In this post, we’ll be looking at the third chapter in Marvel Comics’ 1976 five-part crossover between Conan the Barbarian and Marvel Feature, featuring Red Sonja — though this issue’s status as such is completely ignored by the cover, which, nice as the illustration by Gil Kane and Pablo Marcos is, gives no indication whatsoever of the She-Devil with a Sword’s role therein, either by image or blurb-text. Read More
As regular readers of this blog are aware, we’ve recently been covering the latter (and, honestly, somewhat lesser) portion of the long-running “Headmen/Nebulon” saga in Defenders a couple of issues at a time. Most recently, in May, we looked at both Defenders #37 and #38; this time out, we’ll be delving into #39 as well as the issue indicated by both the cover and post title shown above, i.e., #40. Read More
A week ago, we took a look at Marvel Feature #6, the first installment of what will eventually turn out to be a five-part crossover between that title and Conan the Barbarian. Today, we’ll be dealing with the second chapter of this event — although, in fact, Conan #66 can just as easily (and perhaps more accurately) be described as the second prologue to the crossover “proper”, which won’t really get going until the next month’s Conan #67. That’s because this comic, like Marvel Feature #6, is entirely concerned with getting the storyline’s three principal characters — i.e., Conan, his lover and partner-in-piracy Bêlit, and Marvel Feature headliner Red Sonja — all on the same page. And I mean literally the same page, in more ways than one; since, as regular readers will recall, MF #6 ended with a full-page splash panel depicting Red Sonja facing down Conan and Bêlit over a priceless magical artifact: a single page from the Iron-Bound Book of Skelos. Our story’s first prologue told us how Sonja got herself into that situation; now it’s time for us to check out the second, the better to learn what path Conan and Bêlit have followed to arrive at the very same place as Big Red. Read More
Cover to Savage Sword of Conan #1 (Aug., 1974). Art by Boris Valejo.
It’s been a while since we discussed Red Sonja on this blog — since the 50th anniversary of the publication of Savage Sword of Conan #1, to be precise, and that was back in June, 2024, a full two years ago — so before we jump into the main topic of today’s post, it’ll behoove us to spend just a little bit of time tracking what the She-Devil with a Sword had been up to between her appearance(s) in that black-and-white comic magazine and her sixth solo outing as a headliner in the second volume of the color “showcase” comic title Marvel Feature. Beyond that, a brief recap of the heroine’s earlier history may also be useful, both as a primer for anyone out there not already thoroughly familiar with Big Red, and as a refresher for those who are. (Though if you do already know all this background material backwards and forwards and choose to skip the next couple of paragraphs, that’s fine. After all, how will the rest of us ever know?) Read More
With this post, we continue our coverage of writer Steve Gerber and artist Sal Buscema’s “Headmen/Nebulon Saga” in Defenders, following our recently established routine of taking on two issues of the lengthy storyline at a time. This go-round, we’ll be starting with Defenders #37, whose cover by Gil Kane and Mike Esposito heralds the imminent return to this title’s pages of Luke Cage, Power Man — a hero who’d first fought alongside Marvel Comics’ premiere non-team back in issues #17-19, and then had renewed his non-membership when the group battled the Sons of the Serpent in #24-25.
As regular readers will hopefully recall, Defenders #36 had ended with three of our heroes — leader Dr. Strange, veteran Nighthawk (in his civilian guise of Kyle Richmond), and newbie Red Guardian — having been captured by Plantman, who intended to hold the wealthy Richmond for ransom. But rather than immediately picking things back up with those characters, our creative team (which in addition to Gerber and Buscema includes inker Klaus Janson) start off issue #37’s “Evil in Bloom!” with another Defender, namely the Hulk. Read More
Welcome, all, to the first of four blog posts in which we’ll be commemorating May, 1976 as “Marvel Milestone Month” — a month in which, in a manner both unprecedented and (to the best of my knowledge), never repeated, four major Marvel Comics titles all celebrated a significant numerical milestone (“significant” being defined for our purposes as “a multiple of 50”) within a couple of weeks of each other. Read More
At the end of last Saturday’s Tomb of Dracula #47 post, I promised you that the next installment of this blog would feature “the strange, sad story of Ghost Rider #19.” But, as anyone out there who already knows some version of this tale is well aware, its origins go back well before the May, 1976 publication of the comic whose Gil Kane-Frank Giacoia cover appears at the top of this post. To begin with, this specific issue presents the conclusion of a multi-part storyline that had kicked off in Ghost Rider #17; but beyond that, the ongoing plot lines that find their (more or less) ultimate resolution in this arc extend back at least to Ghost Rider #8 (Oct., 1974)… and, arguably, all the way back to the feature’s debut in Marvel Spotlight #5 (Aug., 1972). And seeing as how we haven’t discussed any issues of this series since July, 2023, when we hit the high points of Ghost Rider #1 and #2 in the context of covering the debut of spinoff character Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, in Marvel Spotlight #12 (Oct., 1973), we’re going to have to do some catching up to properly set the stage. So let’s get to it, shall we? Read More
Back in December, we took a look at the first issue of Omega the Unknown — Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes’ 1975-77 Marvel Comics series that was just as much about a seemingly “normal” 12-year-old boy named James-Michael Starling as it was about the strange visitor from another planet that gave the book its title (if not more so).
This time out, we’ll be looking at the next two installments of the bimonthly title, beginning with issue #2 — which, as you can tell from the Rich Buckler-Al Milgrom cover shown at left, featured a special guest appearance by one of Marvel’s biggest stars, the Incredible Hulk — before proceeding to #3 — which, as you can tell from the Gil Kane-Frank Giacoia cover shown above, featured Omega’s run-in with one of Marvel’s longest-active supervillains, the Spider-Man adversary known as Electro. Read More
As regular readers of this blog will be aware, we haven’t had a post about Marvel Comics’ Defenders title since we covered issue #34 back in January — which means that our continuing coverage of writer Steve Gerber and artist Sal Buscema’s “Headmen/Nebulon Saga” must resume here not with the issue whose number and cover are shown directly above, but with the one whose cover you see pictured at left. And that Gil Kane-Mike Esposito number fronting Defenders #35 (May, 1976) is a doozy, isn’t it? If you’ve never read this comic before, I can’t wait for you to find out who that utterly bizarre unicorn-horned, bird-claw-footed, tentacle-armed monstrosity fighting the Valkyrie really is. Why, I bet you’ll be just as surprised as Chondu the Mystic was! (Wait, did I just give the whole thing away? Damn.) Read More
Cover to Avengers #145 (Mar., 1976). Art by Gil Kane and Dan Adkins.
Cover to Avengers #146 (Apr., 1976). Art by Gil Kane and Al Milgrom.
Back in November, we looked at Avengers #144, featuring the latest (as of Nov., 1975) installment in writer Steve Englehart and artist George Pérez’s “Serpent Crown Saga”. As readers of that post will recall, despite the comic’s final-page “Next” blurb’s promise that the following month’s issue would present the next chapter in the still-ongoing storyline, when Avengers #145 arrived on stands in December its pages were instead filled by the first half of a completely unrelated, out-of-sequence story scripted by Tony Isabella and drawn by Don Heck. That issue, together with the fill-in yarn’s second part in the next month’s Avengers #146, pushed the continuation of Englehart and Pérez’s epic out to February, 1976.
According to later reports, both halves of this story had originally been intended for publication in Giant-Size Avengers #5 — a plan that was up-ended by Marvel Comics’ mid-1975 decision to phase out their whole line of mostly-new-material-filled giant-sized comics. (While GSA #5 was indeed published in September, it was an all-reprint book.) Given that 30-plus pages of Isabella-Heck material had already been both produced and paid for, it’s certainly understandable that Marvel would want to get it into print sooner or later. But smack-dab in the middle of a complex, multi-issue story arc? That hardly seems like an optimal solution. Read More