My favorite run of the comic book, THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN, was written by David Micheleine, co-plotted with inker/finisher and sometime layout artists Bob Layton, and usually drawn or layed out by John Romita, Jr. Their run started together in summer 1978, about the time GREASE came to theaters, with #117. With a few guest artists like Carmine Infantino in #122's origin recap, Alan Weiss (#136) and Jerry Bingham (#s 131- 135), they chronicled the character long-time fans of Marvel know as ‘Shellhead,’ until summer of 1981, with issue #153. Best friend/ personal pilot James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes is introduced with #118. Bethany Cabe is the other key supporting cast member, a devastatingly lovely redheaded woman who is full of surprises, beginning with her profession, bodyguard, and continuing from criticizing Stark’s absent and seemingly-incompetent bodyguard, to revelations in her last year in the strip that eventually led to her parting ways with Tony. This is also the home of...

Or Download it, here! Download this episode (right click and save) "> David Anthony Kraft tells the story behind the story about writing The Defenders for Marvel Comics Group. He goes into the heads of some of the characters and provides some unique insights as well as some creative background. It's actually part two! Take a look at my August posts.

Comically Bad: the Origin of Doc Samson Yet again, we dig into the highs and lows of Marvel Comics circa 1980. Now, if you’ve never been embarrassed by a comic book, are you a true comics fan? That mixture of eye-widening wonder and face palming shame is the hallmark of championing old comic books. Sure as Thor is the prince of Asgard, it’s your birthright! Face front, True Believer! Some of the dissonance, this time, can be attributed to Marvel Super-Heroes #92 being a relic of a decade before. This is a reprint from 1971- where the Silver Age meets the Bronze Age, the times when new writers and approaches outside of the Stan Lee script were only beginning, as in the hands of Marvel Universe architect Roy Thomas. Roy did so much to make the story world of Marvel coherent (and yes, sometimes incoherent), connected, gave it rules and editorially guidance to help enthusiastic young writers and artists. His efforts on Conan The Barbarian gave Marvel a new Top Five book arou...

Marvel Comics Group- in its phase as a slightly anarchic bastion of experimentation and creativity- published the comics reprinted here from 1976 to 1978, Leading off this volume we have the second half of Steve Gerber's run. The Steve Gerber stories are SO creative and smartly-written, with Buscema's competent layouts and nice superhero art. The ideas are so weird and original! The inks vary a bit in their outcome, but overall I like the Buscema/ Janson combo. If anything, a bit more subtlety in the art would better compliment Steve's restless wit and canny observations. These are not standard sorts of stories on the whole- the villains are strange but thought-provoking. Plots are both bizarre and driven by commentary about the modern world and individual struggles for identity in sublime pop form. Steve Gerber continued writing in comics and cartoons; after he authored Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, Man-Thing, and the team-up adventures of the Fantastic Four...

“My Mother, the Badoon!” (My Mother, the Car, was just a bit before my time) It’s 3015 A.D.: we have Val and Vance Astro stranded with Starhawk on a weird swampworld; Hulk and Yondu marooned “on a planet of drunkards and robot slaves” and Doc trying to find them again so they can resume their liberation mission, just as they’re boarded by the Badoon. Between Marti’s fire and ice projection powers, Charlie-27’s ramrod approach (“with eleven times the mass of his Terran ancestors”) and Nighthawk’s darkness-doubled strength they show well against the Badoon and their mindless “Zoms,” human slaves, which is why the Guardians hold back their full force. But Nighthawk’s stunned and taken hostage; now the Badoon wish to be led to the power source, as Doc probes the likely planets, judging by suns and potentially-habitated planets. He detects a “solar-powered entity” and his friends, in the Capella system, second from the sun. The “One Who Knows” tells her to put away her sword or suffer f...

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...

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...