Thundra

Fantastic Four #150 (September, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

A week ago, we took a look at Avengers #127 (Sep., 1974), the first half of a two-part crossover story set to conclude in the comic book that’s the main subject of the present post.  But while Fantastic Four #150 does in fact pick up immediately from the cliffhanger ending that closed out its predecessor, we’re going to be taking a somewhat circuitous route today to get to the splash page of “Ultron-7:He’ll Rule the World!”.  Why?  Well, as regular readers of this blog will surely recall, our Avengers #127 post promised that this follow-up would provide an explanation for that issue’s depiction of a happily reunited Reed and Sue Richards, who’d been very much on the outs the last time we’d encountered them in this space.  So that’s where we’ll begin.  Read More

Savage Tales #3 (February, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As we covered in our discussion of Savage Tales #2 back in June, the promise made on that magazine’s last page — that the following issue would be on “on sale September 25 A.D. 1973 in this the Marvel age of swords and sorcery” — turned out to be off by almost exactly one month.  Savage Tales #3 would in fact not come out until October 23rd — its delay being a result, according to editor Roy Thomas, of business-based concerns over the title’s overall commercial viability.  And even now, the book’s future was far from secure — though we’ll wait and let Mr. Thomas deliver that fifty-year-old bad news himself per his ST #3 editorial, coming up later in this post.

For the moment, however, we’ll move right into the main event of the issue — the reason that my younger self would have continued to wait for ST #3 as long as required back in the day, and still considered the result to have been worth it: the conclusion of Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith’s adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s final story of Conan the Barbarian, “Red Nails”. 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

Fantastic Four #131 (February, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Readers of our Avengers #105 post back in July may recall how that issue’s plot — the first from the title’s brand new writer, Steve Englehart — concerned the team’s search for their missing member Quicksilver, who’d disappeared towards the end of the previous issue.  Following the inconclusive resolution to their efforts in that tale, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes would continue their quest for the mutant speedster for months to come.  But, surprisingly — well, it surprised me, back in November, 1972 — when Pietro Maximoff was finally “found”, it didn’t happen in the pages of Avengers; instead, Quicksilver resurfaced in, of all things, an issue of Fantastic Four — which, as it happened, was the new super-team scripting gig of Roy Thomas, the man who’d written Avengers for the last five-plus years prior to Englehart taking over, and thus the guy who’d launched the whole “where is Pietro?” mystery in the first place.  From a creative standpoint, it made a certain kind of sense that Thomas would be the one to ultimately wrap things up; but in terms of the ongoing mega-story of the Marvel Universe, it seemed to come out of nowhere.  How did Quicksilver ever manage to end up in the Himalayan homeland of the Inhumans, the Great Refuge?  And why the heck was he fighting the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch, Johnny Storm? Read More