MACHINE MAN #5 “Non-Hero” Jack Kirby Edits, Writes, Draws Mike Royer Letters ‘n’ inks Petra Goldberg, Color Consulting Editor, Jim Shooter The powerful signal emanating from Ten-For’s hand array antenna calls the intergalactic Autocron Fleet to Earth. Machine Man stands ready to shove that plan down Ten-For’s steel gullet. What of the innocent bystanders, frozen by Ten-For into status? Machine Man’s magnetized boots prove irresistible in their molecular call, yanking Ten-For across the street to him. A blast mostly misses Machine Man’s head, as he kicks Ten-For head first into the pavement. The Autocron’s chest generates a ray nearly as explosive as the one behind his hinging face plate. Now he presses the stunned hero, grappling, wrenching a light post, constricting, kicking, damaging Machine Man’s body to prevent transfer long enough for the fleet---“and that may come tomorrow ‘mister obsolete!’”. They battle on, the floored Autocron holding Machine Man back with an

This was created by Bob on the Jack Kirby Museum site; I don't have this issue with me! As you’d expect after he saved the world from the invasion of Ten-For last issue, this issue starts with Machine Man hauled in front of a Congressional committee, which now has to decide what to do about the federal order to destroy all of the X-Series robots. In the meantime, MM is released in the custody of Dr. Spaulding, and wins over a hostile crowd by stopping a pickpocket. Oh, fickle humanity. Out in the open, Machine Man is attacked by a larger clumsy robot sent by an inventor out for publicity. Later, Spaulding is kidnapped, and Machine Man surrenders to a waiting helicopter in exchange, ending the issue prisoner of a criminal organization that wants to copy his design. In the meantime, various political maneuvering goes around thanks to his disappearance, with his longtime nemesis Colonel Kragg surprisingly speaking in his defense. A very nice issue with a lot of plot. Some interesting

I’ve got to mention the back-up story in #18, where the court frees Dad on bail and Rich apologizes, in a scene heading into the house and one in at Uncle Fudge’s Shoppe, to his supporting cast for seemingly not caring. Meanwhile Robbie decides to turn his inventive quickness towards discovering the secret of Richard Rider. “Blackout means Business, and His Business is Murder!” Wolfman/ Infantino/ Palmer /Rosen/ Michele Wolfman Flying free above the harbor in NYC doesn’t mean Nova’s not flunking science and math hard enough to become the first kid left back a grade at Truman Capote High. Smiles drop with the black wave of absolute darkness, that not even Nova’s special lenses can penetrate. A zap from within the unknown sends Nova plunging backwards out of control into a building. He’s been mistaken for a spy by BlackOut, who approaches with another dark-matter-like thrust aboard black circles beneath his feet. They levitate him close enough to choke Nova with his powers and expla

I am without my material on this computer, (I use a router for mine) but I'll have it again later this week. All my best friends in Rome, GA (birthplace of myself, and the West Coast Avengers)are hosting us, and much dancing, drawing, singing, laughing, and relaxing follows. I would LOVE to start up some new integr8d fiction---I've never discovered just how some blogs end up with a kazillion followers but I will work on expanding my audience, keep bringing you my remaining NOVA and MACHINE MAN write-ups, and soon afterwards will try to pick a new piece. Any requests? Lone Ranger? Captain America? Sherlock Holmes? Spider-Man? Scrooge McDuck? Have a great time, it may be the only life you ever know!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiYq-545nkQ Suspiria (horror movie theme) Zingy-BUNG-Wahhh! “Tidal wAve” Wolfman/ Infantino/ Palmer / Rosen / Vartanoff Nick Fury and Nova: bound inside plexiglass bubbles, helpless aboard the neutron missile directed at Washington, D.C. Do any of Nova’s powers help now? He flies...as a matter of fact, he rides on electrons across the air. Can he point himself to a path of electrons pointing away from dry land...but the pain! So great, he wants to surrender...but force the rocket away, he must---and his second “honest-to=the super=hero-union-guidebook idea” of the day works! With Yellow Claw’s pressure dome to protect Fury, Nova has time to snap his titanium straps. A few minutes later they rise from the water, to see the missile explosion wake. Late! Richard’s changed, beating the bell to class, only to run straight into Caps. Suddenly all the tension between Ginger, Caps and Rich ---his surly reply, their questions, the lack of

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGgfHZ02I2k&p=80C2E5D8C76C19AE&playnext=1&index=19 Sheena is a Punk Rocker “Death is the Yellow Claw!” Wolfman/ Infantino / Palmer / Rosen / Vartanoff Richard’s sweating the essay portion of a Spanish test, and as we see, letting his worries isolate and distract him helps him not a whit. Ginger’s really had it with this trend; rather than enable it, when she runs into him in the hall, she asks why he’s avoiding their friends---what’s happened to the easy going guy “I once cherished”? Deciding to nix talking about Nova problems, and his dad’s guarded troubles, Rich’s attempt to slough it off, but she makes a point of HIS reticence. Ginger Jaye switches from firm confrontation to asking him to share, open up, as she reads his eyes. He keeps the burden of his splitting family, as well as his life as a lone and secret star, to himself. “If we’ve ever meant anything you can tell me what’s wrong” she says, but he runs out, nearly kayo’ing Caps

First I wanna say Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen, who wrote a later revival of NOVA, has been reading along! Pretty cool. [i]Not ready for Nova Prime Time Players[/i] When this issue hit the stands, the general American public’s ideas of super heroes most likely came from campy sources, as BATMAN and WONDER WOMAN were the two most successful adaptation of super heroes in a decade. The popular culture has seen THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN since 1974, and other than WONDER WOMAN, that’s about it when you think about it. Saturday morning cartoons and comic books were seen as about on the same level by most of the public, despite the deeper characterizations and more mature themes that had crept in since the Silver Age. STAR WARS is coming, bringing less costumed-seeming super-heroes, or rather, bringing a super villain and mostly a motley crew playing hero in super circumstances, with powers, yes, which they're only beginning to grasp. SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE is still a year away,

Here's Andrea DeVito's Sphinx redesign, from NOVA #32. Now, longtime Marvel fans may have thought The THING #34 marked the end of the old Nova villain, but the present team of Abnett and Lanning have worked in a revival of the Sphinx that better uses his long life and time traveling possibilities. Me? I actually look forward to catching up with Nova again. Here I'm going to finish off my Machine Man reviews for now very soon. I'd love to hear from any fans of these series and encourage people to give my original material a try in this blog as well!

Another cool trick might have been: if Ten –For had been beaming plans for machine men down to Earth scientists...then, he uses x-51 to create his dimensional transfer, unaware, perhaps, of the human personality engraved by Abel Stack. He expects to take over the Machine Men when he arrives on Earth. His waiting Autocrons, made unwittingly by the Earthlings, then go berserk, due to the insanity of the human to which he is linked at this point, broadcasting their instructions. Doctor Spalding’s patient Aaron Stack volunteers to help out at the sanitarium to foot his session bills, and seems keen on analyzing the neuroses observed therein. Aaron reveals his secret when the military clashes with the recently-arrived rover, Ten-For. Now Machine Man must face the remaining x-models that serve Ten-For, while the Autocron fleet approaches. Perhaps another nearly makes the choice to be “human” and perhaps another is analogous to a female in its demeanor? His relationship wi

Dr. Spalding: “I’ve drawn back your brain unit, Machine Man! Have I done it correctly?”---this is exactly why I love Jack Kirby’s stories. That the speaker is a psychiatrist is just pop culture excellence. Unique! “Would you fight for those who fear and hate you? It’s a very tough decision to make---especially when you have more in common with the enemy than those you must defend! Here is a Heavy question, to be resolved in cosmic fury!”---opening caption from Jack Kirby. [IMG]http://i52.tinypic.com/2md06k2.jpg[/IMG] Aaron’s face Ten For face [IMG]http://i52.tinypic.com/54doi0.jpg[/IMG] “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” MM 4 continues: The injured soldiers found in Ten-For’s wake subvert any poetic justice Machine Man feels over the Army’s dust-up with the machine man from another galaxy. Yet the hatred in Kragg’s voice for Machine Man’s existence---for the entire conception of his being---floods him with despair. He’s overheard the alarm to the big brass to act; Kragg’s advis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH2a30LTeWw&feature=related Grease I was thinking of how delightfully out of contact with the “latest” Kirby’s Machine Man is, in 1978; the robot is practically a metaphorical persona for the out-of-place cartoonist himself, reinvented as a young man who just might live forever in the pre-pubescent four color world that gave him birth. The then-dated Beat-style lingo and thinking, mixed with fringe mass culture elements such as u.f.o.’s, is so yesterday that I crush on it ironically and un-ironically. My parents were enjoying being a young couple in 1978, so I have regarded that time fondly as I wrote. The fetish for things ‘50’s in those times also reveals just where Machine Man, who is more Twilight Zone than Twilight, really fit into the culture. The artificial intelligence storyline never gets too technical; it is more Bradbury than Heinlein, except Machine Man is rather a bit like more like a Heinlein character, himself. If Nova would’ve be

MACHINE MAN THE LIVING ROBOT #4 1978 “Battle on a Busy Street!” Kirby! Royer, inks, letters Holocaust! Ten-For lurks outside the sanitarium where he manipulated Machine Man and Peter Spalding into building a dimensional interface. A very surprised U.S. Army regiment,, prepared to destroy x-51 once and for all, find themselves at the merciless graces of the rover from the stars. Time is running out! Now Machine Man must guide Dr. Spalding through a simple, yet delicate operation, to free his body from the vertigo-inducing cylinder affixed to his forehead (by Ten-For last issue---Lyron). First, the human must draw back the casing of Machine Man’s head, to remove vital circuitry...from his work space! Then, Machine Man’s fantastic hand weapons system requires Spalding’s maneuvering, to bring the powerful torch from his finger to bear against the cylinder. Together, they cut the inducer from his brow, and Machine Man acrobatically proves his balance restored. He feels conte

MACHINE MAN THE LIVING ROBOT #3 “Ten-For is a Mean Ma---shut yo mouth!---hey, I’m just talkin’ bout Ten-For...” Fingers pressed to a raving man’s head, the thinking robot named Machine Man transmits visual vistas based on the visions transmitted to the patient’s head, here in the sanitarium wherein our hero has taken refuge. A spaceship falls into some unspecified sun, and its pilot cries out for help, boisterously demanding they not waste precious moments! He speaks directly to Machine Man, expecting him to understand: they must create an interdimensional bridge, and he will now tell how. Meanwhile, Col. Kragg and company home in once more on Machine Man, using the device sequestered in his head. For the platoon’s honor, they prepare revenge upon the last of the x-model robots, their sonic mortar-style cannon prepared amidst rushing, yelling soldiers. Locked away momentarily, Machine Man produces a device from his own parts. He shows this to Dr. Spalding, his friend in charge here,

[IMG]http://i32.tinypic.com/2uyq45f.gif[/IMG] 14 “Massacre at Truman High!” Wolfman, Buscema and Giordano Costanza letters, Michele Wolfman colors Hiroshima Mon Amour http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMkPtOw_r90 The Sandman completely understands Karl Von Horstbaden’s plan to kidnap Mike Burley from Harry S. Truman High School, and quickly the deadly villain flies on the winds of the city as a whipping sandstorm. Nova wakes up to the shadowed mastermind of the plan, who explains the death trap set for the Human Rocket. Clamped by tentacles, Nova’s been sealed in a chamber with liquid nitrogen set to freeze him from above and intense gas jets poised to burn him from below. All it takes is a tiny movement to trip the photo-electric cell to freeze and incinerate him instantly. A trap of another kind closes on Rich’s father Charles Rider: fired and black balled, the ex-high school principle is denied a loan. A security guard whispers to the angry patron: a secret organization know

MACHINE MAN , THE LIVING ROBOT #2 1978 X-51's strange life continues as we see for ourselves his symbolic fear. Meanwhile, Doctor Spalding, who had met X-51 hitchhiking in #1, orders sedation of a patient, who cries out repeatedly in technical language, despite his apparent eight-grade education. Dr. Spalding deduces his delusion involves a space-ship falling into a sun. As Cragg and his men move in, MM bursts out of the gas station (thank you Kirby Museum---I always felt he over-paid for the tires and never considered his down payment on collateral damage). He moves like a hot rod on his new wheels (three tires attached to him with rods), which afford him an escape worthy of Evel Kneivel. Asking some cyclists for directions, since he shocks one of them into wiping out, is a bust, but he's within half a mile of Central City before you know it. He then goes to see the doctor, surprising him with a laser light for his pipe. Harried, Machine Man bluntly asks to stay a few

MACHINE MAN #1 Jack Kirby: writer, artist, editor Mike Royer: inker,letterer Petra Goldberg: Colorist> Archie Goodwin: “Enjoyer” (most likely, coordinator and cheerleader) “He Looks like a man...he Thinks like a man...but nowhere in this world is there Anyone as exciting and different as ...” “Machine Man” (title) The story following features four encounters between the Machine Man and humans, along with two interludes at the project base, discussing his origin, where his end is plotted and also argued. The hiking rescue A trio of hiking friends cries out for their fallen buddy, and while Machine Man observes “hiker’s carelessness” aloud, his hand telescopes speedily down the sheer face of the cliff to help, with bars from the center of the tentacle-like arm piece that extend “like a ladder!” The hiker, Freddie, slips, so while he knows he’ll blow their minds, Machine Man leaps and engages his anti-gravity units while calming his passenger. Am

1976. Jack Kirby’s highly-anticipated ETERNALS brings the Chariots of the Gods style to Marvel; issue #2 has a bullpen announcement about the excitement over the new hero, the Man Called Nova. Though most new heroes are launched in try-out books in these times, Stan Lee’s enthusiasm for the new hero gets him a first issue of an ongoing monthly title. “Now if only Wolfman, John Buscema and co. will hurry up and finish it!” That’s the way it was, in 1976: rock’s getting a new shot in the arm through punk, why not super hero comics with a punk of their own? Meanwhile, a bizarre flipside take on super heroes and high school coalesces in Nova’s contemporary, OMEGA THE UNKNOWN, as different from super heroics of the day as Nova was their embodiment. HOWARD THE DUCK and RED SONJA are the other two big debuts that come to mind, taking off by ’76 as smash hits embodying passing trends...though HOWARD seems built around its creator’s idiosyncratic persona, the sword by which the concept l