic book reviews that should satisfy anyone's multiversal appetite. NOTE: Feel free to leave comments either on this post or on all of the posts linked below. We have a "recent comments" widget on our sidebar that will direct visitors to today's action. NOTE #2: We've only linked you to the first issue in each storyline. You should be able to navigate through the remainder of the series by using the "You might also like" feature at the end of each post.
Memorable scene - Wanda being possessed by the Serpent Crown and flat-out talking nasty to the Vision. Vizh took out his frustrations by phasing through Hyperion's chest.
Key comment - Karen: Beast served as a mouthpiece for Englehart to make some social commentary. It would probably be considered heavy-handed now but considering where the national psyche was at in 1976, I think it fit in perfectly. "We commit the most outrageous acts...and you go right along, pretending not to notice!" Actually, much of that speech still resonates today.
Memorable scene - Alicia relates her story and asks how it is that Ben is now with her -- he assures her that he'd been in the Great Refuge with the rest of the team. Alicia is very upset, and produces a scrap of the other Thing's shirt as evidence of what she'd gone through. Ben gets an idea, and calls up Crystal on the omni-viewer. Of course Quicksilver is right by her side, and abrasive as ever. Ben brushes him off and asks Crystal for Lockjaw's services. No sooner is the connection cut than the big pooch appears. Dimension-hopping time, friends!
Key comment - Karen: This illustrates again why I have never liked Reed Richards. Besides lobotomizing his son and treating his wife like crap, he rules the FF with an iron fist! "I own 51% and controlling interest -so what I say goes" -that's just typical of Mr. Big Brain. Oh sure, it may turn out he has something up his sleeve, but he's gonna put everyone through hell before he's done.
Memorable scene - Looking through the book with a discerning eye, trying to find all of the "corrections" done to Ross Andru's art.
Key comment - Doug: I guess, looking back on what must have gone on in those smoke-filled rooms at the meetings between Stan and Carmine (and all of their other assistants), Gerry Conway did a good job with what he had. I mean, there aren't any risks at all taken here -- everyone's in their firmly entrenched characterization, neither company's character really gets the upper hand over the other's (although I'd certainly argue that Ock got the short end of the stick in the bad guy dept. -- he comes off looking pretty inept), and even the supporting casts are pretty vanilla. But I keep coming back to -- what would I have expected?
Memorable scene - The Legion is invited to the Kents for dinner while they wait for Clark to return home. Ma stuffs them with a big country spread, and suddenly Clark walks in. The team is really excited to see him, as again -- they'd thought he never existed (in spite of their own memories). But Clark's reserved, and quickly invites the Legionnaires to the basement to talk while Ma cleans up the kitchen. Clark distracts them by directing their attention to a shelving unit with statuettes of the Legion members. But while their backs are turned, Clark pulls out a device that looks like the Phantom Zone projector; instead, it's a Time-Stasis ray and freezes the teen heroes in their tracks.
Key comment - Doug: For my money, this was all very poorly imagined, executed, and bordering on plain ol' stupid. As Superboy had never existed on Earth-2, and as the Legion was going to be kept around (although from the post-Crisis onward, endlessly rebooted), I failed then and do now to see the necessity of this "housecleaning". While DC through the years has had many corners of their universe supported by rabid fan support, the Legion seemed to hold an almost cult-like loyalty among its adherents. This seems to have been a kick in the teeth and a "We don't care" from editorial toward longtime Superman and Legion of Super-Heroes fans.
Memorable scene -The Deathlok series (which ran from Astonishing Tales 25 to 36) was set in a dystopian future, ruled by corrupt military and corporate leaders. Colonel Luther Manning is killed in combat but brought back to life as a hideous cyborg (for some reason, his face always takes me back to that grade Z 50s horror flick, I Was A Teen-Age Frankenstein!) to do the dirty work of Major Simon Riker. Riker had Manning rebuilt with steel-re-inforced limbs and a computer brain. In fact, he had surgeons keep only a small portion of Manning's brain, supposedly the part that made him a brilliant tactician. However, Manning retains his personality and is able to assert dominance over the computer mind, and break free of Riker's control. In this issue, we see him working as a freelance mercenary, cutting down two men in cold-blood. The story of how he became such a ruthless killing machine is told in flashback. Deathlok was one of the first of that wave of anti-hero characters (including the Punisher, who also debuted in 1974) who would change the face of comics forever.
Key comment -This issue gives us the origin, but there would be so much more to follow. It just scratches the surface. Especially compelling was Manning's struggle to find his wife and kid - although with predictable results. The concept may not seem so novel now, but back in 1974, believe me, it was. Sure, we had The Six Million Dollar Man on TV, but Steve Austin was a pretty normal looking guy, leading an appealing life. Not so for Deathlok. I think Robocop probably owes its existence to Deathlok, and it surely has been an influence on other works.
Memorable scene - JJJ and his paper have paid the way for Dr. Doom to address the United Nations at a world conference on terrorism. Yep -- invite a totalitarian dictator and renowned terrorist himself to discuss how to bring that phenomenon to a close.
Key comment - Fred W. Hill: The Spidey strip was in the local paper my dad subscribed to, so I got to read the first few years worth of stories. Certainly fun but eventually I got bored with it, even when I was still gung ho on the montly comics. Spider-Man is much better suited for comic books than strips, IMO. Stan, however,is very wise in keeping the strip separate from what's going on in the comics -- I have a hunch that having Aunt May on the verge of death and Pete making a deal with the devil to save her at the cost of having his marriage to Mary Jane cease to have ever existed would strike most of that dying breed of regular newspaper readers as spectacularly stupid storytelling. The sort of idiocy Stan strove to avoid when he was mostly in charge of Marvel during the Silver Age.
Memorable scene - And then... things turn zanier yet. The Flash, realizing that the power of light and radiation caused a chink in Bork's armor, grabs the totem once again and begins towing it -- right into the sun! No transuit, no protective aura, nothing. Just running. Into the sun.
Key comment - Inkstained Wretch: That Bob Haney plot ... wow... just, umm, wow ... running to and from the sun? ... I am speechless...
Memorable scene - Kamandi himself is a cipher. He leaves his underground bunker (Command D -get it?) where he lived with his grandfather, to explore the world above, a world he had only known through stories and microfilm records. When he returns to his home he finds his grandfather killed by invading wolf-men. He decides to continue his explorations, but there never seems to be any rhyme or reason to his travels. He never expresses a personality beyond being something of a hot-head. There's no emotional life to the character. I'm not saying every comic character has to be a Peter Parker and cry in his beer every issue, but there has to be some sort of inner life, something going on that drives the protagonist and makes the reader take an interest in them. There's just nothing there with Kamandi. He's a blank slate. He seems to exist only as a vehicle to move from one place to another, from one idea to the next, so that different concepts can get shown off. He has no stake in anything.
Key comment - Despite all of this, I do find Kamandi oddly compelling. I'm even considering buying the second Archives edition. Part of it is just this desire to see if anything really evolves out of this beginning. There's so much potential for story-telling. But without a central character to care about, it's just so much fluff. Kamandi (the book) is like a fast food snack when it could be a great four-course meal. It's kind of fun but ultimately it doesn't satisfy. I'm hoping that later in the series it turns around and gains some substance.
Memorable scene - ...and as Wolverine sought to intervene, new team leader Storm swept him from the fray. Mad, claws drawn -- not gonna fight that way, said Ororo.
Key comment - Karen: It's interesting in this future sequence that Rachel says she's not certain that what Kate does in the past will definitely change their own time stream -it might just create a different timeline. Isn't this always the problem with time travel stories? Can you really change things?
Doug: Thanks again for coming by today. If you left a specific comment on one of our classic posts, we're grateful. But if you'd care to leave some general thoughts here on multiverses and alternate realities, we'd love to hear that as well. Come back soon, and be sure to patronize the other great blogs and podcasts in today's SBTU.
Amazing Spider-Talk/Chasing Amazing/Superior Spider-Talk: Spider-Man Reign
Chasing Amazing - The Case Against Spider-Man Reign
Superior Spider-Talk - The Case For Spider-Man Reign
Between The Pages: A Tale Of Two Cities On The Edge Of Forever
Flodo's Page: The Ballad of Two Green Lanterns
The Idol-Head of Diabolu Podcast: Martian Manhunter Multiversity
In My Not So Humble Opinion: The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong
The Legion of Super-Bloggers: Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes
Longbox Graveyard: X-Men #141 & 142: Days of Future Past
The Marvel Super Heroes Podcast (i.e. part of Rolled Spine Podcast): Epic Comics’ Doctor Zero
Superhero Satellite: Marvel Comics' Star Comics Line: “Licensed Reality and Parallel Properties”
Ultraverse Network:Altered Reality: The Ultraverse Before and After Black September
The Unspoken Decade (2 posts):The Ghost in the Machine: Robocop versus Terminator
...and: 5 Batmen, 1 Superman, ZERO HOUR
Friday, June 20, 2014
Blue Ribbon Digest - the Avengers
So your mission today, should you choose to accept it, is to pick seven or eight issues of the Avengers from within the general parameters of the Bronze Age (1970-85). To assist you, if you click here you'll be taken to issues of the Avengers indexed on the Comic Book Database. Scroll down until you get to the period we're using and you can see the issue number, title of the story within, and the cover date. If you click on a particular issue, of course the creative teams, guest-stars, and villains du jour will be listed.
You don't necessarily have to worry about including complete stories. For example, an issue I know I'd include would be Avengers #161, which is the first part of the four-chapter "Bride of Ultron" storyline. It could be considered a done-in-one, though, as it does have a pretty definitive ending (if you call a big hole in the floor, with the unconscious bodies of superheroes laying about an ending). While the rest of the arc is great throughout, I'm not sure I'd include those in my Blue Ribbon Digest given that I can only pick a maximum of eight books. Remember -- sometimes these compilations gave the reader a broad sampling of a particular book. And hey -- if you decide you want to spotlight a particular artist or spectrum of artists, or villains in the same manner, give us a head's up. The denser readers among us may appreciate the method in your madness!
So let's see your list -- which Avengers stories or single issues will make the cut? Here's another that I'd include:
Doug: By the way, I am 48 years old today, and I could not think of a better way to spend my birthday than talking with friends about the Avengers (my favorite comic since I was six years old). If I receive any comic-related love from my family, I will be sure to let you all know.
Friday, January 10, 2014
BAB Classic: The Avengers: The Top 10 Stories
NOTE: This post was originally published on 9 October 2009
With all due respect to David Letterman and all of the other Top 10ers out there, we're going to start with the #1 Avengers story of the Silver/Bronze Ages and move down the list from there. The method to the madness of this more conventional reveal is to show how each story led to the next, or at least how the stories (although all are outstanding) somewhat declined in importance as each order on the rank is discussed.
You might assume that the first issue of the magazine would be the most important. While I would not argue that it has a revered place in Avengers history, it doesn't crack my Top 10, giving way instead to stories that have played specific influence on the mythos. The most important story in all of Avengerdom is Avengers #4, and that is due to Captain America being the single most important member of all who have worn the mantle "Avenger". While not a founder (although later to have that status conferred upon him) of the team, Cap nonetheless soon became the face of the team, the glue that held it together, and its undisputed "go to" leader. And from the depths of the ocean to the bitter cold of the Antarctic, with his Golden Age comrade the Sub-Mariner playing a key role in his revival (as a new Human Torch had played a role in the revival of the Sub-Mariner), Stan Lee and Jack Kirby crafted a tale that would go on to influence the team over the next 45+ years.
If Cap is the face of the team, then the Vision is the body -- it was the Vision who graced the famous corner box for almost eight years (issues 93-184). While I don't have such a statistic handy, I would argue that the Vision has made more appearances in the Avengers than any other team member besides perhaps Captain America. His first appearance and original origin story, crafted by the classic Silver Age team of scribe Roy Thomas and artist extraordinaire John Buscema, stand as a classic and set up numerous plotlines that would be dealt with for years to come -- the relationship between the Pyms and Ultron, the relationship between Wonder Man and the Vision, the introduction later of the Grim Reaper, the ongoing struggle for humanity that would lead to the Vision becoming a father, his ascension to the chairmanship and proposed takeover of the world's computers, and of course his love for and eventual marriage to the Scarlet Witch. His quiet nobility and incomparable range of powers prove him the most dangerous of team members in combat.
There was nothing more exciting than those times when the Avengers formally assembled to draft a new roster. Despite ongoing tweaks in the membership with a member coming or going here or there, it was the wholesale changes that defined the team as a book set apart from other team books. Issue #16 is significant for tying up the Captain America/Baron Zemo conflict that had raged over the previous year, and showed that although members of a team, individuals would still be free to tend to individual business. But the dynamics of this new roster -- of bringing in three virtually unheard of characters, all three of whom had been criminals and all three of whom had certainly been untested in an arena as large as any the Avengers usually clashed in -- would shape the book for the remainder of the Silver Age. Scaling down the roster from five heavy hitters to four less-powered characters helped to focus on characterization, which was necessary to bring along the development of Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. In spite of Quicksilver's on-again, off-again tenure, Hawkeye and Wanda are in that next level of importance to the team directly below Cap and the Vision.
Hank Pym holds down the 4th spot on the list, and not for any of the right reasons. I am a big Hank-booster, and it has pained me to no end to continue to read the raw deal the man has received since the infamous wife-slap panel that occurred early in the 1980's. But prior to that the mental health ball got rolling early, even earlier than Avengers #'s 59-60. Almost from the beginning Hank had feelings of inferiority when in the presence of Thor, Iron Man, and the Hulk; later, he marvelled at the leadership of Captain America. Shortly after, he found himself stuck at a height of 10-feet. All of these things began to put pressure on him, culminating in his breakdown in Avengers #59 when he took on the identity of Yellowjacket. In my opinion, to make matters worse, Janet agreed to marry Hank while he was unbalanced -- cementing the notion that while "normal", he was unfit to be her husband. But with his new powers and (temporary) personality he became someone whom she could spend her life with. Of course, Hank's downfalls would become a regular theme in the book, and we'll get to another one shortly.
We conclude our look at the individuals who have shaped the book over its long and (mostly) glorious history with a discussion of their most dangerous adversary -- the adamantium-armored robot Ultron. A construct of Hank Pym, Ultron has grown in the annals of Avengers history to be severely entwined in the team's legacy in a sort of perverse family relationship. From his "father" and "mother" Hank and Janet Pym, to his "son" the Vision, to his "wife" Jocasta, Ultron has left his mark time and again against virtually all team line-ups. His indestructibility, his lethal encephalo beams, and his computer mind make him not only the team's most dangerous adversary physically, but perhaps its most dangerous emotionally as well.
This story celebrates the brilliance of author Jim Shooter and penciller George Perez, and delves further into the fragile psyche of Henry Pym. Appearing in Avengers #161 in his Ant-Man garb and possessing memories dating to the time in between the first and second issues of the title, Pym attacks the Avengers while in the employ of his creation Ultron. The Oedipus complex of Ultron is heightened by the fact that he wants to imbue his self-created wife Jocasta with the life essence of his "mother" the Wasp. My only argument with the execution of the story is the fact that in the intervening issues, there is no mention of Hank's collapse into the Ant-Man era. It was a great plot device, yet dropped seemingly immediately.
Roy Thomas. Neal Adams. John Buscema. Sal Buscema. The Inhumans. The Kree. The Skrulls. Heroes from Timely Comics. The fate of the universe at stake. At the time this was written it was perhaps the longest story in comics history, at seven issues. Epic is the only appropriate adjective. A timeless tale that spanned galaxies and included an Avengers line-up without peer. Don't miss the wonderful scene where Ant-Man has to enter the body of the Vision.
If the above is Avengers Epic #1, then this would be Epic #1A. We've not discussed Kang the Conqueror yet, who most Avengers fans would place either in front of or behind Ultron for the Avengers vilest villain. This is Kang's (and author Steve Englehart's) magnum opus. Focusing on Mantis and her potential to birth the child who will rule the universe, the tale takes the Avengers across time and around the world. Kang's multiple identities as Rama-tut and Immortus are dealt with. Several dead characters are resurrected, including Wonder Man (in a try-out for his future return to the book?), an assemblage of Silver Age baddies including the Crimson Dynamo, the Titanium Man, and the Radioactive Man attack the team in Saigon, the Swordsman meets his fate, and the marriage of the Vision and the Scarlet Witch is witnessed. There isn't much time to catch one's breath. Oh, and did I mention that the true origin of the Vision (bah! to John Byrne) is revealed?
Oh, you want epics? Yeah, all of the above factors of greatness, with the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Collector, and an old minor Thor villain who becomes a god thrown in. My only quibble with this story is that George Perez did not illustrate the entire run. But that's pretty small, as the plot and writing carry it through. Many have commented that the cover of #177 was one of the most impactful images of their young Avenger-reading.
In some regards, this arc is the sequel to the Celestial Madonna storyline in that Kang is heavily featured in issues 142-144. As a kid I found the subplot with the team journeying to the Old West and interacting with the Two-Gun Kid, Kid Colt, the Rawhide Kid, and the Night Rider just a blast! The Squadron Supreme appears throughout in the main plot, which involves the Avengers attempting to wrest the Serpent Crown from the control of the alternate-reality president, Nelson Rockefeller. Silver Age ditz Patsy Walker becomes the Hellcat, Captain America returns to the team after the Nomad saga in his own book, and a young fellow named George Perez takes over the artistic chores. Not bad...
So, where did I err?
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