The Many Faces In Scorpio Rose!

Steve Englehart has been pretty frank about his comic book career in interviews and on his own website and such. In the collected Coyote the book is backed up by a few issues of a short-fused project by Englehart and Marshall Rogers called Scorpio Rose. It was meant to be a trilogy but only ever produced two comic books (both of which I remember buying at the time). They concerned themselves with a Romany mystic of a unusual lengthy life and of the demon who loved her at times. 

The saga was adapted and altered from scripts Englehar produced for DC for a projected Madame Xanadu series. The price for those scripts had been misrepresented to Englehart so he refused to turn them over and that was it for Madame Xanadu until some years later when we met her under the name of Scorpio Rose. 

The series went two issues then Rogers was unable to finish it. Instead of getting a new artist Englehart just left it unfinished but in this collection the layouts Rogers did for the final issue are printed with explanations as to how the story wrapped up. Frankly I found the stories very confusing even without an ending. It's not Englehart's greatest by any means, too much mysticism and Rogers art is  often hard to read. But the story is memorable for another reason which reaches back to Englehart's earliest days at Marvel and a character named Mantis.

Mantis of course was the Celestial Madonna (making a comeback perhaps when comics begin to publish again) and her saga unfolded over a very long time in the pages of The Avengers where she courted Swordsman and Vision and others while trying to understand her role in the universe. She gave birth to a child, also the child of an alien plant-person and supposedly this youngster was meant for great things indeed. Mantis disappeared when Englehart left the series. 

Englehart was attracted to DC by the call of better page rates and he took over the Justice League of America, bringing the same wonderful magic to those pages he brought to the Avengers. One issue introduced a green woman from the starts named Willow who was supposed to be Mantis, her story continuing with a new name and place. 

Then Englehart left DC and in the pages of Scorpio Rose from Eclipse Comics he gave us Lorelei, another green lady who was recognizably Willow and Mantis. She assists Scorpio Rose and we meet her child almost hidden in the shadows. 

Later Englehart brought Mantis back at Marvel, but I will always treasure the days when her story was bigger than any one company. For me it always will be.

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How Sharper Than A Serpent's Son!

The Sons of the Serpent debuted in the pages of Avengers #32, presented for the first time by Stan Lee and Don Heck. This mob of racist slobs tricked out in ophidian finery pop out of the bushes and begin to threaten everyone around them. Also a certain Chinese representative named  General Chang shows up at the United Nations and starts to bellow about the inadequacies of the American system of government. 

While these political feints are underway Hank Pym at the time a Goliath stranded at ten feet in height finds a worthy and capable lab assistant in one Bill Foster, who debuts in this comic. It just so happens that Bill Foster is a black man (weirdly colored gray as was the custom at Marvel at the time) and despite wearing what looks like for all the world like a waiter's uniform is helpful to Pym in his search for a respite from his giant size. But then Foster is attacked by the racist Serpents and Pym and the Avengers in a righteous anger decide to bring the group to heel. Having played his limited role as motivation Foster promptly disappears from the story until the next issue. 

In that next issue Captain America is captured by the Serpents and they use his captivity to extract all sorts of things from the Avengers, not the least of which is a public proclamation in support of some of the Serpent activity. This sends public opinion into a tailspin as the people of these United States are whipsawed around from an support of the racist ideology to rejection of the Serpent notions depending on how they perceive the Avengers to be standing. Bill Foster shows back up and is stunned by the seeming support and for reasons utterly unknown to me is not brought into the overall strategy.  Ultimately Cap is rescued by Hawkeye with help from Black Widow and the team rounds up the Serpents and makes all right the world when they reveal that the top Serpent is...gasp...General Chen. (We knew that all the time of course.)

I want to like these stories more than I do. The art by Don Heck is pure but his storytelling breaks down in a few places and I'm wondering if the script was doctored after the fact. There seems to be a clear rejection of the ideas of racism and nativism which the Serpents pronounce but the  way the public seems so gullible is bothersome to me. Maybe I don't want to believe that people could so easily fall under the spell of a self-righteous demagogue who spouts hatred for foreign peoples but then maybe I should wake up and smell the coffee. The Serpents cast their spell easily enough in these issues which propel at a rapid pace, but those notions seems all the ready to catch hold in this real world too. But like the real world, their threat is not ended. A comic book taught me that. The Sons of the Serpent will return. More on that later.

And if the name  Bill Foster didn't ring a bell, then all I have to say is two words -- "Black Goliath". 

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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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