tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6830827465735526826.post7756099792309757014..comments2024-03-19T00:28:15.319-07:00Comments on Marvel University: April 1976 Part One: Special Fourth Anniversary Issue!John Scolerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15830334036783163702noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6830827465735526826.post-89072933110217846342015-09-14T13:09:49.799-07:002015-09-14T13:09:49.799-07:00Sue Storm had a chance to switch her code name in ...Sue Storm had a chance to switch her code name in FF #169, but instead she decided to stick with the Invisible Girl, "a little while longer". Little could she know that she would not give up that name until the end of issue #283.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6830827465735526826.post-47891278826432814402015-06-04T06:14:00.199-07:002015-06-04T06:14:00.199-07:00Professor Chris: yeah, Iron Fist will use his heal...Professor Chris: yeah, Iron Fist will use his healing power again down the road.Professor Flynnnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6830827465735526826.post-15468207595823102242015-06-03T17:47:48.566-07:002015-06-03T17:47:48.566-07:00I'm certainly familiar with the Firesign Theat...I'm certainly familiar with the Firesign Theater, although I wasn't when I first read this month's issue of the Defenders. Nor was all that aware of the various quasi-religious movements Gerber was lampooning. None of that stopped me from immensely enjoying it back then and I still regard the Nebulon/Headmen saga as one of the great highlights of mid-70s comics. Gerber topped having Hulk as a contestant in a silly game show by now putting him in a bozo mask! And if Nebulon could grant himself a glamorous image, why not have him hide within the image of a short, puny-looking nebbish who could still convert ordinary people to his cult that requires they are all bozos and need to put themselves in his hands. Expert merger of humor, drama and social commentary by Gerber and well-rendered by our pal Sal.<br />Meanwhile, Kirby almost seemed to be going for his own brand of absurdism in CA&TF; I kept on collecting and reading but it didn't quite pull me in the same way Gerber's story did. For all their outlandishness, Gerber's stories still seemed to be operating well within the Marvel Universe, but Kirby's CA&TF tales seemed as divorced from the rest of the MU as Conan the Barbarian! And as written by Kirby, both Cap & Falc might as well have been new characters as they hardly resembled the characters' personalities as written by either Lee or Englehart, the prime chroniclers of Captain America since his Silver Age revival. <br />As to Tony Isabella's Avengers fill-in, uh, sorry Tony but this was awful -- bad art, bad story, wooden dialogue. Alas, this month's Spider-Man by Len Wein was almost as badly written, if better drawn, and was more in the style of typical issue of MTU, just without a guest-star. Took Wein a while to start producing stories that really got the gist of what Ditko/Lee/Romita and even Conway had done previously on ASM, balancing the adventures of Spider-Man with the interactions of Peter Parker with his supporting cast, which is IMO one of aspects that had made ASM one of the most popular comics ever. MTU was a side-show, often with Spidey never appearing out of costume for months at a time (at least to my recall, as with the ongoing Mantlo/Buscema time-travel epic), but in ASM readers expected to see a lot more of Peter and his cast, and not just JJJ, and stories like this Whodunit seemed more like something from a typical Silver Age DC than a Bronze Age Marvel.Fred W. Hillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07602124919964053532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6830827465735526826.post-35934813322183310052015-06-03T12:49:02.467-07:002015-06-03T12:49:02.467-07:00Regarding this issue of the Defenders, is no one f...Regarding this issue of the Defenders, is no one familiar with the Firesign Theater or was it just so obvious that no one thought it worth mentioning?Jack Seabrookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02216640325305820140noreply@blogger.com