Hulk

Defenders #38 (August, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

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

Omega the Unknown #3 (July, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

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

Defenders #36 (June, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

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

Defenders #34 (April, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Fifty years ago, the cover of Defenders #34 (produced by Rich Buckler and Dan Adkins, but giving off strong Jack Kirby-Chic Stone vibes to your humble blogger) let any regular reader who’d somehow managed to miss the previous issue in on the big news:  Nebulon, the Celestial Man, who (in league with the Squadron Sinister) had almost destroyed the Earth by flood back in #13-14, was back, and he meant business.  Read More

Defenders #32 (February, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last month, we looked at Defenders #31 — the proper beginning to the multi-part “Headmen/Nebulon” saga which would ultimately prove both the apex and the climax to writer Steve Gerber’s memorable run on this title.  As regular readers of this blog will recall, that issue ended with our favorite non-team faced with a major mystery — namely, that the sinister sorcerer who’d just ambushed them in the guise of their teammate Nighthawk had, once handily defeated by Dr. Strange and then unmasked, turned out to actually be Nighthawk.

Of course, we fans knew one important fact still hidden from our heroes, which was that the brain of Nighthawk (aka Kyle Richmond) had been removed and replaced with that of one of the Headmen, Chondu the Mystic.  But since brain transplants aren’t something you see every day, even in the Marvel Universe, you can’t blame Nighthawk’s fellow Defenders for looking to more mundane solutions first… like, say, demonic possession.  And if that should indeed be the cause for Kyle’s condition, who ya gonna call?  Read More

Defenders #29 (November, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in May we took a look at Defenders #26, which ended with our favorite superhero non-team deciding to join the time-traveling Guardians of the Galaxy back to their home century (the 31st, if you’ve forgotten) in the hope of liberating the people of planet Earth (and its colonies and allies) from the tyranny of the Brotherhood of Badoon.  That crusade kicked into high gear with the next issue, Defenders #27, whose cover by Gil Kane and John Romita you can peruse at right.

On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t take too close a look at that cover, as its copy gives away a surprise that wasn’t actually supposed to be revealed until the middle of the next issue, #28.  Nice going, editor Len Wein (whose culpability would revealed to the world a few months later, in the letters column of Defenders #30)! Read More

Man-Thing #22 (October, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When we last checked in with the Man-Thing back in March, at the end of his 18th issue, it was for the finale of the three-part “Mad Viking” trilogy — one of the most intense and memorable storylines to have yet appeared in the feature, perhaps matched only by “The Kid’s Night Out!” (which had in fact been published concurrently with it, in the Man-Thing’s quarterly Giant-Size vehicle).  As you may recall, Man-Thing #18 concluded with Manny, his human friend Richard Rory, and a distressed teenager named Carol Selby abandoning the small Florida town of Citrusville in the wake of a book burning incident at the town’s high school in which people as well as pages had perished.  That downbeat ending presaged a significant change in direction for the series — one which writer Steve Gerber and artist Jim Mooney would manage to explore in depth for only three issues before having to abruptly wrap up everything as best they could in the title’s terminal release, Man-Thing #22. Read More

Defenders #26 (August, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The subject of today’s post is the first of four regular issues of Defenders that guest-starred the original Guardians of the Galaxy.  But the storyline actually kicked off in the fifth (and last) issue of the non-team’s other vehicle, Giant-Size Defenders, so you can probably guess what that means — yep, we’ll be taking a look at that one first.

Although, considering that we’ve never really discussed the OG Guardians on the blog prior to this post, and given that GSD #5 represented only their third non-reprint appearance overall at the time it was released, maybe we should look at least briefly at the prior history of the team?  Sure, let’s do that. Read More

Giant-Size X-Men #1 (May, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Cover layout by Gil Kane, featuring only the new X-Men team lineup.

The completed original art for the cover, with the new team pencilled by Kane and the old team pencilled by Dave Cockrum; all inks by Cockrum.

Half a century after its original release, there’s little doubt that the subject of today’s post was the most historically significant mainstream American comic book released in 1975; indeed, it’s arguably in the very top tier for the entire decade of the Seventies.  But in April, 1975, it arrived with very little fanfare — at least in the relatively isolated comics-reading world of your humble blogger, who at age seventeen still wasn’t tuned in to what little fan press there was at the time.  I don’t recall seeing any house ads for Giant-Size X-Men #1 ahead of its release, and the only promotion of the book I’ve been able to locate in any Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page published around then is a brief mention in the column that ran in the company’s March-shipping issues, reporting how artist Dave Cockrum’s being chosen to illustrate the project represented the realization of the “fan dream of a lifetime”.  That may well have been the only heads-up I had that this book was coming out at all, prior to seeing its soon-to-be-iconic cover by Cockrum and Gil Kane staring out at me from the spinner rack. Read More