I was just getting around to Being at the time, but looking back at the early and mid-70s, I have a question that applies to movies, books- even my starting point, comic books, which took on a moody, melancholy aspect, particularly with Marvel Comics, which had just begun its publishing period of the roster of characters that we see in abundance across media and toys, today. What are the causes of the increase in violence and death and overall downbeat tone that defines 1970s storytelling? Do you think the new permissiveness post-60s was at the root of the violence and death portrayed? My first thought was, word was getting back about Viet Nam, and young people were disillusioned with institutions they'd been inculcated culturally to trust. I often think the idealism emerging within the counter-culture was just not manifesting quickly enough, for the impatience of the youth. I'm clear, too, that the rise of counter-culturalism 1) certainly does not match the rural values...

The story goes, a motorcycling youth fresh from a stint traveling with the carnival came to New York City, all of 20, 21, hoping to join Marvel Comics Group. David Anthony Kraft arrived with counter-cultural rebellion and a head full of imagination. His high school years spent reading science fiction paper backs in the back of the classroom led straight to a professional status: he took the initiative and inquired about becoming estate executor to pulp writer Otis Adelbert Kline! (I discovered Kline's initials presented as OAK and wondered if that wasn't the inspiration for the "DAK" nomenclature.) Science fiction writer Leigh Brackett (who famously drafted The Empire Strikes Back script) and Marvel's Stan Lee were also formative influences. Fictioneer also published hard back editions of Jack London, Frank Baum, the autobiography of A.E. van Vogt, Robert E. Howard, and E. Hoffmann Price, a colorful ex-soldier and pulp writer who became an early ...

Here are some of my favorite cover images from the series: This one, in particular, is the first one I remember, appearing in Mighty Marvel Checklist of my copy of Marvel Tales #66, 1976, one of my first comics, bought as a surprise at a surplus store by my parents---one of their very few gifts of comics, but all the ones in my kids year were pivotal! Despite their great showdown, Harker's not on the cover of TOD #70 below. Truthfully, cool as this is for showing them in battle and Dracula using his powers, the one; (#32) where Harker's crawling away just barely out of reach of the flying Dracula is just tight, tight, TIGHT! Finally, it looks like the eventual conclusion to the Domini storyline had some pretty cool execution, though Wolfman had to know the end of the series drew upon the horizon by this point. In chronological order, these are the last four of my picks from the Tomb of Dracula four color series by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, with Tom Palmer and ...

DEFENDERS #27 [IMG]http://i55.tinypic.com/2nh3ptj.jpg[/IMG] 27 “Three Worlds To Conquer!” Lord Droom of the Badoon Empire decides to wait until the orbiting Captain America ship teleports its payload to the Earth’s surface. As Doc Strange points out, Hulk’s a bit distrustful of technology; “he’s rarely seen it employed for his benefit.” Droom sends a ray “to bisect and deflect the four beams from the ‘Captain America’” and scatters the teleporting heroes away from Earth, “into the trackless void of sub-space.” Now the stowaway Jack Norriss rushes out upon hearing the bad news. “Where is she? Where’s Barabara?!” The answer: a pool of blood red water, amidst purple and gold vegetation, along with “the 1,000 year-old master of pschokinesis,” who figures from the two moons they’ve missed Earth. Now the webbed, hirsute hands reach forth: lizard creatures with no self-control drag Asto into the crimson mire. Valkyrie’s great strength allows her time to fight back, but this has the...

http://www.imwan.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=69590 Perhaps it’s intuition---or some side effect of the increasing ripple effect of the Transmetamorphosis changing the Earth---but the soldier’s aware of another presence suddenly arrived upon the seen. He has never heard of the blessing of the Vishanti, but across time and space, he is aware that heroes gather---perhaps to stop this change rocking the Earth with change, or perhaps, to make sense of it as chaos has its sway. Holt looks at Blancley, and now both see in their midst a dark stage, figures stabbing the darkness with the lights of their essences, though their bodies assemble from various places across time and space. To stand before such a door way is to immerse one’s self in facing the direction of all one’s fears, and sense, moving forward, your survival’s path, its methods. Now both soldiers become aware of aid, not only from the strange non-team of beings diving with Valkyrie into the perilous recesses of the sprea...

Defenders #23. Kyle reveals to Stephen that he'd met Holliman earlier that night: “He wanted to talk real estate with Kyle Richmond. I wasn't in the mood.” “Perhaps you should have listened more closely, Nighthawk. The forces of karma work in puzzling ways.” How very puzzling---as we’ll see! Whatever reasons drive Kyle to express his exceptionalism through his costumed identity, rather than his millionaire self with its connections, have as much to do with the limitations of a superhero story of the 70’s as the character trying to fit into one. The Defenders are much further from the answers for it. They head back to the Sanctum for tea and pondering---unaware of the remaining three Serpents spying on them. The Serpents, however, find a violent sting awaiting them through Yellowjacket, last seen in GS Defenders #4. Surreptitiously he’s skulked after them over the rooftops, and in a splash page smash he begins to take them down. The first two of them fall to wisecracks a...