Overnight, I was thinking: Instead of video games, I like to unwind with books. But if I really want to let go, it's comic books- preferably from the 20th century. I won't go into 'why,' besides it's a cheap bit of time traveling plus escapism. I like to see the weigh stations of the times, the way comics integrate influences from years before I was born with voices of their times, which are now before many of YOU were born. I love the way art and text together tickle my brain, ping-ponging between right and left hemispheres in a way Grant Morrison described so beautifully in the non-fictional SuperGods . There's a delight in execution, certainly a hint of nostalgia to stir a lifetime of remembrances, a love for this four-color trash made by an industry that always expected its demise the next year, making pamphlets that might survive to a yard sale for a quarter or so each, if not just tossed before the silverfish struck. I've met, interviewed (es...

Forgetting is the curse of the Man-Thing...and sometimes, his only blessing. But I haven’t forgotten the Man-Thing. He may be a character you say haunts you. It’s those stories! Man-Thing is the rarest sort of protagonist, in that he is chiefly an unobserved observer, until he tries to intervene and scares the carp out of the water. In 1971, he debuted in a Marvel Comics experiment with adult material, in the form of black and white magazines. SAVAGE TALES #1 features the ill fate of chemist Ted Sallis, betrayed by his lover into the hands of terrorists who want his secret: the new Super Soldier Formula, in the manner of that which once transformed Private Steve Rogers into the apex of human fitness, Captain America. But something there in the swamp works with this imperfect formula, to render Sallis senseless, recreated as a shambling, muck-based mockery of humanity. The experiment didn’t continue, but the Man-Thing, created by Gerry Conway and Gray Morrow, came back a couple ...

The MCU is wildly popular entertainment. It’s made to appeal to several age groups. I embrace much of this. I also have love for some of the young adult writing of years gone by, too. There is a downbeat, thoughtful quality in the comic series, Man-Thing. While the creature was created- a mix of strange magic and a failed formula meant to help soldiers adapt, a Super Soldier Serum-in 1971, the black and white version of the slime beast only briefly appeared in the magazine, Savage Tales, premiering in its first issue. When Man-thing was revived for a regular strip, ghouls of the vampire/wolf man/ mummy/swamp monster sort popular at Universal Pictures were in vogue. Marvel took cues from the success of smaller publishers like Warren. They took advantage of the relaxed Comics Code of Approval’s standards to bring in nightmarish creations, like Shelley’s Frankenstein. These appealed to some of the young kids, but they also opened more mature story telling possibilities. This...

Listen here! Distinction: how to keep a character voice familiar anywhere, as seen in Luke Cage & The Defenders Luke Cage and the Defenders: Brother in A Strange Land “I couldn’t hear the woman’s heartbeat...no way to judge whether she was lying. None of my hyper-senses can tell me what to do.” “I gotta be some kind of blamed fool, swallowin’ this dude’s rap. But when he started droppin’ names like ‘Nighthawk’ an’ ‘Doc Strange’--yeah, this is the address, all right. I dunno...he came on mighty convincin’ once he got rollin’, and since I didn’t have no plan o’ my own for dealin’ with--- Before you tap that shoulder, sugar- identify yourself.” “Sticks hurt red man- but not Hulk!” “I shall take my magic cloak of levitation and follow, no matter where the trail may lead!” “This is ridiculous! Here I am, putting up one of the greatest fights of my star-studded career, and there’s no one around to applaud!” “If you know me as well as you apparently think you do—yo...

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man, seemed in 1976 to fill distinct market and story-telling needs. There was enough demand for Marvel’s mascot hero and enough room in his well-developed life for a second title devoted to telling it. Already, he headlined most months in Marvel Team-Up, a commercial vehicle widely used to pare him with lesser known and new characters, but these adventures were first and foremost action stories that rarely played upon developments in his life as student/photographer Peter Parker. Marvel Tales kept a steady supply of his five year-old adventures, already paid for, in print and selling better than a lot of new material of other characters- not to be confused with his adventures for five year-olds, the easy-readin’ Spidey Super-Stories. PPSSM filled another need for a while, too: a Spider-Man title for then-editor-in-chief Gerry Conway, without evicting Amazing Spider-Man scribe Len Wein. His campus-oriented stories carried over the supporting ...

Hope your Mother’s Day is happier than most superheroes. I’m sure you can think up someone with a good relationship with their mom, but in the four color fictional worlds there’s usually missing parents, if not downright antagonism! It’s true of their cinematic variations as well, as per witness Iron Man/ Tony Stark in Captain America: Civil War. I’ll skip the Stark ending pun. But sure, Batman, Spider-Man- maybe it’s the removal of the single most comforting relationship of more childhoods than not, or removing authority figures from the story, but Mother’s Day’s twisted in some way for most super heroes. Our mother, after all, is part of everyone’s origin story, you know. And speaking of both mothers and origins, let me pick up with the Defenders, and their run by writer Steve Gerber, as mentioned in my Gawdy Yarns of the Galaxy Original Volume Two post. First, I’m not sure Stephen Strange’s mom’s been in a story-when a character’s kicked around this long, there’s little w...