Flo Steinberg RIP, plus the SDCC Thor, JLA and Inhumans trailers (Potential Spoilers)

Fabulous Flo Steinberg by Lopaka42
[CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

It's a strange thing how you can find yourself feeling attached to someone you know almost nothing about but, thanks to that mysterious phenomenon, it was oddly saddening to learn, a couple of days ago, of the death of Fabulous Flo Steinberg, Marvel Comics' legendary Corresponding Secretary of the 1960s.

It was Flo who answered fan mail, dealt with enthusiasts who visited the office in the hopes of seeing where the magic was created and acted as intermediary between Stan Lee and the company's various freelancers.

Not only that but, in 1975, she became a key figure in the rise of indie comics when she published the infamously ribald mag Big Apple Comix, using the services of such industry titans as Neal Adams, Al Williamson and Wally Wood.

For  a woman so closely associated with the heyday of Marvel, she was there for a surprisingly short amount of time, from 1963 to 1968 but she clearly made her mark, becoming a household name for all readers of that company's output.

In the 1990s, she returned to Marvel, as a proofreader and continued to do such work up until her death.

It probably says it all that her demise made The Daily Express, The Mail and The Daily Mirror, and it's hard to think of any other comics company secretary who could manage such a feat.

Her other great claim to fame was, of course, acting as link woman on the Voices of Marvel Comics record from the 1960s and if you've never heard it or her magnificently Bostonian tones, you can find that very recording by clicking on this very link here.

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In lighter news, a few days ago, it was the San Diego Comics Convention, an event that, if it works hard at it, looks fair set to rival the Sheffield Comics Convention one day.

And that can mean only one thing.

That a whole bunch of trailers were released for display at that very get-together.

Obviously, all sane people only care that a trailer for the Doctor Who Christmas special was unleashed. However, even I've grasped that, this being a comics blog, I should probably concentrate instead on the Marvel and DC trailers that were debuted.

The big ones were the latest trailers for Thor: Ragnarok and Justice League.

Of the two, you can't get round it, Thor:Ragnarok looks like a way better movie. In fact, the trailer contains just about everything you could ever want from a Thor movie - including a total lack of Odin - and the closing moment has to be surely the awesomest shot ever included in a super-hero flick.

Not only that but it turns out that Hela's antlers move.

This is the second Thor trailer now where my main concern has been with Hela's antlers. I can only conclude that I should only ever watch films about reindeers.

I must also confess that, every time we see Hela spin round, I start wanting her to start singing the old Wonder Woman TV theme tune. I'm the sort of man who knows how to wreck any film.

Regardless of all that, my incredible magic powers tell me this film will probably be a walloping great big hit.

In contrast, I have to say the Justice League film looks about as much fun as filling in your tax return but I am intrigued to find out why it seems to feature a member of the Borg in it.

Granted, I do suspect he's not really a member of the Borg and that the film doesn't involve a crossover with the new Star Trek show that's on its way. I also suspect that if I were any kind of comics blogger, I'd know full well who he is, but I don't. The truth is I am a kind of comics blogger. A useless kind.

We've also had the release of a new Inhumans trailer and I have to say I'm still not feeling it. In this one, we get to see Medusa's hair moving, which is an improvement on the previous trailer but, otherwise, the project's still leaving me cold. I also feel that putting Rag 'n' Bone Man on the soundtrack is such an obvious (and an already clichéd) thing to do that it merely has the effect of exacerbating the gnawing sense of a lack of inspiration about the project.

But those are just my opinions and may well be wrong. The trailers are below and you can share your thoughts on them if you so wish, or not share them if you do so not wish. As always, there is no pressure upon you to do either.

The Inhumans TV trailer.

If there's anything the world needs more of right now it's adaptations of comic books. Why, there are barely any films or TV shows being made nowadays that are based on the adventures of people from Super-Hero Land.

And so it is that, to fill this massive gap in the market, this September, ABC and Marvel are going to be giving us their TV version of The Inhumans.

As we all know, Marvel have been keen to make the Inhumans a thing for some time now, in an attempt to make them fit the hole created by the rights to the X-Men belonging to Fox. For the last couple of seasons, they've shoe-horned the concept into the Agents of SHIELD show, which is obviously a great idea, as so many people watch Agents of SHIELD.

This in mind, can the new show possibly replicate the success of Fox's X-Franchise?



I have to say that looks very very dull, with nothing at all in it that would make me want to watch it.

An obvious failing is that it presents us with nothing that even vaguely resembles characterisation from its cast. Only one character - who I assume is Maximus the Mad - even gets anything to say, while everyone else just sort of stands around.

This is possibly not a surprise. Admittedly, I don't know what the Inhumans are like in their comic book form these days but, back when I used to read their adventures, they basically had no personalities at all and were just a bunch of super-powers on legs. In fairness, the trailer gives the impression that that policy's been adhered to. I also have to say that, while I'm no expert on acting, the bloke playing Maximus doesn't strike me as being the greatest thespian that money can buy.

I've also seen criticism of the CGI and it doesn't exactly look epic but, let's face it, no one with any sense watches a drama for the CGI, so I don't care about that.

On the plus side, Crystal has the black, bandy, circle thing going on with her hair.

On the negative side, Medusa's hair seems to have no life in it whatsoever.

Come to think of it, do we even get to see any of the Inhumans, apart from Black Bolt and Lockjaw, use their powers?

So, having seen the trailer, I do fear the worst.

But who knows? Perhaps, in a groundbreaking move, they've brilliantly left out the good bits in order to surprise us all when it's finally broadcast. Only time and the Terrigen Mists will tell...

Fantastic Four #45. The Inhumans make their debut: Part 2!

It's time to shake ourselves from our subterranean hideouts because I'm flinging myself head-first into part two of my favourite Fantastic Four tale of them all, as the FF finally get to meet the rest of the Inhumans.

Having survived the collapse of the building they were stood on at the end of last issue, our heroes manage to capture Dragon Man by the simple ploy of no longer trying to fight him, instead letting Sue use her feminine charms to keep him in line.

While the others try to work out what to do with the brute, the Torch goes for a walk, meets a mysterious girl called Crystal - who has superpowers - and is taken by her to an underground lair where he meets her family, who include Gorgon and Medusa.

Gorgon's none too pleased to see him and, with the aid of an Inhuman called Triton, tries to kill him but the Torch escapes and, signalled by him, the rest of the team descend on the site to deal with his would-be assassins.

But that's when the issue's great no-frills climax gives us the last-panel sight of a man known only as Black Bolt smashing through a brick wall to confront them. Now they're in for it!

Perhaps what's best about the issue is that, although it's packed with incident, including the resolution of last issue's cliffhanger, the scenes with Dragon Man, the introduction, one at a time, of the Inhumans, and even the first appearance of the group's flying motorbike, the tale doesn't neglect to fit in the all-important human drama, with the Thing ruminating woefully on how similar he is to Dragon Man, while the Torch fails to get a date with Dorrie Evans and suddenly finds himself someone new to lust after in the shape of Crystal.

The tale's still hopelessly confused and confusing in its portrayal of the Inhumans. It's still not clear whether they're good guys or bad guys, what their motives are or why Medusa - whose clearly now a prisoner of the others - was running from Gorgon.

It's interesting that, at this stage, it's still Medusa who seems most worried about the Torch's well-being while Crystal expresses no concern at all when the others try to kill him. Could it be that, even at this stage, the plan was for Medusa to become Johnny Storm's new love interest rather than her sister? That had certainly been hinted at the last time Medusa'd appeared as a member of the Frightful Four and it's questionable whether the plan had yet been changed.

Just as with last issue, the fact that none of its events make sense when subjected to any kind of scrutiny doesn't matter because the thing bowls along at a pace that stops you asking any awkward questions, and there're some nice subtle touches to the tale too, such as the way Jack Kirby blacks out the Torch's face at times in his early scenes with Crystal, in order to capture a sense of how threatening his presence is to her.

And how can you not love a comic that features the Invisible Girl tucking the sleeping Dragon Man into his bed?

Fantastic Four #44. At last - The Inhumans!

As I roam the deserted tenement blocks of Sheffield, that're earmarked for clearance, strange young women sitting on bits of rubble often ask me, "Steve, what's your favourite ever Fantastic Four story? Is it that one with Galactus, or that one where Dr Doom steals the Silver Surfer's powers?"

And I say, "No. It's the one where the FF first meet the Inhumans."

"Then you're like us!" They say. "Come with me to our underground lair where I can introduce you to my bizarre family and their paranoid ways!"

I say, "Thanks, luv, but I get enough of that at home."

That aside, it's all true. The first Inhumans story is indeed my favourite Fantastic Four tale of. And it all kicks off with the magnificent issue #44, surely as random and meaningless a comic as there's ever been.

Foolishly unexcited by Reed Richard's invention of the dishwasher, the Human Torch sets off in his sports car, looking for some action but gets more than he bargained for as he's hijacked by Medusa - still in her villainous phase.

Gun in hand, she forces him to help her flee a mysterious figure called Gorgon who likes kicking things. While the Torch and Medusa are chin-wagging, they bump into Dragon Man - freshly revived after his last appearance, and up for doing a King Kong with Medusa.

It all leads to a rooftop confrontation, involving the FF, Medusa, Gorgon and the Dragon Man, before Dragon Man abducts Sue, Gorgon abducts Medusa, and everyone else finds themselves trapped in a collapsing building.

There really is no rhyme or reason to this tale, it's carried along on a lunatic energy that sees ideas and actions flung into the pot for no purpose you can see. When Dragon Man suddenly appears by bursting out of the ground, you do wonder by what process this story was planned, and have to conclude it probably wasn't planned at all. Jack Kirby probably just made it up as he went along.

This feeling's especially strong if you've read later instalments. Given what we know about what happens in those, nothing that Medusa or Gorgon do or say in this issue makes any sense at all.

But who cares? What we're seeing is a strip approaching the peak of its creativity, one that means all sense and logic become irrelevant. It's pure escapism and it's great.

Fantastic Four Annual #5. "I will not 'av Psycho-Men in my Jungle!"

So it's 1975 and I'm on a coach headed for that Las Vegas of the north; Blackpool. Before the journey's over, I'll be reading Barry Smith's first ever Avengers story while Don Estelle and Windsor Davies "sing" Whispering Grass on the coach radio. It probably doesn't reflect well on me that such a song can be the highlight of a coach trip but I don't care. The phrase "Guilty Pleasure" is unknown to me, as I refuse to feel guilt.

But, before that moment arrives, I'm reading this week's Mighty World of Marvel and, within it, the Fantastic Four's first encounter with a deadly new peril known only as Psycho-Man.

Psycho-Man is good. Psycho-Man can control the emotions of mere humans and thus have total power over them. Psycho-Man's smaller than the smallest germ and can only be seen because he's inside a human-sized robot he controls with the power of his will.

But there's something wrong. While Psycho-Man's head has a teeny tiny man inside it, inside my head there's a tiny voice that says this story isn't as good as I'm used to from the Fantastic Four. I don't know why - I'm only eleven, I have few critical resources - but it feels like a 100 watt bulb's been suddenly replaced with a 40 watt bulb.

A zillion years later, I read the tale again, as an adult, in Essential Fantastic Four Vol 4  and it has exactly the same effect. To my adult self, it's like virtually every Fantastic Four tale printed in the three years preceding this tale was a classic and virtually everything in the three years following it was no better than mediocre. The feeling's so stark I can practically point to the exact panel in this story when the Fantastic Four's Silver Age golden age ended.

At the risk of being daring, I'll say it's either panel three of page four, or panel one of page nine. The first instance is where a trio of totally unnecessary lackeys are introduced for Psycho-Man to boss around - including one who's dressed as a cowboy(!). In the latter, it's where the story suddenly goes off at a tangent to introduce the Black Panther's first ever encounter with the Inhumans. In both cases, you're left in no doubt that Jack Kirby's now being left entirely to his own devices by Stan Lee when it comes to plotting the strip, and we find the tale being driven along by what seems to be a random flinging together of ideas and action, rather than coherence and planning.

A large part of the problem is that, although it's advertised as a Fantastic Four tale, they're barely in it. This is the issue where we learn that Sue Richards is pregnant. As a result, she and Mr Fantastic are in no mood to go adventuring. Instead, with two of the FF out of commission, we suddenly get the story veering off to Wakanda as the Black Panther and the Inhumans have a fight before teaming up to take on Psycho-Man who, by total coincidence has set up base under an island off the coast of that kingdom (even though we were told three pages earlier that his base is in the Caribbean). Kirby's lack of interest in characterisation's thrust in our faces in this segment as the Panther and the Inhumans team up, despite neither party making any attempt to introduce themself to the other.

Once inside the villain's lair, the heroes are confronted by Psycho-Man's irrelevant lackeys and defeat them. Now, from nowhere, the Human Torch, the Thing and Triton suddenly arrive without explanation, and our veritable army of heroes find themselves confronted by Psycho-Man's creations drawn from their worst nightmares.

With that fight going nowhere, Gorgon shows up from wherever it is he's been and, handily, it turns out his foot-stamping power's the only thing that's effective against Psycho-Man's handiwork, before the Panther, who's been forgot about, launches himself at the villain to stop him. Suddenly, and without warning, from being arguably the greatest American comic book of the 1960s, the strip's lurched into a valley of mediocrity and redundancy it'll rarely escape until after Jack Kirby leaves. So, for some of us, the tale of Psycho-Man represents a minor watershed in comic book history.

Still, not everything was negative about that coach trip. I loved and still love the Barry Smith Avengers yarn and, to my eternal surprise, I still love Don Estelle and Windsor Davies' version of Whispering Grass. The Fantastic Four may have changed on that fatal day but it seems some things will always remain the same.

Fourteen ways to spot if your neighbours are Inhumans.

Thanks to a well-known Australian soap opera, we all know that everybody needs good neighbours. But how do we know if our neighbours are members of a highly advanced secret race that’s been super-evolved by a bunch of aliens to be used as an army in a future war with another bunch of aliens? Well, here’s where we find out.

1.
They can’t get through a sentence without mentioning someone called Black Bolt who they expect to do absolutely everything for them.

2.
They speak English as a first language despite being from South East Asia.

3.

They can’t make their minds up if their house is in the Andes or in the Himalayas.

4.

They all have super-powers but half of those powers are of no use whatsoever, like being able to swim, or being invisible but with a shadow that means everyone can still tell you’re there.

5.

They’ll accept any madman as their king if he sticks a crown on his head and says he is.

6.

They keep accidentally creating a dome of impenetrable energy over their house that they then can’t escape.

7.

They speak only in exposition.

8.

One of them used to be evil but is now good, and no explanation has ever been given for this.

9.
They keep calling themselves a family even though it’s not clear in which way any of them are related to any of the others.

10.
They think they can get what they want just by stamping their feet.

11.
They say they’ll love you forever, in a love greater than all loves - and then promptly marry someone else.

12.
Their weddings get gate-crashed by Ultron.

13.
Even though they’re from a completely landlocked kingdom, one of them’s been genetically modified to only be able to live in the sea.

14.
Their comic always gets cancelled after twelve issues.

Horizontal heroics from a long-gone landscape. The Titans #1.

Has there ever been a greater comic book cover than that of Marvel UK's The Titans #1? What kind of comics fan could resist the sight of all those heroes rushing out of the page at him?

Of course, the other thing that leapt out at you when you first saw The Titans was that it was printed the wrong way up. Surely such a thing was madness but it was also genius, allowing twice as much content at no extra cost.

Admittedly, not all those heroes on the cover could exactly be called easily recognisable. Just who is, for instance, that blue man with the pointy ears behind Nick Fury?

But, if the cover wasn't packed entirely with what you could call Marvel "A" Listers, it was at least a reflection of the mag's not-always Top Line content as the issue kicked off with the Inhumans in a tale written as well as drawn by Jack Kirby, which means the dialogue's often made up of people just describing what's happening and we get a silly plot by Maximus the Mad to start a war between the Inhumans and humans by making the former think the Fantastic Four are firing missiles at them. The Inhuman Royal Family, having seemingly had lobotomies, all fall for this cunning ruse and, within mere pages, Black Bolt's all ready to declare war.

If the Inhumans are ready to launch into conflict, the next story starts in the thick of one as we get Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's 1960s retelling of Captain America's origin. At just ten pages, it can only be seen as a master class in compression - although it does bring home Captain America's irresponsibility in making a young boy his accomplice on deadly missions and it does beg the question as to why Captain America - who was presumably a captain - spent most of the war pretending to be a private instead of just being Captain America.

From one World War Two veteran to another as we're then given the first half of Nick Fury's first-ever adventure as Agent of SHIELD. It's not exactly a secret that I'm somewhat allergic to both Nick Fury and SHIELD but the story does at least feature a flying car, so it has something to appeal to me.

Next we get the issue's only real clunker as Stan Lee and Gene Colan give us the start of a Sub-Mariner epic in which Namor returns to Atlantis only to discover Warlord Krang has claimed the throne of Atlantis in his absence. It'd be easy to say one's outraged by this villainous behaviour but the truth is Namor acts like such a complete jerk in virtually every panel that when Krang has him flung into a cage to rot, you're hoping he spends the rest of eternity there. Sadly, Lady Dorma - who betrayed Namor to Krang in an attempt to win Namor's heart - then helps him to escape in order to try and win his heart. Those Stan Lee scripted women, eh?

Captain Marvel too finds himself threatened by a menace that arrives from underwater as he faces the Metazoid, a Soviet dissident who, exposed to experimental rays, has become a strange inhuman creature. The Metazoid's been told by his masters that if he kidnaps Mar-Vell's alter-ego - rocket scientist Walt Lawson - they'll restore him to normal. The tale's dominated by the Metazoid's struggles with his conscience and endless philosophising as he tries to work out whether he can justify kidnapping a man to return himself to normal. Surprisingly the haunted nature of the Metazoid makes the Captain Marvel tale the best story in the issue, marred only by the fact that some of the pages are printed out of order. Was this a consequence of the printers struggling to make sense of the new format or was it just one of those things that happens?

Throw in a John Buscema poster featuring a whole host of Marvel super-doers, and a plug for that year's Marvel annuals and there you have it; as far as I know, Britain's - and possibly the world's - first ever landscape format comic. I can't deny it, the format and the five stories per issue always made The Titans feel like something special to me. There was also something that appealed about the unpredictability of just what strips were going to be in it that week.

Have there been any comics since The Titans and Super Spider-Man that were printed in landscape format? It's a shame if there haven't because it was an ingenious idea and, when my destiny's finally fulfilled and I hold ownership of the American comic book industry in my talons, then the world had better beware, for I shall make sure the landscape format returns to once more bamboozle printers and newsagents alike.

Inhumans #2. The Kaptroids

Have you ever been grabbed the Kaptroids?

I have.

And I'm not the only one. So were the Inhumans, in issue #2 of their very own comic.

For those not in the know, the Kaptroids (or the Craptoids, as my dad called them) were giant robots built by the Kree to imprison the Inhumans who, as you know, were originally created by the Kree to fight for them in their war with the Skrulls. The robots had been left beneath the Inhumans' city of Attilan and had now been awakened by Kree agent Blastaar to fulfill their mission.

At the time it always seemed odd to me that an entire city of super-beings would be little more than Scoop 'n Go fodder for a handful of robots, and it still does.

The royal family aside, the Inhumans really are a strangely pathetic bunch here, putting up no fight worth mentioning in the face of their attackers.

There's also a sub-plot about an ugly Inhuman called Iridia made beautiful by the city's Terrigan mists. These days I'm not sure what to make of this sub-plot's theme. On the one hand, it seems to promote the message that looks are all that matters in life, then again, as Black Bolt knew, it's clearly cruel to force someone to be repulsive when they don't have to be.

The thing was written by Doug Moench and drawn by George Perez who, like John Byrne at his peak, had that knack of making every story feel like it was a good story regardless of whether it actually was.

In retrospect, although I loved it at the time and I still have a lot of fondness for it now, there's really nothing special about this tale and, sadly, the Inhumans' strip soon ran out of steam, as the ruling family set off into space to go all Star Trek on us.

The move didn't work. This was the Inhumans, after all, not The Guardians of the Galaxy and the title was cancelled after just a dozen issues.

Looking back on it, I think the reason I loved this tale so much was that, one, the Inhumans were cool and, two, I got it on a Sunday. For some reason, comics that entered my life on a Sunday always seemed that bit more special.