Sal Trapani

Ghost Rider #19 (August, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

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

Omega the Unknown #1 (March, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’re probably already aware that this post is the fourth I’ve published this month.  If, in addition, you’re already familiar with its subject, you may also have noted that it’s the third out of that four to be devoted to a comic book featuring the writing of Steve Gerber.

Of course, if you are a regular reader, you may not consider that latter fact to even be all that notable, as your humble blogger has made it pretty clear that Gerber was (and is) one of my two favorite comics writers of this era (the other being his fellow Steve, Englehart).  And it probably wouldn’t have surprised my eighteen-year-old self, either, back in the waning days of 1975, to learn that Steve Gerber’s work would continue to hold my admiration, half a century on.

What did in fact surprise me way back then, however, was that, per the credits given on the first page of his latest project — a new superhero series called Omega the Unknown — Gerber was sharing the authorial byline… and with a woman, at that, at a time when female comics professionals in general were hardly numerous, and female writers even less so:  Read More

Howard the Duck #1 (January, 1976)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

What a difference a couple of years can make.

From Fear #19 (Dec., 1973). Text by Steve Gerber; art by Val Mayerik and Sal Trapani.

From Man-Thing #1 (Jan., 1974). Text by Steve Gerber; art by Val Mayerik and Sal Trapani.

In the autumn of 1973, Howard the Duck’s debut in the last few pages of the “Man-Thing” story in Fear #19 had been followed just one month later by his apparent demise in the first few pages of Man-Thing #1.  Marvel Comics’ editor-in-chief at that time, Roy Thomas, hadn’t thought that the publisher’s readers were ready for a “funny animal”-style character in what was at least ostensibly a horror comic, and had asked Man-Thing writer Steve Gerber to get Howard out of the book as quickly as possible.  But Thomas turned out to be wrong; the fan response to the acerbic waterfowl was overwhelmingly favorable, and Gerber was eventually given the go-ahead to resurrect Howard in his own solo backup feature in Giant-Size Man-Thing.  After two such stories had appeared, and were again well-received, the author pitched Marvel publisher Stan Lee on the idea of giving Howard his very own solo title — and Lee, who not all that long before had reportedly been utterly bewildered when attendees at his college campus appearances quizzed him about when Howard the Duck would be coming back, immediately said yes.  And thus it came to pass that in late October, 1975, Howard the Duck #1 — featuring a guest-appearance by Marvel flagship character Spider-Man, no less — was hatched into the comic-book-buying world. Read More

Defenders #21 (March, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Fifty years ago this month, the Gil Kane-Klaus Janson cover of Defenders #21 heralded the beginning of a new storyline.  But as soon as we readers of the time turned to the comic’s opening splash page — not to mention the double-page spread that followed immediately thereafter — it was clear that although the “A”-plot of the recent three-parter that had wound through two issues of Marvel Two-in-One before concluding in Defenders #20 might indeed have reached its end, the series’ new regular writer, Steve Gerber, was in no way ready to drop the plot element that had driven much of the action of that arc — the mystery behind the past life of the superheroine we knew as Valkyrie…  Read More

Marvel Spotlight #17 (September, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

If you were to take a deep dive into the credits page for writer Steve Gerber at the Mike’s Amazing World of Comics web site, you’d be forgiven if you ultimately concluded that, in the summer of 1974, he must have been scripting half of Marvel Comics’ entire line.  He wasn’t — not quite — but given that he was at that time responsible for six ongoing features, while also continuing to contribute the odd one-off short piece for anthology titles like Vampire Tales and Crazy, he was turning out at least as much verbiage for the House of Ideas as any other one writer, and arguably more. Read More

Man-Thing #1 (January, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In October, 1973, Marvel Comics’ muck-encrusted monstrosity, the Man-Thing — who’d first been introduced in the black-and-white Savage Tales #1 back in January, 1971, and had been holding down his own regular feature in Fear since July, 1972 — graduated into his own title at last.

But if anyone picked up this “Fear Fraught First Issue” expecting to get in on the ground floor of anything, they were likely disappointed once they turned past Frank Brunner’s excellent cover to find themselves smack dab in the middle of an ongoing storyline… and not exactly what you’d call a straightforward, uncomplicated storyline, either…  Read More

Daredevil #107 (December, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in July, we took a look at Daredevil #105, in which a plotline involving a series of mysteriously-empowered new supervillains — one that had meandered through the generally street-level-set series for the past nine issues — suddenly took an unexpected turn for the cosmic, as our Man Without Fear found himself involved with Moondragon — a woman who, though Earth-born, presently called Saturn’s moon of Titan her home.  In other words, DD had somehow managed to wander into the outskirts of the “Thanos War” saga being chronicled by artist-writer Jim Starlin over in the pages of Captain Marvel.  Read More

Fear #19 (December, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Fifty years after the fact, I’m not sure exactly what my sixteen-year-old self expected to find behind Gil Kane and Ernie Chan’s excellent cover for Fear #19, back in September, 1973.  A straight-up sword-and-sorcery yarn?  That was certainly possible.  After all, if there was one thing that writer Steve Gerber had demonstrated in his run on the “Man-Thing” feature, it was a willingness to confound genre-based expectations.  His previous efforts had ranged from the traditional, demon-haunted horror of Fear #11 to the Superman parody of #17, and from the relatively realistic one-off melodramas of #12, #16, and #18 to the surreal, almost absurdist fantasy of #13-15’s “Thog” trilogy.  If I’d had to choose which of all those antecedents issue #19’s story would most closely resemble, I’d probably have gone with the last one listed — and I’d have been right.

Still, even if I had guessed correctly about that, I’m quite certain that I would never have expected to finish the comic having made the acquaintance of an anthropomorphic talking waterfowl named (though not in this issue) Howard… though, of course, that’s exactly what happened, thank the dogs (err, I mean the gods.  Or do I?).  Read More

Daredevil #105 (November, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In summer,1973, my younger self was still pretty isolated as a comic-book reader.  Good, lasting face-to-face friendships with fellow enthusiasts were on the horizon, but had not yet arrived, and I wasn’t reading fanzines.  Therefore, I generally picked up on hot new titles — or on newly hot streaks on older titles — via the publishers’ own marketing efforts, or by reader buzz in the letters columns… or by sheer happenstance.

So how did I finally catch on to what artist-plotter Jim Starlin was up to in Captain Marvel, some five issues and eight months into his soon-to-be-classic run?  As best as I can tell, it was due mostly to the latter of those three options — more specifically, via a very unlikely tie-in with, of all things, Daredevil.  Read More

Fear #17 (October, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

By the time Steve Gerber sat down to write the story that we’ll be looking at today, he was pretty well established at Marvel Comics.  While it’s true that an early stint working on staff as a proofreader didn’t turn out all that great, due to the twenty-five-year-old former advertising copywriter’s propensity for falling asleep at his desk (many years later, Gerber would be diagnosed with sleep apnea), his freelance writing gig was going very well, thank you.  As of late spring, 1973, Gerber was the regular writer for Daredevil, Sub-Mariner, the Zombie (in Tales of the Zombie), and — last but not least — the gig with which he’d started out, almost a year before: the Man-Thing series in Fear.  Not only that, but in just two months, that latter assignment would provide the launchpad for the character for which he’d ultimately be best remembered, Howard the Duck.

But it all almost came crashing down in the middle of ’73, thanks to Gerber’s introduction of another, less well-remembered character in the pages of that same series — a character whose unmistakable similarity to the flagship superhero of Marvel’s number one competitor, though intended as parody, wasn’t at all well received by that competitor — resulting in the young writer coming very, very close to being fired.  Read More