I'm no further forward in planning a trip away or with the marking I brought home. Instead, here's my second post on the Hachette graphic novel which collects the early days of the Kane/Thomas Captain Marvel.
Yesterday, I said the character hadn't grabbed me as a kid. He was a bit bland and his powers were nondescript. I did get one more issue of the first run, though, six months later in 1970.
But first, Mar-Vell had a cameo role in January's Avengers - the cover as usual rather overstates his involvement in the first, fleeting encounter with the Zodiac cartel. I'm dubious whether sales figures would have come in fast enough to warrant a mini- revival of CM'a own title. In any case, I didn't get this one until our first trip to Galloway in 1972.
This was another childhood purchase in East Kilbride. Not for the last time, the cover proclaims Silvertop as The Hero Who Wouldn't Die.
The story starts in Greenwich Village as Rick Jones's protest singer gig concludes with a paraphrase of Macbeth from Thomas. You can see here that Roy the Boy would come to be best known, perhaps, for his adaptations of the prose of other writers. Rick still seems more 1963's Freewheelin' Bob Dylan than 1970's Sweet Baby James Taylor, however- what a square.
Two pages recap the previous three issues, wisely so after the hiatus. Logically, I think, Rick seeks out Bruce Banner to solve his body-swapping problem with Mar-Vell, rather than Reed Richards, whom he hardly knows.
Mar-Vell encounters a costumed band of looters named The Rat Pack ( They'll be revived in the short-lived Tigra series about six years later.) Rick and the Hulk are then brought together by dramatic irony.
I first saw the next issue as an out-of-sequence reprint in MWOM in the early 70s. There's another recap- it's now 8 months since issue 19. If this had been a failing comic in the 90s, Spidey, Wolvie or both would've shown up. Here, the Hulk invades the campus where "students radicals" have trapped Dr. Weller, Banner's previously-unseen colleague, who might have the key to Rick's dilemma.
Mar-vell clashes with the Hulk but it's Rick who ends his rampage. Mar-Vell patents the "Justice Like Lightning" motto later used in Black Lightning and curiously, this feels like one of the Adams/O'Neil GL/GA Relevancy stories, which first began in April 1970. Maybe Roy was just tapping into the zeitgeist or maybe it was a deliberate move to get hip.
We'll never know because a blurb states "Here ends the final chapter of our second try-out for the Sensational New Captain Marvel." The use of "new" suggests to me that management saw this run of five issues as two arcs, not one. It's sad to see that the Captain just couldn't fly under this team. Did people just not like Kane? It seems no series he did at Marvel was very popular: DD, John Carter- and yet by the mid-70s, he was drawing every cover, or so it seemed. (I wish he had drawn an issue or two of DC's Karate Kid but he was working exclusively Marvel circa 77/78.)
Rick's coffee house music career seemed a bit dated: even DC had noticed Woodstock, especially in the Flash of all places. Maybe Rick shouldn't have shared the powers- but Conway made the gimmick work for years in Firestorm.
Mar-Vell himself was a bit of a dud as an Earthbound space man. His exploits take place in the desert and in caves, then in tenements; an elegant costume design but no sense of cosmic grandeur. Furthermore, there were no memorable super-villains and no supporting cast to speak of. Even his logo is chunky and dull.
Mar-Vell went on to appear in Sub-Mariner 30, two months later, with Rick in a story about environmentalism. Maybe Relevancy would have been the way to go after all but Mar-Vell's next appearances were in the legendary Kree-Skrull war. This sequence is one of the most epic in the late Silver Age/early Bronze Age, although interestingly it's almost entirely driven by Roy's nostalgia (cf. Ant-Man, the Skrull cows, the Timely heroes at the climax, etc).
With the body-swapping status quo back in place, Mar-Vell's series was revived with issue 22 in September 1972. This comic has a Kane cover, in the "frame" house style of the early 70s I really like. The logo has been designed and The Hero Who Wouldn't Die is trumpeted again. Unfortunately, the next brace of issues is wretched. Florid, early Gerry Conway scripting and staid art by Wayne (Superman) Boring.
There's a cutesy nod to CC Beck with Professor Savannah, who gives Rick a "Photon Bath" treatment for a power-upgrade. Conway also introduces a new villain, Megaton the Nuclear Man. He'd also give us Makhizmo the Nuclear Man and tv's own Firestorm the Aforementioned Man before the decade was done.
"I'll come back and I'll show 'em all!"
Despite another framed, vibrant Kane cover, issue 23 is a real stinker. You'll know by now that I can't stand Marv Wolfman's writing. He's created several important characters- Blade, Raven, Terra, Slade Wilson- but his melodramatic tone and tin ear for comedy are excruciating. That quote is actual Marv dialogue.
Megaton's origin is fleshed out with new details- more of a Kree involvement for one, which enables Rick to find a new pair of Nega-bands. Mar-vell disposes of Megaton in the Arctic sky.
Happily, we don't get the next Wolfman-Boring issue which introduced Dr. Mynde ( what a laff). The Hachette book gives a one-page recap of the first Thanos War then continues with two issues of Marvel Spotlight by Moench and Broderick. These were inventory stories from the final cancellation of CM's monthly title in 1979. They rehash most of Starlin's characters and themes in a psychedelic way but with very little originality. But then, I'm not a fan of Moench either, beside his collaboration with Paul Gulacy.
This post got a little out of hand! I need a third one to discuss what happened next to Mar-Vell; what might've happened if Starlin hadn't come along; and which Hulk sidekick might've worn the Nega-bands after Rick.
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