Masterpieces Of Fantasy!

Of all the myriad of reprint comics that Mighty Marvel unleashed upon the world over the course of its long multi-decade existence, none will in my mind ever be cooler than Fantasy Masterpieces. First there's the name, the essence of bombast and insane seriousness which marked the early days of the Marvel experience. Marvel at one level took its comics more seriously than did the Distinguished Competition and consequently also took its fans more seriously too. That was felt by the youngster reaching for entertainment which not only passed the hours but lifted up their senses of themselves. Comic books might have been for kids, but Marvel comic books were a bit different, seemingly designed for a select cadre of readers who could truly appreciate the art of comics.

And so in the earliest issues the artists are the starts with not only Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko getting name-checked on the cover but also others like Don Heck, Joe Sinnot, and Dick Ayers. This wasn't a
"Batman comic" or a "Spider-Man comic" but a "comic by (fill in the blank)", a more adult and sophisticated attitude about literature which these comics aspired to be, if only just. Name checking the talent has proven to be a winner for comics which for many years eschewed such personal glory and promoted a company brand. Jack Kirby and Joe Simon had been the first really to break this pattern in the 40's when they took their trade to DC and later on their own. Kirby and Ditko now were at the spearhead of a wave of celebration of pop culture of which comics were a part.

Sadly by the third issue that attitude had given way somewhat and despite a cost rise there was suddenly a shift in focus as not just the Atomic Age was there to be gleaned but the Golden Age as well. Captain America by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon was back and he was soon to be followed by others of his ilk.

In issue seven Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch joined the jolly band of heroes and monsters and weird science fiction tropes which filled up the pages.

And ultimately a team from Marvel's Timely past, the All-Winners came to visit. The first of their only two yarns was in issue ten and the second would find its way into the magazine after its name change.

These were raucous packages of vintage work, and some of it every bit as good as what was being done in the then modern day. The Black Knight by Joe Maneely was an exquisite example of what could be done on a comic page. But soon Captain Marvel would come to Earth and the title would become Marvel Super-Heroes. Still they were masterpieces.

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Marvel Super-Heroes - The Demon And Doom!

Doctor Doom was a villain who got above his station, demanding and actually getting the treatment usually reserved for respected heroes. Doom, a complex character intricately linked into the saga of the Fantastic Four time and again, but always failed to finish them off. And despite being thought dead himself, always managed to survive and turn up to threaten the world all over again. A master of science in Marvel Super-Heroes #20 we encounter Doom's supernatural roots by way of his Romany ancestry.

This comic produced by Stan Lee's stalwart brother Larry Lieber with help from Roy Thomas and Frank Giacoia and inker Vinny Colletta features Doc Doom facing off against another Fab 4 enemy -- Diablo. The deadly alchemist from days gone by seeks Doom's assistance in taking control of Earth's satellites giving the deadly duo power over all of the planet. To woo Doom's help Diablo presents him with a lovely woman from Doom's past named Valeria. But in the end Doom defeats Diablo and loses Valeria too when she rejects him for becoming the villain he is.

This is the finale of Marvel Super-Heroes brief one year (or thereabouts) run as a "showcase" for Marvel. Despite the promise of a story about an intriguing hero called "Starhawk" by Dan Adkins, he'd have to wait for Marvel's prozine Marvelmania Magazine to get published some years later.

The next issue of Marvel Super-Heroes would be all reprint, and awesome reprints too, in what I've always considered one of Marvel's single finest individual issues.

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Nify Presents - Shazam!

Shazam is just so much fun! Superhero movies have become such a commonplace that making one distinctive from another has become a challenge, but they succeeded with this DC installment. I found the movie a tremendous amount of fun to watch at home, even if at a few moments here and there I think the actor is a bit too broad. But hardly a serious concern in a movie which constantly entertains and very often surprises. I wish in a perfect world that Shazam could keep his name of "Captain Marvel", but that's not the way it works.

It boggles my mind that 2019 or any year saw two Captain Marvel movies released, something beyond comprehension in the 20th century for sure. If for whatever reason you haven't caught this yet, I highly recommend it.

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Marvel Super-Heroes - Ka-Zar Swings!

Ka-Zar was one of Marvel's revivals which didn't immediately get a comic book home of his own. Debuting in the X-Men in the early days of that run under Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Chic Stone, he migrated to Daredevil for some number of issues and even spent some time in Spider-Man before returning to the X-Men under the watch of Roy Thomas and Neal Adams. But he got a nod in Marvel Super-Heroes #19, a book in which he shifts from England to the Savage Land and battles against his brother The Plunderer as well as aliens who seek hegemony over the Swamp Men. Under a dynamic cover by Barry "Not-Quite-Windsor" Smith still in his earliest days and a up and coming Herb Trimpe, the comic beneath features some George Tuska artwork which frankly shows signs of having been done very swiftly. All of Mr.Tuska's shortcuts are on full display, but despite that the story by Steve Parkhouse and Arnold Drake unrolls mostly logically. Of note is that the inking is by longtime DC mainstay Sid Greene. (Is this the only inking he did for Marvel?)

This one ain't the greatest effort by the Bullpen, but it's still worthy of notice. And as we all know Ka-Zar and his toothsome buddy Zabu were destined for bigger things when he set up shop alongside Doc Doom in Astonishing Tales. And speaking of the bad Doctor Doom, he's up tomorrow as we close out this glimpse of Marvel's little Silver Age try-out comic.

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Nifty Presents - Wally Wood's Galaxy!

There's just something so appealing about the sleek smooth lines of a typical Wally Wood drawing and his style was just ideal for science fiction. So it's a no-brainer really that he'd find some time to work for some of the myriad sci-fi digests which once upon a time were common on the newsstands.

The one Wood made his mark in was Galaxy, a digest started in 1950 and focused on the softer side of sci-fi, the psychological and sociological transformations wrought by thinking about the present day and the possible futures. Galaxy always felt a little adult, a bit more sophisticated to me than the others, a cooler  hipper big brother of sorts.

This book showcases some beautiful Wood art, stuff which is not normally gathered in the copious Wood collections. Glad to have it.

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Justice League Unlimited 2004-2006!

Justice League Unlimited is the continuation of the Cartoon Network production, but the folks making this show were savvy enough to know that changing the format would make the fans happy and the way they did it made this fanboy very happy.

They did it by taking the Justice League and dialing it up to eleven by adding in just about as many DC characters as they could get their mitts on. I was content to live out my life never seeing the likes of Captain Atom, the Shining Knight, Vigilante (Golden Age version), Red Tornado, Metamorpho, and even B'wana Beast on a cartoon, but now I have done and I am a better person for it. A young Supergirl is featured in the series and her maturation is one of the plots that moves through several stories. Green Arrow is a featured player and that means some Black Canary. Wildcat shows up and more and more and more. It's a festival.

There's Zatanna, Hawk and Dove, alongside Dr.Fate and much of the Justice Society. Even Power Girl shows...sort of. They did themselves proud and took the series out in bang!

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Justice League 2001-2004!

Cartoon Network's Justice League might possibly be the finest representation of the Justice League of America ever done for either the small or large screen. The makers of the cartoon series had honed their understanding of the DCU with groundbreaking series with Batman and Superman and this was just the next natural progression. What we get in these two seasons are detailed well-crafted stories with real adult appeal and members of the League who were specific distinctive personalities.

While it was of course the Big Three (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman) who sold this show, the producers were keen to put the focus on other League members like Martian Manhunter, Flash, and especially Green Lantern and Hawkgirl who spark up a bit of a romance in these tales. In the first season all of the stories were two-parters, a pain when they first ran, but watching them again on DVD merely a nifty structure which assured a cliffhanger of sorts most all the time.

I was enthralled with these when they first ran, a time when the Avengers and the Justice League of America were the two top comics on my reading list, a time when both comics were the best things their respective companies were producing. Even the lighter-toned comic which developed from this cartoon was a grand read.

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Nifty Presents - King Of The Comics!

Over the years I have gathered up quite a heaping helping of King Features comics, comics waiting for me to finally at long last read them up. I keep meaning to and something stops me, or another whim catches my fancy for a while. Prince Valiant, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, Popeye the Sailor are all terrific King Features series, some of the most important pop culture creations of the 20th Century. So it is a grand treat to get hold of this mighty tome which has great background on those fine series as well as many many others which helped define comics as we know them today.

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Marvel Super-Heroes - Calling The Guardians!

The year is 1967 and Marvel Super-Heroes #18 is all geared up to transport us one and all to the 3007 when the countries of the Earth are united as well as the colonies of human race spread across the solar system. The tale begins by introducing us to Charlie-27, a Jovian military man returning from months-long solitary duty and two months of radio silence to find his home world of Jupiter apparently abandoned.

But soon enough he is attacked by the Badoon, an extra-solar lizard-like race which has invaded and seems to early reports to have conquered the sprawling human colonies. Using his Jovian strength and speed Charlie teleports to Pluto where he finds more Badoon and Martinex, a crystal man native to the planet (Pluto was still a planet back then...sigh). Using his powers to project both heat and cold Martinex helps the two teleport to Earth. On Earth things are not going well as Vance Astro and his taciturn colleague Yondu have been captured by the Badoon. Astro is a thousand-year old migrant from an Earth which depended on Einstein's physics, but found that that had been supplanted and he was met by many Earth men who had settled not just the solar system but also some of the nearest star systems. With the appearance of Charlie-27 and Martinex, Astro is able to use his telekinetic powers and Yondu his maneuverable Yaka arrows to get all four of these desperate souls free of the Badoon hold for now. The four become the  Guardians of the Galaxy and pledge to defeat the Badoon empire.

This is a whopper of a delightful yarn by Arnold Drake and Gene Golan with the assistance of inker Mike Esposito (under his "Mickey Demeo" guise). These heroes are a far far away from the Marvel Universe and one is left to wonder when if ever we'd see them again. Many years later they popped up in Marvel Two-In-One, coming to our time to get more help for theirs and so begins a long and vibrant history. The Guardians in those successful movies are a ton of fun, but they aren't my Guardians, this is them and I cherish them still.

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Nifty Presents - King Of Filmographies!

I've always liked Godzilla, but I have become somewhat besotted with Kaiju in general in recent years and with the "King of the Monsters" in particular.  Certainly the new American films have a ot to to do with that, but hardly all. In this century it has been possible to see these films in their original forms and seeing such my appreciation for the depth of meaning some of  them offer has only grown and grown.

David Kalat does an exemplary job of digging into the depths of the Godzilla franchise and finding meaning and significance in works most of the world dash off as mere momentary entertainments. Of course not all Godzilla movies are created equal, some are just what we might think they are, breezy diversions with great big monsters cracking up the territory. But so many are more, even if they don't fully succeed in what they aspire to be or say.

Kalat's book A Critical History of Toho's Godzilla Series is a film by film breakdown and takes into account other Kaiju movies such as Rodan, Mothra and Varan. It's delightful to find yet new things to see and know about the original movie which is a standard piece I show my students. Godzilla is worth the effort and thankfully Kalat has taken the time.

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Marvel Super-Heroes - The Darker Knight!

The Black Knight is one of my favorite heroes. I fell in love with the 1950's incarnation drawn so magnificently by Joe Maneely and even found the villainous 1960's rendition pretty fascinating. But when Dane Whitman took the role it all came into place for this modern warrior for justice.

This "new" Black Knight debuted in The Avengers #48, taking the lance atop Aragorn his gentically bred white and winged stallions. At first  Dane Whitman took the tools and weapons of his late villainous uncle and helped out the Avengers, but soon in the pages of Marvel Super-Heroes #17 we discover the mystical side of the Black Knight. This comic written by scribe Roy Thomas and drawn by Howard Purcell and Dan Adkins looks pretty, if it does feel a little like Steranko-lite on certain pages.

Visiting the Whitman homestead and castle back in the merry England Dane is visited by the ghost of his predecessor, the original Black Knight as well as Merlin and they convince him through mystic shenanigans that he is the true heir to the ebony blade crafted from a fallen star centuries before and that he must stand against the ancient threat of Mordred. Dane accepts this mantle while in London a man called Sabre is visited by the aforementioned Mordred and given powers and a living stone gargoyle to oppose this new knight. These two mystic knights battle in the skies over London and the Black Knight emerges triumphant for the time being. But you get the clear sense that while this battle was won, the war is far from over.

When he's next seen, the Black Knight will bring his ebony sword to help the Avengers and join that team.

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Nifty Presents - King Of Jeeps!

I've got to confess that this one is a present to myself. I was walking through a local department store just after Christmas and there was a big display of old-fashioned looking model kits. This one featuring the one and only mighty Godzilla caught my eye in an instant.

I snatched it up and added it to the cart, which was not light at the time. I knew I must have this incredible image somewhere in my house. It's of course a model of the Willys Jeep often seen in so many Kaiju movies, the kind of vehicle that is often flying through the air to smash into some storefront or whatever w hen the monster's rage is booming downtown.

I won't break the seal and make the model, though the presentation as seen above is pretty spectacular. I love the box artwork and will make this one of those blasted toys that never gets played with. It's a sin of some kind but I know what I like.

I was inspired though to seek out the similar arrangement of jeep and King of Monsters as seen in the Johnny Lightning series. These things just make me smile and in these hectic days of bad news, a smile is welcomed respite.

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