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! Another comic they bought me there would introduce me to the Defenders, and the work of the author you'll meet at the end of this post. I resurrected this from 2011; the title change broke the original search engine link, so I'll try restoring that, but presenting the repost here to haunt me this year. 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 eve...

This is a strange story, by Marv Wolfman and Steve Ditko. It's about Machine Man helping out mankind while remaining feared; indeed, one thing after the next vexes him as he observes our criminality and distrust and callousness. He releases a powerful bolt while hovering in the sky, and this discharge drifts into the windows of six people, initiating a biochemical acceleration in their evolutionary state. Now far advance of human kind (perhaps a million years), they take Machine Man down, fighting. They circle him and prepare for judgement---much to his anger and dismay. They hear the voice of a child of a man he's saved just now from an embedded bullet (he was shot during a robbery just stopped by Machine Man in the first pages). He believes in Machine Man's good, even if Machine Man's frustrated and embittered. They release him. Too far advanced for life on Earth, they decide to play silent benefactors, destined to return, to watch over Man. For now, however...

You Know, I don't expect only comic book fans to come read this. The value of any form of literature is what you come away with for your own life. Can disposable entertainment be indisposable? Oh, you bet. http://trueai.blogspot.com/2006/01/part-5-quantum-epiphanies.html Here's what I'm reading of late. Somehow reviewing Machine Man stories gave me a renewed interest in Artificial Intelligence and consciousness in general! Binary Bug’s cloud may be noticed by passersby, but his break-in goes uninterrupted. He glides across the very work floor of Machine Man’s new job, and, it says, taps into Compucord’s RAM to acquire “thousands of information bytes.” $2 dollars, low security: his target’s set. Outside, at a midtown movie house, Aaron complains he doesn’t “get” why “you humans WASTE your time on vicarious entertainment.” Peter S. assures him we can’t self-improve all the time, and vouches for a bit of escapist release, while Aaron notices the strange behavior of a...

Machine Man #11 Wolfman/ Ditko Marvel is essentially---especially in 1978---a superhero/ villain universe at heart. Late Kirby projects seem at home in their own worlds; something that crossed over within the books like his Fourth World would've been a great idea. Personally I love to imagine Machine Man meeting Captain America and the Eternals; I'll bet in Kirby's brain, inter-book crossovers weren't totally vanished like cigar smoke. Although Howard the Duck would've been...never mind! But not only are we about to get super-hero/ villains, they will even keep around a bit of science fiction. At least a few bytes. Moreover, the new look's coming from Ditko, who created Marvel's strongest Silver Age look outside of the Kirby-influenced "House Style." But the cover's got a hand in Kirby Perspective, right? At any rate, Col. Kragg and the Army are gone, too, so it's a secret identity/ fighting villains kind of book. I would say it h...

[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...

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...

Nova, I finally get you. This morning it becomes an epiphany, dawning like a warm shower on the sense. NOVA is written as it is so that little kids, too, can enjoy it. Truthfully, many ex-fans cluster here to talk of many things. Or make that, ex-buyers...of comic books, at least. Some of the more popular product amongst people who overlap that crowd are the kid-friendly comics, which seem to have versions of the characters that evoke their sense of wonder and fun. Now, it’s true, by the time Shooter has Pym losing his marbles, it’s evidence that the path to redemption played over and over again went now into a darkness found in adult life, though these things affect many of the young readers, too. But it’s heavy. What Alan (Watchmen) Moore grasped was an alternative, which to this post-modernist genius of deconstruction became clear as A-B-C Comics in the decade after his revolutionary masterpiece of the medium. His efforts at straight-up super heroes convinced some more than ot...

1976 music [IMG]http://i27.tinypic.com/1z6c0z.gif[/IMG] THE MAN CALLED NOVA! #8 “When Megaman comes calling—don’t answer!” Writer, Editor, Creator: Marv Wolfman Art: Sal Buscema and Frank Giacoia Letters: Joe Rosen Colors: Marv Wolfman About 100, 000 miles from home, all Nova can do is watch the Condor, Diamondhead and Powerhouse escape as his programmed ship blasts off for the outer reaches of space. Overcoming his reflex to despair, Nova realizes that if Condor reset the controls, he can, too---with the knowledge of a star pilot, that is! He discovers the Zorr remains (from #1), confirming he’s aboard the original Nova ship. His question, spoken aloud, activates and automated intelligence, Computer Prime, addressing him as New Nova-Prime. A hologram shows the fate of Zorr. Histories are maintained through “bio-circuits,” the wondrous minds of previous Centurion-Novas. A little objective data and a hologram of the previous Nova-Prime appears, mentioning the destruction of ...

Spider-Man! Iron Man! Thor! Nova! All shatter before our eyes---smashed by the angry fists of Diamondhead! Yet this is no mere symbolic montage: in fact, much like the opening splash that first brought us the Punisher, Diamondhead trains against these robots, a rockets, bullets of titanium. Nothing can stop him! He nearly forgets the Destructoid Super Robot remaining, yet he readily demonstrates the prowess that he thinks will make him a great new crime lord. All of his life, from the playground to the boxing ring to now, Archie Dyker identifies with the villain. His attempted theft one night led him to exposure to the diamond-based ray that played catalyst to his skin’s new surface, resembling a roughneck in diamond, like a jewel given life shaped by human greed and form. Though their paths have yet to cross, Diamondhead shares an ultimate foe with Condor and Powerhouse, in the guise of the unrevealed Dreaded One. Who is this colossal menace, whose battles already begin to en...