Essentially Mine: Marvel Feature #11

I love comics, I really do. You can read them anywhere: on the bus, in bed, while eating, on the toilet—they’re just perfect quick reads, and when they’re done well, they’re also very enjoyable indeed. They become equally enjoyable when they’re done just badly enough, at that.

I’m particularly fond of corny, cheesy comics from days of yore. As such, I am a very big fan of Marvel’s line of Essentials, the phonebook-sized black and white reproductions of their back issue library. They started out with all the classic 60s stuff, which is great for someone like me who didn’t start properly collecting until 1996-1997 (after having read European/Belgian strips since I was like 3 years old). But by now they’re also concentrating on a whole bunch of 70s era comics, which I consider to be my “missing decade”.

Being born at the tail end of the 70s, it’s the decade I know the least of. I remember the 80s vividly, having grown up in them, and the 60s I came to know thanks to my parents having grown up in them. The 70s always have been fairly enigmatic to me (in the sense that I never really bothered to find out more, mind you), and that also includes knowing very little about their funky superhero comics. Comics are a nice window into a general mindset of any given era, even with the natural lag between conception and publication.

You can probably imagine that 70s comics are often kooky as all heck. My favourite aspect would be the lack of pretentiousness. I don’t get a “Look at me! Look at how deep my work is! Look at all the linework!” vibe from them. I haven’t come across too many that were just plain moronic (like I often do nowadays) either. So I consider myself a recent fan of 70s comics, making me very grateful that Marvel will be publishing more and more Essentials from that timeframe in the near future.

All that, simply to lead up to this: I just read the first issue collected in Essential Marvel Two-In-One, and it was neat. MTIO was the Thing’s team-up title, just like Spider-Man had Marvel Team-Up and Superman had DC Presents. I guess the Thing must have been quite popular back then to warrant a 100-issue series plus annuals. Of course the real fun is found in all the guest-stars and the potential for a variety of writers and artists. Before MTIO started, the Thing first got two stories in Marvel Feature #11-12, both of which are included in the trade.

Marvel Feature #11 starts out with the Thing feeling sorry for himself (big surprise there, it’s one of his favourite pastimes). He’s being monitored by an old foe—a very old foe, as it turns out, because he hadn’t been seen since all the way back in Fantastic Four #7: the not-so-dreaded Kurrgo, Master of Planet X! Shunned by his miniaturized fellow X’ians, he wants to wreak vengeance on them with the unsolicited help of the strongest one there is—the Hulk! Because this is a team-up story, writer Len Wein duly brings out a Hulk-villain as well, one of the classic ones, the Leader, who is somehow in stasis but still able to communicate telepathically. The two baddies will use their respective foes as champions to fight and whoever wins, will get control over both of the big brawlers plus all the scientific knowledge of their adversary.

Why Kurrgo doesn’t just throw the Leader out of his spaceship is beyond me. He’s in stasis, you dolt! He can’t do anything!

I don’t know what it is about old comics, but in back issue form, things like that read as charming contrivancies. When someone like Loeb or Bendis does it in a modern-day comic, I get all huffy. Go figure.

The Thing and the Hulk get zapped to an abandoned desert town and pound on each other because the script requires them to. I don’t mind though, because Jim Starlin was on top of his game back then and draws a very pleasant knock-down drag-out fight. This issue is entirely plot-driven and said plot is rather flimsy, but dynamic art goes a long way in making it enjoyable nonetheless. So does dialogue like this:

“Hulk does not like this ‘clobbering time’, Thing! Hulk thinks it is dumb! Hulk thinks Thing is dumb, too!” and then Ben gets all pissed because of a “palooka” insulting his intelligence (despite not knowing the difference between a projection and an injection a few pages earlier).

It all wraps up rather quickly: Hulk and Thing are zapped to the ship, where Thing somehow straight away figures out that Kurrgo was cheating by making him stronger than usual, prompting the STILL-STUCK-IN-A-TUBE (!!!) Leader to proclaim himself as winner by default (some winner), which in turn greatly upsets Kurrgo, who sets his silly robot after the two monstrous heroes, who of course bash the tin man with great ease and trash the ship in the process, causing it to blow after the title characters have jumped out (but naturally, Kurrgo and the Leader didn’t escape on panel. Odds on them being dead are infinitesimal though). How’s that for a run-on sentence, eh? :)

It’s just a stupid issue, but I would give it to kids to read in a heartbeat, because it’s sheer, unbridled fun. Good guys, bad guys, slam-dunk action, a really great artist coupled with an equally great inker (Joe Sinnott). There should be more comics like this (of course then I'd be buying even more than I already do. Hmmm, there's a bad side to everything, isn't there? :p).

Comics shouldn’t be like this across the board, but they’re great entryways for kids into the medium, or even simply into reading, without being condescending. Marvel Feature #12 features Starlin’s Blood Brothers and Iron Man, so I’m already looking forward to the next mindless but true-to-form comic-booky fight! (I’m also keeping my fingers crossed for more MTIO collections as well as future MTU ones—team-up stories just boogie! ;))

No time! No time!

What with work being quite busy and reading a nice big-ass thriller (a 1000-pager, whoo!), I haven't been able to post anything useful lately. Or at least, not on here. Since last week I've started contributing reviews to The Comics Review, a place run by a couple buds and acquaintances of mine. It's worth dropping by, if I do say so myself.

So far I've reviewed Books of Doom #1 and Desolation Jones #4.

I also just put up a review for this week's Adventures of Superman #646. The downside is I have no real option to use purty pictures the way I tend to like on this forum. The upside is I can write faster because I don't have to worry about scanning in the relevant images and laying out the post ;)

I intend to do another review or two this weekend, be it on here or over there (I'll save the new stuff for the site and the back issue blatherings for this place). I also really want to make some more new wallpapers. One of my favorites is this damn old one (which just so happens to feature two pieces of Sal Buscema art, so this is like an unofficial "Our Sal Pal" episode :D). Can't say I'm not fond of this recent one either, even if I do wish the girl in that outfit was my girlfriend rather than Britney ;)

So with some luck I'll post again tomorrow. But who knows what the morn will bring...

Black versus Black

This is a stray thought I had while I was on the bus to work this morning. There's a bunch of characters that have the word "black" in their moniker: Black Panther, Black Cat, Black Goliath, Black Manta, Black Canary, Black Lightning, Black Widow, Black Orchid, Black Racer, Black Mamba... Now, something that struck me as a bit odd was this: if I split up the previous list of characters, I've got the following male ones:

Black Panther, Black Manta, Black Goliath, Black Lightning, Black Racer.

and the following female ones:

Black Cat, Black Canary, Black Widow, Black Orchid, Black Mamba.

The male ones all happen to be black men, whose powers are described in their nom de plume. The female ones though are all white women, most of which wear outfits involving black leather. While a notable black superheroine, Storm, isn't called "Black Storm". I find this strange (despite several exceptions, like the Black Knight, Blackbolt and Blackheart, none of whom are African-American), and I'm sure it says something about the way superhero writers work, but I couldn't say what that'd be.

I can say though that this made me think of my girlfriend's superheroine/-villainess name being "Black Sequoia", which would involve her having, oh, I dunno, growth powers or plant-related powers, it doesn't really matter, since it's all about the hot, sleek black leather anyway. I can't complain, really, now can I? ;)

I realize this was a pointless post, but then, to paraphrase a really great writer--"aren't they all?"

Friday Evening Loot

Let’s take a look at yesterday evening’s loot from the comic book store. This week heralded the arrival of All-Star Superman, featuring the talents of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. I didn’t used to be much of a fan of Quitely, back on his Authority and New X-Men days, but ever since his work on We3, I’ve come to understand his appeal. Quitely works in the advertising business and you can tell he’s good at design work, based on his excellent page layouts. His faces still aren’t all that great in some places (Superman looks damn awful in this shot) but on other occasions he nails them just perfectly, as with his depiction of Lex Luthor. The story is very straightforward yet cool: there’s a mission to the heart of the sun, it goes awry, Superman saves the day, but at the cost of his own future, it turns out. Morrison starts out pretty nicely with a very compressed way of telling Superman’s origin, just 4 panels and captions that lay out the story in a condensed yet satisfying way. There are also several nice moments where Superman saves innocents in both direct and indirect ways. Moreover, he nails the bumbling nature of Clark Kent, something I’ve always thought adds to his secret identity. He’s such a clumsy, absent-minded goofball as Clark Kent that nobody in their right mind would suspect he’s also the world’s greatest hero, an element that’s been missing from regular Superman comics for all too long now. I’m happy the stories for this series, while forming a larger tapestry, will remain fairly self-contained, as it’s virtually guaranteed that it’ll be a scheduling nightmare, what with Quitely being so notoriously slow (as much as I like his art, I do not understand why, since his pencils are very minimal, and the digital inker does a whole lot of the work in making everything look pretty, cool and impressive—I guess he thinks about each page a lot, perhaps?). So even if it takes two months for the next issue to arrive, at least I can enjoy it in its own right, hopefully as much as I liked this one. Not an outstanding Alan Moore-type comic, but a good one nonetheless.

By comparison, I also bought and read Supergirl #3, written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by Ian Churchill. They might as well call this Supergruel because I feel it’s some of the worst writing out there. It’s a hodge-podge of halfbaked ideas that attempt to convey significance but are full of meaningless sound and fury (and somewhat creepy titillation) instead. Loeb’s big idea appears to be to pit Supergirl against all of the superpowered teams of the DCU, starting with the JSA, then the Titans, now the Outsiders, and next the Justice League. Perhaps the Legion in #5, who knows? Both Morrison in ASS (yes, I think that acronym is hilarious) and Loeb in SG use mad evil villain Luthor rather than the Wolfman/Byrne businessman Luthor, but Loeb manages to make him sound like a complete idiot rather than a menace. He’s just a loudmouth bully in a suit (Luthor, not Loeb :p) and Supergirl comes across as quite unlikable too. It’s so bad it becomes somewhat entertaining viewed in that light, aided by the penciler being the artistic lovechild of Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee, which is about as backhanded a compliment I can make—but if it wasn’t for the certainty that Loeb is leaving this book in a few issues (along with the titular character, perhaps?) to go write another book for Marvel that will be offensively late as well, I’d be dropping this like a stone. I’ll admit though that the concept of a black-and-silver evil Supergirl outfit is kinda hot ;)

Luckily, the bitter pill of Supergirl was easy to swallow thanks to the writing skills of Dan Slott, Ed Brubaker and Brian Vaughan. Dan Slott was responsible for the fun yet not silly opening issue of the Thing’s new ongoing series. I was most sceptical when I first heard about this but it turns out that my misgivings were unfounded. Paired with artist Andrea DiVito, who previously worked on more cosmic stuff like Thor’s final story-arc and Beta Ray Bill’s mini-series, he tells a tale of a man turned monster, both reviled and revered—which sounds serious and intense, but it’s light and breezy instead. Cauldron the Scalding Man is one of my favorite oddball villains already! The art is sleek, fun, and sexy when it needs to be. The writing is straightforward fun too, as is the plotting, which contrives to team up Ben with Nighthawk and the Constrictor! An unlikely trio if ever I saw one, and nicely reminiscent of the old Thing team-up series, Marvel Two-In-One (I have yet to devour the first Essential of that one, too). Odds are good that Iron Man will show up too since Tony Stark was in the crowd who got transported to the villain’s hide-out as well, so here’s already looking forward to an action-packed second issue. I also get the distinct feeling that Milan Ramada, the meanie responsible for the Thing’s current trouble, will turn out to be a new, female Armadillo. I don’t know why, it could just be the letters of her name, but her doggie makes me think of an armadillo too, and the original Armadillo would’ve made a good foe for the Thing to fight... But anyway, this is a good comic, so my decision to support Slott through single issues rather than trade paperbacks turns out to have been well-founded. As an added bonus I now have an alternative Fantastic Four title to enjoy, since JMS’s FF, Millar’s Ultimate FF and the Marvel Knights FF don’t do it for me and I’ve been missing the presence of an ongoing FF-related adventure to read. I truly wish Dan Slott would take over a Spider-Man title soon, because I’m yearning for some fun Spidey yarns as well. For now both the She-Hulk and Thing series should be enough to tide me over though.

Even though I kept on saying I wouldn’t, I bought Books of Doom #1 and X-Men: Deadly Genesis #1 (I had to settle for the ugly Quesada cover), because I’m an impulsive weakling. Both of these are written by Ed Brubaker, whose work I’ve enjoyed on such titles as Batman, Gotham Central, Catwoman and the current Captain America series (yes, I know I need to read Sleeper and Point Blank, don’t rush me). I may not have been a fan of his Authority maxi-series, but I’m looking forward very much to him taking over the writing on Daredevil with Michael Lark on art chores. In the meantime, both these Doom and X-Men minis should keep me entertained. I’ve only read Deadly Genesis so far, which wasn’t too bad. Frankly, I’ve lost all interest in the X-corner of the Marvel Universe, but I’m willing to sit this one through simply because of Brubaker, although I’ll admit that I’m not opposed to Hairsine’s art either. It all flows well enough and there’s some sense of menace and mystery, so we’ll see where it goes in a few months time (no doubt this one will suffer various delays as well, based on Hairsine’s track record). The back-up story didn’t do much for me, it stayed on the surface too much. Better luck next time. From what I understand, Books of Doom is basically a retelling of FF Annual #2, which featured his entire origin story (beautifully told, too, one of the best Stan and Jack collaborations of the period). I’m assuming things will be fleshed out more and updated for the 21st century. It’s got art by Pablo Raimondi who did a very nice job on last year’s Madrox mini-series, so if I like this first issue, I’ll be around for the full ride. The cover is pleasantly impressive already, so that’s a good start!

Runaways v2 #10 was another pleasant read. Vaughan and Alphona remain a strong creative team and the kids starring in the book are still likable and “realistic”, as far as that goes for superhero comics anyway. What’s odd is that this issue features several of the much-maligned New Avengers, yet does not announce so on the cover. In a way this is good, because Jo Chen keeps on knocking these beautiful covers out of the park, yet considering the sales bump the obvious presence of Spider-Man and Wolverine would’ve given the arc, I’m surprised they don’t let an unwitting audience know about this. Story-wise I have no real complaints, other than being put off by the implied rape scene. I don’t know what it is, but scenes like that simply feel out of place in a world full of brightly coloured superheroes. Turning supervillainous acts into something this base and, well, intimate, is far less entertaining than a plot to destroy/take over the world. But aside from that, I feel that this book remains on track, and I am hopeful for a fun team-up with Spidey next issue. Vaughan is another one of my picks for Amazing Spider-Man, if bloody Straczynsky ever leaves (the day can’t come soon enough), so it’s nice to see him writing one of my favorite superheroes in this fashion.

The last two things I got were Back Issue magazine #1 and Top Ten: Beyond The Farthest Precinct #4. I adored the original Moore-scripted and Cannon/Ha-penciled maxi-series, but this one just doesn’t live up to it, although Jerry Ordway sure does his best to make the pages pop. Maybe this fourth issue will improve the overall quality of the arc, but despite several individual scenes that were okay enough, the story as a whole hasn’t impressed me very much. It may perhaps be unfair to judge the quality of a title based on Alan Moore having written it in the past, but that’s what you get when you publish a sequel that’s not by someone of the same high caliber. In any case, I do like the art and don’t feel like this is a waste of money, so it’s all still good, but if this were written by Moore, there’s no way it’d still be unread, a full day later ;) Back Issue, then, is a comics magazine that focuses on the ‘70s and ‘80s, which is perfect for me since I adore the ‘80s in many regards anyway, especially comics, and know very little about the ‘70s, so it’s a combination of going down memory lane and getting a cool history lesson. This issue has a long interview with Nick Cardy (of original Teen Titans fame) and pieces on the genre comics (martial arts and romance especially) that have gone the way of the dodo. Lots of pencil sketches again too, as usual. One of the best bargains in comics—and a much longer read, to boot! This one’s highly recommended for anyone who likes to read about comics rather than just reading comics. I hope it’ll be around for a good long while to come.

All in all, a good week. I hope next week will be just as good!

The House Ad Fandango #1 - Thunderbolts

Now this is how you advertise a new series, to me. First, you create a nice backdrop (in this case, the heroes being shunted into the Franklinverse, increasing the need for a new superteam in the MU). Then, you gather a perfect creative team: Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley are two of the best. Next, you tell your audience that there's "one team, one goal, one dark secret!" It's that last bit that intrigued me in particular. Not being as much of an internet afficionado yet back then, I didn't know there was a list circulating the net giving options as to what the big secret was, so I was happily surprised (stunned is a better word) when they revealed said secret right away (as relatively new as I was to superhero comics, I was pretty sure the secret wouldn't be the starting point--talk about your whoopsies!).

I love how the ad showcases all the characters, who I've always thought had great costumes (apart from maybe Atlas). Bagley did a great job of creating lots of diversity, lots of detail too, but all the same making them mesh together well. I'm particularly fond of the Songbird, Mach-1 and of course Citizen V designs. Citizen V especially is a true classic in my eyes.

Another great thing about this launch was that it was double-sized for only 3 bucks. Ah, days of yore... I don't think anyone back then had expected the Thunderbolts to still be around nearly 9 years later. Sure, they've been on hiatus for a bit, but not for too long. Nobody had expected for Fabian Nicieza to become the main caretaker of the 'Bolts, to boot, or how important Hawkeye would become.

All in all, I think this house ad just provides you with the right kind of vibe to check out the first issue. And as I will talk about another time, that first issue sure had a great hook to make you come back for the second! Last year's New Avengers #1 may have sold like hotcakes (relatively speaking anyway, in these dire times for comic book publishing) but Thunderbolts #1 is where it was at, baby!

"... He Soars Alone" - Silver Surfer (v3) #111

Today I felt like rereading an old issue of Silver Surfer, #111—also entitled “111”—and billed as the “first issue in a bold new era of greatness!” It’s also the first issue written (but sadly not drawn) by “Gentleman” George Perez. The art is by Tom Grindberg, whom I used to severely dislike, but whose work I’ve come to appreciate over the years. He and inker Bill Anderson did a good job in making the Surfer and his surroundings look alien and different without making things ugly. I’m particularly fond of the way they would over-emphasize his silvery sheen, showing his face or hands reflected in his chest or shoulders and such.

Colorist Tom Vincent also deserves credit in the way he gives the Surfer an intriguingly metallic look; combined with the rippling muscles, you get an alien who’s at once sleek and bulky, which in this particular instance I find appealing. I’m pretty certain that a lot of people would disagree, but that’s why they say you can’t argue taste!

The story here is a nice mix of typical Surfer fare with a sci-fi slant: several beings designated in binary code (1010, 101, 100, the titular 111) attempt to breach our universe. Those who fail are faintly perceived by such beings as the Asgardian Heimdall, the alien Beta Ray Bill, and protector of the universe Quasar, but none of them can make any sense of it. It’s a nice way of showing the cosmic corner of the MU (and of course we get the obligatory plug for another title, the Starmasters mini-series, which was written by editor Mark Gruenwald—I should really get around to mailordering those back issues one day!)

111 though, in actuality called Oclin, collides with the Silver Surfer and is able to make contact while the Surfer floats unconsciously through space; it’s “as if [they] have entered each other’s brain”. Through this connection, Norrin Radd flashes back to the destruction of the planet Inasis—courtesy of a creature ominously called the Blackbody. It’s not really a flashback though, but a vision experienced by the planet’s leader, Grand Practitioner Harquis Tey (I’m really digging the alien names here).

The nice wrinkle is that the flashback/vision may be Tey’s, but the Surfer experiences it as if the people on planet are those he knows and/or cares about: Shalla-Bal, the FF, and so on. Even Galactus shows up, but he too is consumed by the energy-absorbing Blackbody. If the Blackbody looks familiar, then there’s good reason for that, which back then, when I first read it, I didn’t pick up on. Looking back on it now, I like how it's obvious, yet not.

One of the downsides of the story is that it gets bogged down in very lengthy dialogue (or rather, monologue) that tries to explain the back story by telling, not showing. I realize that by showing they’d end up with a double-sized issue, but you know something, that would’ve been preferable over the few pages that were crammed with words. What it boils down to is that the Blackbody will destroy Inasis unless outside help arrives. The Outriders, as they were called, were designated to find said help in our galaxy, which is on the other side of the known universe from their point of view. The only way to reach them swiftly is by going back the way they came, through the cosmic swells, a way fraught with danger, but of course perfectly suited for a character who rides a cosmic surfboard!

Oclin dies as he terminates his link with the Surfer, who then ruminates on his previous mission of atonement and this new destiny that’s been given him: to go where he’s never gone before, starting over in the process and aid those who are in need of it, rather than being reviled for being Galactus’s herald in the past. The Watcher observes him as he decides to fly off to the cosmic swells, and so ends this first issue of Perez’s run.

Summarized like this it’s as if nothing much happens, which is in essence true. Yet enough does happen so that, even though it’s really a prologue to the saga as a whole, it stands on its own while giving one the sense of a new beginning where new things can happen. I clearly remember liking this a lot when I read it originally, and I still do (though not as much). As far as set-up issues go, this is a good one. Knowing that all the set-up will lead somewhere interesting is even better.

Despite Perez’s problems with too many word balloons on certain pages, he manages to make everything sound alien enough without making everything so distant as to be incomprehensible. There’s a nice enough empathic hook, there’s some cool imagery when the Blackbody does its thing, and the Surfer does sound like the self-reflecting, noble skyrider that Stan and Jack envisioned him to be.

Art-wise I have no complaints, really. Cool opening shots of the exploding alien ship and of Heimdall on the Rainbow Bridge, although I must say that the rendition of Quasar is a bit shifty. The bulgy look doesn’t work as well on someone who’s meant to be clearly human. Making the inhabitants of Inasis humanoid yet thoroughly alien on the outside is also well done. I like Grindberg’s layouts quite a bit, they’re dynamic but not messy, there’s a nice flow throughout the issue. His depiction of the Blackbody laying waste to all before him/it is pretty eerie in a cool, cosmic way too.

I must say I miss having a Silver Surfer comic around. It’s the perfect avenue to tell some large-scale stories that can still have a decent philosophical impact. It’s a fine line though, and when the scale tips too much in either direction, the book becomes dull real fast. Still, I hold out hope against hope that eventually someone’ll do the Surfer justice again. Who knows, maybe the rumoured JMS (of Babylon 5, Rising Stars, Supreme Power and Amazing Spider-Man fame) mini-series will be just the thing. Or maybe he’ll have Shalla-Bal boink Galactus or Morg and Norrin Radd has to deal with her artificially aged twin children, who happen to look exactly like him and her, while the actual father is someone else entirely. Yes, I’m still all bitter about that ASM storyline, what of it? :p

In any case, on a scale of 6, where 1 is your average Liefeld comic and 6 is your average Alan Moore story, this issue gets a 4. It gets better though, just you wait!

Our Pal Sal #2 - Captain America #168

In this second installment of my traipsing through Sal Buscema’s penciling career, I’ve decided to concentrate on Captain America #168 (cover-dated December 1973), featuring the origin of Baron Helmut Zemo, he of Thunderbolts fame who, back then, adopted a moniker that would attain far greater significance down the road in an entirely different series—indeed, the current-day Baron Zemo
was first known as the one and only original Phoenix, hoo-ha!

This one-shot story—entitled “...And A Phoenix Shall Arise!”—was co-written by Roy Thomas and Tony Isabella; Sal’s pencils were embellished by John Tartag and George Roussos. I much prefer when he inks his own pencils though, like he did most of the time during his run on Spectacular Spider-Man. There’s a much sharper and defined look to the pages when he’s his own inker.

The cover tells us that we’ll gasp when we learn the villain's startling secret identity. These days it’d be hyped months in advance, back then it was just a blurb meant to draw in readers. Interestingly, they decided not to be too obvious about it from the get-go by substituting “Adhesive X” for “molten lava” and “death ray” for “laser blast” in the Phoenix’s word balloon. It’s a good, fun cover, even if it looks like Cap’s toes are dipped in the supposed lava. You’d think the heat alone would make him a bit uncomfortable.

Our tale opens with Cap and his partner, the Falcon, patrolling the rooftops. They engage in the Exposition Shuffle for a moment, but they’re interrupted by a big old FZASSK! Cap calls Falc a duck as the chimney behind them is blown to smithereens. When they look up, they are greeted by the sight of a man in a costume that is likely meant to look cool or something but, much as I love Sal, isn’t. Sorry, Sal. You gotta love 70s comic book dialogue, by the way. I particularly like how Phoenix has a very flexible definition of wit:




So there’s some running and shooting, Sam pounds on the red-and-yellow-garbed freak and gets some bigoted comments for his trouble, which I take it is meant to be a clue. Poor Falcon is about to be toasted, but wouldn’t you know it, the lasergun conveniently conks out and Phoenix decides to take a run for it, while Cap has forgotten all about this handy shield he carries around and which he tends to use to, you know, throw at people? Sheesh :)




Because the Phoenix spoke of vengeance, Cap decides to run down his list of enemies, figuring he has “more arch-enemies than most people have relatives.” He then proceeds to list, wait for it, five enemies, two of whom are (presumed) dead. Yeah Cap, that was some deep thinking you did there. Since Captain America is even less of a detective than post-Crisis Batman, he comes up with the bright idea to turn himself into bait, in the hopes of drawing out this newest foe. Falcon wants to help out but Steve is afraid something bad’ll happen to Sam, so rather than telling him this, he acts like a jerk (“So, go play with your pet birdies somewhere else, okay?” That sounded oddly dirty...). Ah, the tried and true superhero approach of not using your head. At all.

The ongoing plot of Cap having his good name sullied on the radio is paid some lip-service while our hero swings through town. For some reason either Buscema or his inker or the colorist decided not to give Cap any eyes in this panel:




Luckily Cap regains his eyes just in time to notice someone approaching him in a panic, who tells him how he was attacked by a nutjob who tried to kill him. Cap’s response to the man standing strangely still with his back to him in the alley? Throw his shield, right? No, of course not. Instead, Cap headbutts him in the back (“smash” is a sound now?) and the man falls apart. Literally, because it is a trap (duh) and Cap gets gassed. The scared guy turns out to be the Phoenix, who now obviously has the upper hand and could easily blow his hated enemy’s head off with his death-ray.

As super-villains are wont to do though, he instead trusses up the hero of the piece to a big metal slab hanging above a cauldron filled with something hot and bubbly and starts to talk about the reasons behind this entire exercise of revenge. When he announces the vat is filled with Adhesive X, Cap is surprised, since its inventor, Baron Heinrich Zemo, has been dead for years now. Sal Buscema gives us a nice shot of a face filled with rage before we fade into the moodily illustrated flashback origin scene, which even includes the reason why the original Baron Zemo hated Cap so much, for those who came in late.

After Helmut discovered that Captain America had been revived (back in Avengers #4) and then was present when the elder Zemo was buried under a mountain of rubble (Avengers #15), he set out on his path of revenge, reinventing his father’s Adhesive X and the Death Ray. Now I can dig the Death Ray, it’s your standard villainous prop. But Adhesive X is basically super-duper-glue, so I’m less clear on the nefarious purposes for that one. Especially since its properties appear to be very plot-convenient (note how when Heinrich got doused in the adhesive, only his mask wouldn’t come off, but his gloves and clothes still did—and wouldn’t his eyes be glued shut too? Oh well, best not to think about it, I suppose.)


Cap remains remarkably calm, trying to talk Zemo out of his killing mood, but the man ain’t having it. Luckily for the Captain, Sam Wilson suddenly jumps into the warehouse, since he hadn’t bought Cap’s earlier attempt to get rid of him and had planted a SHIELD tracer on Cap’s shield. Yes, SHIELD on shield, that’s funny. Or not. While Falc and Phoenix/Zemo are engaged in battle, Cap gets really upset about the possibility of Sam hurting the psycho who’s been trying to ice him, and not in the “I’ll be unfrozen to hype Marvel’s newest teambook” type of way—so upset that he not only breaks from his shackles, but somehow is also able to jump away from the slab, rather than actually falling into the cauldron as your average laws of physics would indicate.




The Captain tells Falcon that they have to try reasoning with Zemo rather than continuing the cycle of hatred. Zemo himself is less interested in that sentiment and makes a grab for Cap’s own shield, intending to kill him with it by throwing it at him. Smart move, Helmut, because whoopsie, the shield boomerangs back (how it does that I don’t know, it’s not as if frisbees do that sort of thing, do they?) and SWAPP!s the Phoenix right into the boiling Adhesive X. We get a nice shot of Zemo’s hand as he goes under, dying a gruesome death.




For future plot purposes, the writers decide to have Cap walk away all downbeat rather than, I don’t know, salvage the body from the vat, as he feels guilty for reviving “a whole generation’s hatreds”. Self-important much?




So, here we are, the first appearance of the self-same Helmut Zemo who would one day become one of my favorite villains. Back in this issue though, he was a bit of a throwaway fill-in villain, and would in fact not be seen again for nearly 10 years, when Marc DeMatteis finally decides to return him from the dead (which I will talk about sometime soon).

The art isn’t anything altogether special, to be honest, but I’m going to blame that on the combination of Sal being far less experienced back then and the inkers he was working with. There’s some cool shots though, and the art services the story well enough, such as it is, so I can’t complain too much. I can imagine that if I were a kid back in the 70s, I would’ve liked this or even loved this, although it does puzzle me that apparently nobody wanted to see the character again in all those years, or they would’ve brought him back sooner, wouldn’t they? Makes me think that perhaps even the ‘70s audience wrote this one off as filler. Little did Thomas and Isabella realize the potential for great villainy they had created, but that, as they say, is a story for another time...