Klaus Janson

Defenders Annual #1 (1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In last Saturday’s post, we discussed Marvel Comics’ Thor Annual #5 — which, in the summer of 1976, was the first annual starring the God of Thunder to have appeared since 1971.  Today, we’ll be looking at another ’76 Marvel annual… although this one has the distinction of being the first ever such comic featuring the Defenders, since the so-called “non-team” hadn’t yet debuted in their own ongoing title at the time Marvel had phased out their annuals publishing program some five years before.  Read More

Savage Sword of Conan #14 (September, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

You’d likely never guess it from the wholly acceptable, but not especially memorable Earl Norem cover to the comic book that’s our topic for today — but, half a century ago, Savage Sword of Conan #14 represented something of the end of an era… even if no one knew it at the time.  That’s because its pages contained the very last collaboration between writer Roy Thomas and artist Neal Adams — two creators whose previous joint efforts, though relatively few in number, comprised some of the high water marks of the late Silver and early Bronze Ages of comics.  Read More

Doctor Strange #18 (September, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

With this post, we come to the regrettably untimely end of writer Steve Englehart’s run on Doctor Strange.  But before we get into DS #18’s “The Dream Is Dead!”, we’ll first need to take a look at the previous issue, which presented the first installment of what was originally planned to be an ambitious, multi-part story arc organized around the American Bicentennial; and since the ultimately truncated storyline’s conclusion (such as it was) occurred in the following, Englehart-less #19, we’re going to be covering that one here today as well.  All of that’s to let you know that, well, we may be here for a while.  Read More

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

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

Astonishing Tales #34 (March, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As regular readers of this blog might recall, we ended our October post about Astonishing Tales #33 with the observation that with that issue, Marvel Comics seemed to have finally found a solid creative team for “Deathlok the Demolisher”, with the feature’s primary creator, plotter, and artist Rich Buckler now supported by Bill Mantlo as scripter and Klaus Janson as inker and colorist.  Meanwhile, Buckler’s frequently meandering plotline seemed to have found some new forward momentum as well.  Was it possible that this series — which, to be sure, had still generally been entertaining in (mostly) bi-monthly doses, where one might simply enjoy the gritty atmosphere and violent action without being overly concerned with the incoherence of the overall story arc — was finally on the verge of realizing its considerable potential?  Read More

Captain Marvel #41 (November, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in April we looked at Captain Marvel #39, featuring “The Trial of the Watcher”.  As you may recall, that issue’s trial of “our” Watcher, Uatu, had been held on the home planet of his people, and ended with him getting off the charge of breaking the Watchers’ vow of non-intervention by promising he’d be a good boy and never doing it again.  That might have seemed like an exceedingly small slap on the wrist, given that Uatu had conspired with the group of renegade Kree known as the Lunatic Legion to not only capture but to outright kill our hero, Captain Marvel, before coming to his senses, but whattya gonna do?  The story ended with Mar-Vell literally shrugging off the whole episode, and implicitly inviting us readers to do the same.  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

Thor #240 (October, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before on this blog, Thor was my favorite Marvel superhero back in the 1970s.  (Just for the record, he still is.)  That didn’t mean that Thor was my favorite Marvel superhero comic book for most of that decade, however — at least, not so far as the new issues coming out then were concerned.  The reason for that disparity stems from the fact that, while my enthusiasm for the Son of Odin might have originally been inspired by a general affinity for myth and legend (and for modern heroic fantasy fiction derived from them), it was based at least as much on my admiration for the work that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had done on the feature in the mid-to-late 1960s.  Thor/Journey into Mystery was the one major Marvel title I endeavored to acquire a complete run of back in my collecting heyday (I eventually made it back as far as JiM #96, if you’re curious).  So I had those Lee-Kirby classics — which I was picking up sporadically, just a few at a time — to compare the current issues to.  And despite regularly featuring a high quality of artwork (usually by John Buscema, working with a variety of mostly sympathetic inkers), the new stories (which for most of the first half of the 1970s were written by Gerry Conway) just didn’t measure up in my eyes… neither to those great old Thor/JiM comics, nor to the best of what Marvel was offering elsewhere in the superhero genre in those days.  Read More