Week Ending September 8, 1973

 

Remember the Tri-D Chess sets in Star Trek? A concept so complicated that it would take armies of nerds years to retroactively turn it into a working game that you could actually play during the time you weren't learning Klingon. Well that would be child's play for whoever was in charge of trying to make the Marvel UK continuity function in the early days. I can't help but think that the field of theoretical physics lost out on a great mind.

Mighty World of Marvel #49

Carrying on in the tradition of last week's cover we have a reworking of the cover of Fantastic Four #112 by John Buscema and Frank Giacoia. I quite like the change from the original solid background to this almost watercolour cityscape.

After three weeks of Avengers stories passing themselves off as Hulk tales, it is the turn of the Fantastic Four to sacrifice their billing to the continuity gods. FF #25 steps into the breach caused by the recent introduction of the Avengers and the disruption of the Hulk strip, which has been running ahead of the Fantastic Four by at least a couple of years. This works fairly well for the FF as it is only a few issues ahead of where we were with their own strip, however the return to the thuggish early Hulk is once again jarring. We also see the Marvel UK debut of Captain America, thankfully with little editing or exposition, wisely choosing to save that story for something special in the next few weeks. The story itself is mostly given over to a drag-out punch-up between the Hulk and the Thing, which is a shame as these are the characters least well served by the inking of George Roussos, which manages to completely drown Jack Kirby's unique take on these two bruisers.

This is a complete surprise to me, MWOM gets to play the UK version of Marvel Spotlight as it temporarily gives up some pages for the debut of the X-Men. I was under the impression that we would not get to see Marvel's mutant team until the The Super-Heroes comic was released in 1975, everyday is a school day it would seem. Rather than the traditional superhero origin story, Stan makes the clever decision to introduce the X-Men almost fully formed, with the arrival of new student/team member Jean Grey as the jumping off point. It is a smart move that respects the reader's intelligence and gets things moving quickly. I'm less impressed with the entire team immediately sexually harassing their new member en masse, though you could argue it is period accurate.

Spider-Man Comics Weekly #30

One of the most impressive things about Steve Ditko's run on Spider-Man is his absolute greatest hits of character design for the villains. Almost every one is a straight out of the box, fully realised design classic.

And then there is the Looter.

Even his name feels half-arsed, like Steve was either deliberately avoiding the name Meteor Man that the character would eventually have, possibly to thumb his nose at Stan or Stan just made it up after looking at the uninspired costume design and stuck with it when the story arrived on his desk. Either way, despite getting superpowers from a meteor and having the unique addition of a getaway balloon built into his uniform, the Looter provides little trouble for Spider-Man. 

Praise be to Odin and Kirby, we are blessed with another chapter of Tales of Asgard. Jack gets to indulge in what was obviously a bit of a passion project for him and the All Father gets to kick some ice giant ass back in the days before being grumpy about his son's love-life was his main gig.

Speaking of Jack Kirby's passion for tales of the gods on a grand scale, the opening pages of Thor's own strip get the full Kirby treatment with a flying longship and Asgardians kicking ass and taking names. Some text from Stan almost confirms the idea that there was tension with Jack about the direction of the comic, and these pages are an offering to keep him quiet. The story quickly shifts into the standard Thor fare we know, as Stan soap operas the hell out of it with the tiresome on/off romance between Donald Blake and Jane Foster. Dr Blake decides to finally go against Odin's wishes and reveal the secret of his dual identity to nurse Foster. Odin, being the world's worst dad, immediately removes Blake's ability to transform into Thor as punishment. It is therefore doubly inconvenient that the Grey Gargoyle chooses this moment to turn up in search of the thunder god. Looks like we have a cliffhanger on our hands.