In The Interest Of Balance

In case anyone feels I was unfair in claiming that my favourite book of the past 12 years was also the most important debut of 1997, here's a quick rundown of the other continuing books which had their debut in that year...


Steve Seagle was tapped to bring back Alpha Flight, a book that had limped along for a decade before being put to sleep in 1994. Mostly a conspiracy book, with Alpha working for the sinister forces of Department H, the book lasted 20 issues before dying off again.


A bit player in the X-Books since the early 90s, Maverick was given his own book, so that those who wanted to read the adventures of a mutant spy with a terminal disease, could do so. Since it lasted all of a dozen issues, I'm guessing Marvel overestimated the popularity of the character.


If T-Bolts was my favourite book of 1997, Heroes For Hire came a close second at times. Obstensibly a reunion for Power Man and Iron Fist, this book, devised by Roger Stern and delivered by John Ostrander, felt at times more like a reboot of the Defenders. The heroes didn't do a lot of work for hire, and there was that rotating team that Defenders fans were so familiar with. Unfortunately, although it was a good concept, it didn't catch on, and was canned after 19 issues.


Never one to let an old idea die, Marvel have resurrected MTU a few times now, but this was the first attempt, itself spinning out of a quarterly Spider-Man Team-Up book. Written by Tom Peyer, who's mostly worked for DC over the years, this was another one which barely made a dozen issues.


Another book from Peyer, Quicksilver featured the mutant speedster in one of his more heroic moments, working for the High Evolutionary and fighting against such foes as Maximus the Mad and Exodus, and was axed after 13 issues, after a team-up with the equally doomed Heroes For Hire.


Having been turfed off Captain America in the Heroes Reborn event, Mark Waid could have had his pick of characters to write. Bizarrely, he chose Ka-Zar, a second-stringer since 1965, and who, despite Waid's best efforts, would remain a second-stringer well after the 20 issues of this title.


Yeah, ok, you got me. They can't all be losers, and by any definition, Deadpool's been a big success, to the extent that, as of 2009, he stars in two ongoing titles, and he's probably the second most overexposed mutant out there. But in 1997, no-one really expected Joe Kelly's stab at an ongoing book for the Merc-With-A-Mouth to make it big. And, to be honest, I'm still astonished at the longevity of what is basically a one-dimensional character. Go figure.

So there you go. Seven books launched in the same year as Thunderbolts, of which one can be classed as a success. T-Bolts doesn't seem so lame now, does it?

My First Comics

I may never know which Borders comics fan's mum decided to turf out his November and December-dated Marvel comics, but it was my good fortune that, rather than binning them, she instead donated them to one of the stalls at the Liberal Party's pre-Christmas Bazaar. At the event, where I was dragged by my mum and dad, not only did I get to meet the impressively-statured Cyril Smith, I was confronted with a selection of comics of which, until then, I was sadly unaware.


Alpha Flight #4 & #5 (both by John Byrne)
Alpha Flight #4 featured the tail end of a multi-parter in which the so-called Master of the World attempted to conquer the world, using Marrina the Fish-Girl. It also featured the Invisible Girl and Sub-Mariner, and introduced the idea of Aurora's multiple personality disorder. Issue #5 featured the dwarf, Puck, investigating a drug-smuggling ring based out of a hospital. For a comic featuring only one character I'd even heard of, Alpha Flight had me hooked from the start.


Fantastic Four #260 & #261 (both also by John Byrne)
FF #260 introduced me to the FF's nemesis, Doctor Doom (I may have been aware of him from things like the Spider-Man cartoons, but it would be a very vague awareness), and, before the end of the issue, had killed him off, in a battle between the Silver Surfer and Tyros. This was also the end of a multi-parter, but was also reasonably straightforward to fathom. Alpha Flight #4 was set immediately between #260 and #261, introducing me to the idea of crossovers between titles. #261 had the FF off in space, bumping into the Watcher, and had the team trying to justify not having let Galactus die in an earlier issue. This was a bit of a mystery, but by the end of the book, I pretty much understood what it was all about. The issue also featured a recap of the FF's origin, which was handy for newbies like me.


Amazing Spider-Man #246 & #247 (by Roger Stern and John Romita Jr)
ASM #246 was, essentially, an imaginary story, in which J. Jonah Jameson, Mary Jane Watson, the Black Cat, and Spidey himself daydreamed about their perfect day. Oddly, whilst Jameson and the Cat's dreams ended well, neither Mary Jane or Peter Parker were able to sustain their delusion, suggesting that both have some psychological issues to deal with. #247 featured Spidey teaming up with the fabulous Frog Man, a hunt for the Hobgoblin, and a mystery villain, Thunderball (of the Wrecking Crew). It would be years before I would find out who Thunderball is, and I have no idea to this day about Frog Man. The Hobgoblin was another story, of course.


Spectacular Spider-Man #84 (by Bill Manto and Dave Simons) and #85 (by Mantlo and Al Milgrom)
PPTSSM #84 featured Spidey hunting down a gang of child abductors, and was a purely self-contained story. #85, on the other hand, had the Hobgoblin show up to take on Spidey and the Black Cat. It also, handily, showed the story so far of the Hobgoblin, and featured Peter Parker having a get together with his old college friends, including Harry Osborn, which in turn introduced me to the history of the Green Goblin, which made Spider-Man's obsession with the Hobgoblin a lot more explicable.


Avengers #237 & #238 (both by Roger Stern and Al Milgrom)
Avengers #237 featured Spider-Man trying out for the team, an event alluded to in Spidey's own book, and had the Avengers fighting a whole load of supervillains in Project Pegasus. Looking back, I'm not sure why I accepted supervillains being imprisoned with their costumes on, but it's not something that gave me cause for concern at the time. Issue #238 had the Vision, in a coma due to an earlier battle, recover unexpectedly, showed the She-Hulk househunting, and featured a last-page appearance by Tigra and the ghost of Spider-Woman, the last of which confused the heck out of me.


Captain America #288 (by JM DeMatteis and Mike Zeck)
Set in the future world of 1993, this featured Cap teaming up with the cyborg, Deathlok, to take on the ruler of a destroyed New York. This was pretty much double-dutch to me at the time, and since I didn't have the next issue, it would be a long time before I'd find out how Cap stopped the imminent destruction of the world.

Daredevil #202 (by Dennis O'Neil and William Johnson)
This book had Matt Murdock's firm hired by an African tribe do do PR for their boss, Micah Synn. Micah turns out to be a nutjob, prone to dangling policemen out of windows. As a one-shot, it does a fine job of introducing DD and his significant others, and as an introduction to Micah Synn, it made me want to read more about him, which handily was what Denny O'Neil intended.


Defenders #125 (by JM DeMatteis and Don Perlin)
My first issue of Defenders featured the departure of the original team, the wedding of Patsy Walker and Daimon Hellstrom, and a new team being formed. it also featured an Elf. Much of this made little sense, but thankfully, there was a handy letters page which clarified some of what was going on.

The Thing #5 (by John Byrne and Ron Wilson)
This book had Ben Grimm getting beaten up, for no readily apparent reason, by Wonder Man, She-Hulk, and Spider-Man, before being possessed by his old foe, the Puppet Master. I didn't know at the time who the Puppet Master was, nor why he was out to get the Thing, so this was a less successful introduction to the book, but since the book was essentially an FF spin-off, it wasn't too much of a problem.


Incredible Hulk #289 (by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema)
The Hulk was intelligent at this point in his history, which seemed odd at the time, less so now. It had MODOK setting the Abomination to attack Bruce Banner, who was working for the government on gamma ray research - which with hindsight seems less logical than the Hulk's intelligence. Mostly the issue involved Hulk beating up the Abomination, which for a Hulk book is pretty much what you'd expect.

Marvel Team-Up #135 (by Bill Mantlo, again, and Ron Frenz)
This issue featured Kitty Pryde (note the lack of codename) rescuing some kidnapped children from the Morlock tunnels, with the help of Spider-Man. I didn't know who the Morlocks were at the time, and I'm not sure why they were kidnapping people, but it was a decent enough tale, at the time.


The Mighty Thor #337 (by Walt Simonson)
This was a flummoxer. Thor lost his powers, whilst an alien invader gets them. Nick Fury turns up, with little explanation of who he is and why he has a flying car and a helicarrier. And out in space, someone is forging something big. Now, having read the succeeding two years worth of issues, I know this is a classic, but at the time, it was not a good first issue. Not at all.

Uncanny X-Men #175 (by Chris Claremont, Paul Smith and John Romita Jr)
Speaking of confusing first issues, this issue features the wedding of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor, the return of Dark Phoenix, and Mastermind looking for revenge against the team for what Phoenix had done to him. Confusing stuff, but with enough exposition (this was a Claremont book) to make it explicable.

So there you have it. My first 18 Marvel books. Some classics, and some, less than classic, but enough to get an 11 year-old me hooked on the things, if not for life, then at least for the forseeable future. To my bank manager's horror.

10 Second-Stringers

Following up on yesterday's post, I thought it'd be nice to take a closer look at these guys, a posse of criminally underexposed characters introduced in 1974, who, if not for the cult of Wolverine, might well be far more respected in comics circles. Or they might not. You judge...


Nuklo was the son of a couple of golden age heroes, and briefly, the brother of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Created by Roy Thomas in the pages of Giant-Size Avengers, Nuklo, unfortunately, possessed the power of being highly radioactive, which probably scuppered his chances of joining any of the big-name teams. So naturally, he ended up appearing in the pages of Thunderbolts later on.


Created by Jim Starlin and Steve Englehart, Nitro's proved one of the more successful of the class of 1974. Not only was he indirectly responsible for the death of Captain Marvel, who died as a result of an illness contracted during this very issue, but, depending on your viewpoint, he was either indirectly or directly to blame for the disaster which led to Marvel's Civil War a couple of years back.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, unfortunately. That really is a man dressed up as a giant chicken. To be fair, he is a voodoo priest, so a chicken costume is not entirely inappropriate, but I'm not sure most comics readers are discerning enough to take that look seriously. Time remains to tell whether Black Talon ( a creation of Len Wein and Gene Colan) will once again show up as a foe of Brother Voodoo, now that he's the Sorcerer Supreme.


Oh, my... Mid-70s Marvel was many things, but subtle it wasn't. Mahkizmo, the Nuclear Man, came from an alternative future world where men enslaved women, a world at war with another alternative world, this one the female-dominated world of Thundra. Created by Gerry Conway and Rich Buckler, Mahkizmo disappeared after his first appearance, only resurfacing when She-Hulk author John Byrne was looking for some bottom of the barrel villain to make fun of.


OK, so they can't all be winners. Marv Wolfman and George Tuska brought the Piranha into the pages of Sub-Mariner, as they were beginning to seriously run out of good ideas. Originally, a real piranha fish, this chap was mutated by radiation during one of Subby's many battles, and, rather than count his blessings, Piranha decided to hunt down Namor. Other than a couple of guest shots in the Defenders, alongside other fish-based foes, he's never been seen since. Good.


And talking of the Defenders, here's Nebulon. Introduced by Len Wein and Sal Buscema, Nebulon made a couple of half-hearted efforts to conquer the Earth, before vanishing into the mists of time.

Luke Cage had some wacky bad guys in the early days of his title. Created by Len Wein (him again) and George Tuska (and him again), Cottonmouth was a drug-dealer with ambition, a taste for snake skin shoes, and, when the occasion demanded, a bazooka. Like so many other animal-themed characters, he seems to have been a one-shot character, with his name being pinched later by a member of the Serpent Society.


From the mailbox: "It had to happen. Marvel was first among comics publishers to feature black superheroes - and villains. Marvel was first to recognise the women's movement in comics with characters like the Black Widow. And now, in this issue of STRANGE TALES, we're proud to introduce the comics' first Jewish monster-hero. Needless to say, we're looking forward to your reactions[]. So ... grab a sheet of paper or a post card or last week's leftover bagel and WRITE!!" I think you can guess how filled-to-the-brim the Mighty Marvel Mailbag was that week. Brought to the world by Len Wein (it's that man again) and John Buscema, the Golem lasted all of three months, before vanishing for the rest of the century.


Jeez, Len Wein gets about, doesn't he? Equinox, a curious blend of the power of fire and ice, turned up a few times in the pages of Marvel Team-Up, and even showed up a couple of years ago during the Secret Invasion, but despite having one of the more interesting visual looks of the era, never really seems to have found his groove.


Brought to us courtesy of Gerry Conway and Ross Andru, Grizzly must be the character who must resents the ol' Canucklehead. I mean, look at the guy. With that surly attitude, coupled with the ridiculous costume, he must have reckoned he had at least as good a chance as Wolverine of making the big time. If not for a quirk of fate, Grizzly could have found himself on the cover of Giant-Sized X-Men #1, and we might now be reading three or four monthly books about the exploits of the world's favourite ex-wrestler. There's no justice.

So there you have. Ten of the, er, best creations of 1974 who didn't go on to become superstars. I like to think that in some parallel universe, these guys are world-famous, with legions of fans. Well, except for Piranha. That guy sucks.