It’s been a minute since we last checked in what the Avengers were up to half a century ago — since the aftermath of the Avengers/Defenders War, in fact, and we put that multi-issue epic to bed back in September. Given that consideration — as well as the fact that the issue we’re focusing on today is the second half of a two-part story, which itself has been spun off from the conclusion of the three-issue story arc preceding it — you might guess that we have a good amount of recapping to get through before moving on to our main event.
And you wouldn’t be wrong. But, as it happens, the recap that’s been provided on the opening pages of Avengers #124 is actually a pretty clear and comprehensive rundown of the main events of the previous four issues, so we’re going to rely heavily on it to see us through (though not without adding some supplemental details and commentary along the way, naturally). Thus, without further ado, we’ll turn past our subject’s uncredited cover (probably pencilled by John Romita and/or Ron Wilson, with inks by Frank Giacoia) to the first page of its contents — an act which, as you’ll see immediately, puts us right smack-dab in medias res:
We’ll pause a moment here before proceeding to our clearly essential recap to note the story’s credits, which find regular writer Steve Englehart joined by a couple of irregular artists — though two who already had Avengers work behind them (and ahead of them, too, for that matter). The veteran illustrator John Buscema, of course, was already well established as one of “the” Avengers artists, having served as the title’s regular penciller for two substantial stints in 1967-69 and 1970, and having contributed a few one-off jobs since then (the most recent coming just a few months back, in #121). Dave Cockrum, on the other hand, was considerably less experienced, both in the comics field in general and on this book in particular. Not counting a couple of costume designs contributed during his fan days, which were picked up and used by editors at Charlton and DC, his first professional credit dated back only to 1971; and his only work on Earth’s Mightiest Heroes had come in issues #106-108, where he’d been one among multiple inkers. For the most part, Cockrum had been drawing for DC Comics these last few years; there, he’d become known for his work on the Legion of Super-Heroes feature in Superboy but, having recently come to a parting of the ways with DC over the (non-)return of his original art, the 30-year-old artist was now beginning his career at Marvel in earnest.
Notably, Buscema and Cockrum are co-credited simply as “artists” for “Beware the Star-Stalker!”, rather than as penciller and inker; the Grand Comics Database indicates that the former illustrator only provided breakdowns, while the latter was responsible for the finished pencil art as well as the inking. However they divided their labor, the combination of their talents made for a highly appealing product, with Cockrum’s slick finishes providing an excellent complement to Buscema’s accomplished draftsmanship and storytelling.
Ah, the Zodiac. This is a supervillain group that I enjoyed reading about quite a bit back in the day, although fifty years later, I have to admit that there’s really not much to them beyond a moderately interesting (if obvious) basic premise and some appealing costumes. I believe that my fondness (if that’s the word) for the team stemmed mostly from how I first discovered them, in a 1970 crossover between Iron Man and Daredevil which featured lots of calls back to previous issues of not only those two titles, but of Avengers and even Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (in which Jim Steranko had, probably inadvertently, introduced the whole “zodiac” theme via his solo villain, Scorpio). At that time, there somehow seemed to me that there must be more to this batch of baddies than there actually was — which, when you got down to it, was that they were simply twelve mostly non-powered crime bosses who had decided to play dress-up and give themselves codenames because, well, that’s just what you do if you’re a moderately ambitious crook in the Marvel Universe.
Actually, there was a little more to the Zodiac this go-around, as writer Englehart — himself an avid adherent of astrology — decided to play up that aspect of the crime cartel. On his watch, they came to favor astrologically-inspired crimes — such as the “mass murder” plot referenced in the second panel above, which involved using a weapon powered by “stellar energy” to kill everyone in Manhattan born between May 22 and June 21 (every Gemini, in other words). The Avengers managed to put to a stop to that scheme in issue #121, but still had problems putting the dastardly dozen away completely; this, despite significant dissension in the villains’ ranks, where Aries plotted to usurp control from the team’s leader, Taurus, and the other members fell into place behind one of the other on the basis of whether they were an earth, fire, water, or air sign — with Libra, “the balance” purporting to take a neutral role. Yeah, these folks (and their scripter) really took this stuff seriously.
Lest any of you out there reading this think that our Assemblers were completely at the mercy of the Zodiac as a result of their deployment of the ol’ warehouse-disguised-as-a-spaceship trick, please be advised that the Avengers almost managed to save themselves from Taurus’ trap. Still, even Iron Man (who managed to break the warehouse-ship free from orbit and propel it back towards Earth with his foot-jets) wouldn’t have been able to keep his fellow heroes (and six of their foes) from burning up on re-entry without the timely help of a force-field projected by the Zodiac’s Star-Cruiser, which was piloted by none other than the not-so-neutral-after-all Libra (not at all a bad trick, considering that character’s blindness).
The Zodiac story arc reached its climax with a final fight between the two teams at the Zodiac’s headquarters — one which culminated in a scene which isn’t included in Avengers #124’s recap, but which we’ll cover here, anyway; since, despite it not having much to do with the current storyline, it represented a fresh development in an important ongoing subplot. The sequence began towards the battle’s finale, when a solar eye-blast from the Vision knocked Taurus into the HQ’s swimming pool, and, being unable to swim, he called upon Vizh to save him (art here by Bob Brown and Mike Esposito)…
Yeah, file that one away for the future, folks. For now, we’ll turn our attention to the more pressing question that concerned the Avengers at the end of issue #122 (and in the middle of issue #124’s recap): why had Libra taken the action he did to save their lives?
As you may recall, Mantis had arrived at Avengers Mansion back in issue #114 with no backstory to speak of. She seemed to be no more (or less) than the exotic Vietnamese girlfriend of the redemption-seeking Swordsman — an exceptionally confident young woman who rocked some serious Dragon Lady vibes, while displaying martial arts skills so advanced as to allow her to incapacitate Thor, at least briefly. Those skills went mostly unexplained for months, as did a not negligible degree of psychic ability. So it wasn’t all that surprising that there would be more to her history than we’d yet learned — though the revelation that she’d (apparently) been fathered by a “C”-list supervillain (and a blond Caucasian one, to boot) definitely seemed to come out of left field.
But, as chronicled by Englehart, Bob Brown, and Don Heck in #123’s “Vengeance in Viet Nam! — or — An Origin for Mantis” (and yes, that “An” is significant), it all made a sort of sense. Libra, by his own account, was a German who’d served as a mercenary soldier for the French forces in Vietnam in the early 1950s. He’d met and fallen in love with a young woman of Saigon named Lua, not learning until after they’d wed that her brother, in addition to not being a fan of interracial marriage, was (as it says in the last panel above) the “king of the Saigon underworld!” — also known by the very appropriate sobriquet of “Monsieur Khruul”. An attack by Khruul and his underlings caused both his own sister’s death and Libra’s blindness, causing the latter to flee with his and Lua’s newborn daughter into the jungle, where they soon found refuge with the mysterious (and hitherto unknown) “Priests of Pama”. Both Libra and Mantis received training from the Priests — but, as he told the Avengers, while he learned patience during his time with the priests, he also retained his desire for money and power; and thus, ultimately deserted both the temple and his daughter.
One significant element in Libra’s yarn that’s not mentioned in our issue #124 recap is that Monsieur Khruul had — evidently completely by coincidence — been the employer of the Swordsman at the time Mantis first met him. Swordy had been sidelined through most of the Zodiac storyline, recovering from a wound that he’d received in the line of duty in Avengers #117. (Typical of the character’s bad luck, that wound had subsequently become infected when he was taken at first to jail, rather than to a hospital.) Upon learning that his old boss was the murderer of his beloved’s mother, Swordsman had vacated his wheelchair and taken an Avengers quinjet, arriving to confront Khruul in his Saigon mansion well in advance of his fellow Avengers’ arrival there. It hadn’t gone at all well…
Yeah, it pretty much sucked to be the Swordsman in early 1974… and things weren’t going to be looking up for the guy any time soon.
Leaving their unfortunate comrade in the care of the Scarlet Witch, the Avengers proceeded on to the temple of the Priests of Pama — where, as we’ve already seen, they found that the Priests had been murdered by Khruul’s men…
Naturally, after hearing this, Iron Man doesn’t hit the Star-Stalker with another blast of his repulsor rays. But it hardly matters; the creature is already well juiced up, and he proceeds to smash the temple floor with a single blow from his fist. This doesn’t seriously harm any of our heroes, but it does knock them off their feet — making them a more-or-less captive audience for our villain to regale them with his origin story:
Hmmm… so I guess that the Star-Stalker had some sort of psychic alert system in place to let him know whenever any of the Kree pacifist outposts went dark, wherever in space he himself happened to be at the time? And that he was already in the vicinity of Earth when he got the alert? Or that he possesses a near-instantaneous means of interstellar travel? Or both? And he came straight to the Priests of Pama’s temple, killed one guy, and then hid, because… it was fun? OK, whatever.
“Of course!” exclaims the Black Panther. “Zodiac’s Star-Blaster! What better weapon to use against a Star-Stalker?” And so, the Avengers make arrangements for the crime cartel’s contraption to be transported from the States to Vietnam, on the double,
So, Mantis’ story is that she picked up her super-martial arts skills on the streets of Saigon. Sure, that’s the ticket. Clearly, Libra’s account is seeming more credible by the minute — but it’s also clear that Mantis believes what she’s telling Vision and the others, as well as understandable that she’d react extremely negatively to a stranger showing up to tell her 1) he’s her dad, and 2) everything she remembers about her childhood is wrong.
About this time, a contingent from S.H.I.E.L.D. arrives with the Star-Blaster. Unfortunately, the thing’s been on the fritz since Thor and Iron Man damaged it in battle a few issues back — but since both Iron Man and Black Panther have electronics expertise to spare, that’s not a problem for very long…
The Star-Stalker smashes Thor and Iron Man together, knocking them both out. Following them into battle, Black Panther, Vision, and Libra fare no better…
Um I’m not sure it really makes sense that the Vision’s “solar rays” take down the Star-Stalker so handily, when the Star-Blaster’s “star-energy” didn’t faze him at all. The sun is a star, after all. Are we to assume that the Zodiac managed to somehow eradicate the heat from the stellar power they captured and manipulated? Or… maybe their technology runs on some sort of astrological principle, where normal physics don’t apply. Yeah, let’s go with that one.
And that’s that for this issue. I won’t try to tell you that this was one of Steve Englehart’s finest efforts, and I certainly don’t count the Star-Stalker among the Avengers’ most memorable villains (as best as I’ve been able to determine, he’s remained pretty much dead for the last fifty years, and small wonder). But the story sure looks nice, and this two-parter represents a major development in the ever-unfolding, ever-more-cosmic story of Mantis: the “Celestial Madonna” saga, which will prove to be one of the most essential story arcs of Steve Englehart’s run on this title.
But before that storyline can really take off, we’ll have next month’s crossover with Captain Marvel to enjoy. There, we’ll see if Englehart can credibly shoehorn the events of his friend Jim Starlin’s Thanos War epic (in which the Avengers have played a significant role ever since CM #27, published a whole year earlier, in April, 1973) into his own ongoing Avengers continuity. Oh, and seeing as how the “Next Month” blurb also promises “the riotous return of Captain America” — a guy who’s been pretty damn busy fighting the Secret Empire (and running from the law) in his own book for some time now — it looks like he’ll be needing to fold in several months’ worth of his own Captain America stories as well. Should be fun! I hope you’ll join me next month to see how it all turns out.
Additional cover art credits, per the Grand Comics Database and Mike’s Amazing World:
- Avengers #120 (Feb., 1974) by Jim Starlin and Frank Giacoia.
- Avengers #121 (Mar., 1974) by Ron Wilson (?) and John Romita.
- Avengers #122 (Apr., 1974) by Rich Buckler and John Romita.
- Avengers #123 (May, 1974) by Ron Wilson (?) and John Romita.
“You will never guess my secrets so leave me to spin my cocoon.”
That’s what I usually say when I leave a party for a good nights sleep.
Another fine overview of this issue and the preceding Zodiac yarn. Issue #120 was my first exposure to the astrological-themed crime cartel and although I never bought into astrology at all, I still found it rather intriguing and being among the 1/12th of the population who happens to be a Gemini (along with my mother and youngest brother, whose mutual birthday was 4 days after mine) and whom Taurus planned to kill made for a bit of silly fun. I actually liked the two-page spread of Zodiac in issue 120 enough to have made my own, rather crude, rendering of it to use as a poster on my bedroom wall. But ultimately, most of the members of Zodiac weren’t all that compelling and only a very few – Taurus, Gemini (whom I’d seen in the Ka-Zar series), Aries and Libra rose a bit above the crowd in the previous issues. Eventually, I would read the previous stories, in which the original Scorpio had a more compelling role and in which Capricorn’s mask horns had some odd Elastic Man like powers – and what was with his pale-green skin?
Moving on to this issue, um, overall, this is some unusually clunky writing by Englehart. Some of the story problems you brought up evaded my 11-year-old self 50 years ago, but it still struck me as rather disjointed even back then. Seems primarily a means by Englehart to enlarge the mystery of Mantis while also eliminating some characters who might have otherwise shed more light on her background, possibly corroborating Libra’s claims. But now both the Kree pacifist colonists and Khruul were all conveniently dead and it’d be about another year before more substantive details about Mantis’ background was revealed, even if just elaborating on Libra’s admissions. Also of note in this mag was Swordsman showing more signs of heading towards a psychological breakdown. In retrospect, it now occurs to me that this was running a bit parallel with Harry Osborn’s going ever more bonkers over in Spider-Man, although these mental derailments would have very different denouements coming up just a few months hence. Actually, I rather liked what Englehart was doing with Swordsman for the sheer pathos of it all. At 11, I certainly hadn’t had nearly enough experience of the ups and downs of life or knowledge of the wide-range of the peculiarities of real-world human behavior and failings. Swordsman wants to be a swashbuckling hero in the worst possible way, to be someone Mantis can look up to because he needs her admiration and love, but over and over again he gets cut down, this last time in a truly humiliating fashion after he’d gone off on his own on an ill-thought-out mission of vengeance which turned out to be a total fiasco. Even as I could groan at Swordsy’s foolishness, I could also empathize with his plight. He had genuinely reformed from his former truly bad self, but he was still screwing up. Still all too human.
Oh, and I didn’t think about it back then but now it turns out that Marvel’s two most prominent Asian characters are actually also half-white or Eurasian. But then, I hadn’t yet read an issue of Master of Kung Fu. About a decade later, I’d become an uncle to Eurasians, courtesy of my brother Terry’s romance and marriage to a Filipina he met in high school with whom he had two sons, born in September 1983 and December 1984, the latter now recently retired from the Air Force and living with his wife in Okinawa.
Meanwhile, with the next few issues, we’d have cross-overs with Captain Marvel and the Fantastic Four, along with diversions from Klaw, Solaar and Necrodamus, and then the beginning of a string of conflicts with Kang, Looking forward to whichever, if any, of those and other mags you might bring up for your own look backs, Alan! Always a pleaure.
The Dave Cockrum/Murray Boltinoff Controversy is interesting.
Cockrum was the regular artist on what had been retitled Superboy & The Lefion of Superheroes with #197. Cockrum drew a doub;e page spread of the wedding of two Legionerrs. Dual Damsel and Bouncing Boy in issue # 200. Cockrum asked for the art back (since he was proud of it)( Boltinoff initially said “”Yes” but Carmine Infantino said, “No.” Cockrum got fired.
Cockrum had recently become the regular artist for CPT Marvel, Jr, in Shazam #8. He loved the character (as he loved the Blackhawks) and asked to continue drawing that strip. Julie Schwartz said “No.” (Oddly, Schwartz had the chance to save DC’s bacon as he had when Boltinoff fired Adams for changing Bob Haney;s script for B&B#86, but he did not save Cockrum, who would co-create the new X-Men, Marvel’s biggest 1970s series.)
I have always thought Cockrum’s talents as an inker far surpassed his skills as a penciler. I also thought ne was better at character designs than he was as story-telling artist. I think, like Steve Ditko, an artist who often did his own inks, Cockrum’s pencils lacked a certain something when he did not ink his work.
Mike Grell, newly hired by DC, had only just finished a three issue Aquaman back-up in Adventure Comics when this happened. He took over Superboy & the LSH. I liked his work but still missed Cockrum. The LSH, with its superhero and science fiction subject matter was uniquely suitable for Cockrum.
Oddly enough, both Cockrum and Grell were Vietnam vets, Cockrum (like Jim Starlin) in the Navy and Grell in the USAF.
Hello, John!
Thank you for writing this. I thought I was the only one who felt that Cockrum’s inks covered a multitude of sins when it came to his pencils. His figures tended to somewhat stiff, and the storytelling was only so-so. But because he had a way with details in the inking, the final product looked swell. This really became evident when he took over BATMAN with Mike DeCarlo’s inks. Actually, it would become apparent even sooner, with GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS #3. But that’s for another time.
If you look at what Cockrum was able to bring out in pencils by people like George Tuska (in AVENGERS #106-108) and Bob Brown (#126), he really could have stuck to inking and finishes.
Having said that, Cockrum’s pencils could rise to the occasion, as he would show in a mere four months with GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS #2, to say nothing of X-MEN the following year. But again, he was inking himself, or he was assisted by super talents like the Crusty Bunkers.
And I agree with you that Cockrum was a good fit for the Legion of Super-Heroes. I really was never that big a Mike Grell fan, because his figures and expressions tended to be even stiffer than Cockrum’s. (To say nothing of his problems with anatomy – heads being too big or small for the bodies, and so on.) Grell was also able to get by with a slick inking style.
I always thought Grell was better on adventure strip kinds of things than superheroes, per se, Jon Sable, Freelance and The Longbow Hunters. His work on James Bond is of a piece with this.
I thought The Long Bow Hunters was a masterpiece, but I was less enthused about his long GA run. His other sort of classic superhero story is that Phantom Stranger story he did early on with Arnold Drake in Phantom Stranger #33.
He is a genuinely good writer who also has flashes of visual genius that go nowhere (e.g., the GL/GA “Brand of Power” story).
In the recent past, only Kane & Adams drew animals as well. It is a shame there is no real demand for classic westerns, Grell would have been great at that,
I thought Warlord had great potential, but probably should have been kept bi-monthly to retain narritive focus..
Having recently reread all my Warlords, I think that’s a fair assessment. Lord knows, nobody else was able to do a good job writing Travis Morgan. I’ll probably reread Jon Sable soon.
I’m not a big fan of his GA run but the issue where Travis and Ollie meet is a hoot (“Did Gilligan ever get off the damn island?”).
I agree that Cockrum’s figures could be somewhat stiff, but I’m still a huge fan of his work. I also agree that, as seen here, his inking over other pencilers could be really effective. Most of all, I agree he was a fantastic character / costume designer. He redesigned most of the Legion of Super-Heroes, attempted to introduce a bunch of new characters on the Legion feature (Nightcrawler was originally intended for the LSH), and designed most of the All-New, All-Different X-Men along with various other X-Men characters.
These issues had been my introduction to the Zodiac and fueled my fond memories of this iteration. I’ve always hated that this group was killed off en masse in a very lackluster way and replaced by lamer and lamer groups.
Off topic, I’ve had a recent thought about Mantis as the Celestial Madonna. Since her son Sequoia tried to end animal life in the universe, he is clearly not the Celestial Messiah. This means that Mantis’ next child is to fill that role and potential storylines galore are now open. Hopefully, one of them will turn her skin color back from green. It’s not a good look on her.
Hi, Alan!
Another swell write-up! I was wondering when you would get around to revisiting THE AVENGERS. You really could have written up ANY of the preceding issues, but I get it. Between CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON, DR. STRANGE, THE AVENGERS (and soon CAPTAIN MARVEL), you’d have to change the name of this blog to “Attack of the 50-Year-Old Englehart Comic Books.” Not that I’d holler if you did.
Still, there were a few things about the issues previous to this one that have always stayed with me.
I REALLY dug the Zodiac three-parter in #120-122, partly because of my own curiosity about astrology and partly because I liked the way Englehart depicted the group’s “no honor among thieves” internal conflicts, especially with the alignment among the earth/air/fire/water signs. That made this story just a cut above the usual beat the villain plot, especially coupled with the character work Englehart was doing with all the members.
There’s a scene in #121 that I’m sure Englehart shoe-horned in, with Tony Stark and Don Blake talking, underscoring the fact that they knew each other’s secret identities. That was almost certainly a way to counteract the editorial goof from #118 when the Watcher talked about erasing the memory of their secret identities – an error that Englehart cited in a later letters page.
Also in #121 is one of my favorite puns. Right before Taurus attempts to slaughter all the Geminis in Manhattan, the caption refers to “the city he plans to duodecimate like a god gone made.” I knew that “decimate” has come to mean “to destroy,” but it also means “to reduce by one tenth.” So I got it that “duodecimate” would mean to reduce by one-twelfth. (I apologize if this comes across as mansplaining. If it’s any consolation, I’m annoying and pedantic with EVERYONE, regardless of gender, as my dear sister-in-law never fails to point out. WIth me, it’s not mansplaining. It’s Nuttsplaining.)
At the beginning of #123, Mantis is so freaked out by Libra’s revelation that she even drops “this one” for a few panels and uses first person!
As for the issue at hand – yeah, Star-Slayer is not sorely missed. But as an instrument for advancing the plans for the Mantis and Swordsman (who at the time didn’t even have a real name, poor bugger), this issue was effective. And the art sure is purty!
Notice the Vision’s line: “I’ve said this before, but never to you: You have a remarkable mind.” As is so often the case with Englehart’s attention to detail (one of the several traits that made him my favorite writer at the time), you can actually find the moment when Vision DID say it before, In fact, it was in #121, and he said it to Swordsman (still stuck in a wheelchair after his infection) while Mantis lay unconscious, recovering from a battle. And Vision saying that made the emotionally fragile Swordsman think, “What did he mean by that? Does he – NO!” This moment would come back to haunt Vision in the very next issue, #125, when the complexities of the Wanda-Vision-Mantis-Swordsman quadrangle would REALLY kick in.
Just think – all this stuff would play out over the course of a year!
Again, thank you so much for this blog, Alan. It’s a gas revisiting one of my favorite eras of comic book reading!
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate Englehart and his writing as much as anybody, but this issue of the Avengers is kind of a clunker. The art’s pretty–I’m not sure I was aware that Cockrum had ever worked on the Avengers–but Star Stalker? Really? That names sounds like the title of a story about paparazzi gone wild in the heyday of Hollywood. And he just stops in the middle of a battle to cocoon-up? It seems obvious that the only part of this story Englehart really cared about was the Mantis origin storyline and everything else is just a weak framework to make that happen.
Though I doubt it would have bothered me at all in ’74, it is somewhat insulting to discover Mantis is another Asian character who’s actually half-white. Is Wong the only pure Asian in the MCU at this point? Was this a Marvel editorial policy at the time or did they really believe no one would care about a character who wasn’t at least a little white?
Anyway, fortunately this was a one-and-done story. The Star Stalker is not a worthy creation of Steve Englehart and is barely worth our time or trouble to discuss. I always did like the Zodiac, though. I thought their costumes were cool and Astrology was going through a big resurgence in popularity at this particular time, so I thought it was a cool concept. I vaguely remember the Key of the Zodiac storyline (may not have been what it was called), also in The Avengers (I think. The memory is very vague) and enjoyed it a lot.
Thanks for an entertaining look at what was otherwise a weak point in Steve Englehart’s Marvel career, Alan.
Good point about the Eurasians. Reading a lot of pulp stuff as I do I’m used to that as a background for villains (the supposed horror of the races mingling, plus the hybrid of white and the supposedly lesser races were often written as a kind of mutant) but why so many heroes? Particularly in the Bronze Age. I assume in Mantis’ case it was the decision to use Libra as her father, ergo mixed-race. But still …
In an early DC/Marvel crossover Mantis appears in Justice League of America #142 going by the name Willow. Although it’s never explicitly stated it’s supposed to be the same character.
Read this as a back issue in the late 1990s. It definitely made more sense when a few years later Marvel published The Celestial Madonna collection.
The way the Star Stalker shows up the instant the Priests of Pama get killed off, I was actually under the impression that he was kept imprisoned in the temple, and once Khruul’s men killed the Priests the Stalker took the opportunity to break loose.
Speaking of the Priests, I find it very implausible that a gangster like Khruul could actually have managed to kill off the Priests of Pama, who taught Mantis alien super martial arts. I’ve always figured that they faked their deaths in order to avoid being questioned about their role in rearing Mantis. It would fit in with the entire long-ranging manipulative plans of the Priests and the Cotati, and maneuvering her into a battle with the Star Stalkler was just one more aspect of their whole schene to prepare her to be the Celestial Madonna. Indeed, a decade and a half after this issue came out, in the pages of Fantastic Four #325, the Priests of Pama who trained Mantis turn up alive & well.
Your explanations work well enough for me, Ben!
So glad you looped back to the Avengers to touch on the ongoing story of Mantis. This was the heyday of the Avengers for me, as a self-proclaimed super-heroine advocate, I loved Mantis, and thought she brought a lot fo the team, from skills to drama and mystery. Yes, looking back, the Star-Stalker segment of the story was a bit rough, but as a 12-year-old, I loved it as it once again, showed off Mantis to a great degree. I know some folks didn’t like Mantis because she came across like Englehart’s pet-character and he spent a lot of time having her show-up the rest of the team, but nobody would complain if Thor or Cap did that. For me it was refreshing, and the year’s + worth of stories to come just made it even better.
The entire sequence had a narritive flow and a point. at the end it looked like much less of a deus ex machina.
Reasonably certain that cover looks a lot more like Ron Wilson’s clumsy and misproportioned figures that anything John Romita Sr did, even on his worst day?
Come to think of it, all the Avengers came in with unexplored pasts. In 1974, only Thor’s past had been explored to some degree with the Tales of Asgard and the revelation that Donald Blake was Thor all along, transformed into a mortal to teach him some humility. But nearly nothing had been shown about Steve Rogers’ life prior to his becoming Captain America and no one from his pre-Cap past was ever introduced (at least as far as I know) – no family, no friends, no one who would have known him as a kid in the 1920s or ’30s and who wouldn’t have been all that old in the 1970s. Conflicting revelations would be made about Cap, Wanda, Pietro, and Vision, among others in the next few years and some would be retconned in the ’80s and at this point I’m not sure what really still stands. There’s much that would no longer make much sense in the 2020s because too much time has passed. Even Mantis’ past as a child of a German soldier with the French Foreign stationed in Vietnam during that nation’s civil war and a Vietnamese woman he met there no longer holds up without serious retcons since as of 2024 it has been about 70 years since the French left Vietnam. But in the end, these are figures of fantasy and as long as stories are still told about them, their pasts will be tweaked over and over again so what is “true” today may not be “true” 5, 10 or 20 years from now, depending on the whims of later creators and publishers.
While using the Sin-Cong War as a background for Tony Stark, Reed, Ben, Flash Thompson’s militarys ervice, Frank Castle, etc. is meant to escape tying them to real wars (so no need to update as the sliding schedule shifts) establishing the Swordsman got his start there fighting against French colonialism doesn’t make sense — at this point it would mean the French fighting to hang on to a colony in the 1990s and I can’t buy it. More generally the war is just a bad retcon: https://atomicjunkshop.com/one-two-three-four-we-dont-want-your-siancong-war/
It occurs to me that DC apparently didn’t have any sort of similar problem as, to the best of my knowledge, none of their key superhero characters (created specifically for DC rather than acquired by DC) were closely tied to any war or historical event in the way that so many key Marvel characters from the ’40s & ’70s were. None of the DC pantheon had origins as directly tied to WWII as Captain America’s, nor even to the Cold War as with the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Iron Man and the Punisher, nor were key supporting cast members drafted as with Flash Thompson. My impression is that in their superhero fare, DC, by editorial policy or maybe just happenstance, avoided any stories putting their heroes in conflicts in any way related to the Cold War, while from FF#1 in 1961 and well into the ’80s, Marvel produced many superhero comics directly or indirectly related to the Cold War, such that even as the Cold War with the Soviets has receded into the past by several decades now Marvel has much more difficulty pretending there were no such connections and thus resorted to a fictional war against a fictional nation during an indistinct timeframe that will always have begun “about 20 years ago” so that Reed & Ben never have to turn 60 and Bruce Banner, Tony Stark and Frank Castle, etc., don’t have to be over 40, and Mantis’ human self never has to be much over 20. Presumably, in the cinematic M.U., Mantis was converted to an alien species just so they wouldn’t have to deal with her complex comics origin.
Speaking of Mantis, it also occurred to me as to how many mainstream comics creators, even those who have worked on multitudes of characters, often have specific pet characters or character-types they become attached to or associated with far more than others. Mantis is clearly Englehart’s, as Howard the Duck (or Rat/Mouse) was for Gerber. Stan Lee’s was the Silver Surfer, even more than Spider-Man, IMO, which may be odd since Lee wasn’t involved in specifically creating that character but it seems Lee became besotted with the character, thinking he could use the Surfer to pontificate on his views of the world and thus somehow make his mark as a “serious” author, although that never exactly panned out. Starlin had Thanos. Ditko had Mr. A and his somewhat more commercial variant, the Question. Even Kirby had Thor and variations thereof, specifically Orion, Ikarus and Captain Victory.
fred, I think your general observation about the DC heroes is pretty accurate, at least as far as their best-known characters are concerned. The main exception (if that’s the word) has to do with the Justice Society of America and other Golden Age superfolk, who aren’t necessarily tied to WWII in their origins, but have been so thoroughly enmeshed with it through decades of later storytelling that it seems all but impossible to cut them loose from it now. Perhaps at some point DC will decide that having a Nazi-bashing Jay Garrick & company still active, showing a little gray but otherwise in great shape, is just too much for audiences to accept (Ian Karkull and other retcons notwithstanding) — but seeing as how they’ve kicked the can down the road every time they’ve had a chance to change things via their latest reboot (and there have been so many), I dunno.
DC has this problem with other kinds of characters, such as Tomahawk.
He was presented as being a hunter and trapper respected by the British and the various Indian Nations in the 1750s . . . and as a man who was still a respected homesteader and community leader in the 1830s . . . .
Tomahawk fascinates me for the strange changes it went through, even though I’ve only read one issue: https://atomicjunkshop.com/my-strange-fascination-with-dcs-tomahawk/
Thanks for the bit of info, Alan! That aspect of the DC universe gets a bit confusing for me as I never got nearly as much into Silver or Bronze age DC as I had been into Marvel. I knew about the annual team-ups of the JLA with the JSA, with the JSA consisting of not just the older variants of those heroes who had been revived but with different costumes and alter egos, as well as those whose adventures continued uninterrupted from the Golden into the Silver Age and beyond (but at what year and month did the stories of GA Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, et al, end and their SA or even Bronze Stories begin??? Was it ever made clear or just left nebulous? Did Roy Thomas try solving that riddle when he switched over to DC and took to telling modern tales of the GA heroes?
I loved Robinson’s Starman series, although I didn’t even become aware of it until I happened to come across an omnibus collection at a used book store, glanced through it and liked it enough to purchase it and then went about obtaining the other volumes. The way the various other Starmen, as well as other heroes and villains of DC’s deepest past and then current present were weaved into the stories was fascinating, particularly as at least a few of those older heroes were actually shown to be genuinely old but in the DC reality as it stood at the time Robinson’s stories were set, the three most prominent heroes of DC’s Golden Age, Superman, Batman and Robin, were no longer part of that reality at all but were “the new kids on the block”. Sure, it makes perfect sense that the most popular, most iconic superheroes get to remain eternally young as long as they remain iconic and popular enough for new stories featuring them to be economically successful enough to keep producing them, while those who didn’t make the cut and remain neglected for too long will eventually be shown as elderly characters, well past their prime. Something about that struck me as a bit sad. In our world, Superman will always be the first of the colorfully garbed iconic comic-book superheroes but to avoid having to make Clark Kent, as well as Lois Lane and even Jimmy Olson, not to mention Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, all over 100 years old now, in the DC universe they have to pretend he’s just the most prominent of the “newer breed”, while his once contemporaries, the original Sandman and Starman, etc., are now the ancient fogeys.
Mike of Mike’s Amazing World has put a lot of thought into the transition from Earth-1 to Earth-2. The breakdown for specific heroes is here: http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/main/index.php?page=fanboy
Suffice to say, It’s Complicated.
Mike Friedrich seems to have been the first writer to take the age question seriously. When he starts working on DC superhero books he shows Ted Grant deciding to retire in Spectre 3 and Alan Scott feeling his age in GL 61
I’ve noticed that while DC has a huge array of immortals (Vandal Savage, Immortal Man, Jason Blood, General Immortus, Mobius from Swamp Thing, Count Viper) most of Marvel’s immortal characters are retcons, such as Nick Fury and Natasha Romanoff having drug treatments that have kept them young since WW II (why they made ‘tasha’s presence in WW II canon rather than sliding-scaling it I cannot imagine).
The Tomahawk issue also includes the following: 1) some of the Tomahawk stuff concerned the French and Indian Wars which started about 20 years before the American Revolution; and 2) Son of Tomahawk (in 190-’72) concerns Tomahawk’s son (Hawk) in the 1830s with Tomahawk as a major (and active) character (of course, it is an “1830s” where everyone is using M1873 Colt SSAs and Winchester 1873s.
There were great stories by people like Frazetta early on in Star Spangled Comics (Fred Ray was no slouch, he went on to make dioramas on Colonial History in museums. But the writers (like George Kashdan) seemed to skip blithely thorough Colonel history with no idea when or where things happened.
There is still a bit of this even recently with Star Man and Steve Savage, WWI Balloon Buster, his father, Matt Savage, 1870s Trail Boss and Scalphunter, a guy raised by the Apache (?) who is related some way.
No, Ke-Woh No Tay, AKA Brian Savage, AKA Scalphunter, was raised Kiowa (https://frasersherman.com/2014/05/13/two-weird-comics-westerns-sfwapro/). The first issue presented him as the son of 1950s western chsaracter Matt Savage, Trail Boss but as others have pointed out, the issue shows Matt dying early in the Civil War when his series took place post-war. I had no idea about Steve Savage.
One thing I disliked about James Robinson’s Starman was having Savage as the sheriff of Opal City in its early years. The one thing that made the “white guy raised as a native” palatable was that Savage was never tempted to go back to the white side — he always considered himself a Kiowa. I never bought that would have changed.
And yes, I’d noticed just from scanning Tomahawk covers that he seemed to shift from Colonial era to Western without missing a beat.
Gardner Fox did a little of the aging hero stuff when he re-introduced Wildcat in the second 1965 Starman/Black Canary story in B&B, which makes sense, non-powered hero, who is a costumed boxer.
Mike Friedrich, picked up on the idea and used it well. The Double GL story from GL#61 picked up on the idea well, although Alan Scott reached the opposite conclusion from Wildcat.
Mike Friedrich was a better writer than he generally gets credit for.
I just read his GL story and it’s the kind of heavy-handed “relevant” story that makes so many comics of the late Silver Age a slog. Friedrich could be excellent—his handling of middle-aged supervillain Victorius in Amazing Adventures is very good—but he was more likely to be hamfisted.
Upon my first exposure to Dave Cockrum’s X-Men with a few issues around 94-100 I wasn’t impressed, I was a teenager and had only bought these old books because I wanted know about Wolverine…upon buying these back issues I was disappointed by how little the character was shown in the stories, I quickly gave up on collecting that era of X-Men (wisely enough though I didn’t sell the books!). After many decades away from comics I came back and started reading again with #94 onwards, I was very much impressed by Cockrum’s work and still really enjoy it. After finishing the run I wanted to find more of Dave’s work and ended up with the 3 Avengers of 124-126, earlier issues 106 to 108 the two giant Size issues (#2 and #3) however something was lacking, his second run on X-Men wasn’t to my liking either, Nightcrawler mini-series didn’t move me…so for me I adore his X-men run but noting else has lit my fuse the same way!
Thanks again for another great look back and thank you everyone for your contributions in the comments – it really is a very special little group you have here!
I agree the Star-Stalker ain’t all that. Fortunately the heart of the issue is Mantis’ mysterious backstory, the history of the Kree (which would be developed more a few issues later), and the various personal dramas so it still works for me.
I love Cockrum’s Legion work and his early X-Men. Annoyed about the story of wanting his original art back — while it was SOP for companies to hang on to the art, technically they had no right to any of it (everyone was a freelancer; all DC and Marvel bought was the right to reproduce the art, not the art itself). I agree some of his later work was disappointing. Did enjoy his Futurians and the Nightcrawler series.
I enjoyed the Zodiac three parter for Englehart playing on the team’s internal dynamics much as he did with the Avengers or the Defenders. My head cannon is that creating the team was Cornelius Van Lunt’s ego — it wasn’t enough to be a corrupt billionaire banker, he wanted the kind of celebrity (so to speak) that a Dr. Doom or the Red Skull gets (even if he did cede leadership to Aries in the original incarnation). Though typical for the era, they never found much useful for Virgo to do.
It’s the three parter that enabled me to learn which signs aligned with which of the four classical elements.
I enjoyed Swordsman as a kid — swashbucklers were just cool — but rereading any of his appearances as an adult, it’s hard to buy him as the deadly international criminal we were repeatedly told he was. I was dismayed seeing him broken down in Englehart’s run but that added to the punch — nothing worse for a writer than an “oh, thank goodness it was only them” reaction to a character’s tragic arc.
Odd historical trivia note: I wonder if Englehart used the real life 1955-6 conflict between the Diem RVN Gov’t after the French left and the “Bình Xuyên criminal gang and the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo religious sects” as a background to this story? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_in_the_Vietnam_War
I think I remember that Englehart served in the US Army Stateside as a Consciencios Objector Medic during the War. As such he might havew known more about the background than average, (Cockrum had served with the US Navy in thge RVN (as had Starlin).
Also, the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo sects and the Saigon and Hanoi underworlds are part of the underpinnings for Graham Greene’s 1955 novel, The Quiet American. .
Sadly, I missed this one back in 1974. Around this time Marvel UK started publishing a black and white weekly Avengers comic that reprinted their adventures right from issue 1. It was a great way to catch up on all their original adventures, but it did have a downside though. There couldn’t be two Avengers comics on the shelves in the UK so Marvel stopped distributing the ongoing monthly colour comic here. The last issue that I saw and bought from the spinner racks was 120, the first part of the Zodiac story. I remember a double page spread of the twelve villains and couldn’t wait to see how the story would resolve. Alas I wouldn’t be able to read that until I bought the Essentials volume that covered that period many years later. In fact I wouldn’t be able to buy another Avengers colour comic until issue 153 (after the weekly black and white Avengers comic had folded and Marvel in the US started shipping them to the UK again). This meant that I missed all the upcoming revelations on Mantis, the Vision and the Original Human Torch and wouldn’t read them until almost forty years later.
I was a great fan of Dave Cockrum on the LSH and credit him with saving and reviving them. His character and costume designs were gorgeous and I remember poring over the “wedding of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel” page that led to him leaving DC. I pored over that page trying to work out who all the characters were and would go back to it over the years as I tracked down the comics that featured the Wanderers and the Tornado Twins (amongst others!). I was so disappointed when he left and couldn’t find anywhere else where his work was being published. I would find him again in a couple of years time and hopefully you had the good sense to pick those issues of a certain comic up from the spinner rack when they were first published – only time will tell!
I did always like the Star-Stalker’s sinister, shiny and saurian appearance! Plus energy-drain powers are always fun, even though his weakness was utterly contrived. There are far worse one-and-done supervillains out there.