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Showing posts from April, 2017

The Man Who Could Walk Through Bad Comics: Machine Man by Wolfman and Ditko

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Rated: Comically Bad I loved Machine Man. I found him some years after his initial turn on the Marvel stage, just in time for his very cool early cyber punk limited series. A couple of years later, I got my hands on a few of first wildy-imaginative Kirby issues. Yes, Jack wrote the same offbeat slang for all his characters, apropos of nothing, and sometimes forgot which of the many powers he packed into his robotic super man. But his angle- “social issue of the century”- compelled me; his design, resonates. I like his central dilemma, his somewhat disagreeable and sometimes cynical persona. But if I hadn’t found him originally in childhood, as created, written and drawn by Jack Kirby, I doubt I’d have been hooked by his continued series by Marv Wolfman and Steve Ditko. With #14 (April, 1980) we hit the wall with what a busy writer/editor can credibly do each month. This is one of four titles Wolfman wrote and edited, and it so happens, by cover date, we’re reaching the end of