So, how do you follow up a grand, multi-issue crossover superhero epic in which your protagonist and his allies have just barely managed to eke out a win against an insane god in time to save the universe?
If you’re Captain Marvel plotter, penciller, and colorist (maybe we should just go with auteur?) Jim Starlin, you opt for moving straight into a new multi-issue storyline. Though surely no one will begrudge you taking a few pages at the top of the new narrative’s premiere installment to wrap up a few loose ends, and otherwise provide a nice coda for the tale you’ve been telling for the past nineteen months or so…
Starlin’s not responsible for all the labor on this issue, naturally; he’s joined by scripter Steve Englehart, who’d done similar duty for the previous issue (and had also written the issue of Avengers that crossed over with CM #33), as well as by inker Jack Abel (who follows in the wake of multiple previous embellishers who’d worked on the title during Starlin’s relatively brief run) and letterer Tom Orzechowski (whose contributions we’ll have more to say about later).
These panels make for a nice send-off for characters who had, for all practical purposes, comprised the bulk of Captain Marvel’s supporting cast through Starlin’s run to date.
For the record, this is the first reference in a Marvel comic to the Lunatic Legion, as well as to their agent, Nitro. Given that Starlin would no longer be around by the time the true nature and identities of the L.L. were revealed to readers, it’s interesting to speculate as to how much he’d actually worked out about them before leaving the book; all we really learn about them in this issue is that 1) they’re aliens and 2) they’re malevolent.
Rick is understandably nonplussed by this unexpected turn of events, but ultimately decides to go with the flow. Back at Avengers Mansion, he packs his things, and then says his goodbyes to his superhero friends (at which time Iron Man tells him to be sure to send them all tickets when he plays Madison Square Garden) — as well as to one other:
Compared to the fond farewell afforded the Titans and Titan-adjacent characters earlier in the issue, Lou-Ann Savannah’s abrupt departure from the series is handled in a disappointingly perfunctory fashion. In Starlin’s defense, he’d inherited Lou-Ann when he came on the book with issue #25 (she had been introduced by writer Gerry Conway and artist Wayne Boring in #22), and perhaps he shouldn’t be blamed for not being particularly interested in developing her further. And, granted, he had tried to make her part of his “Thanos War” narrative, albeit in a passive role (first by being kidnapped and brainwashed by the Controller, then, after being liberated, by hanging out at Avengers Mansion, tearfully staring out windows while worrying about the absent Rick). Still, you have to figure that he and Englehart together could have come up with a better explanation for breaking up the couple than Rick’s lame “Thanos pulled us apart too soon” line. (Just in case you’re wondering, this appears to be the last non-flashback appearance ever made by Ms. Savannah, other than a wordless, one-panel “is that her?” cameo in Starlin’s 1982 Marvel Graphic Novel, The Death of Captain Marvel.)
Yep, it’s Carol Danvers — still more than two years out from making her costumed-hero debut in Ms. Marvel #1, and thus still primarily known as an important supporting character from the early issues of Captain Marvel; her last appearance in these pages prior to this had been in CM #18, published five years previously.
Some months back, your humble blogger announced that he would no longer be pointing out every occasion of Marvel promoting their official fan club FOOM (Friends of Ol’ Marvel) via in-story sound effects, simply because such uses had become so ubiquitous. But the way that Tom Orzechowski rises to the occasion of lettering “FOOM!” in a distinctively different style every time it’s used in this story — which, given that it’s used just about every time the villainous Nitro employs his powers, is a lot — mustn’t be allowed to pass by without an expression of appreciation for service over and above the call of duty.
(UPDATE, 6/8/24, 1:15 pm: Somehow, your humble blogger managed to miss sharing the page shown directly above in any form — not even a synopsis! — in the original published version of this post. Which was a shame, since it contains vital story information, sets up the next page’s rejoinder by Dandy to Rick’s asinine comment in the last panel, and also provides a vital clue to the major creative shakeup coming for this series in its very next issue; see Baden Smith’s remarks in the comments section below for more details on this latter point.)
Actually, Tom Orzechowski’s sound effects lettering is pretty stupendous throughout this story, even when he’s not rendering “FOOM!”.
While I’m handing out kudos, allow me to say how much I like inker Jack Abel’s work on this issue. Abel has never been a favorite of mine, to be honest, but his style suits Starlin’s pencils quite well, at least to my eye.
You gotta love that “Note” arrow at the bottom left of that last panel. Obviously, Steve Englehart really didn’t want you to miss Jim Starlin’s subtle visual storytelling, there.
Mar-Vell’s “cosmic awareness” continues to help him avoid the full brunt of Nitro’s blasts through the next explosion — but the one after that? Well…
The panel above is the only instance in the story where the sound effect made by Nitro’s blowing up can’t be read as FOOM (at least, not unambiguously so). Could it be because Starlin handled the visuals for this panel all on his own, without any involvement from Orzechowski (or, for that matter, from Englehart, who as scripter might have been calling the shots on those other instances)? Maybe, though that’s just a guess on my part.
Hmm… what’s this about Carol not having seen Marv since CM #18? Englehart seems to have forgotten about their encounter during the Kree-Skrull War, as depicted in Avengers #92 and #93… oh, no, wait. My bad, y’all. That “Carol Danvers” turned out to be the Super-Skrull, remember?
(Just for the record, this scene doesn’t represent the actual end of Nitro — though it’ll take him a while, he’ll eventually manage to reconstitute himself; after which, he’ll have a quick scrap with the enigmatic Omega the Unknown before facing off again with Mar-Vell in Captain Marvel #54 [Jan., 1978].)
As most of you out there reading this probably know already, Captain Marvel will survive his exposure to Compound Thirteen to fight another day… and yet, the deadly nerve gas does kill him in the end, it being the cause of the fatal cancer to which he’ll eventually succumb eight years later, in Starlin’s Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel.
Back in 1974, however, Mar-Vell would be sticking around — but Jim Starlin wouldn’t be, As the writer-artist later related to Karen Walker for an article published in Back Issue #93 (Dec., 2916), his departure was spurred by his frustration over a heavy turnover in the inkers who’d been assigned to the book — his ten issue run would ultimately see seven different embellishers credited with working on one issue or another — and by what he considered to be Marvel’s failure to follow through on repeated assurances to give the title a permanent inker, once and for all, By Starlin’s account, he had hoped these problems had been resolved after Klaus Janson came on to ink issue #33:
Klaus was ready to do it [i.e., be Captain Marvel‘s regular inker], and then John Verpoorten, who was production manager, stuck Klaus on another job and gave Captain Marvel to Jack Abel — I liked Jack Abel’s inking on it, but you know, we had made an agreement and they just weren’t living up to it, so I was done.
Starlin’s tiff with Marvel doesn’t seem to have lasted for very long. As he’d told the same writer, Karen Walker, for an earlier Back Issue piece (this one published in issue #34 [May, 2009]):
I had quit Captain Marvel over a dispute… but I settled this dispute with Marvel and I was going to come back. But Al Milgrom or somebody was already on it; I think Steve Englehart was writing it. So [Marvel editor-in-chief] Roy [Thomas] asked me [what character] I wanted to do. So I went home that night and pulled out a bunch of comics. I came across, in the Fantastic Four, Him, and came back the next day and said that’s who I wanted to do, and that night I started working on it.
Cover to Captain Marvel #35 (Nov., 1974). Art by Ron Wilson and Frank Giacoia.
All of this — from Starlin’s decision to quit Captain Marvel, through his subsequent fence-mending with the Marvel brass, and finally to his taking on the relaunch of Warlock (the messianic superhero formerly known as Him) — evidently happened in rapid succession. Nothing in Captain Marvel #34 — not the story, not the letters page — had given readers any hint that a major creative shake-up on the book was imminent. (UPDATE, 6/8/24, 1:30 pm: Or had it? Again, I refer you to Baden Smith’s comment below for details.) So when we picked up issue #35 in August, and turned to the first page to find the story had been scripted by Mike Friedrich (working from a plot by Steve Englehart) and drawn by Alfredo Alcala, it could hardly help but come as quite the surprise to many of us.
The letters column of issue #35, following a set of missives praising Starlin and company’s work on #33, concluded with the following:
The editorial text went on to promise that Captain Marvel itself was hardly going “back to the same old stuff”, announcing that, following Friedrich and Alcala’s pinch-hitting on CM #35 (for which they were duly thanked by the anonymous Bullpenner writing the piece), Englehart would be taking over the book’s writing, while Starlin’s friend and frequent inker Al Milgrom would become the new regular penciller.
Ironically, however, before Milgrom could begin his tenure in earnest, Jim Starlin would be back — if only to pencil three pages of Captain Marvel #36. But, that’s a story for another post, at another time.
“Nothing in Captain Marvel #34 — not the story, not the letters page — had given readers any hint that a major creative shake-up on the book was imminent.”
Not so! A letter from sharp-eyed reader Brent Anderson in CM #36 notes “I read six pages and then FOOM! in the sixth panel I saw some crazily-written town names on a directional mileage sign.” ( The signs read Siht 7, Eussi *unclear*, Si 15 and Dneet 18) “I pondered them for a minute and figured what they said: “This issue is the end”
He then deduces that if it’s not the end of Captain Marvel (as suggested in the last panel on the final page), then it may well be the end of Jim Starlin. Clever lad, that Brent….wonder what ever happened to him?
In the same letter page, reader Lloyd B Smith Jnr takes them to task about Carol Danvers appearing in Avengers #92 and 93…and gets a No-Prize for it! Shorter memories than certain ol’ codgers fifty years on (I speak purely for myself).
Finally, I agree with you about Jack Abel’s inks – I did not like them at all mostly; the only other time apart from this issue where they actually worked quite well was over P. Craig Russell’s pencils in a Morbius story around this time.
Thanks for sharing that, Baden! Not only had I missed that clue, but I’d somehow neglected sharing so much as a synopsis of that page of the story. The post has now been updated with that page added, plus a pointer to your comment. 🙂
Oh, and as for that clever Brent Anderson fellow, I think he may have drawn a comic book or two when he grew up. Or was it more like two hundred comic books? I forget. 😉
http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/main/features/creator.php?creatorid=75
I absolutely loathed Jack Aabel’s way of ruining comic book art so I’m surprised he meshed so well with Starlin too.
And I wonder about Compound Thirteen. It stuck with Starlin for years, enough to be the way he freed up the Captain Marvel trademark for more profitable use. Did he ever say he had plans for it to have had an immediate effect on Mar-Vell if he had stayed on the book?
And I’ve always wondered if the idea for most of the Warlock series had already come to hm and a slightly different version of events would have been the next arc in Captain Marvel?
Jim Stalin’s art (particularly, his inking) has a Murphy Anderson influence. It should be no surprise that Abel (like both Cockrum and Milgram) had been an Anderson assistant.
The late “Big John” Verpoorten was trying to keep a lot of plates spinning (apparently without a lot of help or oversight). After his untimely death. http://jimshooter.com/2011/06/rooting-out-corruption-at-marvel-part_14.html/; http://jimshooter.com/2011/06/rooting-out-corruption-at-marvel-part_15.html/there were some issues that came out.
As with recent issues with Samuel Bankman Fried and his companies, proper financial controls and effective governance help . . . a lot . . . .
I would take anything Shooter writes with a grain of salt, although from everything I’ve heard about Marvel in the mid-1970s from other creators who were there it sounds like the basic gist of what he describes *could* have happened. I think we can all agree that Verpoorten had a thankless job as Production Manager at a time when the company was experiencing a great deal of chaos & instability.
Very much,
No one has made any allegations that John Verpoorten benefitted in any way. In fact, given Marvel’s growth at the time he did a great job keeping the wheels on the train at all.
Given that Marvel was part of a conglomerate (and not Martin Goodman family business), I can’t see why Verpoorten did not have more help & oversight.
I don’t think American Comics has a good handle on Jim Shooter, almost 40 years after the end of his career as Marvel EIC.
I once suggested Jim Shooter as a topic for a business writer I know. Shooter’s story involves corporate control, pop culture, the rice of VC firms and several charismatic, compelling public figures.
Sean Howe told the Marvel part of the story very well and very fairly but no one has explored the Valiant and Defiant parts of the story..
“rise” not “rice”
and Broadway Comics at the tail end – each of Shooter’s comic lines was “less” than the one before, with Broadway being at the tail end. Most of it was clearly flailing for what was popular (babes, guns, violence, slick coloring), but I remember thinking Star Seed had some interesting potential.
His getting VC support for: 1) a hostile take over of Marvel; 2) the launch of Defiant; and 3:the launch of Defiant, is notable.
He had obviously made real $$ for Marvel, or the VCs would not have ponied up.
On the other hand, he apparently had problems with his Boards at Marvel and Valiant.
There is a good business book about Marvel’s travails with Ron Perelman and Carl Icahn, Comic Wars Sean Howe handled Shooter’s Marvel career with great fairness in his book on Marvel
But I think there is probably a great book on how entertainment and business interact (and sometimes collide) in the rest of Mr. Shooter’s career.
I remember this book! Not surprising, really, I remember a number of mid-seventies Marvel comics I bought once I’d be dragged kicking and screaming into the Marvel Universe by my friends John and Ben, but I have a very clear memory of standing in the store and gazing at the cover of this one and wondering what would happen next. I never imagined it would be Starlin leaving the book!
I always thought Nitro was an interesting villain and the path that took him from here to his eventual role in the New Warriors and the beginning of Marvel’s Civil War is truly twisted indeed, but Starlin didn’t do much with him here. Here, he definitely has the feeling of a powerful one-note villain with a very demonstrable power, but very little in the way of character and motivation to keep him going. The idea that this is the inciting incident that ultimately did lead to Cap’s death many years later, adds a great deal of extra weight to this comic that certainly wasn’t obvious in 1974. Was Starlin really plotting that far ahead? I’m sure Alan or Fraser or someone will pull up an old interview where Starlin tells the whole sordid tale of how this turns into that, but if I was a betting man, I’d say “no.” Marvel was such a chaotic beast in the seventies and story assignments were so short-lived and capricious, I’d imagine the most Starlin could lay claim to would be writing a story that, while simple and unassuming, contained the seeds for a wide range of stories that could have gone off in any number of interesting directions.
I was bummed when I found out Starlin had left Captain Marvel. I got over it when I began reading Warlock. Looking forward to re-reading those with you folks, as well. Thanks, Alan!
As Starlin wrote “Death of Captain Marvel” in response to his dad dying of cancer I assume it wasn’t in the works in 1974. That would be awful.
I agree Nitro’s not more than a nasty hired gun and not a memorable one. Though I liked the moment many years later in which some hero fighting him refers to Marv’s death and Nitro’s response is “I killed him? Awesome!”
I agree, just happenstance that Starlin saw that he could use the events in this, his last full Captain Marvel story in the regular series, to perfectly dovetail with the story he wanted to tell in The Death of Captain Marvel. In 1974, I doubt he even had it in his mind to kill off Captain Marvel, although he left him in pretty dire straits in that last panel.
I can’t think right off of any other ongoing series wherein one author left the primary hero in such circumstances just before handing over the title to another writer, although Stan Lee himself left at least two or three series on a cliffhanger for the new writer to deal with (or fill in writer when he went on vacation just after giving Spider-Man 4 extra arms and left Roy Thomas to follow up on that!). There were those examples of the original Doom Patrol, seemingly killed off for good, and left that way for many years, at the end of their first series; then there was Omega the Unknown, killed off permanently at the end of his original series. And, Alan Moore seemingly killing off Swamp Thing at the end of his first issue on that title, but then using the next issue to not only bring Swampy back to life, but to also reveal he had never been what everyone, including Swampy himself, thought he was – a man transformed into a plant-like much monster, but instead was a humanoid-shaped plant that thought it was once a human.
Back to Starlin, I wonder how different his telling The Death of Captain Marvel would have been if not for his experiences in dealing with the death of his father by cancer. As it is, it’s an excellent work of art, one I can appreciate more at my current age, having experienced many more losses of close friends and family than was the case when I first read that graphic novel at age 19 in 1981.
50 years ago today, I was 6 days away from becoming 12, and much enjoyed this issue and was looking forward to seeing how this story featuring the Lunatic Legion would turn out. I also certainly figured one way or another Marv would recover from “that gas”. My response to that next issue? “Whaaaat the f****????” Now, in decades since, I’ve come to appreciate the artistry of Alfredo Alcala, but in 1974 seeing him taking over the art (even if just for one issue) from Starlin was very jarring to my sensibilities. Under Jim Starlin, Captain Marvel had become one of my favorite comics and now Judo Jim was gone from the mag, and still several months from the beginning of his next epic in a new Warlock series, which may not have come about if he had stuck with Captain Marvel. And while we may never know how Starlin may have further developed Marv & Rick, Englehart & Milgrom did a fairly good job in my estimation.
As to other elements of this issue, yeah, it seems strange Lou Ann was written out. Doesn’t seem there was any reason she couldn’t have accompanied Rick, etc., on the tour, as she wasn’t shown to have a job or anything else requiring her to stay put. But then, Dandy is added to the cast, seemingly purely to play the role of a thorn in Rick’s side, although she didn’t stick around all that long either. And Rick’s musical career would finally reach a rather hilarious, bizarre and heartrending crescendo. Can’t really tell if Rick Jones’ career, such as it was, was based on any actual solo performer. Certainly not Rick James or the man formerly known as David Jones but more famous as David Bowie! Maybe John Denver? At any rate, it occurs to me that many top male pop/rock stars of the mid-60s – mid-70s underwent significant changes in their appearance, and not simply due to becoming older. Of course, most mainly grew their hair out quite a bit, such that the moptops of the Beatles in 1964 would seem fairly short in comparison to the hairstyles of the Beatles and most of their contemporaries by 1968 and throughout the ’70s. Also, many men grew facial hair and fashions certainly changed. But Rick Jones, as much as Peter Parker and Johnny Storm, and most of the X-Men (aside from the Beast) weren’t changed all that much, aside from being allowed to grow into adults rather than being kept in perpetual mid-teens. Rick Jones’ age still seems rather nebulous. Was he at least 21 yet, old enough to hang out in bars? Or was he in “18 or 19 Forever” mode? Sure, he looked older than when he was introduced, playing a harmonica in his jalopy sitting in the middle of a nuclear weapons testing site (did he have serious suicidal tendencies at the time?). But, still, his image hadn’t been changed all that much. Idle musings.
The huge irony of all this is that Jim Starlin quit the series because of the rotating inkers, and the broken promise to have Klaus Janson be the permanent inker. So, what happens? As soon as he leaves, Janson gets assigned to be the regular inker over Al Milgrom’s pencils on this series!
If I see Starlin again, I’ll have to try to remember to ask him if he had any concrete plans for the Lunatic Legion… assuming he would even remember after half a century! Steve Englehart soon revealed the Legion to be racist blue-skinned Kree reactionaries, but I can’t help thinking this was his own idea, nothing to do with Starlin, since at the time Engelhart was also recounting the origins of the Kree in Avengers. Plus, the Lunatic Legion under Englehart seemed to be deliberately gunning for Captain Mar-Vell, but here Nitro’s encounter with him is a whopping big coincidence.
Whatever the case, Englehart & Milgrom did do a fair job of picking up the very few threads of story Starlin set out here and told an, um, interesting story all their own. Alan, I hope you’ll be blogging about Captain Marvel #37-39, because there’s some genuinely weird stuff in those three issues.
“I hope you’ll be blogging about Captain Marvel #37-39, because there’s some genuinely weird stuff in those three issues.”
I’m definitely planning to write at least one post about that storyline, Ben. 😉
There was also the involvement of the Watcher in a very atypical manner. I would have thought Starlin might have given Englehart some hint as to his plans given that they had been working together on the past couple of issues. But that’s just pure speculation and even so, Englehart undoubtedly took the story in directions Starlin wouldn’t have taken. I also wonder about that “next issue” blurb, advertising Ant-Man & the Wasp and Annihilus (although it would be the Living Laser who showed up on the cover). Englehart must have already had at least a general plot already conceived for issue 35 although it seems Alcala was an emergency fill-in on the art.
Dandy is a little hard on Rick for playing “Gary, Indiana,” to my mind. On their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the Beatles performed five songs. Four were John Lennon-Paul McCartney compositions (“All My Loving,” “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand”).
The fifth was “Till There Was You,” which, like “Gary, Indiana,” also comes from Meredith Willson’s *Music Man.* Willson and his estate earned more from the Beatles’s recording of the song (it turns up on *With the Beatles* and on both BBC compilations) than from the show which contained it.
Speaking of the Beatles, Mar-Vell is most likely not the man who comes by to zap in “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill.”
The early 1960s was an era when Broadway songs routinely made it into the pop charts (as they had in the 1950s) so that’s not surprising.
I saw an interview many years ago with the poet who wrote Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do” (as a poem, she then set it to music) and he was laughing about the fact the royalties had earned him significant coin because that didn’t happen in the late 20th century.
It wasn’t just the early 1960s: the Fifth Dimension had a huge hit with their performance of “The Age of Aquarius” (mixing in “The Flesh Failures” {Let the Sunshine In} in 1969.
The original *Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll’s” chapter on Motown mentions that founder Berry Gordy was very fond of looking to other audiences when his acts had hits: there would be albums offering the Four Tops on Broadway, or the Temptations in a Mellow Mood, and the Supremes, believe it or not, recorded a whole disc of Rodgers & Hart songs.
The difference between Rodgers & Hart and Rodgers & Hammerstein may be found in this observation:
“Rodgers & Hart wrote songs everybody knows for shows no one remembers. Rodgers & Hammerstein wrote songs everybody knows for shows that won’t go away.”
Rick Jones, incidentally, was introduced in the first issue of *The Hulk* in 1962, which was the year “The Music Man” movie came out. (Chaucer…Rabelais…Balzac…)
Happy birthday, Cole Porter! (Born June 9, 1891.)
In 1982, Barbara Streisand got to #19 on the Singles Chart with Memories from Cats. There is NO accounting for taste . . . .
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/sheryl-crow-financial-woes-end-092601419.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAA9ln3WlTQew2eRuPIh6RmCrw84woeSNiLxtGZQpxyFhax1ZsXwyvt9bu0csICjI1jdnCGI70JSY_KC8C5P7gyBx9_X3AuukRSb50APM8utyPNmbVBxt7JpFExahhBS56qZLF8IOlr3Be_Klurn-EI9y2d9vP73d1–DdsyUrHZu#:~:text=Nine%2Dtime%20Grammy%20Award%20winner,commercials%20%E2%80%94%20just%20to%20stay%20afloat. He picked the right time. Ms. Crow says she basicly makes nothing of records anymore . . . .
And we’re back with another episode of “Attack of the 50-Year-Old Steve Englehart Comics”! Yay!
I guess I’m in the minority when it comes to Jack Abel’s inks here. After Janson’s superb work on #33, this was a bit of a letdown. Looking at it with 50 year hindsight, it’s not THAT bad, but the relative lack of detail annoyed me at the time.
Nitro after Thanos also represented a downgrade more considerable, but kudos to Starlin for coming up with interesting visual ways to depict a guy who blows himself up real good and then reforms.
I sorta liked the way Starlin and Englehart handled writing out Lou-Ann. Given a page-count and a bimonthly release, this wasn’t a scene you could handle in more than a handful of panels, and I thought they did a decent job.
Yes, the next issue was a shock from a creative standpoint. I missed the little character touches that distinguished an Englehart script (as opposed to having him only do the plot), but it was OK. I do remember being pleased that Steve was staying on the title, and though it would never reach the (to me) lofty heights of his work on AVENGERS, DR. STRANGE or CAPTAIN AMERICA, it was still pretty interesting.
Thanks again, Alan!
Awesome, awesome cover.
The story is ok……but as commented, a bit of a let down after the Thanos 9 parter. Kirby was much better at post-epic stories….the brilliant ‘Man or Monster’ in FF#51 after the Galactus trilogy, or the origin of Thor after the Mangog/ Ragnarok 4 parter.
Page 2 does not look like Starlin to me…reminds me of sometime Starlin collaborator Alan Weiss…and Kronos look like a Don Newton drawing! Unlike many here, I enjoy Abel’s inks, and thought he did well with Herb Trimpe on the Hulk. His style was very precise, although for this piece his brushstrokes are slightly more fluid and organic.