Sal Buscema

Defenders #11 (December, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The primary subject of today’s post, Defenders #11, is the official conclusion of Marvel’s Avengers/Defenders War crossover event of summer, 1973 — though you’d be hard-pressed to find any evidence of that fact on the book’s otherwise very fine Sal Buscema cover.

Still, as the opening splash page clearly tells us, this is indeed “The 12th and final chapter of the greatest super-epic ever told!”  And surely writer Steve Englehart must know whereof he speaks.  Mustn’t he?  Read More

Defenders #10 (November, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Today we continue our coverage of Marvel Comics’ groundbreaking crossover event of summer, 1973, the Avengers/Defenders War.  As you’ll recall from our post about Avengers #117 two weeks ago, the latest battle in the ongoing conflict between the super-teams ended without a clear winner or loser, as Captain America and the Sub-Mariner called a time-out to investigate their suspicions that the heroes were being played against each other by a malevolent third party (which was indeed absolutely the case).

But, as had been promised in no uncertain terms by Avengers #117’s end-of-issue “coming next” blurb — and which was proclaimed even more forcefully by Defenders #10’s John Romita cover — whatever “Breakthrough!” might be imminent wouldn’t arrive in time the stop the Mighty Thor and the Incredible Hulk from throwing down.  And that was a good thing, since if that match-up hadn’t come to fruition, sixteen-year-old me would have asked for my money back.  (Well, not really, since I was well aware the guy working the counter at the Tote-Sum would simply have looked at me like I was crazy if I pulled something like that.  But you know what I mean.)  As it was, however, I could just kick back and wait for writer Steve Englenart and artists Sal Buscema and Frank Bolle to bring on the brawlers…  Read More

Kull the Destroyer #11 (November, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

By August, 1973, Marvel Comics had been publishing comics about Robert E. Howard’s sword-and-sorcery hero King Kull for over two and a half years — or, to be more precise, for thirty-two months — but only had ten issues of Kull the Conqueror to show for it.  That record was in marked contrast to that of Howard’s better known barbarian protagonist, Conan, who’d made his American comic-book debut just five months before Kull’s, but who’d so far racked up thirty-one regular issues of his own title, plus a “King-Size” reprint special and two appearances in the black-and-white magazine Savage Tales, to boot.  But while from our contemporary perspective it may seem obvious that Kull of Atlantis — despite his having actually preceded Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria in terms of the chronology of their respective creations by Howard — was destined to always come in a distant second to his younger compatriot in terms of audience appeal, fifty years ago, the powers-that-were at Marvel — especially editor-in-chief (and Howard fan) Roy Thomas — had yet to receive that memo.  Read More

Defenders #9 (October, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

We’ve arrived at the second full-length installment in the epic Marvel Comics crossover known as “The Avengers/Defenders War”, and if you missed our post about the previous episode in Avengers #116, you might want to check that one out first, since we’re going to jump right back into the continuing narrative without worrying about a recap… pausing only long enough to make note of the fact that while the first installment’s cover by John Romita and Mike Esposito managed to convey the scope of the conflict while only depicting three heroes, this issue’s follow-up by Sal Buscema ups that number to five.  On the other hand, Hawkeye the Avenging Archer has been Hawkeye the Defending Archer for all of a minute, so it’s not hard to understand how Marvel might have thought that fans coming in even a little bit late would be confused to see an issue of Defenders that only cover-featured Hawkeye and Iron Man.

And now, with that observation made, it’s on with the show:  Read More

Avengers #116 (October, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

According to writer Steve Englehart, the multi-issue Marvel Comics crossover event most of us refer to as the Avengers/Defenders War (Englehart himself prefers to call it the Avengers/Defenders Clash, God bless ‘im) had its origins in his personal affection for the classic Marvel Annuals he’d enjoyed as a fan in the 1960s — epic, overstuffed extravaganzas like the very crashed wedding of Reed Richards and the Invisible Girl in Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965), or the save-the-timeline battle between the “new” and the “old” Avengers in Avengers Annual #2 (Sep., 1968).  As the writer confided in his 2010 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — The Defenders, Vol. 2, “I have great memories of finding these gems and sitting down in the shade of a tree on a sunny summer’s day to read them.”  But in recent years, such summertime Annuals as Marvel had continued to produce were mere collections of reprints — nice enough if you didn’t already have those stories, many of which were already classics, but not something you could really get excited about in the same way you could the extra-length, brand-new, “event” stories featured by the Annuals in their heyday.  Read More

Captain America #162 (June, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

It’s been some seven months since the blog last checked in with Captain America.  As regular readers may recall, at that time we took a look at the storyline that kicked off new writer Steve Englehart’s tenure on the title — a four-issue saga in which our star-spangled Avenger (aka Steve Rogers) learned that during the post-World War II era, while he himself had been frozen in ice, he’d been replaced by another Captain America — the “Commie-busting” Cap whose adventures Atlas (aka Marvel) Comics had published for a few years in the 1950s.  That iteration of the hero, along with his partner Bucky, had ultimately gone insane, becoming an avatar of bigotry — and a menace to society whom the real Captain America, along with his partner, the Falcon, and girlfriend, sometime S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter, had to take down before he could permanently damage Cap’s reputation… and a whole lot else, besides.  Read More

Conan the Barbarian #25 (April, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In January, 1973, the cover of Conan the Barbarian #25 — a collaboration between Gil Kane and Ralph Reese — hardly gave any hint of the enormous artistic shift this issue represented for Marvel Comics’ award-winning series.  After all, Kane had pencilled four Conan covers prior to this one, and while two of those had graced issues that also featured Kane art on the inside (the first of those, #17, also happened to have been inked by Reese), the other two — including the most recent one, for issue #23 — had fronted stories drawn by the title’s original and primary regular artist, Barry Windsor-Smith.

So, if you were a regular Conan reader who’d somehow managed to miss issue #24 (and if you were, you have my sympathies), you may well have been startled to open #25 to its first page to see that the story had been drawn by a penciller previously unseen in these pages (though his name and work were hardly unfamiliar to Marvel fans)… namely, John Buscema:  Read More

Defenders #4 (February, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Behind an attention-grabbing cover pencilled by John Buscema from a rough layout by Jim Starlin (and inked by Frank Giacoia), the Defenders creative team of writer Steve Englehart, penciller Sal Buscema, and inker Frank McLaughlin began this latest installment of the super-team’s continuing adventures right where the previous one had left off.

It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a happy scene…  Read More

Defenders #3 (December, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As we discussed on the blog back in May, the first issue of The Defenders (which was actually the fourth outing for the titular super-team, following their three-issue tryout run in Marvel Feature) ended on a note of mystery, as the Sub-Mariner revealed to his allies, Doctor Strange and the Hulk, that prior to the events of that comic, he’d been attacked by none other than the Silver Surfer — who had at the time appeared to be himself allied with Necrodamus, the sorcerous acolyte of the Undying Ones whose attempt to summon those evil extradimensional entities our three heroes had just then thwarted, though only barely.  Read More