Stephen Strange--This Was Your Life

While most of us are lucky in life to have few if any brushes with death, I suppose we're also fortunate in the respect that we're going to actually meet death only once--and hopefully in just the conceptual sense. I'm not really keen on the prospect of looking into the actual "face" of Death; simply knowing I've died is going to be enough of a hurdle to clear without also having an imposing figure of Death greeting me. (Maybe Death could resemble David Tennant--that would be awesome.)

So picture Stephen Strange, who, in his life as the Master of the Mystic Arts, has faced the prospect of death numerous times but who has also had the displeasure of meeting Death, twice. We know that their first meeting was one of the trials Strange would undergo in his new existence as the "Sorcerer Supreme"; and the nature of a series of trials is that you're likely meant to survive one in order to face the next. (Seriously, though, you have to be feeling good about your chances if your first trial is meeting Death, and you "pass." What's going to be more perilous than meeting Death?) But meeting Death a second time for Strange would prove to be a more (pardon the word) deadly experience. Strange only survived his first such meeting by accepting the fact that he had to actually die. But if that's not an option, how, then, do you prevail?

In Dr. Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #45, though, we'd be offered more than the battle scenario between Strange and Death that played out in their first meeting. Then, it was clear that Strange's abilities could only prolong the inevitable; yet this time, it would be Death that would prolong their contest. Strange is literally at Death's door, having died but still clinging to his mortal existence by a thread. That's something of a contradiction; but suffice to say that his struggle against crossing over would have to take place on Death's terms. The approach this story takes is that Death's most potent weapon would prove to be Stephen Strange's exposure and growing aversion to the concept of death, well before the circumstances that led him to seek out the Ancient One. In the process, we'll learn for the first time about Strange's family--elaborating on what we already know of his brother, Vic, but presented in the form of unpleasant memories and stinging words that few but Death could bring to bear.

And so the tale begins, with an appropriately macabre entrance.

My Unabashed Letters to Marvel!

We've already covered some of the greats at Marvel who began their climb up the company ladder by rubbing elbows with other fans who contributed missives to the letters-to-the-editor pages, which were waiting for us at the end of a story (and sometimes tucked in the middle) to give an extra bit of fun to reading a Marvel comic. Reading a letters page felt like getting in the same room with other people who had read the same story--each of whom got a little something different out of it, or perhaps had the same points to raise as yourself. And part of the magic was that the responses were so engaging--partially, no doubt, to maintain the "good will" aspect of customer relations, keeping the lines of communication open and making readers feel that their opinions mattered.

It's been awhile, but I think I ended up writing three or four (maybe five) letters myself. I recall three of them, two of which I'd like to share here; the third was a letter which Jim Shooter, chief editor at the time, graciously responded to himself. I say "graciously" because if memory serves, my letter wasn't particularly thoughtful or anything that merited a response--but he addressed the items I'd mentioned point by point, taking time out of his day to answer my letter personally. I've always remembered that about the man, and to this day I'm duly humbled by his generosity.

At the time, writing a letter to the editor was fun in itself; finding your letter pop up in the book with a response a few issues later had you doing a mental Snoopy dance (or the real thing, depending on whether or not you were in public and how inhibited you were). I remember being motivated to write a letter after reading an issue of The Defenders while Ed Hannigan was on the book. There were a lot of issues of The Defenders that were tough to get through for completists like myself who were committed to reading them; so on those occasions when you had a run of good plots and writing, it made you feel like the book was getting its second wind, and this particular issue did it for me.

Reading my letter again, I can almost see FUTURE BLOGGER virtually stamped all over it, which gives me a laugh. It's almost like opening a time capsule.  I was around 22 at the time, and here I was enthusiastically writing a letter to a comic book--and to tell you the truth, I thought nothing of it. Fortunately, it was also during the period when writers were taking the time to reply themselves--and Mr. Hannigan's one-sentence response to my letter was perhaps due to limited space, but the wit in it made me smile.

As you can see, I even had a name to use back then! You'll have to excuse the redaction, though it wouldn't exactly take a rocket scientist to follow the paper trail for the full info if you're intent on satisfying your inner stalker.

And speaking of rocket scientists, we'll need to drop in on one in Nevada to get some context on what prompted me to write this next letter. The story concerns a project that the government has undertaken to duplicate the conditions that produced the Fantastic Four in order to create more such beings. If you've read this story as well as FF #197, you probably have an idea of where I'm heading with this. Here's the gist of what's going on:

Which I thought was, as I put it at the time, a really "cool storyline" to explore.  But it triggered a "Wait a minute--haven't we already covered this ground?" feeling in me:

The (unsigned) reply never cleared things up for me, since it addresses a factor (the communication angle) that didn't come into play until later in the storyline, and which at the time didn't have any bearing on the government's initiative to duplicate the FF's original flight. Though in all honesty, I didn't seriously expect a reply of "Oh. Yeah. Well, I guess we didn't really need to reinvent the wheel here, did we? Our bad."

But it was fun to explore the point with the book's editor(s).  I haven't kept up with Marvel titles for awhile, so I'm not sure if letters pages were phased out at some point or if they're still featured in Marvel mags--what's the story there? In any case, please feel free to chime in with your own experiences with and remembrances of the Marvel letters pages. And I think I can guarantee that they'll see print!

A Visit With The Fantastic Four!

Fantastic Four #11 generally gets high marks from comics fandom, though probably not because it features the first appearance of the Impossible Man; rather, because it devotes half its space to a revealing look at the Fantastic Four itself, in a fun and satisfying informal Q & A designed to appeal to the book's growing fan base.

"A Visit with the Fantastic Four" probably did a lot not only to lock in its current readership, but also to tempt those readers not yet on board--as well as to reach out and welcome readers to the new Marvel Comics. The Avengers and X-Men were still months away; Thor had only a few issues under his belt (and still having his stories told in Journey Into Mystery); Incredible Hulk was on the verge of being cancelled; and both Iron Man (in Tales of Suspense) and Amazing Spider-Man would be hitting the racks the following month. Fantastic Four was carrying the ball for the team, as it were--and this issue made the FF virtual ambassadors.

Structured in the form of a story, this "visit" feels as if the team members are taking us along with them throughout their day and eventually inviting us into their dialog, acting as our guides and responding to "fan letters" to further establish a connection with whoever is holding the current issue. But, while admittedly doing a service for Marvel's line of super-hero titles, the story is a splendid FF tale in itself; and since it includes a brand new FF story, as well, the reader must have felt they were getting a lot for their 12¢.

For instance, just look at all the things happening on the splash page:

The kid calling out to his buddies stokes eagerness and excitement for the reader, indicating that something is going on here that they don't want to miss; and just in case that's too subtle, let's throw in a line outside the newsstand store, consisting of people of all different ages. Other than Free Comic Book Day or special collectors' issues, how often do you see a line outside your comics shop? We also learn that the FF themselves are aware of the comic, as part of what we'd later be told is a licensing deal they've set up with Marvel--an arrangement not only for profit, but one which also gives them favorable publicity with New Yorkers. (Hey, I sure hope that cop is on his break!) And it's a good bet this one page did a lot to lay the groundwork for making a comic's letters page one of the most popular features of an issue aside from its story.

So let's see what all the excitement is about!

Villain With A Corset

Can YOU

Name This Marvel Villain??

Attack of the Living Dynamo!

You can't help but have a guilty fondness for Zzzax, the self-named electrical monster who kills humans in order to feed on their minds and make himself more intelligent. He's an easy monster for any Marvel writer to bring into existence--just find an electrical-based accident somewhere, and you've got Zzzax. When it's time to send him packing, you find some way to ground him, and *poof*, off he goes until his next appearance. Zzzax is a handy, perpetual threat that can be tossed into just about any book when needed, without worrying about explaining his reappearances.

(All right, I'll stop with the simulated electrical effect on his name.  Hmpf.)

Zzzax's origin could have taken place at any time, in conflict with any character--but we have writer Steve Englehart and artist Herb Trimpe to thank for his creation in the pages of Incredible Hulk. It turns out Zzzax came into being at a simple New York City generator station, when some well-organized domestic terrorists decide to hit the plant as a way to shift the balance of power. ("Power," get it? I'm rolling my eyes, too, but apparently the play on words rallied these guys.)

I find it a slight cause for concern that a simple Con Ed generator station would have an atomic chamber on the premises in late 1973. Frankly, atomic power in use in our cities' power stations would startle me even today. But what's done is done, and you can bet that this eruption isn't just going to fizzle out at this point:

And so a new monster is born--and our terrorists have indeed brought "power to the people."

The Deadly Aim of--Mr. Rasputin!

Most of the time when we come across practitioners of the mystic arts in comics, they're focused on matters beyond their day-to-day lives--contacting other-dimensional beings, amassing greater power, planning world conquest--maybe all of the above. Not many of them use their knowledge in more mortal pursuits, like extortion or blackmail--which leaves the field wide open for a man like Mr. Rasputin, who's making quite a name for himself in international circles:

By accounts, the first Rasputin, while having great influence in the Russian monarchy, worked behind the scenes and didn't harbor aspirations to rule--but Mr. Rasputin clearly considers his ancestry deprived in that respect. And so, using his skills in hypnosis and mysticism, he's well on his way to becoming the perfect terrorist.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before his activities in the occult drew the attention of the Master of the Mystic Arts:

Rasputin puts up a good fight against Strange, all things considered, but it doesn't take him long to realize what he's up against. So he resorts to a weapon which it turns out Strange is ill-prepared against:

It's surprising that we don't see more Dr. Strange foes packing heat, just to be on the safe side. A gun seems to, you'll excuse the expression, work like a charm against him. In this instance, only Strange's quick thinking keeps him from being plugged by another round:

And so, laid up in a hospital bed, Strange has little recourse but to return to Rasputin in his astral form. Unfortunately, Rasputin has taken the liberty of setting up shop in Strange's Greenwich Village sanctum, thereby increasing his threat:

We shouldn't count Strange out yet, though in his current state his options are limited. But even using his cloak of levitation and his mystic eye, Strange finds that Rasputin is a formidable foe:

You have to hand it to Strange--deprived of his physical body and on his way to imprisonment in another dimension, he still is able to keep his cloak in the fight. And its relentless grip finally swings this conflict in his favor.

I don't know what jail Rasputin is currently languishing in--but, thanks to Clea, Strange's disciple for a time, his essence gets a new lease on life when she attempts a spell to give the Valkyrie a little background on the three heavyweights who founded the Defenders. But Strange discovers her efforts too late:

And so the Hulk, the Sub-Mariner, and Strange all find themselves reliving warped versions of events from their pasts. Unfortunately, like Namor and his Nazi foes, Strange finds his fellow denizen to be armed, and all too familiar:

Rasputin's aim and determination seem as deadly as ever. But help is on the way:

The three are able to make it back safely. As for Clea, it's a safe bet she was put in front of a blackboard with a piece of chalk, where she'd begin to write "I Will Not Attempt Spells On My Own Anymore EVER" 1000 times.  We can only hope she doesn't start fooling around with handguns.

The Best Of Enemies

The career of the second Green Goblin, Harry Osborn, seemed almost as tumultuous as that of his infamous father, with both shifting back and forth between identities and, of course, their enmity toward Peter Parker. In the 200th issue of Spectacular Spider-Man, the Goblin and Spider-Man were once again primed for a "final" showdown that would bring to a head Harry's bitterness toward Peter concerning the death of his father, whose role in the death of Gwen Stacy Harry is adamant about refusing to acknowledge. There's nothing new on the table in this regard, since Harry's mental instability has been a factor ever since his problems with drug abuse coincided with his father's unexpected death. (Having Norman Osborn for a father couldn't have helped his peace of mind, either.)

And yet, this story is scripted by J.M. DeMatteis, and so we can likely expect a different approach to the Spider-Man/Green Goblin clash. For one thing, despite the fact that they're in costume as Spidey and the Goblin, it might instead seem to you that the two characters who are going head-to-head here are Peter and Harry, whose friendship is long since passed but who seem repeatedly drawn to its roots. We've rarely seen the friendship between these two given more than lip service in past stories; they shared an apartment together in their school days, yet their interaction was limited, and they were little more than ships that passed in the night. But DeMatteis, who makes his mark on a story through characterization and sentiment blended in with whatever world-threatening crisis is taking a hero through their paces, shows us the relationship and bond that must have taken place off-panel--and not just with Harry and Peter, but also folding in Gwen and Mary Jane. And as we'll see, that lost friendship will have more of an impact on this battle than any blow.

Another thing you'll notice with DeMatteis's approach to a story is that he often avoids the typical structure of a comic book story. For instance, if you see a villain like the Green Goblin begin a Spider-Man story, usually the narrative will jump right in to the impending danger and the threat he represents, with maybe some maniacal laughter thrown in. So while the Goblin is indeed swooping toward his target--and, being that the target is Mary Jane, we're allowed a sense of dèjá vu from when Gwen Stacy was abducted--thanks to DeMatteis, perhaps the Goblin's words will have a deeper meaning than simply the portent of a greater threat.

Lies, All Lies!

A person in a comment thread once wrote, "Avengers Forever just seems to be a story consisting of really well-drawn explanations to questions 10 people had." That's as good a description as any for this twelve-issue series from 1999 which, aside from its main plot, sought to untangle and make sense of inconsistencies in Marvel continuity (as well as ill-considered character and plot decisions) which involved the Avengers, either as a group or individually.

In the midst of all the questions which a series like this must ask, there are two anchors around which everything else seems to orbit:

• The attempted murder of Rick Jones, who's seen as a danger when his ability to manifest the "Destiny Force"--the power inherent in all humanity which he used to halt the Kree-Skrull War--reasserts itself.
• The efforts of Immortus, the so-called Master of Time, to contain the Avengers, due to a bargain he's made with the "Time-Keepers"--a trio of beings who are convinced that the Avengers will be responsible for an aggressive move by humanity to spread its race and influence throughout the stars using the Destiny Force, heedless of the death and destruction they bring to other races. Rather than kill the Avengers, Immortus chooses to accomplish his task through a massive campaign to manipulate the team's activities throughout its history.

Rick, with the guidance of Libra, former member of the Zodiac crime cartel, summons a team of Avengers to investigate and deal with this crisis. But with Libra's studies in the area of balance, these Avengers are a mixture of members from different time periods, chosen thus for specific reasons:

Also in this struggle is Kang the Conqueror, who battles against both Immortus and the Time-Keepers in an effort to preserve his own standing in history.

With plenty of "time" to go around, and a title like "Avengers Forever" to live up to, the series spends a generous amount of that time exploring various points in Avengers history. But the real eye-opener comes when the extent of Immortus's tampering in that history is revealed. Providing key assistance to him in his machinations are the Space Phantoms--not a single alien race, as we'd been led to believe, but something quite different:

And so the Space Phantom we've seen in various stories, whose "home planet" Thor had once sacrificed his hammer's time-spanning energies to "save," was simply one of these beings who was conditioned by Immortus to take part in a ruse, such as this one:

And on the series goes, stopping at points to clear up discrepancies or wipe them away outright. For instance, in the climax of the event known as "the Crossing," we saw Henry Pym get this bombshell dropped on him:

The scene effectively nullified the entire storyline of Pym's mental instability throughout his years as an Avenger. Yet the Crossing is one of many such events which has a virtual eraser applied to it in Avengers Forever. First, as for Iron Man being under Kang's influence, we'd have to go back a bit further to follow the paper trail:

Which brings us to Pym, who, thanks to the Phantom, again finds he has no one to blame for his problems but himself:

Somewhere in this series should probably be a segment on what the heck Immortus was doing with the Scarlet Witch by making her some sort of energy repository for the Time-Keepers. In this issue of revelations, it seems they're instead exclusively concerned with her children:

Immortus takes a number of steps over various points in time which would finally allow Master Pandemonium to effectively deprive Wanda of her "children," and thereby satisfy the Time-Keepers--at least for the time being, that is. With the Vision later lost to her, the one flaw in the story's approach here is that there's always the possibility she might start a family with someone else--though I doubt Immortus would bring that to the Time-Keepers' attention, assuming he's even considered it.

Naturally for this kind of series, the opportunity is also taken to explain the discrepancy of the Vision's origin, given that the original Human Torch was later found dormant at a gravesite by the West Coast Avengers, with others popping up (including Phineas Horton, revealed here to have been a Phantom) to claim that the two could not be one and the same. The solution to the discrepancy left my head spinning:

Which all leaves the Avengers with one heck of a situation:

If that isn't enough to make your eyes glaze over, have a look at the final battle scene, where things come to a head:

What. A. MESS.

You're likely to find Avengers Forever to be a fun ride and a satisfying read, providing you don't dwell on what's truly happened here. In clearing up many of the Avengers' unexplainable contradictions, co-plotters Kurt Busiek and Roger Stern have apparently overlooked (or chosen to ignore) an important point: the fact that much of what we know of the Avengers' actions and history has now been revealed to be the result of the manipulations and/or mental coercion of Immortus. That will be an uncomfortable distraction when reading prior Avengers stories--but it also makes for a lousy footnote to a series which has made such an effort to tie up loose ends.

Avengers Forever (12-Issue Series) Script: Kurt Busiek Pencils: Carlos Pacheco Inks: Jesús Merino Letterers: Richard Starkings and Albert Deschesne

When Heralds Clash!

Since Doctor Doom regained his kingdom of Latveria from Zorba, who took over leadership when Doom was toppled from power, he didn't take long to make good on his threat to renew his goal of destroying the Fantastic Four. To that end, he empowered Tyros, the former herald of Galactus known as Terrax, with a portion of the "power cosmic" and convinced him to carry out that attack. In Part Two of the story, we saw Tyros engage both the Thing and the Human Torch, with the Invisible Girl racing to join the battle after discovering that Doom was the catalyst for it.

Unknown to Tyros, his time is limited to carry out the FF's destruction, since the rampant artificial energies that Doom has charged him with are quickly consuming him. But Tyros has been wasting neither his time nor his power, attacking the FF with a vengeance and forcing them to battle for their lives. Yet the cover to this issue implies that the cost of this battle will go beyond the Fantastic Four, and that the goal of vengeance may well circle back to consume this affair's instigator.

What Lives Within The Cocoon?

While we're on the subject of the new Wasp, another such transformation of the character must surely be included in the what-were-they-thinking category--and it's a fair bet you know the one I'm talking about. Let's go back to that *cough* wonderful storyline at the tail end of the first volume of The Avengers called "The Crossing," where Anthony Stark had inexplicably betrayed the team and began trying to kill them. At one point in the battle, Janet Van Dyne (not yet changed to the Wasp, even in the midst of a life-or-death battle--no, I can't explain that, either) rushes to stop Stark (as Iron Man) from blasting Hercules, only to find herself in the line of fire:

Stark then escapes the Avengers' retribution by taking a powder through time, and his situation would now segue to Avengers: Timeslide and Iron Man before finally concluding as part of the Crossing. As for the Wasp, Hank Pym treats her using the same machinery that originally changed her biology to allow her to adapt to her new powers:

And the results of Pym's new adjustments to increase the Wasp's chances of survival would make any mad scientist proud:

Hank then keeps a vigil over the cocoon, monitoring the Wasp's vitals. But the danger from those making "the crossing" is not over, particularly when one of their own has escaped and sought sanctuary with the Avengers. To make sure she is slain, an enemy team arrives in a surprise attack--but only a single member, the diminutive and calculating Neut, is needed to lay waste to the entire team of Avengers, including the one they would protect:

But as Neut closes in for the kill, he gets a *ahem* little surprise of his own, as the Wasp's cocoon finally unravels to reveal... well...

In the aftermath, the now full-sized Wasp seems to take her transformation in stride, in the same good spirits as those who are pleased at her recovery:

The Wasp, in this form, would plunge with the other Avengers into battling Onslaught, and the reset button for her condition would be hit upon her return.

BONUS:

Clothes horse Janet Van Dyne takes us through a tour of her costume closet!