As of October, 1974, Steve Gerber had been the writer on Marvel Two-in-One for a year — ever since the series teaming the Fantastic Four’s Thing with a rotating cast of co-stars had jumped from its previous home in Marvel Feature to its own brand-new title, in fact. Intriguingly (though perhaps also understandably), with the whole Marvel Universe to play with, Gerber had initially opted to choose Benjamin J. Grimm’s partners in adventuring from environs he already knew well — that is, from other series he was already writing. So it was that in MTiO #1, the Thing had come face-to-face with his half-namesake, the Man-Thing; next, in issue #2 he’d first fought and then joined forces with the Sub-Mariner; and then, in #3, he’d teamed up with Daredevil — a trio of co-stars who were all also headliners in other Gerber titles.
By issue #4, however, the writer must have felt he’d gotten his feet under him, and so that one found the Thing traveling through time with a major Marvel star Gerber hadn’t written before now, Captain America, for an adventure ultimately shared (in #5) with a group of heroes no one had written since their first and only appearance back in 1968, the Guardians of the Galaxy. And after that? Two months later, Jim Starlin’s cover* for Marvel Two-in-One #6 let us know that Ben’s next co-star would be yet another well-established hero never before scripted by Steve Gerber: the Master of the Mystic Arts, Doctor Strange.
But there was a bit more going on here than would immediately be comprehended by most of us readers back in ’74, as both MTiO #6 and the issue that would directly follow after it constituted a preview of sorts of Gerber’s run on a title that he wasn’t writing yet, but would be taking over very, very soon. (If you read our post about Giant-Size Defenders #3 a week and a half back, you already know which title I’m talking about… if not, you’ll have to bear with me for a while. Or, I suppose, you could take a wild guess. Your choice, faithful reader!)
But for now, let’s simply move on to the opening splash page of what to all appearances is just another typical issue of Marvel Two-in-One:
Your humble blogger must confess that, fifty years ago, his seventeen-year-old self was more that slightly disappointed to find that this issue’s interior artwork wasn’t provided by its cover artist, Jim Starlin, but rather by George Tuska (penciller) and Mike Esposito (inker) — a couple of Marvel veterans who didn’t seem particularly well-suited to the magical, multidimensional milieu of most stories starring Doctor Stephen Strange. However, as we’ll see, this particular tale will turn out to be a fairly well-grounded one (at least as far as Doc Strange yarns tend to go), so, while the straightforward storytelling of Tuska and Esposito might not add much extra visual oomph to Gerber’s plot, it’ll nevertheless get the basic job done.
Even before all the “dazzling particles” have either been absorbed or have otherwise faded away, four of those affected hurry to leave the subway platform — Nick and Duff on foot, the Goldenberg couple by train…
“…leaving only Strange and Clea…”? Um, what about the derelict, Alvin Denton? We’ll have to assume he’s still sitting propped up against his wall, all but insensible to his surroundings, as our storytellers appear to have forgotten about him (if only for the moment)…
As Stephen and Clea head back to the Sanctum Sanctorum to research the problem, the scene shifts to the Baxter Building, where the Thing is rudely awakened from a sound slumber by a ringing telephone. Ben can’t imagine who’d be calling him at ten past two, but whoever it is has his private number, so…
Ben can’t say no to Mrs. Coogan — in a thought balloon, he recalls that she was like a second mother to him when he was growing up, helping take care of him while both his parents worked to put food on the table — so he hops in the Fantasti-Car and flies over to her home on Yancy Street, where he listens skeptically to the wild tale of her grandson, Duff, and his buddy, Nick.
Meanwhile, in Greenwich Village, Dr. Strange has called the Eye of Agamotto forth from his amulet, and successfully used it to contact the mystic power behind the mysterious harmonica…
Leaving Clea and Wong with instructions to keep an eye on the harmonica, Strange takes to the skies, using his amulet as a magical searchlight to track down the five people touched by Destiny. His quest takes him across the Hudson River to Brooklyn, where live Sheldon and Renee Goldenberg…
It’s a happy ending for the Goldenbergs, and a nice, easy win for Doctor Strange — and as far as the latter goes, the last such we’ll see in this story.
On Yancy Street, the Thing has heard Duff and Nick’s tale, and while he suspects they might have been “on sumpin'” when they encountered this “exploding chick with a harmonica“, he agrees to hang around until morning, just to be sure. He steps out for a bit to grab some fresh air and collect his thoughts, and soon thereafter Dr. Strange quite literally drops out of the sky in front of him. Correctly surmising that his fellow hero’s sudden appearance is no coincidence, Ben asks the magician, “Wanna swap yarns?”
A giant rat? That doesn’t seem like it should be too much of a challenge for one of the strongest men in the world to handle, especially with Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme backing him up. But, of course, this is no ordinary rodent of unusual size; its power is derived from Duff’s own “self-prescribed destiny”, and therefore neither Ben’s raw physical might or Doc Strange’s magical mojo are enough to stop it. The only way it can be stopped, in fact, is if Duff rejects the defeatism and despair that have come to rule his life, shaping him into just the sort of guy who would, well, try to steal a harmonica from a teenage girl, inadvertently causing her to fall in front of a moving subway train…
And that is that for our friend the rat, as the furry menace promptly goes poof, never to threaten the Yancy Street neighborhood again…
So ends the first part of what will eventually turn out to be a trilogy, as well as a crossover with an entirely different title (yep, that’s another hint)… though the second chapter will indeed appear in the next bi-monthly issue of Marvel Two-in-One, which originally reached stands in October, 1974.
Behind a cover by John Romita (possibly with assistance from Tony Mortellaro), the opening splash page of MTiO #7 lets us know, via the credits box, that Sal Buscema has replaced George Tuska as penciller for this installment:
Sal Buscema, we might note, was also the regular artist of Defenders, the fourth issue of which had seen the Valkyrie (this version of her, anyway) make her debut, prior to going on to become a regular member of Marvel’s “non-team”. (Dr. Strange was, of course, a fixture in that series as well; so even if Buscema was no more a “natural” at the otherworldly mystical stuff than was Tuska, he’d at least been at it a while.)
If you, too, are wondering about what Valkyrie is doing in Cobbler’s Roost, Vermont — she’d taken a leave of absence from the Defenders in issue #17 of their series, several months ago, to go try to learn the background of the mysterious young woman named Barbara, whose physical body Val’s own enchanted persona currently occupies. (Yeah, sure, she’d since appeared in Giant-Size Defenders #3, which came out the very same month as this issue of Marvel Two-in-One — but so had the Sub-Mariner, and he’d already emphatically left the team not just once, but twice.) We should also note here that upon her departure, Val had left her winged horse, Aragorn, at the Long Island riding academy owned by Kyle Richmond (aka Nighthawk), adding another layer to the mystery of how Valkyrie — and Aragorn — can have shown up in Central Park just now.
After giving Ben the gist of this (and also recapping the main events of MTiO #6 for any reader coming in late), Dr. Strange suggests that his colleague go to Cobbler’s Roost to try to retrieve the harmonica, while he’ll continue his efforts to locate the old derelict. The Thing is game, and promptly takes off in the Fantasti-Car — only to realize once he’s airborne that he has no idea where Cobbler’s Roost actually is. These were the dark old days before GPS, naturally, so Ben does what any information-poor traveler would have done back then: “Stop at a gas station an’ pick up a map!”
The appearance within this issue of the Asgardian villain known as the Executioner has already been telegraphed by the cover, of course… and if he’s here, can his pulchritudinous partner in perfidy, the Enchantress, be far behind?
Turning to the next page, we learn the answer to that question, and it’s a hard “no”:
OK, so the idea of luring the Thing into a trap via a faux service station doesn’t make much sense — why would E. & E. believe that Ben needed directions to where he was going? But, whatever; let’s move on to another, possibly more useful question — what’s the villains’ interest in the harmonica? According to the smarter member of the duo, they hope to harness its power “to effect our triumphal return to our birthplace — to Asgard — as the rulers of that realm eternal!” Sure, why not? But, as the Enchantress is now coming to realize, there’s no way they can do that until the last of the bystanders touched the previous night by Destiny’s power — Alvin Denton — confronts his own personal fate. And so she frees both Ben and Alvin, then causes the illusion of the gas station to vanish, while she and her partner magically teleport away…
Once again, Ben Grimm accedes to the Sorcerer Supreme’s request. He’s about to bundle Alvin into the Fantasti-Car and head back to NYC — but when Alvin begs him to take him home, instead — “home” being Cobbler’s Roost, VT — he changes his mind.
En route to Vermont, Alvin tells Ben the story of his life — the last few unfortunate years of it, anyway:
Art by Herb Trimpe and John Severin.
Art by Marie Severin, John Buscema, and Tom Palmer.
This is probably a good spot to point out that the idea that, setting aside details of clothing and hairstyle, Valkyrie and Barbara are virtually identical in appearance, is a new notion that appears here for the very first time. Previous to this, we’d been given to understand that “Valkyrie” always looked the same — whether she was merely a disguise for the Enchantress (as she was in the character’s debut in Avengers #83 (Dec., 1970), or, as later, the magical “construct” whose persona briefly possessed a young Manhattan woman named Samantha Parrington in Hulk #142 (Aug., 1971), some months before the Enchantress placed that same persona into the woman we readers still, at this point, know only as “Barbara” — a onetime cultist of the extradimensional demonic entities called the Undying Ones, who’d first entered Marvel continuity in Hulk #126 (Apr., 1970). Yes, Val and Barbara are both blonde, pretty, and youthful-looking — but, then again, so was Samantha Parrington… and, for that matter, so is the Enchantress herself.
The Executioner immediately dives after the falling harmonica, with the Thing following close behind…
Instead of going after the Enchantress, Valkyrie dives to attack the Executioner instead, leaving Ben to wonder aloud why she didn’t simply do as he’d asked…
This issue’s final scene may feel like an ending of sorts — and for poor Alvin Denton, it sadly is just that — but as the bottom-of-the-page teaser reminds us, the Valkyrie’s quest for self-knowledge is hardly over. Nor have the Executioner and the Enchantress been fully put down for the count. And what about the harmonica of Destiny, and its remaining mysteries?
The answer to that and other questions left hanging at the end of this issue would soon be forthcoming — though not, as the teaser also confirms, in the pages of Marvel Two-in-One. Rather, the present storyline would continue, and conclude, in the very next issue of Defenders, as Steve Gerber — following his thorough warm-up in these two issues of Marvel Two-in-One, not to mention his co-plotting and scripting efforts on Giant-Size Defenders #3 — begins what your humble blogger considers the all-time definitive Defenders run. I hope you’ll return next month for the beginning of a highly memorable era, as we crack open Defenders #20.
*According to the Grand Comics Database, Marvel art director John Romita made a few touch-ups to Ben Grimm’s mug, but otherwise it was an all-Starlin job.
The undeniable charms of Gerber’s quirky story were undercut, for me, by the whole “Valkyrie can’t hit a woman.” It made no sense —Amora could easily say ‘You can’t fight me’ rather than exclude the whole female sex — but it gave Gerber a kryptonite Gerber could use to sideline her. Which he did too often.
As a Val fan, that’s one of the things that soured me on his run despite its good sides.
To be fair, Gerber also often side-lined Dr. Strange, somewhat understandably given the extent of the Sorcerer Supreme’s powers while conscious! None of that undermined my overall enjoyment of Gerber’s run.
I frequently think of his run when I read someone complaining they hate magical superheroes because “magic has no rules” — there’s quite a bit of “Strange can or can’t do whatever the plot requires.”
The same is true of Man-Thing where Gerber’s mindless brute can suddenly have enough memory to splint an arm in one issue (and I say that as a fan of his run).
To greater or lesser degrees, depending on the writer/artist, that pretty much applies to every “super” character, from Superman and Batman onwards. Many of Batman’s stunts, such as disappearing within seconds of talking to someone, and his cape never somehow weighing him down or causing him to trip while engaged in fighting, not to mention all the things he’s able to fit into his utility belt, etc., constitute comicbook magic. Of course, that’s magnified in those characters who are touted to have genuine super powers such as Superman or the Specter, or mystic powers such as Dr. Fate and Dr. Strange, as well as those with high-tech powers such as Iron Man. Power levels go up and down not just as the plot requires but kept in check enough so that all problems are supposedly resolved once and for all in such a way that the world of the comicbook stories bears little resemblance to that of the readers. To a certain, Alan Moore has played with that idea a few times, such as in Miracle Man and Promethea. Shannon Wheeler played with it in a more humorous way by having his character Too Much Coffee Man become powerful enough to solve just about every problem in the universe — mainly by destroying it all, leaving TMCM in a state of absolute nothingness — and bored out of his mind!
Oh, agreed. Brian Cronin has a whole list of fights in which a vastly superior combatant winds up losing (“The Wrong Side Won”). And Spider-Man’s spider-sense has never been consistent — even Stan Lee had Spidey do things like find a criminal’s lair (even when they weren’t in it) or spot criminals walking down the street because they’d just pulled a job.
But when it’s called “magic” it’s somehow more objectionable to some fans.
There’s also Ben Edlund’s immortal comment about the ridiculousness of Batman being able to drive from the Mansion to a Gotham City crime scene without ever running into traffic.
I agree that the “Val can’t attack women” shtick doesn’t make much sense if its only in-story purpose was to keep her from coming after her “creator”, the Enchantress. But it seemed to go hand-in-hand with the over-the-top militant feminism that the Enchantress had originally built into Val’s supposedly-artificial persona, so I think I always took it as the Enchantress accomplishing her main goal of self-protection in a sneaky way… back in Hulk #142, at least, she was trying to work behind the scenes. (Granted, none of it makes any sense at all years later, after Val is revealed to really be Brunhilde from Norse mythology, but we can’t lay that on Gerber — or on Steve Englehart, whom I think was the first to introduce Val’s “kryptonite” in Defenders #4.)
Keeping her reluctant to hit women rather than magically barred would have been more interesting — comics had some fun in the 1970s with heroes who struggled against the “I can’t hit a girl” programming they’d grown up with.
As an addendum — nothing I just wrote lets Gerber off the hook for using the can’t-hit-women thing as a flimsy excuse for sidelining Val, of course.
Regarding Batman never getting stuck in traffic, I’m reminded one of the old recurring articles in Mad – Scenes We’d Like to See, which generally skewered many standard tropes in movies, tv shows, and, yes, comics. I don’t know if they ever dealt with tropes involving car chases, but I’ve seen so many over the decades and to my mind so many of them are so predictable that I’d really like to see a scene wherein the chaser & chasee both get stuck in massive, bumper to bumper traffic jam and one of them even wrecks their own car trying to get out of it; or one of the cars runs out of gas! A few weeks ago, I re-watched The Graduate, which I probably hadn’t last watched in 20 or 30 years, and one scene I had entirely forgotten about had Ben, Dustin Hoffman’s character, while trying to get to Elaine’s wedding and stop it, ran out of gas! And that was just after he’d stopped at a gas station to get a map and was in such a hurry that he didn’t bother to fill his tank even after the attendant asked him if he needed any gas. Of course, The Graduate was a comedy, albeit with some dark themes, rather than an action film, and it wasn’t a car chase, but I still found it hilarious. One time, about 40 years ago, while living in San Jose, I managed to run out of gas on a freeway. A traffic cop stopped to check on me and I had gotten out, reflexively locked the door and shut it, explained the situation to the cop, who then went on his way — and then I realized I had left the key in the ignition! Well, eventually that was all resolved, but rather embarrassing.
The “spider-sense” is one of those magic powers that has nothing to do with any actual spider. I don’t know if it was Lee’s or Ditko’s idea, but time and time again it has been used in ways that make no rational sense. But then we’re talking about a “funnybook” wherein a character got super-strength and the power to walk on walls & ceilings from the bite of a dying radioactivated spider (but not the physiological capacity to make and spin webs!). There’s a lot in comics fans have to mostly grin and move on and maybe make critical complaints about or otherwise find another hobby.
Stan’s explanation (for whatever his statements are worth) is that spiders always seemed able to sense when he was about to squash them.
It’s true it’s not more ridiculous than any of his other abilities but then again, all his other abilities can be “explained” by a radioactive spider bite. Not so much spider sense.
It’s telling that even the Original Handbook of the MU which struggled to offer explanations for everything threw up its hands and said “psionic … maybe?”
I think the real world reason spiders can sense danger is their keen sensitivity to motion and vibrations on their webs or in the air. They apparently can’t see at that well, and thus can’t see approaching potential danger as well as houseflies, which are far better at getting away from danger than spiders. Of course, being able to fly away helps. Spiders may try scurrying away as fast as they can, but unless they have a convenient nearby hiding place, they’re likely to get squished if some human is after them, as in the sad fate of Boris the Spider in the old Who song by John Entwistle:
He’s come to a sticky end
Don’t think he will ever mend
Never more will he crawl ’round
He’s embedded in the ground
That may have been Dr. Octopus’ favorite rock song!
As we have pointed out numerous times, almost all female characters were poorly served by their Marvel writers (and DC) during the seventies. We didn’t notice it at the time, but it becomes glaringly obvious now, with fifty years of enlightened hindsight. And while better today, it’s still not where it ought to be.
George Tuska…a perfectly fine journeyman artist whose work didn’t diminish my excitement over a new comic (much), but didn’t increase it all that much, either. He was fine. Consequently, Esposito’s inks, which never really made anyone’s work shine, didn’t do much damage either and the over-all effect is solid, if not anything to write home about. The Buscema/Esposito team, however, was more disappointing. Sal, as we spent some time pointing out in response to your last post, Alan, was another solid penciller–more solid than Tuska, to be sure–whose work was at it’s best when he was inked by Vinnie Coletta. Esposito ain’t no Vinnie, my friends, and the result is not what it could have been. Still, Sal did what he could. He may not have been well-suited to the magic and mayhem of a Doctor Strange story, but as you say, he was getting better at it.
As for the story, I have to wonder why Gerber went to all this trouble to re-open the can of worms that was Barbara Norris without revealing any more about who she was or how she got caught up in the Cult of the Undying One. We found out more about poor ol’ Alvin Denton, her poor, wine-soaked dad, in this yarn than we did anything new about Babs and it was frustrating to plunk down my hard-earned money for a story that was only a place holder until the real story could begin in the next issue of the Defenders. I like Gerber. Next to Englehart, he’s one of my favorite writers from this period, but it feels like he phoned this one in.
Also, can we talk about how Clea got sidelined again, told to stay home and watch the harmonica with Wong, while Strange went out to play? Valkyrie wasn’t the only female character who got short shrift here.
I look forward to Defenders #20, Alan, which, I agree was the beginning of the non-team’s most definitive run. Thanks.
Sif, for example. I figured replacing Jane Foster with an Asgardian warrior meant she’d get in on more fights. Instead, Sif gets captured, or stands back while her man fights or stands around worrying about him — it makes the transition pointless.
About the only SUPPORTING female character I can think of (Wonder Woman doesn’t count) who doesn’t get sidelined on the regular while the boys save the day is Big Barda. And even her record isn’t perfect.
Sharon Carter during the 1960s got a surprising amount of action — an exception that proves the rule.
Interesting post, but Colletta Sal’s best inker? Shurely shome mishtake? Sal was inked by Janson, Palmer, and often himself and any of those pairings were streets ahead of what Colletta did to his pencils. In fact, other than Esposito (who, for whatever reason, was paired with Sal a lot, unfortunately) I can’t think of another inker who was worse on Sal.
Perhaps Gerber thought he’d deal with who Barbara Denton Norriss was when he brought Jack into The Defenders.
But about all I can remember along those lines was Jack recognizing Chondu the Mystic from a date he had with Barbara. They saw him at the Vermont State Fair and on the way home they had a flat tire.
Seems to me there are maybe some John Romita Sr touch-ups in Marvel Two-in-One #6 over George Tuska’s art as well. The first panel of page two especially, Stephen Strange’s face/eyes/eyebrows don’t like all that much like Tuska’s work. Some of the eyebrows on Strange’s face throughout also look possibly reworked. Maybe left to his own devices, Tuska drew a Dr Strange face that looked uncomfortably like his version of Tony Stark?
That made me think of Gene Colan’s runs on all three of Marvel’s comics featuring leading mustachioed protagonists in the ’60s and ’70s — Iron Man, Dr. Strange and Tomb of Dracula. I think Colan was better than average at making distinct faces and his version of Tony Stark didn’t look too much like his Stephen Strange, nor did his Vlad Dracula resemble Stark or Strange, even when he wasn’t opening his mouth wide enough to expose his larger than normal canines! As to Tuska, I’m not aware of him drawing Stephen Strange in any other stories and wouldn’t know for sure if someone else had to redraw the master mage’s visage to keep him from being mistaken for the billionaire master inventor. Iron Man rarely took off his helmet during Sal Buscema’s runs on Avengers, so right off I don’t know how well he did on distinguishing Stark & Strange, although I’d guess that in color comics, as long as Strange had those white temples and Stark’s hair remained all black with blue highlights readers could usually them apart. Most artists tended to give Strange a narrower, slightly longer face than Stark, somewhat like Vincent Price as compared to Clark Gable or a young Howard Hughes.
Several years ago, I read a comics site called Too Busy Thinking About My Comics by Colin Smith, which included commentary about much of Gerber’s Marvel output, including the Defenders and this particular story and in light of reading that and re-examining it here, that ending, wherein Alvin Denton dies before having a genuine chance to connect with Valkyrie, who inhabits the body of his daughter, packed an emotional punch for me, more than it likely did when I first read this story 50 years ago. Gerber did wind up making much of the curse Amora put on Val, although I didn’t mind that bit too much myself as I think overall Gerber humanized Val more than any previous writers had done thus far — but then we can only speculate as to what direction Len Wein may have taken with Val if his run had been longer. Reading this, I also can’t help but think of one of Neil Gaiman’s story arcs on Sandman, The Doll’s House, wherein several characters are inadvertently exposed to a sort of psychic event that plays havoc with their senses of themselves and their destinies. I do feel both Gaiman as well as Alan Moore took some inspiration from Gerber, building up and expanding upon many of his themes on the human condition amidst bizarre circumstances. Ben Grimm and Valkyrie are, of course, entirely fictional characters, existing only in works of fiction, comics or otherwise — “paper dolls”. But Gerber could make me at least care about their situations, not simply regarding the “fight of the day” but their efforts to understand themselves and their place in the world. Ben is the far more experienced superhero who had to come to terms with his destiny and his monstrous transformation which has led him to many incredible experiences but he still maintains connections with his past life, such as Mrs. Coogan (although this also brings up questions as to whatever happened to his own parents, which, as far as I know were only explored decades later, if ever). Valkyrie, on the other hand, has no personal memory of her past before her persona was embedded in Barabara Norris’ body and herein lost a father she could not remember. Portentously, a reference is also made to “Jack”. It would be many years before I became aware he had been introduced, along with Barbara, in the Hulk a few years earlier, and Gerber would make much use of him during his run on The Defenders. Even before starting work on The Defenders series proper, Gerber was planting seeds for aspects of his coming run.
Regarding Ben happening to stop at a gas station wherein the Executioner happened to be waiting for him, I just took it as the Enchantress managing to put a spell on him from afar. Certainly, weirder things have happened in comics! It’d be left to Walt Simonson to finally flesh out the characters of ol’ Skurge and Amora about a decade hence from this story (I can’t remember if either had gotten their proper names previous to Simonson’s celebrated run on Thor). Back to the Enchantress’ magic spell on Barbara, to me the transformation into Valkyrie was akin to that of Donald Blake into Thor and it didn’t really make sense that Alvin (and, later, Jack) would so quickly recognize Valkyrie as Barabara. Sal Buscema did tend to draw most female faces to look very much alike, but to my eyes the way he drew Barbara’s face was distinct from the way he drew Val’s, and while the change in their physiques wasn’t nearly as dramatic as that of Donald to Thor, there was still a significant difference, as well in the ways they stood and moved, etc. Barbara was drawn to look like a reasonably attractive young woman but still an ordinary mortal while Valkyrie was drawn to look much more like an idealized, statuesque goddess who might just skewer you if you pissed her off (but, thanks to the CCA and unwritten norms of superhero behavior of the time, wasn’t likely to actually do so!). The Enchantress, on the other hand, might just turn you into a toad but still demand that you thank her for the honor of being allowed to look upon her. I hadn’t encountered the word pulchritudinous before, Alan, but it is perfectly apt for the evil goddess of bewitchment! Anyhow, that Alvin & Jack could somehow see past the spell to recognize the Barbara they knew and loved within Valkyrie still strikes me as odd but I give Gerber a pass on that bit of comicbook magic. And it brought Alvin to overcome his physical and psychological frailties to do his bit to save his daughter even as it brought about a heart attack that killed him. And rather unusually for comics, he didn’t linger on long enough to say any last words.
Mrs. Coogan’s comment that Ben’s eyes still have the same twinkle that she always loved has stayed with me ever since I read it.
I wonder whether Sheldon Goldenberg ever wrote that book, or went no further than a song-cry of a living dead man, as Brian Lazarus did in Man-Thing #12.
The two Steves, Englehart and Gerber, were my favorite writers of this era. Englehart was the first writer of this era to individualize characters in a group beyond Hawkeye type characterizations. He could also use continuity way better than anyone, even Roy Thomas. Gerber almost was his equal in characterization but his specialty was wackadoodle concepts and set ups that were just plain fun and (mostly) still worked. I loved all his stuff back then and we’re not even up to the Headmen (and Ruby Thursday!) and Nebulon’s cult. Hopefully whoever drove him away from Marvel had at least middling bad karma follow them around for a while!
When I first read this back in 1974, I never thought of this because I had never seen the specific Twilight Zone episode (although, coincidentally, I had just started watching the reruns on WPIX from New York City), but I immediately caught it now reading this blog post.
Whether intentionally or unintentionally–and with Steve Gerber I suspect it probably was an intentional “Easter egg”–the character of Al Denton was a character on a Twilight Zone episode. The episode was called “Mr. Denton on Doomsday” (which could have been the title of this issue). Al Denton was the town drunk(!) In the story Denton at one point gets the chance to change his destiny with some magic. The story does have a happy ending for him, unlike the Al(vin) Denton in Gerber’s story.
Mr. Denton on Doomsday – Wikipedia
Thanks for sharing that, Stuart! I had no idea.
It’s a favorite episode of mine but I still didn’t make the possible connection.