When Calls Terrax!

John Byrne was just ten issues into his memorable run as both writer and artist on Fantastic Four when, in May of 1982, he put together his own "Galactus trilogy" that would arguably give the 1966 original a run for its money. Byrne seemed to hit the ground running on the book, putting many ideas in motion while adding fresh takes on original characterizations and events. Some, like the team's encounter with Doctor Doom in "Liddleville," worked quite well; others perhaps fell short of the mark. And then, suddenly, quite the surprise: pulling out a big gun like another attack on Earth by Galactus. It certainly was enough to get your attention--coming at a point when it would either firmly establish Byrne's credentials on Fantastic Four, or become the story that would, good intentions aside, indicate how wrong Byrne's style might be for Marvel's flagship team.

But, to put such worries to rest, I'll simply ask: how often, if ever, have you heard anyone speak disappointingly about these three issues? Perhaps no instance comes to mind, with good reason. And such a well-received story coming this early in Byrne's run makes it seem even more impressive. Byrne had already laid sufficient groundwork in terms of the four characters that, let's face it, not every writer or artist has been able to succeed at handling. In addition, some interesting things have been introduced. The Thing has been regressed to a less evolved version of himself. A second "human torch" has been discovered. Doctor Doom, something of a benchmark for any new FF writer, was fittingly (and successfully) featured in the FF's 20th anniversary issue. The Inhumans were relocated off-Earth. The odd attraction that Alicia Masters has toward Ben as the Thing, which even Stan Lee never fully explored, has been addressed. And, needless to say, Sue is starting to blossom as a person, rather than simply Reed's wife.

And so, now that Byrne has all of his ducks in a row, so to speak, it seems he's ready to kick this series into high gear. And you can't get much higher than space, where we find an embittered herald of Galactus, on his way to Earth and spoiling for a fight:

And can Galactus be far behind?

This Isn't The Planet You're Looking For

Let's see--we were reviewing Doctor Strange #s 10-13. Where did we leave things?

Yikes, that's right! The Earth has been destroyed. And you and I are dead.

The End.

But it looks like there's a body in all of that rubble and planetary debris: Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts. It was his battle with Baron Mordo which resulted in the Earth's destruction--and it looks like he's the sole survivor. But, how can that be? At least we can take a good guess at his state of mind right now.

Strange's grief and sorrow are certainly understandable. But, what does he do now? Float around in the void, in the area where his home planet used to be? Well, if you're the disciplined Dr. Strange, you start to pull it together, whatever the circumstances.

Yeahhhh--about that "power of prolonged life" part, allowing him to live through the disaster. In a word: baloney. Strange is speaking of the time when the Ancient One progressed to a higher plane, and bequeathed his status as Sorcerer Supreme to Strange--and as a result Strange would now have a longer natural lifespan as did the Ancient One. But exactly how does having a longer lifespan allow you to survive injury or death while the ground you're standing on (as well as everything else) is being blown to smithereens? Let's even use a less planet-wide example. If, say, Gorgon attacks Strange, can Strange just ride out the massive shockwaves without injury? Can he just laugh off strikes by Blastaar? Nitro?

While we're on the subject--in all honesty, I've never been fully on board with the whole "Sorcerer Supreme" concept, which writer Steve Englehart introduced with the Ancient One's ascendance.

The title tends to raise the bar too high for Strange. Is he really the "supreme" sorcerer--i.e., above all other sorcerers? More sorcerous knowledge than anyone else? More power? As readers, we can appreciate the status it gives Strange in terms of his being the Ancient One's successor--but just how literally are we to take it? And what does it say about Strange? Does he now rule out that any other practitioner of the mystic arts can be as wise, as learned as himself?

But let's put these things aside, because Strange has a lot on his plate right now. He definitely has all the time in the world now (oops, he doesn't have a world anymore, does he?) to think his way out of this mess--and in doing so, he returns to one of the clues Englehart dropped along the way.

But make sure you don't drift off--we're just getting to the good stuff!

If This Be Doomsday!

An excellent story which I think any comics reader could sit down with and enjoy from cover to cover is one that I've never hesitated to recommend: the four-part Doctor Strange #s 10-13, which first saw publication in late 1975 but, due to the book's bi-monthly publication schedule, didn't conclude until April of 1976. That's a heck of a long time time to wait in order to find out about the fate of the world--especially when we would see it come to be destroyed, with Strange as the only survivor.

Scripted by Steve Englehart, who had begun writing the good doctor in the pages of Marvel Premiere, it's a tale focused on Strange himself, even though it involves Eternity as well as that tiny matter of world's end. It also features some of the finest artwork to date by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer, veteran Doctor Strange and Tomb of Dracula artists whose reputations precede them. Palmer doesn't step aboard until issue #11 (Frank Chiaramonte handles inks in the initial issue), but, as an added treat, he also pulls double duty as the colorist on his issues.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself with that little slip about the Earth being destroyed. Just put that out of your mind, okay? Let's start at the beginning, when Strange, due to recent events, is filled with apprehension about the awesome entity known as Eternity, and so joins his consciousness only to receive a most shocking announcement:

And this was well before the Internet. If Eternity is this alarmed about widespread communication in the mid-'70s, think of how he wouldn't have hesitated to pull the trigger with everyone accessing the Internet from their mobile devices.

Strange, of course, contests Eternity's conclusions. But, then, Eternity proposes, of all things, something of a contest with Strange, reducing the enormity of bringing about the end of the world down to a personal level:

And so the experience begins. And we know all too well what's at stake.

Or do we?

Prey of the Frog-Man!

Can YOU

Name This Marvel Villain??

The Middle American Avengers

It's no wonder that the Sons of the Serpent, that group of power mongers who costume themselves in (what else?) serpent garb and excel in sowing discontent and outright discord in the public in order to advance their agenda, would eventually sow a little of that discontent in a few Marvel readers now and then. Particularly a Sons of the Serpent story taking place in 1970, on the heels of the strife- and racially-torn decade of the '60s.

Following such a story in Avengers #s73-74, written by Roy Thomas, Marvel devoted an entire letters column to one letter from a (at the time) New York reader who took Marvel to task for wearing blinders and failing to be more conscientious in terms of using their stories to make readers better informed about the realities of social injustice. In the following issue, Thomas took another full column to respond personally to the reader.

(If you'd care to see Jones's letter presented in a panel-by-panel format, the PPC breaks it down for you here.)

It was a rare day when such letters made it past the wall of light banter which Marvel almost always erected around its letters pages, an effort at positive reinforcement for the reader in order to have them feel good about picking a Marvel comic and hopefully stimulating them into picking up the next issue. Thomas wasn't able to include his response in the same issue due to space concerns--which, if you've glanced at the letter by Mr. Jones, was an unorthodox decision by Marvel in terms of leaving the tenor of Jones's letter to close out the issue. It certainly made for a change--and the last things you were thinking when turning the final page were the words "merry Marvel."

I would have much preferred Jones to couch his points of criticism in--well, a letter to the editor(s), rather than what comes across as mental notes scribbled down for later formalizing. I have less an impression of Jones as a thoughtful writer/reader, and more of a person grading an essay before casually putting it aside and moving on to the next. There's evidence that several of his points are well-taken--yet it's difficult to give them any thought because the points are made in a hit-and-run manner.

Thomas, by comparison, engages Jones. His response comes across as well thought out and considered--bypassing taking Jones's comments point-by-point, yet giving the impression that he's doing just that. And while there are those points made by Jones which Thomas takes particular issue with, it manages to appear as if he's responding to Jones's disjointed missive as a whole--while injecting his own thoughts at the end in order to establish a sense of dialog, rather than one-upmanship. (And while this may be small comfort to Jones, the letters page featuring Thomas's reply leaves the reader of that issue's story feeling more satisfied about the choice they've made to pick it up.)

Interestingly, the issues featuring these two letter columns would see the beginning of another story arc touching on racism (featuring Red Wolf), which gave the Avengers something of a vicious circle to navigate.  I'm somewhat curious as to whether Jones felt equally compelled to voice his discontent in that instance, as well.

In The Future Waits--My Executioner!

When the Hulk began sharing half of those old Tales To Astonish stories, things were not only going well for the Hulk--they were going pretty well for readers, too. The Hulk was actually getting a lot more action and development than he did in the six issues of his first regular (and cancelled) series--and an array of art talent was stepping on board to detail his adventures, in an assortment of constantly changing layout/finisher combinations that had you wondering how many desks at Marvel his pages were being shuffled across.

I didn't start getting into those old stories until I read a copy of the fourth Hulk annual, which was bascially one big reprint issue featuring the Hulk stories from Tales To Astonish #s 75-77. The Hulk had finally reached a turning point with the military--thanks to Rick Jones, who, assuming that Bruce Banner was dead (and had died a traitor), was on the verge of revealing that the Hulk and Bruce Banner were the same person. (Jones finally did spill the truth to Major Talbot.) The Hulk, meanwhile, was very much alive and on his way to Washington in the mistaken belief that Rick was in trouble there.

And there's even more to take in. It seems that Banner, in his off-hours, had designed something called a "T-Gun," which the military decided to go ahead and build in order to then have General Ross's unit investigate just what the heck it was supposed to do. It's then that Ross gets word that the Hulk is approaching Washington (and making a beeline for the White House)--and so he decides to test the T-Gun by moving it there and having it ready to fire once the Hulk makes his landing.

Is your head spinning yet? Good, because it gets better! It turns out the "T" in T-Gun stands for "time"--that's right, Banner had theorized that a sudden blast which altered the light waves around a person could send them into a different time. (You'd think he would have scribbled a little thing like that somewhere in the margins of his designs, wouldn't you?) Unfortunately, the trigger-happy military wasn't willing to wait for a lengthy analysis, and so the Hulk is fired on and gets sent to the future--a decimated Earth where survivors are under siege by the "Evil One."

And just take a guess who that turns out to be!

SPLAT Goes The Vision

It's time to plummet into another experiment in

Given how it looks like our friend the Vision is trying to become a regular in this series, we'd probably better summarize what we learned the last time: increasing your mass when you're unable to change your actual size only makes you heavier. Or, put another way:

Our latest experiment in mass begins when Goliath is rendered senseless by a gas grenade attack. Unfortunately, he's left dangling from a high-rise and about to plunge to his death:

But the quick-thinking Vision knows of one way he might survive:

Apparently the Invisible Girl has secretly been tutoring the Vision, because he's under the impression that multiplying his mass will have this effect on a falling form:

But in reality, here are the Vision's options:

• He can multiply his mass all he wants--but unless he increases his density, he's just going to go *SPLAT* underneath Goliath on impact. And Goliath will still be a goner.
  
• If he does increase his density, Goliath will be killed by hitting the super-hard/heavy form of the Vision instead of the street, no matter how much the Vision thinks he's Johnny Bench.

This is just too weird! What's the explanation??

The Yellow Stick Of God

Some of you reading comics during the early 2000s may remember writer Mark Waid's run on Fantastic Four, when the FF were in their "Imaginauts" phase. Valeria Richards... Johnny becoming the CFO of FF, Inc., as well as the herald of Galactus... the sci-fi masthead... the team laying claim to Latveria... the A.I. falling in love with Reed... the trip to Heaven...

Whoa, back up a sec, you say. The what?

A very interesting run, yes. At times an uncomfortable one. The FF were looking rather--cartoonish, for lack of a better word. Almost caricatures of themselves. Far less serious, though far more family-oriented. I found myself drawn into these stories in spite of myself. I wasn't crazy about the action sequences, with Reed's pasta-like stretching and other distractions; the team didn't look in fighting form, if that makes sense. But the relationships between the characters made for enjoyable, if whimsical, reading.

And there was that trip to Heaven, to recover Ben's soul.

And the Fantastic Four's meeting with the Almighty.

Yes, that Almighty.

It's easy to get the impression from all this that the FF had lost their edge. But surprisingly, Waid kept a tight grip on what made these characters work--and when tension and desperate battle conditions were needed, the FF were there in all the ways that mattered, resulting in some fine stories that rank right up there. Yet it's fair to say that these FF issues were very much under the radar--and that's unfortunate.

For instance, the sequence where the FF meet God comes on the tail end of a very good story that cements the bond between Ben and Reed, though it has the team on the verge of tearing itself apart. But when all is said and done, they're given a last leg to their trip that comes as something of a surprise, to say the least:

Are you?

Down, Down, And Away

While scouring New York for a bad guy, the Avengers separate in order to cover more ground. (In which case you'd need, oh, about 7,000 Avengers to even make a dent in a search of all of New York City, but I digress.) During their search, we see a few of the team come across some of their fans--for Yellowjacket, a swarm (get it?) of autograph hounds (who knew that Yellowjacket had a fan base?), and in the case of Goliath, some teeny-boppers making fun of his "get-up."

As for the Vision, exposure to humanity seems to be something he'd like to avoid altogether:

This is one of the coolest Vision sequences, and it's of course visually appealing. But it bugs me for a few reasons. Specifically:

• The Vision's disdain for humanity. Why wouldn't the Vision make more of an effort to know the people he fights for? Why keep them at a distance? He'll stick his neck out for a total stranger like Red Wolf, and he's obviously capable of feelings--he's also taken the time to grow closer to and trust his fellow Avengers. Why make their cause his own if his heart isn't really in it?
• This is the typical man-on-the-street? Really? The Vision is one of the world-famous Avengers living in your midst on Fifth Avenue, not the Silver Surfer.

"Stop 'im, man!" Uh--what's your problem, guy? You seriously want to take someone into custody for literally walking down a sidewalk? And you're agitated enough about it to the point of calling out to other people to grab him? What if he were walking down a stairwell--would you have a conniption about that? And the first thought to occur to the other guy was to "tackle him"?

"Why didn't he say anything? Why??" Dude. I want you to stop the next ten people on the street who ignore you, and demand the same answer.  And then, what the heck, tackle them.

• You know, Vizh, snubbing humans only to end up doing your walking in the sewer isn't exactly improving your situation.

Future Statues Of The Past

This statue was first created in 2004 by the Kucharek brothers, who have done a fair share of Marvel statue designs; but in light of all the "Days Of Future Past" buzz, it seemed appropriate to bring it to light once more.

The statue measures 7.75" x 11" x 11", with the characters of Logan and Kitty Pryde measuring 6.5" and 6" in height, respectively. Now in the hands of third-party sellers, it ranges from $270-$400 in price. Wotta deal!

Just between you and me, I'm hoping ticket prices aren't as inflated.