Few words are necessary for this
Marvel Trivia Question
How many dialog-free action sequences featuring Marvel characters can you name?
After looking at Marie Severin's gorgeous artwork depicting the awesome clash between the Hulk and the Sub-Mariner in Tales to Astonish--featuring a page where the only words in play were the ear-shattering sound effects of the blows landing--I realized how rare such instances have been in other titles. Either that, or I'm just drawing a blank. So in the spirit of audience participation, what amazing sequences do you know of where characters are shown battling it out while the writer steps out for a cup of coffee?
Here are a few that come to mind for me:
Including two full-page battle scenes featuring Spider-Man and Captain America, with Spidey's page predating Cap's by about a year:
So I'm punting to the more knowledgeable among you, so that you can hopefully sift through your memories and recall other battles where actions truly spoke louder than words. Good luck!
3 comments:
Good stuff!! Rumble, young man rumble. Nobody, in my opinion, anyway, can match Starlin and the King for a good brawl. By the way, Kirby wrote and drew a heck of fight scene in the Eternals, between Ikaris and the cosmic-powered Hulk! (Don't ask, it's a long story). Seek it out, by Crom!
I always found it a bit amusing (and maybe disingenuous) when one of these sequences was bracketed with apologia like that text on the Captain America page. Hard to tell if the writer was genuinely trying to call attention to the art, distract attention from scripting those pages, or head off a letters page controversy over the "silent" pages. (Probably all three).
That's a fair observation. I think in those days, the writing style was such that it would have felt a little weird to have an art-only page just hit you out of the blue with no lead-in. But also, it couldn't hurt to give a nod to the artist when the opportunity arose--not just as a courtesy to the artist, but also as a way to give the reader a more familiar connection to the creative staff and, by extension, to Marvel itself.
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