Week Ending Jan. 13, 1973

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Mighty World of Marvel #15


Issue 15 of MWOM hits the newsagent shelves with a dramatic, if probably cobbled together cover. Despite the artwork coming from various sources, it would have certainly parted me from my pocket money. Can the contents live up to the promise of this cover's confident collage? Let us find out...


Well the Hulk does his best to hold up his end with the continuation of last week's story. I am still enjoying the Ditko/Roussos art, despite some heavy-handed application of the Zip-A-Tone shading. In the time between the stories from the original run of The Incredible Hulk title and this episode from the pages of Tales to Astonish, I assume Hulk's first encounters with the Avengers took place. This leads to another 'cunning' Marvel UK edit being required, as Rick Jones was still hanging around with the Avengers in the US version of this story. The solution? Rick is attending Lee University and Captain America is hastily redrawn as 'Dean Wilkerson'. Not exactly elegant, but probably would not have aroused suspicion at the time. The story itself is enjoyable enough, featuring not one but two bad guys, in the form of the Chameleon and the shadowy figure of the Leader, masked by his 'scientific worksuit' (the helmet of which seems a tad on the small side for the Leader I know) still, it is nice to see the set up for longer story arcs.


I touched on the enthusiastic use of Zip-A-Tone in the pages of the Hulk this week, any signs of restrained use are thrown out of the window as we reach Spider-Man's section of the magazine. I can only assume that someone was given a stack of Letraset shading and equally large pile of cocaine, then instructed not to leave their office until both were exhausted. The results are horrible, I have no idea if the original art and story were any good, so overpowering is the effect of the retrospective shading.


The  are faced with the triple threat of Klaatu Kurrgo, his copyright infringing robot and yet more awful Zip-A-Tone use. It's a by-the-numbers, sub-par Outer Limits tale for our foursome, as they are whisked away to Planet X to save it from destruction. Which is sort of achieved in a manner that doesn't even really work in the context of a 1960s comicbook story. Do not let anyone tell you that the early Stan and Jack FF run was flawless, fun sure, but it has its share of workmanlike filler.

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