As of October, 1976, Marvel Comics had primarily used their tabloid-sized “Treasury” format (which had premiered in the summer of 1974) as a vehicle for reprint material. Exceptions to date had included MGM’s Marvelous Wizard of Oz (1975), Marvel Treasury of Oz Featuring The Marvelous Land of Oz (1975), and Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man (1976), the first and last of which were co-productions with DC Comics; more recently, the past summer had seen the release of two new 10″ x 13.5” extravaganzas written as well as drawn by Jack Kirby: Marvel Treasury Special Featuring Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Marvel Treasury Edition #12 was something different. By and large, it was a reprint package, re-presenting the hard-to-find (and expensive) earliest appearances of Howard the Duck. But it was also fronted by a brand-new 27-page story featuring Howard teaming up with the Defenders… something which made it a must-buy for my nineteen-year-old self, despite my already owning all the “old” material in the original editions, not to mention my general overall distaste for comics that combined new and reprinted stories under the same cover (especially when the page count of the reprints significantly exceeded that of the new stuff, as was the case here).
Concerning that last point, however… if I’m going to be completely honest, I probably didn’t make too much of a fuss at the time about having to spend a buck-fifty for one new 27-page story. For one thing, that was still 10 pages more story than I’d find in your standard, regular-sized Marvel comic during this era. For another, I’d acquired enough of a collector’s mindset by then that I’d have figured that MTE #12 would surely be worth at least twice its cover price in no time at all (not that I had any intention of selling it any time soon, if ever, but still).
And finally, I was simply all in on Howard the Duck in the fall of 1976. I’m sure I would have picked up this book even if it hadn’t given me the chance to enjoy one last Defenders story by the trio of talents — writer Steve Gerber and artists Sal Buscema and Klaus Janson — who had, up until two months ago, been that superhero group’s regular creative team… but the fact that it did certainly made me even more enthusiastic about buying and reading it.
So, after taking a moment or two to enjoy the fun cover produced by regular HtD penciller Gene Colan and inker Tom Palmer (with the inevitable touch-ups by John Romita), let’s have a look inside,,,
I’m sharing this Table of Contents (which ran on the ad-free tabloid’s inside front cover) partly so you have a more specific idea of what the package included — but mostly because it’s the only place in the book which provides the creator credits for the story we’re about to peruse. And now you know.
At this point, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this group of wannabe supervillains is almost too lame even to work as a joke. But the next guy up will prove to be rather more dangerous…
Waaaugh, indeed. (For anyone who may not know, Celebrity magazine was a shameless [and short-lived] People knockoff that Marvel had launched in 1975.)
We fans who’d read Howard the Duck #7, released just a week before this, recognized the Parkside Plaza Hotel as the place where Howard and his companion, Beverly Switzler, had been staying while attending (OK, working at) the All-Night Party’s National Convention. But we were surprised to see Howard and Bev being tossed out on their keisters. How dare they treat the party’s brand-new Presidential candidate and his personal assistant in such a cavalier fashion?
Beverly tells Howard that the party’s bigwigs must have assumed that he was rich, and he agrees that’s plausible, asking rhetorically: “Or how could I afford to run, right?” She’s sure the ANP will get in touch once they learn what’s happened, but in the meantime, she and Howard need a place to stay in New York. Beverly has some friends from high school who have a house in Greenwich Village, and she figures they’ll put her and her companion up. “Swell,” Howard says as they board a subway train. “So all we gotta do is get there alive, right?”
Readers who’d been following this feature at least since Howard the Duck #1 would recall Peter Parker’s encounter with Howard and Beverly in that issue; and, of course, anyone who’d missed it the first time was about to get the chance to catch up via its reprinting later in this Treasury.
This gang of four had been the core Defenders lineup throughout the just-concluded Gerber-Buscema run on the book; still, it’s interesting that the latest additions to the non-team’s non-roster, the Red Guardian and Luke Cage, haven’t been included. Maybe our storytellers just wanted to keep things from getting too crowded.
Howard turns on his heel and makes for the exit, but almost immediately runs into an invisible wall. “Please forgive the mystic barrier I’ve erected, my friend,” Dr. Strange asks apologetically.
Dr. Strange confirms Howard’s deduction, then goes on to confide that what he really wants is his guest’s opinion “as a being who also has seen beyond this reality.” The Doc has noticed “an unusual degree of mystical activity” going on as of late, and wonders if Howard has as well. But the Duck is obliged to disappoint his host, confessing, “Closest I ever came to stirring up magic was an act I useta do at birthday parties. Everything else I just kinda got stirred into.”
Strange leads Howard into the darkened room where resides the Orb of Agamotto. He begins to describe how he intends to use the Orb to locate his guest’s other-dimensional homeworld, “and then, by the power of the eternal Vishanti…” But a suddenly apprehensive Howard cuts him off, indicating he’d just as soon the magician “skip the spooky details“…
“Stiga” is a Swedish brand name for products associated with table tennis and other racquet games; Nighthawk’s use of the word as a noun here would appear to refer to a robot ball-launcher that the company may have marketed in the U.S. in the 1970s, but, best as I can tell, only sells overseas nowadays.
A seasoned Marvel Comics reader might well take issue with how Dr. Strange’s abilities are portrayed in this story, asking such questions as: Should he be able to project his astral form after his physical form has been knocked unconscious? And even if he can, how is it possible for him to physically manifest a costume — complete with a (presumably fully operational) Cloak of Levitation — for Howard out of thin air, especially in such a state? But while Steve Gerber might justifiably be dinged for having Dr. Strange’s power levels vary wildly over the course of his Defenders run (mostly for narrative convenience, or so at least it often seemed), I’m inclined to give him a break here. After all, this is a Howard the Duck story first and foremost, and it’s reasonable to expect the “rules” of the Marvel Universe to be a bit more elastic in Howard’s vicinity. Or so thinks your humble blogger, at any rate.
Why Shea Stadium? Well, why not?
Tillie’s supposedly “feminist” shtick is reminiscent of the modus operandi/backstories of a couple of other Marvel characters, Thundra and Red Sonja; the joke in her case seems to be that she’s not conventionally attractive, so who’d ever want to win her for a bride? (No, this bit has not aged well.)
Kyle “Nighthawk” Richmond is, of course, correct. In the Steve Gerber era, the Defenders had indeed become the Marvel team that somehow attracted “weird villains” — maybe not quite as weird as such earlier foes of Howard as the Hellcow, the Space Turnip, or Winky-Man — but close enough that the melding of the two series’ milieus isn’t nearly as jarring as having Howard drop in on the Fantastic Four or Avengers would be.
Meanwhile, back at Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, Howard is successsfully fighting back against Dr. Angst. After freeing himself from his opponent’s needle-and-thread trap, our hero deflects an onslaught of six-ply radial tires via that old standby, the Shield of the Seraphim…
For anyone out there who might still have been thinking that Howard’s Doc Strange duds were simply illusory, this last sequence seals the deal — this duplicate Cloak of Levitation is every bit as potent as the OG one Doc got as a gift from the Ancient One way back in Strange Tales #127 (Dec., 1964). Which might again raise the question of how such a thing could possibly work; though, as we noted before, it’s probably better just to roll with the anarchic absurdity of the whole enterprise than to sweat such details.
Following Howard and Bev’s brief break-up and almost instantaneous reunion in Howard the Duck #6, the idea that he’d up and leave her to return to his native dimension just a couple of episodes later was clearly a non-starter. Still, despite the understated manner in which the moment is played, it’s clearly a major step for the couple’s relationship that he’s blowing off the opportunity to go home for the sake of remaining with her.
Left unanswered at the end of this episode, of course, is the very pertinent question of who hired Dr. Angst to kill Howard in the first place, as well as its natural follow-up: when and how will they try again? (That they will try again obviously goes without saying.) But those answers will have to wait a few weeks, until the release of the 8th issue of the regular monthly Howard the Duck title; for now, at least, our tale is done.
Half a century after its original publication, “The Duck and the Defenders” may not rate as one of the greatest ever stories for either its star or its guest-stars — but it’s still pretty darn amusing, in your humble blogger’s opinion, serving as a diverting detour for the Duck on his road to the White House as well as a fine coda to the Gerber-Buscema Defenders run. Speaking in regards to the latter, Dr. Angst’s “Band of the Bland” (as they’d be retroactively christened when Gerber brought them back in Sensational She-Hulk some fourteen years later) seem like clear forerunners of Mr. Nobody’s Brotherhood of Dada, the supervillain group created by Grant Morrison for that writer’s monumental Doom Patrol run of the early 1980s; as such, their misadventures here offer us a brief glimpse of what Gerber’s Defenders might have eventually evolved into, given enough time… and, perhaps, a more receptive marketplace. But, if nothing else, the non-team would at least be entering the post-Gerber era with their proud non-ranks swelled by at least one new non-member. (As the star of his own feature, Howard definitely counts. Beverly might too — except that if we include her, we might also have to fold in Jack Norriss, and I’d honestly rather not go there.)
The reprinted content that takes up over half of Marvel Treasury Edition #12’s page-count includes Howard the Duck’s first two solo headlining adventures, which ran as backups in Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 and #5, respectively, as well as Howard the Duck #1, all of which were written by Steve Gerber and pencilled by Frank Brunner. But it also includes Howard’s debut appearances as a minor supporting character to 
Marvel’s premiere muck-monster in Fear #19 and Man-Thing #1, as written by Gerber and pencilled by Val Mayerik — or, rather, it includes the few relevant pages from each of those books that actually feature Howard. Given that our web-footed future super-star literally walks into the story on the fifteenth page of the first comic (see left) and then just as literally falls out of it on the ninth page of the second (see right), these scenes don’t make much sense without some framing material. So that’s what MTE #12 provides, mostly in the form of text… though the whole thing is prefaced by an all-new splash page by Gerber and Mayerik:
I can still recall how startled I was by this page when I first saw it in October, 1976, simply because of how different — and, for my money, better — Howard looked in this piece, which was inked as well as pencilled by Mayerik, as compared to Mayerik’s earlier renditions, which were inked by Sal Trapani. It was then (and remains) a reminder of how much difference an inker can make when it comes to comics art… as well as a taste of what a Mayerik-drawn Howard the Duck might look like. (We’d get a even better idea next summer, when the artist would illustrate Howard’s first Annual, followed half-a-year later by the title’s two-part “Star Wars” parody — but we’ll save further discussion of those for another time.)
In wrapping this up, we should note for the record that the 84-page (counting covers) Marvel Treasury Edition #12 also included such bonus features as an early, unused version of the cover to the yet-unreleased Howard the Duck #8, as well as several illustrated text pieces written by Gerber, mostly in regards to the HtD Presidential Campaign. The whole package was topped off by another all-new piece of artwork that graced the tabloid’s back cover…
…OK, an almost all-new piece of artwork. That circular “Get Down, America!” portrait of Howard was of course lifted directly from Bernie Wrightson’s campaign button design, and dropped into Gene Colan and Tom Palmer’s illustration. Still, I doubt anyone complained. (I know I didn’t.)
Describing Peter as a “baby faced masher” is pretty hilarious. Loved Howard the Duck.
“If this is what it’s like to possess spheres…” That line went completely over my head when I was 14. Sheltered childhood, I guess.
Very entertaining! The title of the story is riffing on the Twilight Zone episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” which is itself an homage to Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 play “Six Characters in Search of an Author.”
I think I actually bought this when it came out and must still have. I certainly wasn’t particulary into HtD but Treasury editions usually felt like a new shiny thing (with erratic distribution in the UK) and I was buying the Defenders title at the time. The reprints would have been mostly new to me but so much of the humour would have been lost on me. The way Howard appears as a anthropomorphized duck in an otherwise “realistic” world, reminds me of the original appearance of the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, who also wears a jacket and waistcoat. Down the rabbit hole we go….
Except Howard had a lot more cheek 😉
I hadn’t read this story for years, and was startled to see Sal Buscema’s name on the credits – in my head I was convinced that Gene Colan had drawn the whole story, not just the covers.
Not to worry, though. Sal reveals here a gift for humour he wasn’t often called upon to display. I particularly liked: the doorman’s weary disdain as Howard and Bev are thrown out of their hotel; Howard’s jealousy towards Peter Parker (I agree with Michael, “baby-faced masher” is a zinger); Nighthawk’s eye-roll when Bev misidentifies him as the Falcon; the three-panel sequence, straight out of Looney Tunes, where Bev dispatches Black Hole into his own, well, you know; and, on the last page, the WTF expression on the face of the cop clambering out of Black Hole’s midriff.
As far as the story goes, some nice gags, some subtle and not so subtle satire, but there’s one hugely discordant note in Howard’s apparently genuine dismissal of his relationship with Bev as something to “occupy [his] time”. Howard’s irascible, impulsive and cynical, yes, but this feels nastier. It’s kicked into the long grass on the last page, but still leaves a sour taste.
Anyway, one thing that never leaves a sour taste is Alan’s insightful and entertaining musings in these pages. Thanks as always!
This was my first exposure to this since comics this size have always been a turn off to me and still are. It also reminds me that Howard stories from Gerber were so haphazard. Things just happen out of nowhere and I guess I don’t like that anymore. The story would have been improved if they’d added Bessie The Hellcow, my favorite Gerber creation ever.
I agree and haphazard is the right word for it. People just pop up, go through the obligatory fight scene and disappear. I’m curious about something too. Most of Gerber’s Howard stories have that standard Marvel comic structure, villain appears, is dispatched etc. The only real difference is with Gerber the villains are usually very absurd. Well, like Dr. Strange at the same time of publication, I’m guessing Howard the Duck’s appeal and purchasing audience was older, more mature, more often college kids that the audience for the standard Marvel fare. Therefore I don’t see why Gerber maintains this same tired formula with the costumed antagonists. I think pitting Howard against modern windmills ala Don Quixote would’ve made way more sense. Corrupt politicians, Overblown media and celebrity types, Filthy rich moguls, Gung ho military brass, to name just a few. Yes, I know these elements are often included. But often just for a couple of panels here and there, cut short to make room for said costumed villains. Mind you, I’m not knocking what IS included, it’s still worlds better than most of the fare offered in Early Autumn ’75.
I think the idea was to still make it *look* like a regular Marvel comic story with its requisite costumed villains, fights, etc. — except this turns it all on its ear.
How do I say this? I became a fan of Steve Gerber because his stories intrigued me as they were imaginative, often detouring into unanticipated directions with a resonating emotional connection that had me rooting for his characters. This rather fearless approach didn’t always work. Daredevil and Sub-Mariner are two good examples of that. But when it did – such as with Marvel Two-In-One, Man-Thing and of course, certain issues of the Defenders – Gerber knocked it out of the park.
Quirkiness was simply one aspect of his storytelling arsenal – a key one for certain. But not his only bag of tricks. No question Gerber dug deeply into that particular bag for the Headmen-Nebulon story for The Defenders. Likewise, writing an anthropomorphic duck required further reaches into that absurd corner of his creativity. But it seemed that by this point, the main aspect of a Steve Gerber story was that it would be…weird.
That single word permeates every panel of this Treasury edition. A guy with paddles as weapons? Dr. Strange knocked out by baseballs? A drably dressed wannabe sorcerer threatening the Defenders? Sure, there were humorous bits such as the encounter with Peter and Mary Jane. Ditto on the “spheres” reference. But to me, along with “weird,” the whole issue also came across as “tired.” Gerber going through the motions in lieu of tapping his talents.
Perhaps deadlines or behind the scenes problems factored into this. Or maybe his heart wasn’t truly into it. The art’s not a problem – Sal Buscema and Klaus Janson do fine job. But having never seen this one before today, I can’t say I’m sorry it didn’t land in that corner grocery store in my hometown.
What I can also say is that I enjoyed every word of Alan’s wonderfully written review! And speaking of Ducks, I’m working to complete all my chores so that I can devote quality time later today to watching my Oregon Ducks facing UCLA at Autzen Stadium! Quack! Quack!
While not exactly among Gerber’s most biting satirical outings, I still enjoyed this last journey into the absurd for the Defenders under Gerber with Howard as the latest temporary non-member, although in this one instance it was the Defenders were the guest stars in the temp’s mag rather than the usual other way around. All very silly but tongue-in-cheek such that having Doc do things he ordinarily shouldn’t be able to do didn’t bother me at all — including once again having Doc knocked out so that he couldn’t bring the meat of the story to an abrupt end practically before it began.
Referencing Morrison’s Brotherhood of Dada from his Doom Patrol run was very apt. Alan, as I’m among those who think Morrison was highly influenced by Gerber’s Defenders, but taking things to even more absurdist heights (or depths?) over a much longer period. I had mostly quit collecting comics during the period Morrison’s Doom Patrol was in the shops but later got the collections. Among the amusements in the story at hand was Hulk still being held by Banner’s cultural conditioning that it was “wrong” to fight women and hence being befuddled about what to do when Tillie kept attacking him. Of course, Tillie had no chance of actually hurting Hulk and all he had to do to knock her out was swat her with the back of his hand. Appears the Black Hole might have beaten Hulk simply by sucking him in, but Beverly saved the day by making BH suck himself in — which sounds, uh, vaguely pornographic and disturbing all at once! Fortunately, Doc’s magic trumped whatever comics physics it was that powered BH’s capacities and it turned out being sucked into that particular black hole wasn’t quite the death sentence implied by the caption wherein we first saw the power employed. According to our friendly neighborhood Wiki AI, the fate of anything sucked in by an actual black hole is to be “stretched, ripped apart, and crushed into its most basic atomic or subatomic components as it falls toward the center”, which certainly doesn’t sound like a picnic to me! Can’t blame Gerber for wanting to keep things relatively light for this mag in particular, so no one was seriously hurt and so the Black Hole sucked in a more amusing way than horrifying. Dr. Angst, the Spanker and Sitting Bullseye were all rather pathetic baddies, although not all that more so than some of those that faced off against Johnny Storm and Hank Pym in several of their early solo stories, or even when paired with Ben Grimm and Janet Van Dyne, respectively, in later stories.
As to the reprints, they were all new to me, so I was very happy to get them as additions to the new story. Eventually, I did get Adventures into Fear #19 and Man-Thing #1, and so got the full story of those mags, and I got the Essential Man-Thing volume 2 with Manny’s adventures in the Giant-Size mags, including the harrowing “Kid’s Night Out”.
All in all, for this HtD fan who was a bit late in arriving to the party, Marvel Treasury Edition #12 was a delight, very much worth the $1.50 expenditure IMO. Loved your overview of the mag, Alan.
This is far from the only story to defy physics (which is what superhero comics do) and imply going into a black hole is not always a death sentence.
Superman’s been openly defiant of the laws of physics for, oh, 88 years now, and kept getting ever more defiant as he got older and doesn’t seem likely to stop anytime soon! A mere black hole??? Pshaw, Supes will eat it for breakfast and burp it out! Well, ok, these days it might give him a little trouble, just for the same of more drama if nothing else.
I’d go with Joe and Rick that this all felt a bit formulaic and tired. Even Sal B’s usually reliable art seems to be just going through the motions. I’d also wonder how much some of the clever facial expressions were in the original pencils or added/reworked by Mr Janson? Peter and MJ’s faces look very much as though they were reworked by Mr Romita Sr.
I’d also agree with our esteemed/humble host that the whole presentation of Tillie the Hun as a stereotypically aggressive man-hating feminist has very definitely not aged well (it was a bit tired back then). The supposed humour in her being too unattractive for any man who did ‘defeat her in battle’ is lame as well, and had already been riffed in ST:TOS’s Gamesters of Triskelion, where Chekov is stuck with the heavily made-up to look unattractive Tamoon/Jane Ross (she didn’t look like that in real life!), while Jim Kirk (of course) gets the barely-dressed and willing Shahna/Angelique Pettyjohn.
I wonder if it was deliberate or subconscious on Gerber’s part to have Sitting Bullseye be so obviously similar to Simon and Kirby’s original Bullseye (in their Mainline Comics)? Even to having a bullseye tattooed on his chest by ‘redskins’ (his terminology, not mine), where the original was branded. We know that Gerber was a fan of S&K’s work from that period, he even admitted to stealing a copy of Fighting American.
All in all, this was quite a poor farewell outing for Gerber’s Defenders, but then I was never the most enthusiastic follower of his run anyway. Leagues above what was to follow, but I always preferred Englehart’s stories of the original ‘big three’ (plus Val).
Loved ST’s “Gamesters of Triskelion”! Although more than a bit campy, that episode had an undeniable energy that made up for it’s shortcomings. It wasn’t that long ago, however, that I learned Jane Ross’s actual appearance. I knew there was heavy make-up involved with her character, but yeah, she wasn’t hard on the eyes either.
While I didn’t mention “Tillie the Hun” in my previous comment, you, Alan -and everyone else – captured my disappointment with her character.
Tillie does get one decent gag early on, where she forestalls Bullseye from launching into a cliched expository origin monologue with a terse “Ahh, shaddap!”
I think I assumed that Tillie the Hun was Gerber’s parody of male misconceptions about feminism in those less enlightened times.
I think that would maybe credit Gerber with a bit more prescience than the attitudes of the times would warrant. Wouldn’t that require at some point presenting her in a sympathetic light? There’s nothing that ever suggests ‘feminists aren’t really like this’.
I believe many of you are overthinking this. Gerber was just pressing buttons to get a rise out of his audience, as far as I’m concerned, and 50 years later it seems it worked.
I found this and all of the other HtD material, upon a light, cursory reading, to be quite entertaining. Funny stuff and lotsa laffs! That’s its level. It ain’t Tolstoy.
Hi, Alan,
(Not sure why that showed up there)
I guess in retrospect, this story is a relatively harmless, goofy take-off on superheroics, filtered through the Duck. I don’t think of it as Gerber’s farewell to the Defenders (as much as I enjoyed his run on that title). It’s more an excuse to have Howard assume the guise of yet another Marvel character – in this case Dr. Strange. This happened a few times in the first year or so of the book – Howard the Barbarian, Howard as Shang-Chi, Howard as Son of Satan, and so on. Nothing deep or trenchant in the way of satire, just a hoot. (Although I think it falls fare short of the Howard annual that Mayerik drew, which was two hoots and a holler.)
And yes, a few lines kinda flew over my 17-year-old sheltered head. It’s Gerber pushing the boundaries of what you could do in a comic book – although I’m pretty sure this wasn’t a Comic Code book, so it was more of his testing the limits of Marvel’s own practices.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, as always, Alan!
2. I have one of those campaign buttons, still do after all these years!
oh, and 3. Grant Morrison’s first issue of Doom Patrol was in 1989, which isn’t early 1980s…
I like this better than a number of commenters. I agree it’s not the biting, sarcastic commentary about life or our absurd society that HTD often got into but the idea of Dr. Howard, Master of the Mystic Arts? The mundaneness of Dr. Angst (I suspect if he’d showed up in the regular book that might have led to stronger satire)? They worked. And I can forgive, for once, playing fast and loose with Stephen’s limits.
It helps that I have a fondness for loser villains when the writer’s aware they’re C-listers. That said, they’re not a great crew. Tillie doesn’t seem to have much point — I suspect she’s to give the team a Valkyrie counterpart but why not match them up then?
The big turd for me, as for several others, is Howard being so dismissive of his relationship with Beverly. Even the ending doesn’t, to me, come across like he’s made his choice as much as a desire to slip away without having to say an awkward goodbye — if she hadn’t been in the room he could have gone.
This might have worked if Gerber had set this up as a running ambivalence in HTD. Or if Howard had shown regret about leaving Bev and finally decided against it. As is, thumbs down.
I’ve been at New York Comic Con the last three days. Definitely had a blast, but I’m exhausted and broke (gotta pay the rent, y’know) and we’re also taking our new cat to the vet for a checkup later this morning, so I’m bowing out on Day Four and instead having my coffee and reading Alan’s blog post about Marvel treasury Edition #12.
Speaking of comic cons, my partner Michele is a huge fan of Howard the Duck, and of Steve Gerber’s work in general, and over a decade ago she bought a copy of Marvel Treasury Edition #12 at a comic show. I read it, and found it very clever & funny, with some great artwork by Sal Buscema & Klaus Janson. Reading Alan’s blog post about this special, I was reminded of how much I liked this story, and I chuckled out loud several times.
It’s interesting that Alan draws a line between Dr. Angst’s “Band of the Bland” and the Brotherhood of Dada in Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol. I actually got to meet Morrison’s DP artist Richard Case at NYCC this year. Talking with him, I learned he read Marvel in the 1970s, specifically Steve Englehart’s Avengers. I don’t know if he was a fan of Gerber. But it did cause me to realize that in the chaos of the first half or so of that decade Marvel did publish quite a bit of work by Steve Gerber, Steve Englehart and Don McGregor can sort of be seen as a precursor to the material that DC would later publish under the Vertigo label in the 1990s. Gerber even wrote for Vertigo, penning the Nevada miniseries, so he was a natural fit for that imprint. And with the benefit of hindsight, you can sort of see that a series like Omega the Unknown, which was an odd fit even for the craziness of mid-1970s Marvel, might have actually flourished at Vertigo.
Anyway, thanks Alan for another entertaining blog post. Looking forward to your write-up of Howard the Duck #8.
Among the great posers – what if Gerber had created Omega the Unknown for Vertigo in the late 1980s? Presumably, it could have run for at least 5 years, long enough to tell the full story he & Mary Skrenes had intended. Or what if Kirby had launched the New Gods in the era of direct market sales rather than in the waning decade of newsstands and mom & pop mini-markets? And if he hadn’t had to include Jimmy Olsen as part of his epic conception. We can only speculate. Neither Gerber nor Kirby could guess who radically the comics scene would change during the next decade, although Kirby at least had the idea that genuine book-length collections, as in at least 200 pages, of related comics stories would eventually become a thing.
What a fascinating question! While Omega didn’t quite “land” in the mainstream market, I definitely see much stronger possibilities had it been launched a few years later in the direct market. Ditto for Kirby and his New Gods. Unfortunately, the Black Lama and “Supervillain War” in my favorite hero’s book, Iron Man, would’ve been a stinker in any corner of our multiverse. 😊
There’s some unintentional humour because Dr Strange’s ethereal self in this reminds me of a very popular UK tv children’s character from a few years after this came out – Willo The Wisp.
https://www.doyouremember.co.uk/memory/willo-the-wisp
Yes! The great Kenneth Williams!
OK, I’m late by a day checking in b/c I’ve been sitting at Ground Zero for Hurricane Isaies (or however it’s spelled) and we just got power back on an hour ago! We’re fine, the house is fine, a couple of trees aren’t fine and mainly, I’m just tired.
I thought back in 76 and still believe today that the Defenders was the best choice of a Marvel super team to hook up with Howard, primarily because of the way Gerber wrote both books and the way he approached their place in the overall MCU. That said, this story suffers, I think, because as we all know, Gerber makes these things up as he goes and sometimes with his schedule and the need to hit a deadline, I think he almost always went with his first idea and seldom with this “best idea,” you know what I mean? Some of this, as others have pointed out, feels very slipshod and poorly thought-out. The only reason it is as well-regarded as it is, is because Gerber is generally regarded as a genius and sloppy work from a genius is still better than what we get from most others. I don’t mean to say Gerber was sloppy or lazy on purpose; I think the Marvel production schedule, combined with the number of books he was writing simply encouraged quantity over quality and that lessened the work we “could” have gotten from Gerber if he’d had more time.
Last question: on the pages where Howie and Bev run into Peter and MJ, did someone re-draw Pete and MJ’s faces? Romita, maybe? Sure looks like Big John’s version of Spider-man and his favorite redhead. Thanks, Alan!
Glad you and everyone else I still know down there came through intact.
Let me echo Fraserherman in saying that I’m also glad you and everyone else are okay!
I wouldn’t normally use the comments for a technical issue, but I’m out of ideas. Viewing this site and in WordPress reader, the image scans are blank. This is happening with another site I follow on WordPress. I’ve used two different browsers and two devices. Cleared, rebooted, updated to no avail. Searches all come up with uploading issues, not reading issues. Looking over the comments, it seems no one else here has an issue with the images. I must be going mad. Any help is appreciated.
Sorry you’re having problems, Bill! Just to clarify, are you unable to see images when reading the regular web page version of the blog, or just when viewing in WP Reader?
The regular web page, also. It shows blank spaces where the comic scans should be and WP Reader has gray borders around blank spaces.
If it’s happening consistently on different devices as well as in different browsers, and with other WP sites as well as mine, I’m honestly stumped. My best advice is to post a question on WP.com’s public support forum for users (https://wordpress.com/forums/).
Wish I could be more help!
Thanks. I’ll do that. Seems to be an issue connecting with WP. I can click on a blank space and after awhile, I get, “i0.wp.com took too long to respond”
It’s back! I wish it was an identifiable issue. I guess images won’t load for reasons I don’t know for an indeterminate amount of time. Oh, well.
My friends in tech say those random on-and-off issues are the worst to deal with.
This occasionally happens to me. Not just here, it’s some random thing that strikes randomly. Can’t say why it’s happening constantly to you.
It’s good to know it can happen and “get better.” Same thing happens on my iphone, as well. Checking WP forums, the search AI takes me in circles back to the forums page. So far, I’m only seeing issues of uploading to someone’s own website, not about visiting a site. Maybe a local issue with my network and servers? I’ll keep looking. I may have quite a backlog of Attack-Of’s to read in the future. 😀
One of my favorites