Everything Old Is New Again

Of course, 2004 wasn't just about Brian Bendis. It was also the year of optimistic relaunches:


3rd time out for Alpha Flight, and a return to Marvel for 90s X-writer, Scott Lobdell. A humorous spin on the Canadian superteam, this lasted all of a dozen issues, and most of the team were subsequently exterminated, in order to establish the badass credentials of the latest Avengers foe. As for Cable and Deadpool, this was was a buddy book, written by Lobdell's former partner in X-crime, Fabian Nicieza, and, for the first few issues, even featured covers by Rob Liefeld, who'd brought Cable and Deadpool to comics in the first place.


Keith Giffen, J.M DeMatteis, and Kevin Maguire had made comedy names for themselves with a relaunch of the Justice League at DC Comics, in 1987. 17 years on, they decided to have a crack at the Defenders, applying similar comedic principles to the title. Meanwhile, J. Michael Straczynski decided to have a crack at making Dr Strange popular again, mostly by retelling his origin. Neither limited series did much for the ongoing popularity of their cast, but neither did a great deal of harm either.


On the other hand, these two books did no good at all for anyone. Chris Claremont launched a new Excalibur book, not related to the previous team book, but instead starring Professor X and Magneto, mostly so that Claremont could retcon the evil Magneto who had been showing up in Grant Morrison's New X-Men. There followed a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing between Morrison fans and critics, none of which made Excalibur a good book. Still, compared to James Mullaney's brief revival of Iron Fist, a book so bad that, despite being the biggest fan in the world of Danny Rand, I have been unable to reread, Excalibur was a classic.


Dan Slott made his first venture into the Marvel Universe with a new She-Hulk book, in which Shulkie joins a law firm and engages in all sorts of superhero litigation. Imagine Boston Legal with super-types. In one form or another, this book was still going until quite recently. Meanwhile, having killed off the original Thunderbolts concept, and replaced it with a supervillain wrestling book, Marvel persuaded series originator Kurt Busiek to come back one more time. The relaunch lasted until Warren Ellis came along and kicked out the existing team, in the midst of 2006's Civil War, to my somewhat dissatisfaction.

Yeah, on the whole, actual ideas were pretty much on the way out over at the House of Ideas that year.

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?

70 Years of Marvel - 1997

C'mon now, did you really think I was going to spotlight any other book?

The 90s were not a golden decade for Marvel, but there was the occasional highlight, and none more than the introduction of the Thunderbolts. With apologies for spoilering 12 year old book, Kurt Busiek's concept of having Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil pose as superheroes in order to take over the world was pretty damn cool. But the idea that, having pulled off the initial deception, some of these long-standing bad guys (Goliath, Screaming Mimi and the Beetle) might decide that they actually quite like the respect that they're receiving, and might decide not to go through with the whole going bad and inevitably getting their heads handed to them element of the scheme, now that was genius.

In a time when there was a noticable decline in the quality of most of Marvel's product, Thunderbolts stood head and shoulders above the rest. For years, the original team trod the line between heroism, opportunism, and villainy, being at times, outlaws, acknowledged heroes and saviours of the world. Then Warren Ellis took over, and the whole concept of wannabe heroes was ditched, in favour of outright villains and psychopaths working for the government in return for a pardon. All well and good, but nothing we hadn't seen twenty years ago in Suicide Squad over at DC.

July '97 was notable for being Marvel's Flashback Month, in which Stan Lee (or a reasonable facsimile) showed up in pretty much every book, in order to introduce a tale from the past of the protagonists of the book: Daredevil's college days, Baron Zemo's childhood, Cable's first time-journey. A novel idea, but pretty much inconsequential in the long term,

1997 also saw Roger Stern and Ron Frenz return to Spider-Man, to give the definitive answer to the question: who is the Hobgoblin? The question had already been answered, a decade previously, but it had been an unsatisfactory conclusion, and Stern took advantage of the new, post-Clone Saga regime to write "his" ending to the mystery he'd started 15 years ago.

New blood was introduced to the X-Men, in the shape of Maggot, Cecelia Reyes and Marrow, all of whom were introduced during the latest X-Crossover, Operation Zero Tolerance. The first new members of the team introduced in nearly a decade, all three proved less than popular, and all three were gone from the team by the end of the millennium.

Outside of comics, New Labour swept to power on the UK in this year. A decade of national mourning was declared, following the ascension of Saint Diana, the People's Princess. And the world gasped at the majestic wonder that was Jim Cameron's Titanic. If any of this seems familiar, then I can only assume you are suffering from deja vu, and not that, for some reason, I looked up 1997 when writing the entry for 1996. Move along, move along.

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.

70 Years of Marvel - 1964

Yes, Thunderbolts fans, that is the self-same Baron Zemo who would go on to become Captain America's WW2 nemesis, who would subsequently go on to found the Masters Of Evil, and whose son would in turn found his own team of Masters, start up the Thunderbolts as the biggest con in history, and eventually become an almost-good-guy. In his first appearance, though, Doctor Zemo was merely one of many Nazi stooges who took on Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos, and lost.

Famously, Sgt Fury was the result of a bet at the Marvel offices, in which Stan Lee wagered that he could make a war comic in the Marvel manner and make it a success. It worked, for at least the next couple of decades, thriving throughout any number of successes and failures at the House of Ideas.

Making a return to regular appearances in 1964 was Captain America, albeit only as a member of the Avengers. The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver made their first appearance in this year, as did Daredevil, the Black Widow, Wonder Man, and Hawkeye.

1964 also saw the US Government suggest (god forbid) that smoking cigarettes might be harmful to ones health. The Beatles were conquering America. And IBM were unleashing the S360 mainframe! Meanwhile, the war was hotting up in Vietnam.

At the movies, Clint Eastwood was scowling his way through A Fistful of Dollars, while Santa Claus was Conquering the Martians. Meanwhile, on the telly, Top of the Pops was not yet tragically unhip. The Munsters and the Addams Family were both tearing up the airwaves, as was the Man From UNCLE. And a generation of kids were thrilling to the adventures of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

70 Years of Marvel - 1956

Patsy Walker has been around since 1944, and began as an attempt by Timely-Marvel to copy the success of their Millie the Model title. It worked: Patsy had her own book well into the 60s, through the whole Atlas era and into the Silver Age of superheroes. She clearly had her own fan base in the 60s Marvel bullpen, as Lee and Kirby gave her a cameo appearance at the wedding of Reed Richards and the Invisible Girl.

Even after her own book ended, she wasn't finished, as Steve Englehart brought her, and her husband, back, as guest stars in his run on Amazing Adventures in 1972.


A couple of years later, Englehart reintroduced Patsy, having her help out the Avengers against her soon-to-be-ex-husband and his employers. Along the way, Patsy somehow gained a costumed identity.

A couple of years after that, Gerry Conway, in pretty much his last act as writer of the Defenders, would bring Patsy / Hellcat to the team, where she would spend the remainder of the 70s and half of the 80s, before leaving the team to settle down with her new husband, Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan.


Patsy and Daimon languished in obscurity together, until 1993, when Hellstorm got his own book (it was the 90s, pretty much everyone in the Marvel Universe had their own book. I'm surprised Irving Forbush didn't have his own book). Fans of Patsy would probably be disappointed by her first appearance in Hellstorm...


Then later, Warren Ellis got hold of the book. And killed her off.


But this being comics, even that didn't stop the Powers-What-Be from using the character. Firstly, she was rescued from hell by the Thunderbolts.


And then, courtesy of long-time fan, Steve Englehart (it's that man again!), she got her own book again, albeit briefly.

And now, in 2009, in these days of Civil Wars and Secret Invasions, when everything's grim and gritty, and just when you think Patsy has nothing to offer anymore, she's back in a thinly-veiled "homage" to Sex and the City.

Honesty, whatever next?

Anyway, elsewhere in the real world in 1956, the people of Europe were thrilling to the first Eurovision Contest. Sadly, no Terry Wogan. Two planes collided in mid-air above the Grand Canyon, Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal, and frogman "Buster" Crabb vanished in Portsmouth harbour, sparking a flurry of conspiracy theories.

In the world of entertainment, Elvis was staying at the Heartbreak Hotel, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was on at the pictures, David Niven was going Around the World in 80 Days, and musical fans could go see The King And I with Yul Brynner. But only if he wasn't busy. Boom boom.

On the small screen, Tony Hancock was making the move from radio to telly, and Hughie Green was introducing Opportunity Knocks, without which we might well be spared half the tripe on Saturday night tv. At the library, one could pick up a copy of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, whilst theatre-goers could see a very young Alan Bates starring in Look Back in Anger. Something for everyone there, I'm sure you'll agree.

70 Years Of Marvel - 1942

By 1942, America was firmly involved in WW2, and so were its superheroes. In addition to Cap, Namor and the Torch, there was a second wave of heroes turning out to help fight the Axis hordes. Let's see, who have we got here..?

First, on the left, we have Captain Daring, who, according to the link, fought the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler in the 31st century. I promise I didn't just make that up, although I suspect International Hero did...
Next up, we have the Fin, an American sailor who discovered that sinking to the bottom of the ocean gives you super-strength. Not one of Bill Everett's finest creations, the Fin vanished without trace at the end of the war. Shame, that.
In the centre, we see the Thunderer, so named because his costume contained a built-in microphone, which he used to amplify his voice, "thundering" at his enemies. So, sort of like Black Bolt, but far lamer than Black Bolt could ever dream of being.
Alongside the Thunderer is Citizen V, who longtime readers of my other blog may recall I have something of an affection for. A British soldier who adopted a secret identity, and who went on a one-man rampage across occupied Europe, striking terror into the enemy, Citizen V vanished without a trace at the end of the war, and was unheard of until 1997, when Kurt Busiek chose to use him, or a version of him, as the centrepiece of the Thunderbolts, a different sort of superhero team. In one form or another, he's been around ever since.
Next to Citizen V is Blue Diamond, a terribly obscure hero powered by a super-magical diamond, who made his one and only contemporary appearance in this very issue, spent the next 30 years in limbo, before being revived (albeit in flashback) by Golden Age aficionado, Roy Thomas.
And lastly, in that box down there, we have the Silver Scorpion, another hero who was plucked out of obscurity to be a member of the V-Battalion, courtesy of a 21st century retcon.

And there you have it, a genuine bona fide Golden Age legion of substitute heroes. Of course, most people were choosing to read about Cap, Namor or the Torch, which is why Ed Brubaker isn't currently writing about the exploits of the Thunderer, or, God help us, the Fin.