Argosy's Blazing Comics!

The Argosy comic book line (if you want to call it that) is one of the most bewildering I've ever come across. We begin with the Blazing Comics G-8 and his Battle Aces #1 featuring the story of "Grun the Primeval". There is never an explanation why Grun is primeval or why he's green. This is a flip comic with a Web-Man back up story on the reverse. 

The cover is by Tim Truman and is an homage to an issue of G-8 and his Battle Aces from 1940 titled "The Green Scourge of the Sky Raiders", and having not read that issue I can only assume Grun is original to that book. I don't remember buying this one, but no doubt it was because of the interior artwork of Sam Glanzman. The story is by Chuck Dixon. This team produces both stories in this issue. 

(Sam Glanzman)

What we have is a twenty-one-page story in which G-8 and his allies battle Grun and injure him. He is then sent by his superiors to work with a mad scientist named Krueger who has invented a lightning gun which Grum makes use of once before it is destroyed by G-8. Surviving his plane crash, Grun is captured by G-8, but then escapes in a mindless fog and returns to the scientist's lair. There Grun wanders through a time machine and disappears for a moment or two much to Krueger's chagrin. When he returns his wits (such as they are) have returned but now he has no memory of the events which have just taken place or where he went in time. 

It turns out that Grun traveled through time to the then present day of 1991 and confronted Web-Man, a superhero spun off from Argosy's very violent The Spider. The Spider's Web starring Web-Man is the title of this section. The story is titled "The Web of Time". Web-Man is really a young man named Rick Worth and his friends with Eva Zane who happens to be the daughter of the scientist Dr. Leonard T. Zane. Zane figures out that Grun is from the past and works to return him while Grun shows up and takes Eva hostage, but is saved when Web-Man fires his "Weblee" gun which disgorges sticky webs. Grun has disappeared in a flash of light (to return to the past) and while trying to free Eva, Rick brushes her breast which embarrasses him but she seems to enjoy. The almost kiss when her Dad shows up. 

We would have to wait two years until 1993 for the sequel which is titled Web-Man #1 (and Time Warrior as the back up on the flip side). Chuck Dixon returns as the writer, but the artist is Greg Luzniak, who draws in the wildly popular (at the time) style of Image Comics. The lead story has two big villains, a French masked man named Vermillion and Dr. Kraken, a villain who has deadly tentacles. Rick Worth is on the outs with Eva but still has hopes and she for her part is partial to Web-Man. In the course of their crimes Vermillion and Kraken capture Eva but she is saved when another "hero" named Blue Steel shows up. He seems to be a Punisher rip-off just as the creators are trying to make Web-Man as much like Spider-Man as they can. The two villains escape but their plot is foiled. 

The back up story for a series titled Time Warrior is titled "The Face of Time" and begins with Grun back in the skies of WWI where he encounters a man who looks much like him save for the green skin. This turns out to be a story Grun is telling his psychiatrist who looks a lot like Freud. Grun is grounded and sent to work with Dr. Krueger who sends him to meet up with Albert Einstein. Later two characters named Stahlmaske and Razorfist, the Scourge of the Cossacks show up at Krueger's lab and confront Grun before getting sent into the time machine. This seems to send Grun into time as well, but as the story ends we are not sure. And sadly we will never learn more, but it does set up the premise that Grun now can travel through time whenever he encounters a big electrical charge. 

The next comic in the Argosy series doesn't show up until later that same year but now Web-Man is called The Spider and the comic is drawn by Gray Morrow. A new writer named Jason Daly takes the helm. The cover is by Greg Luzniak and Bob Wiacek who also produced a two-page "super action" poster inside the issue. The title seems to be The Spider Presents Quiver. 

(Gray Morrow)

"Quiver in the Night" begins with the Spider in the morgue where he confronts to villains before finding Eva on a slab as naked as the day she was born. How she got there is unexplained. The Spider takes Eva with him and in the car offers her an old Web-Man outfit to cover her nakedness. She puts that on, including the mask and the Weblee gun for some reason as well. Then we enter her dream where she is confronted by a killer named the Pumpkin Man who turns people into pumpkins. She awakens and feels the need to summon Web-Man and with a strange green light in her eyes goes on the prowl. Pumpkin Man kills a few more people such as television cook, a mugger, and two newlyweds before he is tracked down by our new heroine. She snaps out of her trance and lets him go. The comic closes with several page of Luzniak art from the earlier Web-man issue and has a back cover which names our new heroine "Quiver", though the story never actually does that. 

Now we skip forward to 2002 and a book titled A Gene Colan Film Starring The Spider. This is a weird wordless graphic story developed from Colan's pencil art which takes us into the subways of NYC where the Spider encounters a strange Bat-Man creature and attempts to stop him with blazing automatic firepower. He fails but as the segment ends does manage to snag the flying creature with a line and is whisked down the subway tunnel. Meanwhile a subway car appears with trapped people and it seems to be operated by The Spider's foe The Kraken. 

(Gene Colan)

And that's pretty much it. There are two pages of Gray Morrow artwork featuring a fetching babe which doesn't seem to connect to anything, and we get a reprint of first chapter of the Spider story "Death Reign of the Vampire King" which apparently is the source material for Colan's work here. (I'll have more on this novel in a later post.) The story is credited to Jason Daly though there is not a single word uttered in this page yarn other than the girl saying "Gasp. Hang on!". This is one of the weirdest books I own but it's not without its charms. Gene Colan was a master, and this sequence showcases his ability to tell a story. 

Also out about this same time was The Spider #1 Sneak  Preview Webman which features a Gene Colan cover with a redesigned Webman along with the Kraken and Vermillion. Beneath this cover though is a reprint of the Dixon and Luzniak story from 1993. 

These are strange comics spread over several years but they are near totality of the output for Argosy Comics save for some material produced in the last ten years which I don't have. I bought all of these in the second-hand market and it wasn't for the story. Artists like Glanzman, Morrow, and Colan always get my attention, even on bizarre material like this. I don't recommend these really, but they are strange enough to hold the interest. 

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MiracleMan Book Two: The Red King Syndrome!

The Red King Syndrome is the title of the second "Book" of Miracleman stories and focuses on our hero's conflict with his creator Emil Gargunza. In the fanciful Marvelman comics of the 50's Gargunza was the Dr. Sivana figure, a gnomish scientist with everlasting evil intent, and in these new tales for a fresh audience in the 80's he's not changed all that much. His motivations have deepened, he's a product of the Fascist states and now has his own agenda to breed superhumans so that he somehow will be able to live forever. He is a ghastly and bloodthirsty figure as presented in these stories, a man utterly concerned with his own wants to the utter exclusion of all others. Not all our characters will survive this tribulation. 

While Miracleman is attempting to save his pregnant wife from the clutches of the mad doctor, Johnny Bates is dealing with his own demon, Kid Miracleman. We are privy to his mind as the two personalities vie for control. The extended story ends with a birth which is presented in quite graphic terms. Not unlike the exploitation movies of the 30's these scenes merely show the biological process, but nonetheless require a warning for readers who might be shocked by such imagery. 

The artwork in these stories is passed among several diverse hands. Alan Davis handles the thrust of the first several chapters, but he is replaced by Chuck Austen who is in turn supplanted by Rick Veitch. John Ridgeway also delivers a very winsome story starring the late Young Marvelman. 

The last Warrior magazine to feature "Marvelman" in a painting by Mick Austen. 

The series moves past its Warrior magazine origins and slips over to Eclipse Comics who reprint the earlier chapters before beginning new material changing the name to "Miracleman". These books feature cover art by Jim Starlin, Paul Gulacy, Tim Truman and John Totleben among others. 

The Red King Syndrom was collected in this handsome volume touting a John Bolton cover. 

Marvel reprinted the stories decades later with mostly Alan Davis covers thought others took part as well. These stories are for mature audiences for the graphic representation of both life and death. A comic book hovers dangerously close to real life, the fantasy becomes almost too potent for many. Good stuff indeed! 

Next time we visit Olympus!

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Tarzan Vs. The Moon Men!

The Moon Men saga is one of ERB's less well known. But that didn't stop Dark Horse from using the concepts in a lovely four-issue saga that closed out Dark Horse's regular Tarzan series way back in the 90's. Tom Yeates is the artist with Al Williamson giving his pencils a lush finish. Timoth Truman is the writer, and he does a bang-up job of blending in three of ERB's yarns. 

The story begins when two lovers seek a quiet and remote location and enter the same cave in which Nu of the Neocene had taken shelter eons before. They find his bones just as ERB described in his novel The Eternal Lover. It turns out the cave is a temporal portal and all of a sudden there pops up a man from the future who claims to be a descendant of Muviro, Tarzan's top man among the Waziri tribe. Soon we learn he is in fact a descendant of Muviro and he comes to the present to seek help from Tazan against a wave of Moon Men who have invaded Africa. This story seems take place in the wake of the events in The Red Hawk, the last of the three Moon saga books. 

Tarzan, his son Korak, and another Waziri warrior go to the future to fight the Kalkars and the Va-Gas, two species from the Moon. The Kalkars had brought the savages to Earth to help them win the planet, but their schemes don't really come together very well. While Tarzan is left to fight the Moon Men and the hybrid beasts they have bred here on Earth, Korak finds some comfort in the arms of the lovely Na-ee-lah, a descendant of Orthis  the man who sparked the invasion to begin with. 

Tarzan must battle Go-Va-Goh the savage leader of the Va-Gas. And it turns out there is treachery aplenty in this cracking yarn that shows a planet under siege. The story is a smart one with dandy artwork.  There is a little confusion on my part about time frames, but I was careful not the let such details ruin my enjoyment of this rousing bit Tarzan adventure. 

The story was collected along with all the other issues in the Dark Horse run in a handy easy-to-read omnibus volume. More on other stories in this collection as the month unfolds.

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Sam Glanzman's Attu!

Attu is another intriguing collection from the great Sam Glanzman by Dover Books. The series was originally published by 4Winds Publishing, an imprint operated by comic artist Tim Truman. Truman is an artist clearly inspired by the work of Joe Kubert and Glanzman himself and opened the door for his mentor to do something different.

(Concept sketches for Attu project appearing Amazing Heroes)

The story is a science fiction and action yarn about a caveman who confronts not only the obligatory dinosaurs but the equally impossible aliens.

I never picked up either of the two volumes from 4 Winds when they emerged in 1989 and 1990.

But somehow or other, I did get hold of Fantastic Worlds #1 and #2 which have additional Attu stories by Glanzman. Doubtless I bought them at the time because of Glanzman even though neither issue features the celebrated artist on the cover. His character is cover-featured on the debut issue, but the art is by Steve Busti and Al Williamson.

Rich Buckler and Joe Sinnott create a knock-out for the second and final issue of the run but it has nothing to do with Glanzman's creation.

Attu the Collected Volumes gathers together (according to the solicitation) the two published volumes of the story as well as an unpublished third volume.

(Rejected cover for the Attu volume)

In an interview Glanzman suggested there was yet another volume but no mention of it in the edition from Dover.

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The Times Of Attu!

Attu is another intriguing collection from the great Sam Glanzman by Dover Books. The series was originally published by 4Winds Publishing, an imprint operated by comic artist Tim Truman. Truman is an artist clearly inspired by the work of Joe Kubert and Glanzman himself and opened the door for his mentor to do something different.

Concept sketches for Attu project appearing Amazing Heroes

The story is a science fiction and action yarn about a caveman who confronts not only the obligatory dinosaurs but the equally impossible aliens.

I never picked up either of the two volumes from 4 Winds when they emerged in 1989 and 1990.

But somehow I did get hold of Fantastic Worlds #1 and #2 which have more Attu stories by Glanzman. Doubtless I bought them at the time because of Glanzman even though neither has the artist do the cover. His character is featured on the debut issue but the art is by Steve Busti and Al Williamson.

Rich Buckler and Joe Sinnott create a knock out for the second and final issue of the run but it has nothing to do with Glanzman's creation.

Attu is due out late this summer and gathers together (according to the solicitation) the two published volumes of the story as well as an unpublished third volume.

Rejected cover for the Attu volume

In an interview Glanzman suggested there was yet another volume but no mention of it in the upcoming edition from Dover.

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