As I’ve shared in previous posts, your humble blogger was a relative latecomer to Jim Starlin’s run on Captain Marvel. While I’d bought a few issues of the title way back in 1969, I had abandoned it after Roy Thomas and Gil Kane’s Fawcett-inspired makeover in issue #17 and hadn’t paid much attention to Mar-Vell since, save for his guest appearances in Avengers. For my younger self in the summer of 1973, Jim Starlin was the guy who’d drawn a pretty good “Doctor Strange” story in Marvel Premiere earlier in the year, just before Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner took over that feature and made it really good. But then, he 
showed up in the middle of Daredevil #105, having drawn (and almost certainly also plotted) an origin for that issue’s ostensible villainess, Moondragon, which introduced me for the first time to the epic storyline concerning Saturn’s moon of Titan, and its most dangerous denizen, Thanos, that the young creator had been chronicling in Captain Marvel since coming on board that series with issue #25, back in December, 1972. And then, only a couple of weeks after that, Marvel Feature #12 had arrived in spinner racks, with an even more Thanos-centric yarn, this one drawn (and also at least co-plotted) all the way through by Starlin. If DD #105 hadn’t already 100% convinced me to check out Starlin’s Captain Marvel the first chance I got, MF #12 surely must have clinched the sale.
Even so, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from Captain Marvel #29 when I turned past its striking cover by Starlin and inker Al Milgrom (well, mostly by Starlin and Milgrom*), which promised a “big change” to its title character’s status quo, to find myself on this equally striking first page…
As I would come to appreciate in time, this issue was in fact a great jumping-on point for a couple of reasons. Story-wise, it did indeed represent a major turning point for Mar-Vell of the Kree — in fact, it was very likely the most consequential single issue, in terms of the hero’s motivation and powers, since Captain Marvel #17 (by pure coincidence, the last issue I’d personally deigned to buy, as noted earlier). And from a creative perspective, it found Jim Starlin fully coming into his own as a comic-book auteur, as along with plotting, drawing, and even coloring the story (all of which he’d been doing since his first issue, #25), he’d also scripted every page. (Starlin had provided dialogue for one 6-page chapter in the previous issue, but the remaining 13 pages of #28 had been scripted by his writing collaborator on every issue since #25, making this his first solo flight.) As for the inking, while Starlin didn’t handle that particular job himself, he had about as sympathetic an embellisher as he could hope for in Allen Milgrom — a friend of his since the early 1960s, when they’d both attended the same Detroit area junior high school and bonded over comics; indeed, their first artistic collaborations actually dated back to that time, though “Metamorphosis!” was the first time they’d worked together as professionals.**
“Are you confused, Marvel?” Sure, my sixteen-year-old self may have been baffled by what was going on here in the opening pages of “Metamorphosis!”… but, hey, our hero obviously was as well, so at least I was in good company.
The visualization of interior psychological states and/or philosophical concepts as external foes (suitable for slugfests with the hero) would quickly emerge as a hallmark of Starlin’s work.
Olympus?! Yeah, man, Olympus. Why not? I hadn’t necessarily expected a mythologically inspired backstory for Starlin’s Titan, but Marvel’s version of Thor and his fellow Asgardian gods had been mixing it up with interplanetary menaces like Ego and Galactus (and let’s not forget the Stone Men from Saturn) for longer than I’d been reading the company’s wares, so this seemed completely consistent in tone and concept with the Marvel Universe as I knew and understood it. Later, of course, I’d also see the parallels with the myth-based origins Jack Kirby had devised for the technologically advanced super-gods of his Fourth World comics at DC — an unfinished opus that certainly influenced the execution of Starlin’s ideas regarding Thanos and his kin, even if he’d come up with the basic premises behind the characters years earlier, before any of Kirby’s New Gods had debuted in print.***
I knew enough about classical mythology in 1973 to recognize that the character of Zeus’ brother, A’lars, was an interpolation of Starlin’s, and not an “authentic” mythical figure. But it didn’t bother me; Marvel had taken plenty of liberties with Norse mythology over the years as well, after all, so this just seemed par for the course. The same went for the revelation that the Marvel version of the Greek god Kronos (whose Roman name was Saturn) had become a discorporate entity as a result of an accident with a “cosmic energy tube”, rather than having been overthrown by his children and exiled to Tartarus, as in the ancient texts.
At this point, I knew Mentor only from his brief appearance in a flashback sequence in Daredevil #105, where he was accompanied by a blonde, light-skinned woman named Kazantra, who identified herself as the mother of Thanos. Upon first reading the page above, I made the assumption that this Sui-San was the same woman, shrugging off the difference in coloration as an error of some sort (I probably didn’t even remember that “Mom” in DD #105 had had a different name, as well). Later, I’d come to discover further discrepancies between the DD flashback and subsequent accounts of the same events — possibly as a result of Steve Gerber having scripted the Daredevil sequence rather than Starlin, though it could also be due to the latter’s own evolving thinking about the material — though those are best left for discussion in future posts.
From What If? #25 (Feb., 1981). Text by Mark Gruenwald; art by Ron Wilson and Alan Kupperberg.
Still, as long as we’re discussing “discrepancies”, I can hardly move on from the preceding sequence without acknowledging that most of it isn’t in continuity anymore — at least, not in its original form — and hasn’t been for some forty-two years. In 1981, a back-up story that ran in What If? #25 established that A’lars wasn’t the brother of Zeus, ruler of the gods of Olympus, after all; rather, he was the brother of Zuras, the leader of the Eternals of Olympia. Why the retcon? It all pretty much comes down to the following phrase, which I’ve nicked from a 2021 CBR.com article by Brian Cronin on this subject: “Some guy didn’t like that idea” — the idea in this case being that the denizens of Titan were descended from the Greco-Roman gods of Earth, and the guy being Marvel writer-editor Mark Gruenwald. Gruenwald evidently thought that the Eternals — an advanced offshoot of humanity engineered by the incredibly powerful aliens called Celestials — were a better fit for the progenitors of the Titans than the aforementioned gods. Never mind that the Eternals were clearly originally created by Jack Kirby with the idea that they weren’t part of the mainstream Marvel Universe, and that in his conception, characters like Zuras were the source of human myths about gods and demons, who otherwise didn’t have an independent existence. Or that the Eternals had made their debut in 1976, almost a full three years after Captain Marvel #29 was published; so it’s not like Jim Starlin could have opted to use them, but chose to go with the Greco-Roman divinities instead.
Personally, I find the idea of Thanos and his kin being related to the gods of Olympus much more imaginatively appealing than the notion of their being descended from the Eternals. Among other aspects, I like how Starlin ties in the actual celestial bodies of Uranus, Saturn, and Titan with the classical myths that inspired their names; a connection which still exists in the Eternals-based retcon, true, but only in a muddled, watered-down fashion. But even if I didn’t prefer the original history of Titan for aesthetic reasons, I would still think it unseemly to overturn the work of an earlier creator just because you had an idea you thought was better than theirs, and were in a position to enforce your will. Especially when, as far as I can tell, there weren’t any significant conflicts between Starlin’s original concept and the rest of Marvel’s continuity.
Cover to Eternals: Thanos Rises (Nov., 2021). Art by Esad Ribić.
For his part, Starlin seems to have taken later writers’ futzing about with his creations in stride, incorporating the post-1981 version of their origins into his own later Thanos stories. In Back Issue #9 (Mar., 2005), the artist-writer was quoted as saying: “I try not to trash things from previous writers, so I had to work that sort of in. I didn’t really think that threw off the myth making all that much.” In that same spirit of acceptance, your humble blogger feels obliged to acknowledge how much he enjoyed the recent Eternals comics written by Kieron Gillen, with art by Esad Ribić and others, in which the idea of Thanos-as-Eternal clicked for me for the very first time. These are excellent comics, and if you’re a fan of Jim Starlin’s Thanos, Jack Kirby’s Eternals, or both, you really should check them out.
And now that I’ve finally gotten all that off my chest after four decades, what say we return to “Metamorphosis!”?
Prior to this page, my only glimpses of Thanos, Mentor, and Eros outside of flashbacks had been in Marvel Feature #12, where they could be found in pretty much the same circumstances we see them in here. (Somewhat ironically, an editorial footnote to the latter pair’s single on-panel appearance in that issue had dutifully referred us readers to CM #29 “for further details!” — but maybe Starlin didn’t get the memo, as none such would actually be forthcoming in this issue.)
On the other hand, Drax the Destroyer (you’ll note that Starlin doesn’t bother with the “Drax” here) had only appeared as part of a single-panel memory montage in Marvel Feature #12, and hadn’t figured into Daredevil #105 at all (at least, not on-panel), so I’d had even less exposure to him than to Mentor and Eros. And I didn’t get learn much more about him in this issue; still, what I did see and hear was intriguing.
Despite his being a servant of Thanos, the Controller wasn’t a Starlin creation; rather, he was an old Iron Man villain, having first appeared in issue #12 of the Golden Avenger’s title, back in 1969. But being only an occasional Iron Man reader, I’d never seen the guy before, so he might as well have been a brand new character as far as I was concerned.
Overall, the preceding two pages were very useful to me as a new (OK, returning) Captain Marvel reader in helping me feel more grounded in the complex storyline. Other, more seasoned fans might have become a little impatient, seeing as nothing much actually happens in those two pages; still, I expect even those readers were kept engaged through Starlin’s adventurous visual approach, as exemplified by his use of innovative layouts and “special effects” (e.g., use of a pale blue color-hold for Thanos’ profile).
Eon goes on to explain how they were created by Chronos specifically for the purpose of providing a future champion, i.e., Captain Marvel, with the “skill” that would be the only possible means of overcoming the “raw power” of Thanos. However, they can’t simply give Mar-Vell this skill, because as long as he follows the way of the warrior, it would be wasted. “The universe now needs not a warrior, but a protector!” declares Eon. “He who seeks to protect must first love… and there is no love in war! Do you know war, Mar-Vell?”
The visual personification of Death that Starlin gives us in the last panel above is a dead (sorry) ringer for a mysterious figure that’s been silently hanging around Thanos since issue #26 (along with making several appearances in Captain Marvel, they’ve shown up in Marvel Feature #12 as well). Gee, do you suppose that might mean something?
From Captain Marvel #12 (Apr., 1969). Text by Arnold Drake; art by Dick Ayers and Syd Shores.
From Captain Marvel #18 (Nov., 1969). Text by Roy Thomas; art by John Buscema and Dan Adkins.
Una had perished in Captain Marvel #11 (Mar., 1969), just a month prior to my picking up my own first issue of the title. But though I’d missed witnessing the tragic event itself, I was well aware of what had gone down, as Mar-Vell’s deep grief — and his even more intense desire for revenge on the man he blamed for her death, Yon-Rogg — were a running theme throughout my brief original stint following the book. The thing is, I’d stopped buying Captain Marvel just before the apparent death of Yon-Rogg (yes, he got better later), which occurred in issue #18 — and since I hadn’t witnessed the end of Mar-Vell’s vengeful pursuit. I hadn’t realized that at no time did it involve “a quest of the secret of bringing life back to Una“. (There is a panel in CM #18 where Mar-Vell demands of his enemy, “Can you give life again to one you did slay??“, but the question is obviously 100% rhetorical.) Jim Starlin got that bit wrong, in other words… which is unfortunate, seeing as how this sequence is essentially supposed to represent the clincher in Eon’s argument against Mar-Vell’s warrior ethos. (Though, having said that, I feel obliged to admit that this apparent blunder got past me for years… decades, even… OK, I just caught on to it a couple of weeks ago. Satisfied now?)
This is probably as good a spot as any to observe how effective Starlin is as a colorist, along with everything else. He makes bold choices throughout this issue, eschewing “naturalistic” hues (if that’s the correct word when dealing with this kind of surreal milieu) whenever needed to underscore a dramatic moment, or otherwise enhance the mood of the narrative.
“A few alterations of costume, my hair now blond...” Is there anything that says “superhero comic books” more than signifying major changes to a character’s modus operandi via a few irrelevant cosmetic updates? I don’t think so.
Actually, the costume alterations are exceptionally slight — as far as I can tell, all that Eon has done in that regard is extend the top of Mar-Vell’s mask to his hairline. But that dye job definitely takes years off the guy, don’t you think?
“He knows now his strengths,” a narrative caption tells us, as we see Captain Marvel take on — and then, quickly take down — facsimiles of such old foes as Sentry 459 and Ronan the Accuser. “He knows now his weaknesses… Knowing this, he knows all!”
Something I haven’t mentioned in this post yet — and really should, before I completely run out of story — is how much I like the way Starlin gradually — and graphically — establishes Eon’s duality over the course of the issue. Though Eon speaks in the first person plural from the get-go, the earliest visual depictions suggest that they’re a single entity, even if one that has two faces (or maybe just three eyes?). But then, as the story progresses, the “face” and “eye” personas are treated more and more as separate, through a variety of different visual representations. The fact that the text never mentions these morphings at all simply enhances the already very trippy vibe of Starlin’s narrative.
For those who may not already be aware, the preceding tale wasn’t the first time that Captain Marvel had been whisked across the galaxy to be given new powers by an awesome cosmic entity. Or, more accurately, it was — but there’d been a brief while there before this when he thought he’d had such an experience. It took place in the aforementioned issue #12; and though, in the end, the great and powerful Zo turned out to be every bit as much a humbug as his better-known backwards-namesake, you’d think that Mar-Vell might have had a stray thought or two at some point during his issue-length encounter with Eon along the lines of. “How do I know this isn’t just another con?” But if our hero had any such doubts, Starlin didn’t make us privy to them.
Does that count as a flaw in the story? Perhaps, but it’s only a minor one, at least as far as I’m concerned; and the same goes for any other quibbles I’ve mentioned here. This comic book completely knocked me out in August, 1973, instantly turning me into the kind of Jim Starlin fan who would pick up anything and everything with the guy’s name on it for at least the next ten years. Fifty years later, I still find “Metamorphosis!” an exceptionally entertaining reading experience… one that’s only enhanced by my knowledge that there’s even better stuff soon to follow. I look forward to sharing it all with you in the coming months and years.
*For the printed cover of Captain Marvel #29, Mar-Vell’s face was redrawn by Marvel art director John Romita. This kind of thing happened a lot at Marvel in the 1970s, as well as at DC Comics; the practice was (and still is) often justified by the companies’ interest in keeping their trademarked characters “on model”, but it’s hard to figure out how that could apply in this case, as Romita had never drawn a Captain Marvel story to my knowledge, while Starlin had been rendering him on a regular basis since issue #25.
Thankfully, Marvel would make amends of a sort in later years by having Starlin redraw the cover illustration for several different reprint editions, as well as by including a scan of his and Milgrom’s original art in a couple of those editions. For anyone who may not have already seen that piece, here ’tis:
**The first to make it to newsstands, at any rate. DC Comics’ Sword of Sorcery #5, featuring a Gray Mouser story pencilled by Starlin and inked by Milgrom, is supposed to have gone on sale on August 23, 1973 — a whole two days after Captain Marvel #29, which reportedly hit the spinner racks on August 21st.
***According to an article by Peter Sanderson published in Back Issue #9 (Mar., 2005), Starlin came up with Thanos and Eros as the result of a college class:
“This was before I actually came to work in New York for Marvel. I had been taking a psych class, and I just was playing around with characters,” he [i.e., Starlin] says. Thanos and his brother Eros (who later also became known as Starfox) were inspired by Starlin’s study of Sigmund Freud’s concepts of the death instinct and the sexual drive.
“Some guy didn’t like the idea.” I was thinking yesterday how much of John Byrne’s work can be summed up by his not liking what someone did.
“Marvel had taken plenty of liberties with Norse mythology” There’s a great line in one 1970s stories where Hercules is on a college lecture tour and his handler tells Thor “We’d invite you but nobody accepts your version of Asgard with guys named Hogun and Volstagg as accurate.”
I flipped through this on the stands at the time; under my brother’s and my informal division of comics purchasing, he got the non-Avengers Marvel books and wasn’t buying this one so I didn’t want to spend money on it, particularly mid-plot thread. I didn’t really sit down and read it until I bought the Death of Captain Marvel TPB. It is indeed, an amazing piece of work.
I had, however, completely forgotten any connection between the Titans and the Olympians — I guess in my head-canon Starlin’s creations are too SF for me to accept it. Though waaay better than having the Eternals as part of the MU, as I’ve vented about at Atomic Junk Shop (https://atomicjunkshop.com/kirby-von-daniken-the-eternals/)
Romita’s head was much better than Starlin & Milgrom’s version, in my opinion.
I would prefer the Romita head to the Starlin version I’ve seen elsewhere—which looked pretty ugly by my memory. The one Alan gave us here though looks good and I would have left as is and ran with it.
This is a classic example of what comics were like before “decompression” became the norm in the 1990s: high panel count per page, and therefore far more *story* within a single issue, instead of spreading it out over three issues and having too many splash pages (or pages with very low panel count).
Starlin and Milgrom worked exceptionally hard on the art. The intensity is sustained in every panel. Today’s comics artists would cry if they had to draw in an “analog” approach (with traditional materials *by hand* and with much sweat of the brow) instead of using far too much photo reference and computer programs to set up perspective grids, etc. to speed up the process. The difference is clearly discernible.
My only quibble with Starlin’s work in this issue is that he used “stop motion” panel sequences a few times too many (where the “camera” is static for three or four panels while the characters move around a bit; it emphasises a moment in time, almost like slow motion on film).
I have to admit I prefer the Romita head on the cover. Starlin’s was too small.
If digital tools had been available at the time, I’m sure quite a few of yesteryear’s artists would have taken advantage of the time savings and boost in productivity.
Jim Starlin and Captain Marvel represent my first real love affair with a Marvel property. Sure, I liked Spider-Man just fine and the FF and I’ll be a Daredevil fan for life, whether I’m currently reading the book or not, but Starlin’s work on Cap and later, Warlock was epic story-telling unprecedented since the time of Jack Kirby, and his unappreciated work for a completely Different Company.
Like Kirby before him, Starlin really embraced the idea that the only real limitation on his work was his own imagination, which was considerable. Sure, he might have cherry-picked a few ideas from Kirby and Greek mythology and who knows what else, but the way he tied it together and built on his own ideas and concepts is pure Starlin. It’s weird seeing Jim’s original concepts for characters that have now been transformed and redefined so completely for the MCU, but it was these original iterations that made his work such a fertile field for Gunn and others to play with in the first place.
Finally, as an artist, I always loved Starlin’s work. So big, so dynamic and full of life. Even when I didn’t like his take on something, I still loved the passion he imbued it with. I hope you bought every issue of Captain Marvel throughout the entire run, Alan, because I missed a lot of them over the years and look forward to having you fill in the gaps.
I did buy every issue of the rest of Starlin’s run on CM, Don — alas, there’s only five to come after this one. But, yes, I do plan to write about ’em all. 😉
One of the star symbols on the last panel of the second page shown here was later used for Quasar when he got a Mar-Vell inspired costume in Quasar #19. I wonder if that was deliberate.
I suspect that it was deliberate since Quasar was picked by Eon to replace Captain Marvel as the Defender of the Universe, complete with cosmic awareness.
I was already sold on Starlin’s Thanos Epic after having read C.M. #27, but #29, despite being a sort of interlude to the main story was magnificent in and of itself, IMO. Since Thanos & Eros were themselves both based on Greek mythological concepts, it made perfect sense to integrate them with Marvel’s version of Greek mythology and notice that Starlin referred to Zeus and Alors as among Chronos “many and different” offspring, not his only children, and, as discussed in the Marvel Masterworks Forum, none of what Starlin wrote here contradicted anything of the Marvel mythos, including its own version of Greek mythology, as things stood in 1973 and there wasn’t really any need for Greunwald’s modifications and I don’t particularly like them, But what the heck, Marvel continuity has been shot to hell for decades. And of course, it’s ridiculous to complain about Starlin’s version of Greco-Roman mythology not matching the “actual” myths because Lee & Kirby had already made significant changes in their version of Norse mythology from the old tales. At any rate, they’re all make-believe, whether from oral tradition of over 2,000 years ago, or comicbook versions of 50 years vintage or just published yesterday.
Obviously, Starlin wanted to make some philosophical points in this issue regarding war and protecting people. I think Starlin did a better job of integrating them into the overall story than, say, Stan Lee did with the Silver Surfer’s musings in that title, and many of Harvey Kurtzman’s EC war stories reflected philosophical outlooks on war and so-called “honor”.
This issue also provided a bit of a primer on Mar-Vell’s past comics exploits, nearly all of which I was entirely ignorant of, including his old costume. That Starlin misconstrued Marv’ quest for revenge against Yon-Rogg as one to bring Una back to life may be put down to creative license on Starlin’s part, or even Eon describing Marv’s unstated but underlying desire. I’ve gotten a few back issues of C.M. from before Starlin’s run, but most were terribly written and aside from the early Colan and later Kane runs, most were terribly drawn so I haven’t been motivated to get the whole set, not even in an Essentials volume.
I must admit one aspect that really puzzled me for years was the reference to “alterations” to Marv’s costume. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what those alterations were since nothing stood out to me as significantly different. That his face mask was modified to cover his entire forehead escaped my notice! Maybe it was because the way Starlin often drew his hair, and giving him even just moderately longer hair than he’d previously been drawn with, made it less noticeable to me. But looking back at the before and after panels, there it is! I didn’t think the change from blonde to silver hair made him look that much younger, but comparing how Starlin drew his face and hairstyle to how Colan drew him in his earliest appearances, Starlin’s version looked both much younger and far less militaristic. Colan’s Mar-Vell, without the helmet, looked like an old soldier, even when dressed in a business suit. Him/Warlock’s appearance transitions, from Kirby to Kane to Starlin, somewhat echo those of Marv, from Colan to Kane to Starlin. In both cases, Starlin only made slight modifications to Kane’s versions, but ultimately, they hardly looked at all like Colan’s and Kirby’s original versions. Although Iron Man was also a warrior type, specifically of the Cold War, despite Tony Stark himself never being an actual soldier, and Mike Friedrich was having Shellhead undergo his own, albeit much more drawn-out Metamorphosis, I doubt Starlin could have crafted this particular story around Iron Man. Although not a great seller, Iron Man was very much part of mainstream Marvel, particularly as an Avenger and also as an Earthling who outside of his participation in the Kree-Skrull War, hadn’t had much in the way of “cosmic” experiences. And being “cosmically aware” just doesn’t seem suited to Tony Stark’s temperament, as written up to this point. Mar-Vell’s life seemed to have undergone much more internal turmoil and made him a better candidate for this sort of change in outlook.
I’d say Lee having booted Starlin off of Iron Man worked out for the best, and I can see why Starlin, and other of the ’70s generation of comics creators came to prefer working on the titles on the fringes wherein they had greater artistic flexibility rather than on the top titles wherein they would have been under much tighter editorial constraints or the glaring eyes of Stan Lee. But then, Lee & Thomas, and Wein, in his turn, seemed a bit inconsistent in how much they would allow the new writers & artists to push the envelope in this era. Lee himself started the subplot of Reed & Sue’s marriage difficulties that nearly resulted in their divorce; and Conway was allowed to kill off Gwen, although Lee later ordered Conway to bring her back, somehow; Englehart was allowed to write several months of Captain America stories without Steve Rogers putting on the Captain America duds, but Gerber was required to “kill off” Howard the Duck in Man-Thing because he was just too silly to include in a horror mag! But, as with Gwen’s return, reader response resulted in Howard making an even bigger comeback. With Starlin on Captain Marvel, seems his distinctive run made the Kree captain more popular than ever, with enough momentum to keep him going even long after Starlin left, albeit not enough to prevent a final cancellation and finally being killed off altogether. His last metamorphosis.
This was around the time Tony was turning Stark Industries from military contractor to more peaceable tech so I could see Eon working with that. But no, it wouldn’t be as good — working with Mar-Vell did give Starlin a lot more freedom.
If anyone’s curious about fred’s reference to the Marvel Masterworks Forum, you can check out the discussion of August, 1973’s Marvels, including Captain Marvel #29, at: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/marvelmasterworksfansite/marvel-masterworks-marathon-part-147-august-1973-t39099.html
I’ve only read a couple of issues of Jim Starlin’s Captain Marvel run, so I’m sure I’m going to enjoy your retrospectives on them. And that reminds me I really want to pick up one of the reprints of those stories.
Did Starlin ever explain why Thanos was big & purple & had a bumpy chin, even though all of the other inhabitants of Titan looked exactly like normal humans? I know it was later explained that Thanos suffers from “the Deviant Syndrome” and that’s why he looks the way he does, but that’s obviously part of the retcon that made the Titans into a breakaway group of Eternals, since, as you say, Jack Kirby didn’t even create the Eternals and Deviants until several years later.
As fred noted over in the Marvel Feature #12 comments a little while ago, when the Titans first appeared in Iron Man, they were *all* purple. If Starlin ever accounted for the later discrepancy in appearance between Thanos and the other members of his family, I’m not aware of it (which doesn’t mean he didn’t, just that I can’t remember!).
But you know, I’m not sure I even thought that much about it back in 1973; rather, I suspect I saw it as analogous to Darkseid and Orion not having much family resemblance to speak of, over on the DC side. Gods (and demi-gods) just aren’t like us ordinary folks when it comes to genetics.
In an interesting coincidence, Captain Marvel 29 is the third Marvel comic in August 1973 to provide a “big change” or “new direction” for the main character. The first was Sub-Mariner 67 which it appears you may not be discussing (and that was certainly a big change with a new costume, new direction and demotion to bi-monthly status..and unfortunately eventual cancellation). The second, of course was Kull, which you discussed a few days ago. And third was Captain Marvel 29. What is really interesting is that while the Sub-Mariner and Kull issues were clearly attempts to increase sales, Captain Marvel 29 seems much more organic on Jim Starlin’s part and the captions on the cover of Captain Marvel 29 seem like editor Roy Thomas’ attempt to bring as much as attention as possible to the Captain Marvel book. From reading various interviews over the years, it appears this was successful. In fact while Iron Man would go bi-monthly in September 1973 because of declining sales, Captain Marvel would be a solid success although it would continue as a bi-monthly book. I came to Captain Marvel late but did not start with CM 29. I had started reading lots of Marvel comics in early 1968, but completely missed Captain Marvel. Although I was reading Avengers during the Kree-Skrull war storyline and beyond, I must have missed Captain Marvel’s return in CM 22 and I guess I also missed 23-24 as well. However, I did see CM 25 with its Starlin cover and Captain Marvel about to fight the Hulk, Namor and others. I have to admit, that book got me curious and I did buy it, and of course since the following issue had a battle with the Thing, I was now completely hooked. So that’s how I got into the first Thanos storyline. All due credit and props to Mr. Starlin…I am a big fan of his art, and he very quickly developed into a very good writer. In one interview, Starlin said that CM was very close to being cancelled and essentially this storyline not only saved the book there was an implication that it was selling better than a number of books at this time including Iron Man. But as you said, Alan, CM 29, beyond being an excellent book, was a perfect jumping on point for any CM reader, since Mar-Vell’s past was such a vast confusing mess (I eventually read many back issues of CM..some were ok…and some not so much). It was almost like you were beginning anew with this character in CM 29, and I look forward to your comments on CM 30-33. One last thought…around this time I had the opportunity to read Iron Man 55-56 which I had missed when they first came out. I had read interviews where both Starlin and Gerber had discussed being fired from Iron Man by Stan because he did not like IM 56. I find this really bizarre. IM 56 was not that bad as far as I remember and the early art by Starlin was fine. It’s clear that Stan did not see much (if any) of the mediocre to poor fill-ins that were put out by Marvel during the 70s. IM 56 was hardly the worst thing to come out of Marvel in the 70s. Thank goodness Roy Thomas recognized the potential of Jim Starlin and gave him the opportunity to work on Captain Marvel!
I went to law school later in life, as a former US Army Major in the 1990s. One of my Classmates, on learning I was a fan of Jim Starlin’s comics back in the 1970s, asked me how I had gotten passed the Urinalysis screening. I told him, I never needed to drop Aceid; Starlin droped it for me.
I suspect Starlin’s influences on this comic included his feelings about his time in the US Navy and his service in Vietnam during that period.
I found Starlin’s writing uneven on this issue. (Apparently, he had issues with his own work, bringing in Steve Englehart to handle the dialogue of his last two CPT Marvels. (I still have no idea why Eon had a “Daredevil head” in some panels.) However, if you look at Strange Tales #178, you can see how much more comfortable he had become waring the “Auteur” hat in a bit more than two years.
Al Milgrom was a very good Starlin inker. Milgrom, like David Cockrum (who inked CM #26) was a Murphy Anderson assistant. If ypou look at Starlin’s Warlock strip in Strange Tales, where he inked his own pencils, Starlin’s own inking style evokes elements oif Anderson.
I did not buy CM#25, but had followed it from # 26 and had read and enjoyed Starlin’s IM stories. I liked IM#56, but I suspect Lee thought Gerber & Starlin had been cavilear with the IP. They, for example, had IM rollerskate back from his first fight with Thanos. They used a parody of early Dr. Strange bad guys to set the main threat in train, who in the last panel is having an Orange Julius with Dr. Strange, who says that he does not believe in magic, In short, it tended to make light of an established Marvel hero in a somewhat unaffectionate way. (Yeah, Gerber and a Starlin who was still a bit wild, they were **certainly** going to be respectful.)
Doh! Okay, I missed this one-panel allusion to death in a previous comment. Kids today have to understand that back in those days, readers weren’t constantly looking for Easter eggs everywhere like the readers/viewers of today!
Also wanted to add my voice to the chorus of those who disagree with the Eternals retcon. I went into this in greater depth on my own blog when that Eternals movie was scheduled to come out a few years back: https://crustymud.paradoxcomics.com/the-mcus-big-eternals-gamble/
I agree The Eternals in the MCU doesn’t pose the same problems. On the other hand having just a half-dozen random figures means most of Earth mythology and legend has nothing to do with them; Thena may have inspired Athena but 99 percent of Greek mythology is still just mythology. Kind of pointless.
Amazing issue. I was eleven years old. I didn’t buy DD105, but I bought MF12. I was hooked. I loved the artwork. Then CM29. I still remember how cool it was to see the “cosmically aware” Mar-Vell with the universe face.
Some 50 year later observations:
“Eight billion light years ago, Chronos foresaw…” Light years are distance, not time.
Chronos appears to have three wives, a brunette, a blonde and a redhead. Lucky Chronos. I’d be most happy with one Petticoat Junction lady for my wife, Bobbie Joe (Laurie Saunders). I’m sure everyone agrees with me on this.
I go back to the cusp of puberty seeing Starlin/Milgrom’s “clothed” breasts. In fairness, many women in the early 70s were not wearing bras, so fair play on observation. But, maybe they leaned into it? If so, I’m glad.
At the top of the uniform change page you can see the boots are straight across. The new uniform has boots with pointy tops. Whoopie!
The art is fantastic! I see Alan Moore writing in some of the sequences. When CM fades out to a star-like twinkle, it reminds me of Miracleman close-ups to his eye. It seems to me that Starlin must have been an influence to Moore, but creativity can coincide.
As I look at it now, it’s flawed and strange, but still great! For a 10, 11, 12 year old, it’s gold. It hits on themes pre-teens are feeling; disoriented, transformed into something “better”, good vs. evil in a simple sense, ground-breaking art that seems like only us young people are aware of.
I didn’t buy DD105, but I bought MF12, what a great comic! I, too, as a commenter commented, wonder why the heck Iron Man flew over the Thing in the desert! Pick him up! He’ll be a good partner. I bought CM29 and I was hooked.
About the uniform change, Starlin did the opposite with the gloves. Before, the were higher toward the elbow, afterwards they were straight across.
Not that I noticed back then.
The art is amazing, the ‘history’ pages especially memorable to me 50 years ago, when I first saw them ( but could not read them) in Italian editoriale corno reprints that my grandparents would package up ( on request!) and send across to the UK. This issue appeared in i Fantastici Quattro #108 & 109 May 1975.
Starlin drew many of the covers to my first Marvels ( the British Mighty World of Marvel), and his art was a big reason why I kept buying ( plus the Kirby FFs and the Ditko Hulks and Spider-mans of course!!).