Bizarre Adventures #30 - Marvel

Feb. 1982 - He is Paradox!

Who, exactly, is Paradox? I found that out for the first time myself reading this issue, in a story called "Saturn's Secret" by Bill Mantlo, Mike Vosburg, and...Joe Jusko?

I can't exactly tell what Joe did in this issue...the inks and wash tones, perhaps? Joe, if you're reading this, clue us in!

Anyway, after the unusual splash page:

We open on the planet Mercury, in the future, where Man now has the ability to breed an off-shoot of their species, a group of beings bred to be able to survive (and work) on the scorching hot planet, to mine it for metals needed for Man's growing empire to thrive.

But of course there's tension, leading to this new breed of humans to break free of their masters and declare open rebellion!

On Earth, we meet Paradox who is, Mantlo informs us, "the Empire's premier antigravity danseur."

He is met by several agents of the government, who want to hire him to quell this rebellion. And as we see, not all of them think too highly of Paradox:

He agrees to the mission, reluctantly, after being told all the other agents that have been sent on this mission have failed. After they leave, Paradox talks to a hologram of a woman named Catherine, whom he acts as though is really there. Hmm...

On Paradox's way to Mercury, we're given an interesting glimpse of the rules of this kind of society. The humans treat the aliens with contempt, and when two teenage girls rudely push an alien girl over to get Paradox's autograph, he teaches them a lesson:

Soon enough Paradox arrives on Mercury, where he meets up with a team of other agents all sent to quell the rebellion.

Turns out Paradox is well named, because he turns out to be on the opposite side of his employers, helping to turn these enslaved people free!

Years ago, Paradox helped jail this woman, Catherine, for crimes against the government. But then he fell in love with her, and came around to her way of thinking. When she was brutally raped and murdered by his own kind, he resolved himself to be come a sort of double agent. As he watches the revolution happen right before his eyes, he thinks of her:

Definitely some interesting stuff going on here. Bill Mantlo manages to get a lot of info across about the world of Paradox, and still finds time for Marvel-style action. Paradox is definitely not your typical hero.

Next is a story called "Silhouette" by Peter Gillis and Gene Day, about two different sets of people chasing after a valuable element. I had a hard time figuring out what the heck was going on a lot of the time, though Day's art is nice.

Next is a great little tale, "Honor", by Steve Skeates, John Buscema, and Bob Wiacek:

...interesting to see Big John render a sci-fi tale, but of course he does just fine. And no offense to guys like Tony DeZuniga or Ernie Chan, but I really liked Bob Wiacek's inking over Buscema's pencils:

This story only runs five pages, and wraps up with a nasty, downbeat ending. A nice little tale, would've made a great episode of Outer Limits.

Last is the regular BA feature, "Bucky Bizarre" by Skeates and Steve Smallwood, wrapping up an unusual issue that had some definite interesting moments.

Superheroes Monthly Debut Party

From time to time I've profiled issues of the fun U.K. reprint title Superheroes Monthly; this photo is from an event at a comic book store celebrating its debut. Now that's a store that knows how to throw a party! Look how ecstatic that kid on the far left is--now that's Comics.

I had never seen this photo before until I came across it on the uber-cool site Wonder Woman Collectors, site master Kyall Coulton generously told me I could post it here. Thanks Kyall!

Savage Sword of Conan #32 - Marvel

Aug. 1978 - Another fine Conan adventure, behind a cover by Val Mayerik!

Like I've said before, it actually does a bit of disservice to try and explain these Conan adventures, especially the ones by the team of Roy Thomas and John Buscema (the Scorsese/DeNiro of Conan comics). Sure, they're formulaic, but that's part of the fun.

So instead of a tedious breakdown of the plot, I present mostly without comment some of finest moments in this issue, courtesy "Big" John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga:

Discussion Question: Who is more blindly optimistic, the random swordsman who thinks he'll be the one to kill Conan, or your standard Joe Henchman who signs up with the Joker thinking the Clown Prince of Crime won't kill him in a random act of pique?

Ok, anyway, back to Conan:

...every issue should end with Conan patting a girl on the behind. There, I said it.

Not only is this issue a classic of Conan-style debauchery, but it features this ad for the next issue:

Conan...drawn by Gene Colan?!? Off to eBay!

Bluebook - Q.M.G. Magazine Corp.

Dec. 1968 - My post three weeks ago on our first "men's magazine" ended up being the single most popular post I've ever had on the blog, and I got requests for more! Luckily, a lot of these magazines are found on eBay very cheaply, so here we are with--Bluebook!

Bluebook ran, under one title or another, from 1905 to 1975(!), published by different houses, featuring material relevant to the time.

As we'll see, Bluebook in 1968 had two things on its mind: war and sex, and not necessarily in that order.

First up is the letter's page, titled "Bluebook's Bull Session." The answers are fairly non-descript, but the questions are a trifle unsettling:

Fun Fact: That second letter mixing sex and suicide was written by the Zodiac Killer.

Anyway, the first article is one-page feature called "Men At Arms."

Pause.

Ok, is the Post Office looking the other way now, satisfied Bluebook has fulfilled the requirements of a First Class Mailing permit? Good! Now let's get to the main event: an article called "Super Sex: The Return of Prostitution's Golden Era" featuring behind-the-scenes info from prostitutes themselves, featuring photos like this one:

...this photo makes me sad.

Next is another war-related piece, but with the sex worked right in:

...I can't speak for author Hal D. Steward, but I think if I worked hard writing a several page article about the Enduring Commie Menace, I'd feel a bit let down by the photo they chose to ran to open it.

Next is a war-only article, "The Glory Trail of Marvin Shields--The Navy's Fightingest Seabee", which seems to be a pretty serious piece, and features some serious photos of strife in Vietnam (btw, Blogger Spell Check does not recognize the word "Fightingest").

"I Invaded The World's Wildest Sex Market" is next, featuring lots of little black bars, then another fightin' men piece, "The Fantastic 92-Day Escape Ordeal of Capt. Lawrence Fowler", and then "Night of the Long Knife" which re-uses the nice cover painting.

Next is "The Never-Ending Orgy", about the swinging lifestyle, featuring photos like this:

...I think that caption quote needs to be repeated, bigger:

You said it, bro.

There are some more articles, like "The Ghost Ship That Sailed to Hell", plus a centerfold featuring a cutie named Fran Purdy. She's credited as being a TV actress, but I can't find any listing for her on imdb. Make of that what you will.

Like the previous men's magazine we talked about, the most intriguing thing to me about these mags are the ads. They sell all kinds of bizarre stuff, like this:

...and this:

A man-girdle and fake head hair? For a magazine so obsessed with getting laid, they tried to sell you stuff guaranteeing that would never happen.

These two top-to-bottom ads also caught my eye:

Men's nigh-invisible underpants?....the hell?

As for the second ad...I honestly don't even understand what it is they're selling. I guess its some sort of illustrated porno book. It is written by "A master of description", so there's that.

Eerie #100 - Warren

April 1979 - I realized a while ago I haven't talked about any Warren mags recently, and they were the main reason I started this blog in the first place!

So while buying stuff on eBay, I saw someone selling this 100th issue of Eerie, which I had never read, so I snapped it up.

Unfortunately, Eerie's 100th issue happened right smack in the middle of the sci-fi craze that swept the Warren mags, in the wake of the massive success of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

And since my...apathy for this material has been stated here many times, I don't see the need to belabor the point. Not that there's anything wrong with this stuff, its just that I could never really get over the idea of this kind of material being in a magazine named Eerie.

Again, since Warren kept doing this stuff, obviously it was fairly popular; its just that it never grabbed me as a kid, and it still doesn't, all these years later.

So I'm going to present without comment some of the material in this issue, featuring superb art jobs by Alfred Alcala, Leo Durnona, Jim Janes, Isidro Mones, and Jim Starlin:

...of course, like all Warrens, this issue ends with pages and pages of fun Captain Company material. By this point, most of it was also sci-fi related, except for the back issues you could buy, reminding one of the genuinely, well, eerie material that this mag used to run:

Masters of Terror #1 - Marvel

July 1975 - Are you ready to be scared?

Masters of Terror, sure, was an all-reprint title, collecting material from Marvel's myriad horror/suspense comics from the early 70s, but what material it was!

For one measly buck, you got a lot of good material, all of it wrapped up in a cover by Jim Steranko and Gray Morrow! Wow!

First up is the cover feature, an adaptation of Theodore Sturgeon's "It!", the predecessor to later swamp-laden comics stars like Swamp Thing and Man-Thing, by Roy Thomas, Marie Severin, and Frank Giacoia:

Running twenty pages, its a surprisingly gruesome story (I especially felt sorry for the dog), but very effective.

Next is "The Horror From The Mound!" which is not set in the world of Baseball, but rather West Texas:

...written by Gardner Fox, its a fairly routine vampire story, given extra oomph by a nice art job by Frank Brunner.

Next is "The Terrible Old Man", by Thomas and the art combo of Barry Smith (who was still in his Kirby phase at the time), Dan Adkins, and John Verpoorten; an H.P. Lovecraft tale about a creepy old man (as if Lovecraft would write a story about a not creepy old man).

Following that is, to me, the centerpiece of the book, "The Drifting Snow" by Tony Isabella Esteban Maroto:

Maroto turns in an absolutely fantastic art job, full of rich detail and startling compositions:

There's a text piece about the authors adapted in this issue, and then a Robert Bloch story, the uber-creepy "The Shambler From The Stars!":

...writer Rob Goulart and artists Jim Starlin and Tom Palmer (now there's an unusual combo!) do the story justice, and pull off an especially creepy finale.

The final story is the gripping "Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper!" by Ghoulart, Thomas, and the very spiffy art team of Gil Kane and Ralph Reese:

...Reese does a particularly nice job inking Kane; I'd love to see if they did more work together.

This story has one of the most downbeat, nasty endings I've ever seen, without any sort of moral uplift. And since this story ends the issue, without even any sort of text piece afterwards, its an especially nasty way to wrap up the book. Well done, Marvel!

Masters of Terror would only last two issues, sadly; maybe the all-reprints content turned off comics fans. Too bad, since they clearly pulled some of the best material they had together.

Cracked #175 - Major Magazines

January 1981 - It's way too long to only now get to Cracked magazine, the perennial also-ran to Mad.

Sure, Cracked lived in Mad's shadow during its entire, almost forty-year(!) run, but as a kid I didn't know that. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, Mad still had a bit of a reputation as being edgy, or at the very least something my parents probably wouldn't automatically approve of. So I went for Cracked, which seemed a little gentler or less edgy. I laugh now, reading that sentence back.

Anyway, I had a whole ton of Cracked, and for a long time never missed an issue. They disappeared from my life at some point along the way, and I always meant to get to it here, but never seemed to quite do it.

Then I saw a couple issues for sale (cheap!--er, sorry, that's Mad) from an eBay seller I was buying some other mags from, and picked one up.

I picked this issue, with its M*A*S*H cover, because I love the show, and wanted to see how they skewered it:

The thread of this parody--drawn by the peerless John Severin--is the M*A*S*H actors might want to try other roles after playing the memvbers of the 4077th for so long, and they get replaced by other TV stars, like Archie Bunker, Mork, and Fonzie.

Hardly an idea so funny you have to pick yourself up off the floor from laughing so hard, but I think that's because, for the most part, M*A*S*H was a massively popular and beloved series that it was hard to parody. Indeed, the cover says "We Salute M*A*S*H", not "We Destroy M*A*S*H."

After that, there's a piece on mail-order catalogs ("what-order whats?" says a younger generation) featuring some nice cartoony art by Charlton mainstay Warren Sattler:

...I love the stereo guy's laid-back, keep-on-truckin' posture.

There's a piece on different pictures on U.S. currency, a one-page strip called "Ye Hang Ups" drawn by Catherine Severin, who I couldn't find much info on. Since John has a famous sister, the awesome colorist Marie, I assume Catherine is John's wife or daughter.

In any case, she has a nice style, similar to John's, but more cartoony, and she acquits herself well on several features, like this one:

There's also "The Cracked Lens", which is a cost-effective feature putting funny captions on movie stills, "Cracked Headlines", "How to Be A Salesman", "When the U.S. Adopts the Metric System", and "Profile of a Coward."

That last strip is drawn by Cracked mainstay Bill Ward, who also drew the regularly-featured character Nanny Dickering, who was the magazine's roving reporter:

...as a kid, I never really wondered why Nanny was built the way she was. I mean, jeez! If my parents had seen this maybe they woulda been happier with Mad!

(A few years later, when I got interested in, um, other kinds of publications, it was deeply disturbing to see Bill Ward drawing a hardcore, XXX-rated comic strip for the porno magazine Club. It was basically a strip of women that looked a lot like Nanny Dickering doing things involving...well, you can guess. It was odd to have something from my childhood crash so directly into my mid-teenage years)

The issue ends with "Cracked Shut-Ups", which is what it sounds like.

I hope I don't sound too critical here. Sure, the humor now is mostly lame in the extreme, but Cracked was meant to entertain your average 11 to 12 year old, and it did its job.

In fact, when Cracked returned in 2006, I was a little disappointed to see it was brought back as a pseudo Onion-style humor magazine (which folded after a measly two issues!). I woulda been more than happy to see Sylvester the janitor again.