Marvel Super-Heroes Fall Special #3 “Who Saves the Hero?” September 1990

 

Story by Danny Fingeroth and Art by Gary Hartle and Tony DeZuniga.

CBR runs an occasional series “Foundationed Deep” which talks about connections between characters so stuff like Bruce Wayne was the first Robin, Wolverine knew Captain America in World War 2 and had helped Peter Parker’s parents on a mission.

This is a story about how Dominic Fortune had met Captain America and how their lives interacted.  It’s a nice story and given that it doesn’t have a connection to the Steele saga it appeared 3 months before the final Web of Spiderman stories I decided to talk about it after that two parter.

The story opens with Captain America foiling truck hijacking and getting assistance from Dominic Fortune. Both Cap and Old Man Dom recognise each other having met a couple of times. 

And we flashback to the early 1930s and a gang of bullies are picking on scrawny Stevie Rogers and Davey Fortunov rescues him.  The bullies are scared of Davey and run off.

We then jump forward to 1940 and Stevie is watching newsreel footage of Dominic Fortune and recognises Davey Fortunov.  At the same time Fortune is being recruited by Phillips (who I presume was played by Tommy Lee Jones in Captain America: The First Avenger) for Project Rebirth. 

As Fortune is tested, there is a discussion about his suitability as a candidate for the project.   One thing discussed here is the fact that he is Jewish and how that would be a big propaganda win against Hitler, but that America might not be ready for a Jewish hero, not that anyone was prejudiced you know.  But ultimately his moral character is lacking, he gambles and is living in sin with Sabbath Raven, so we head to the next candidate.

Wouldn’t you know it Stephen Rogers gets the call up. As Steve is being tested, Dom is showing Sabbath where he was staying and wouldn’t you know it Nazi saboteurs try to kill young Rogers and Fortune comes to the rescue.  One of the soldiers commandeers Sabbath’s car (Sabbath is depicted with red hair rather than her usual black hair).

Sabbath goes to help Dom and after another Nazi attack Rogers goes back to help Dom and Sabbath.  The cavalry arrives and Rogers takes the supersoldier serum and becomes Captain America. 

We then see Sabbath and Dom watching a newsreel of Captain America and recognising Steven Rogers.

The story ends with Fortune chasing off another gang of bullies and Captain America finding him – the pair then catch up over a malted milk.

This is a nice little story that adds Dominic Fortune into the history of Captain America.

(I consider this the second story in the Secret History of Captain America Trilogy – the other 2 being Doc Savage/The Shadow – The Case of the Shrieking Skeletons and The Sting of the Green Hornet)

Oz Comic Con Comic Buys

I spent my afternoon at Oz Comic Con and grabbed myself several comics.  I thought I'd share what Ibought and my thoughts on the same.

Avengers:The Road to Marvel's Avengers (Marvel) -  I found this trade collecting some of the MCU tie in comics,  There are three Iron Man tie-ins and one for Captain America.

Being Team Cap all the way I only grabbed the book for Captain America: First Vengeance by Fred Van Lente and several artists.

There's a gap in Captain America: The First Avenger where most of Cap and the Howling Commandos WWII adventures are glossed over in a montage and I thought that a comic series (or an animated series) set in that time period would be pretty cool.  You could get appearances from other Timely era characters who would be very unlikely to get movies. The Blonde Phantom, The Phantom Reporter, Golden Girl, Claire Voyant The Black Widow.  So I was intersted to see what  First Vengeance would give us.

It was different weaving through the events of The Frrst Avenger, we see the rise of Johan Schmidt, the escape and attempted escapes of Prof Erskine, an early exploit of Peggy Carter Agent 13, the first meeting of Steve Rogers and Bucky, the meeting f Bucky and the Howling Commandos.

This was a fine story and fleshes out The First Avenger a little. (but Cap's WW2 adventures would have been cooler)

Another story in this collection is Proximity which comes from the Iron Man 2: Black Widow Agents of SHIELD comic.  You know how "Natalie Rushman" comes to see Tony with papers to sign.  Well this story is how THe Black Widow infiltrated Stark Industries and used her spycraft to manipulate events so that she is the one who has to see Tony.

Both stories were enjoyable enough and are like watching deleted scenes on the DVD release of the movies.

Headlocked: A Single Step written by Michael Kingston art by Randy Valiente and Michael Mulipola (Headlocked Comics)

At the last several cons, I've heard Michael Mulipola talk and I've walked past his booth.  I've been meaning to get his books but I ummed and ahhed and usually I'd run out of money.

I've noticed that it's the books that you stop and think about do I take a chance on this? are the ones that end up being the best ones.

Headlocked as you might guess is a wrestling comic.  One that follows a young wrestler Mike Hartmann, a young man who decides he wants to be a professional wrestler.

Kingston is a wrestling fan but much to my surprize Mulipola is a wrestler and an artist and he is not the only one.  The cover to A Single Step is provided by Jerry "The King" Lawler.  There are bonus stories written by MVP, The Young Bucks and Samoa Joe.

Oh boy this was a good story and tells of Hartmann's attempts to break into the industry I'm interested to see where the story goes in the next two volumes both called The Last Territory.

Next time I see Michael Mulipola, I'm going to have to grab his WWE comics that he has worked on.

Broken Line written by Andrew Constant and art by Emily K. Smith, Mark Lauthier & Kathryn Mann. (Gestalt Comics)

Gestalt is an  Australian comic company that started in 2005 and is the second longest operating Australian comic book company.  I have several of thier books and all of them have been quality products.  They are the publishers of The Deep, Wastelander Panda and Unmasked.  I'm going to mention several other books of theirs in this post.

Constant is the writer of  Torn (from Gestalt), the latest Demon Miniseries by DC and Frew's Kid Phantom (from issue 2)

Broken Line is Mad Max meets a supernatural apocalyspe.  The main character is unnamed and refers to himself as Cop.  The nature of the apocalypse is unspecified, the opening pages suggest a nuclear holocast but there seems to very little fallout or mutants.

Cop has a big black car that calls to mind Mad Max's car.  In story he tells us that he was given the car by a mysterious bogey man, the car is impossible to damage and the tank is always full (suddenly I want one)  and part way through the story the car (literally) disappears.

Cop sees that his sargeant has killed himself when he gets a call from "Robber" who has stolen a cop car.  The two play chicken and Robber shows Cop a young boy he has chained to a tree.  The young boy had bitten his own arm.

I though we may be in one of those Zombie apocalypse scenarios but the boy is human just messed up by a Rasputin-ish preacher who teaches that God and his angels hear prayers through cries of pain.

The story revolves around Cop, Robber and the boy tracking down the preacher.

This comic was enjoyable but whoo boy did it bring up a lot of questions, I'm interested to see where this goes and if we get answers in future installments.

Karnak Book 1 written by Christian Read art by Micheal Maier (Gestalt)

Reid and Maier are the team behind the supernatural western The Eldrich Kid (also from Gestalt (it's starting to look like I may have to do a series of Great Comics Rereads for my other Gestalt books).

The poster for this book described it as Doctor Who meets Dr Strange and I cannot argue with that.  As I looked at it the name Karnak seemed to dance around the edge of familiarity in my brain.  I mentioned it to Wolfgang Bylsma, owner of Gestalt and he mentioned one of Jack Kirby's  Inhumans had that name. (There is also an Egyptian city of Karnak with a large temple)

Then it struck me, it was similar to William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost Finder.  Wolf just smiled and showed me the electric pentagram on the back cover.

When I'm naming my characters I always want names I can conjure with and Christian Read has certainly done so in this series his Richard Karnak takes some cues from Hodgson's Thomas Carnacki but this is new character.

The story is set in the modern day (there are computers and mobile phones) and the 70s is a long time ago.

The story is narrated by Cass Lot who has moved in her new house with her fiance Chang Chan.  The lock on the front door appears to have blood in it.  (apparently moving into a new house is the scariest thing you can do - it rarely works out well in horror movies)  Things get worse from there and Cassie is apprached by Richard Karnak and his assistant Belthaniel (who I think may be an angel)

Karnak discovers that Lot's house was the home of the leader of a satanic swingers club in the 1970s (which by the way I want to know more about  Satanic Swingers sounds like it should have been a sleezy paperback in the seventites) which is the source of the problem.  There's very cool easter egg where the news story about the Satanic Swingers is written by Ned Buntline.  Buntline was the author of the Buffalo Bill Dime novels in the old west.

Belthaniel clears out the supernatural from Lot's house and Cassie intrigued by this new world she has stumbled on and goes to work for Karnak as his protege and assistant.

Karnak is almost exactly how I image Wesley Wyndum-Pryce (from Buffy and Angel may have turned out if he had not come across Angel) with a smattering of DC's John Constantine.

This is highly recommended.

Changing Ways Book 1 by Justin Randall (Gestalt)

I 'd heard good stuff about Changing Ways from a lot of people.  So I decided to give it a go.  I have to admit I was a little aprehensive because it looked like a zombie book and Brad don't do zombies (of course, I have a zombie story rattling my noggin)  but I'm willing to give it a crack,  Let me say Changing Ways is not a zombie story, I have no idea what genre to put this in.

in book 1, Tom Taylor writes a foreward where he says "Changing Ways grabbed me by the eyeballs and wouldn't let me go."

I really can't top that.  The story and art pulled me right in and did not let up, my wife called and I was at page 71,  and I was like "How did I get so far through?"

Great storytellers do that, time stops and you get caught in the story.

I was so hestitant to read this book and now I can't wait to see what the next two parts bring.

I thought intially I wouldn't like the art but damned if it grabbed me.  Randall's colouring bathes entire pages in yellows and reds and greens and blues.  I'm seriously lacking an art vocabulary to talk about the art and the colours.  There's an amazing bit where the young girl in the story is telling her parents something that happened to her and Randall drops his realistic style and gives us art that looks like it was drawn by a ten year old girl.  Holy Smokes.

Now I am torn do I rip straight throught the next two volumes? or dole them out over several days to savour them more?

The Great Comics Reread: The Twelve

So a few years back one of the local comic shops had a moving sale every back issue $1.  Sweet I say and have a shopping spree.

Part of that haul was Issues 3-8 of The Twelve as well as The Twelve: Spearhead one shot and the zero and half issues.  A little bit of internet research told me that the series had not been finished.  J. Michael Straczynski (writer) had become in demand with Hollywood after the success of the movie Changeling directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie.  The artist Chris Weston (who did Spearhead solo) also moved onto other projects.  The general consensus on the net seemed to be that we'd never see the end of the story then in 2012 the last four issues came out.

 The idea is that twelve characters from the Timely Comics era (and hadn't been seen since) were found in 2008 in a bunker in Germany in cryogenic suspension.  The military tries to make them think it's still the 1940s but the narrator The Phantom Reporter soon sees through that.  In many ways the scene is reminiscent of the end of Captain America: The First Avenger which came out three years later. 

Many of the reviews I read claimed that JMS was trying to do a Watchmen.  I can certainly see the similarities - one of the heroes is murdered at the end of the first issue.  The use of defunct characters (the original plans for Watchmen were just that - the MLJ and later the Charlton characters) and the old Timely characters. Some might even say that JMS later work on Before Watchmen bears this out.    I won't go into the merits of this but Watchmen would certainly appear to be an influence on this comic.

I liked the idea that Marvel was embracing some of their Golden Age heritage - except for Captain America and Sub-Mariner there were few characters that seemed to consistently used in the Marvel Universe.  Some of the Characters only appeared in one or two Golden Age Stories some had more.

I wasn't quite so fond of JMS retconning of the character's histories.  The Fiery Mask's origin is revealed to be completely false  for example completely trampling over the Joe Simon origin.  I though his handling of Rockman's origin was better leaving the reader to decide whether the new origin was true or not.

The Phantom Reporter had three identities Richard Jones, cub reporter, The Phantom Reporter and millionaire Van Elden.  The Van Elden identity is completely ignored. (The millionaire playboy fighting crime trope was a little overused in that time and perhaps made him too similar to Mr. E who was already in the Twelve)

It would have been a big problem but the zero and half issues reprinted several of the Golden Age stories so readers would have had the opportunity to read those stories and see the changers that JMS made.

Another thing that I had an issue with was that Twelve was a way to bring these characters back into the modern Marvel universe yet several of the characters were rendered useless for that purpose.  The delayed ending would not have helped in this regard.  Several were dead or presumed so (The Blue Blade, Dynamic Man, Rockman and The Fiery Mask) others seemed to be operating in secret (The Phantom Reporter, The Black Widow, Master Mind Excello, The Laughing Mask, Electro and The Witness) .  Me E had retired. 

Some like Electro and The Black Widow had new bearers of the name running around but a simple name change like (the original Daredevil now referred to as The Death Defying 'Devil  in new stories)

Overall,  I enjoyed the series.  I liked the idea of bringing back the classic characters and giving them a new life.

The pulp style covers were nice.

A few thoughts on a possible Black Widow film

Just after The Avengers came out, there was a quote from Joe Quesada basically saying that there was no female Marvel properties or actresses that could carry a solo movie franchise.


Not surprisingly this caused a wee bit of a stir.  The internet rattled off multiple characters and actresses who could do exactly that, the most obvious one that most people pointed to was of course the one female character and actress who had appeared in both Iron Man 2

 

and The Avengers

 

 

 

 

 

After seeing Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the announcement that we were getting a Black Widow at some point in the future (after Avengers 2: The Age of Ultron) 

 

I had to wonder if Marvel Studios was playing it carefully -  there had only been one Marvel based film with a female lead character Elektra (2005)  and it was not a success. 

 

 (A number female characters appeared in the  X Men films and Sue Storm The Invisible Woman had appeared in the two Fantastic Four movies but they were part of an ensemble cast) There had been one animated series starring a solo Marvel heroine Spider-Woman which ran for 16 episodes.

 

So Marvel Studios had little experience with their own properties.  How was their largest rival DC handling solo female superhero movies/TV/Animation?

 

After two failed pilots, Wonder Woman had a TV series that ran for three seasons (1976-1979), Isis (TV series 1975), Supergirl (1984), Birds of Prey (TV series 2002)  Catwoman (2004) Wonder Woman (2009) animated film. Wonder Woman had an unaired pilot in 2011.  Of all of these only the Wonder Woman TV series starring Lynda Carter might be considered a success.

 

Outside of the big two I'd be hard pressed to think of any successful solo female film or TV series.

 

So I wonder if Marvel Studios, is carefully introducing us to Black Widow expanding her role just a little bit more each role - A glorified cameo in Iron Man 2, part of the ensemble in The Avengers, almost equal co star in Captain America; The Winter Soldier (at least one review has suggested that the movie should have been called Captain America and Black Widow)  so that we as fans actively want a Black Widow film.

 

I could be overthinking it.

 

 

 

 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Of all the current batch of Marvel studios movies Captain America: The First Avenger was my favourite.  It was a great pulp era adventure.   So I was really looking forward to the sequel (even more than the Avengers)

The Winter Soldier was a great movie it brought Cap firmly into the 21st century and teamed him with Black Widow (who had previously appeared in Iron Man 2 & The Avengers) and The Falcon.

Each of Cap's allies gives us a nice contrast with Cap.  Steve Rogers is a super soldier thanks to the serum he received in the first movie. Black Widow is a spy and their methods are nicely contrasted in the first mission.  Captain America uses non lethal force to knock out enemy agents, The Black Widow shoots and presumably kills.

When Black Widow and Cap go on the run it is Black Widow who takes the lead teaching Steve spy craft, such as "when on the run don't run".  The Black Widow is very very good at what she does.

Sam Wilson is a former soldier, Steve literally runs rings around him (as Sam points out "I do what he does only slower")  The Falcon exo suit is awesome to watch in action and I couldn't help but to be reminded of The Rocketeer (the wings taking the place of the finned helmet) *

The Russo brothers have wisely kept CGI to a minimum and it pays off in the fight scenes.

I'm really curious to see how the fallout from this impacts the other Marvel movies (Guardians of the Galaxy won't be impacted being set in space) and The Agents of SHIELD TV series.

Marvel seems to be really leading the race in the cinemas with trailers for Guardians of the Galaxy, The Amazing Spider-man 2 and X Men Days of Future Past all showing before the movie.  Lego Batman told us to turn off our phones. (Having said that I prefer Arrow to SHIELD so maybe they should focus on TV more.)






*Actually if you replace Howard Hughes in The Rocketeer with Howard Stark it makes perfect sense.