Sal's Sunday Punch #3

It's a very special Incredibly '90s Sal Buscema Punch!

"It's okay, I guess.  I've been punched harder."
(Spectacular Spider-Man #219, written by Tom DeFalco and Todd DeZago, art by Sal Buscema and Scott Hanna) 

In today's installment, from 1994's Spectacular Spider-Man #219, Spider-Man's been poisoned by the evil avian duo of the Vulture and the Owl (in an amusingly Silver-Agey touch, he was scratched by an actual vulture with poison-soaked talons), and he's teamed with Daredevil to find the cure!  Too bad for him that there is no cure.  And, you know, because it's 1994, Daredevil is wearing an armored costume and keeps insisting that he isn't Matt Murdock because he faked his own death with his Infinity War doppelganger, and the Vulture is wearing an armored costume and is also young, having drained the life energy of Peter Parker's robot spy mom.  Comics, man.

He's Magically Vicious

Despite the Kirby-centric paragraph to the left,
the art here is credited to Dick Ayers. Just FYI.

So it's fair to say that I'm a fan of Jack Kirby. However, I don't think I've read as much of his material as I would like - in terms of collections, I believe I only have The Forever People of his Fourth World books, and a couple trade paperbacks of his '70s Captain America and the Falcon run. So when I saw a reprint of the Joe Simon/Jack Kirby run of The Fly for cheap at a local comic show, I made sure to snatch it up.

The Fly is one of the Archie Adventure Series heroes, published by, yes, Archie Comics. The company actually started out publishing superheroes (under the name MLJ Magazines), but America's Favorite Teenager soon eclipsed his super-brethren in popularity and became the publisher's flagship character.

Where does The Fly figure into this? He's not one of the "Golden Age" heroes of MLJ, for one, having been created by Simon and Kirby in the early 1950s. He became part of their core stable in years to come, though - whenever there was an Archie superhero revival, you'd be sure to see him alongside The Shield and the Black Hood (who did start out in the '40s), even if he was sometimes called Fly-Man.

Hulk #178: The Story of Space Jesus.

That was exactly the apostle Mark's
reaction to the crucifixion  too.

So, I've had this old issue of the Hulk sitting in a pile of comics waiting to be read. When I finally read it I realised I would have to share it with you guys. The point of 80 Page Giant is for us contributors to share the stuff that we're reading (or thinking about) that really strikes us. And this sure struck me.

See, I'd long known that Jack Kirby's Him character had been re-imagined as Adam Warlock. I'd also long known that Adam Warlock was kind of a 'space Jesus' type of character. What I hadn't known before was how absolutely freaking literal that was.

So along came Gerry Conway and Tony Isabella to educate me, in Incredible Hulk #178. This issue... this issue... it's a retelling of Christ's crucifixion, starring Adam Warlock as Jesus.

No, I'm not kidding, man. This thing isn't even as subtle about this as a Narnia book. Take a look at that cover. Adam Warlock on a freaking cross. At least Aslan was put to death on a stone table, so you could PRETEND it wasn't a Christian parable.

So let's take a closer look at this thing, shall we?

More Unstable Molecules

So, scanner's busted.  That means no Nightwatch for a little while.  It also means that my content will have to be from Marvel's digital comics, which I can make screen captures of - and today, that means more Unstable Molecules!  Today's installment comes from 1975's Fantastic Four #164, written by Roy Thomas, with pencils by George Perez, inks by Joe Sinnott, and colours by Petra Goldberg.  Johnny Storm's off on a date, and he's wearing this, possibly because Annihilus punched him in the head too many times:

You can't talk about "winning combos" ever again, Johnny..

Archie One-Page gags.

Oh Ethel. You're so ugly and repulsive!

So when I'm going through and scanning things from my Archie digests I often end up scanning extra pages, because of course when you lay out a digest on a scanner you end up doing two pages at a time. Sometimes you scan two pages you want, sometimes the second page is something else. Maybe it's ads, or the first page of a story I don't want -- and of course sometimes it's one-page strips that are self-contained jokes.

Rather than just delete these, I've been saving the one pagers. So how about I share a few of them today? Yay!

I'm honestly not positive of the genesis of these one-page gags. Some of them are clearly formatted for the single page -- others are clearly taken from Archie newspaper strips. I'll leave it to you (and to my own comments, let's be honest) to try and decide which is which.

As always there's no credits on these strips, so I can't really help you if you're trying to work out who the artist is on them. I can give you a best guess, but that's about it. So how about we get on with the show?

Let’s Get It On!

Hey there sports fans! (I know there are at least like, three of you out there reading this site). Throughout the decades of comic book-dom, there always rages the debate on who could beat who in a fight, whether it’s Spider-Man versus Green Arrow or Spawn throwing down with The Specter or some such. But what if, say, you took a super hero, stripped away his powers and put him in the cage with an honest to God modern day gladiator?

No, not this one.

Obviously comics have looked at this before, most famously the Superman vs. Muhammad Ali comic from the seventies. Same concept (Supes is depowered) but I’m updating it a little with the modern combat sport of Mixed Martial Arts vice boxing, mostly cause a) it more closely resembles a real fight than pure boxing and b) it’s the only sport I follow.

Seriously though, Muhammad would have creamed a depowered Superman in a boxing match. I wager Cassius took it easy on him.

I took four heavy hitters (pun intended) from the Big Two and stacked them against the sport of men (and women, I suppose). Who can really throw down without their gadgets, invulnerability and super healing powers? Find out!

Sal's Sunday Punch #2

 The thing one needs to remember about a Sal Buscema Punch is that the punch is not the most vital component. The most vital component is that the guy getting hit goes flying, flipping over backwards and screaming. What this means is that even a horse can get in on this action!!

Hulk #265, Writer Bill Mantlo, Artist Sal Buscema, Colourist our friend Bob Sharen.

Gut-wrenching embarrassment.

Everybody loves Magneto.  He's universally recognized as the X-Men's greatest foe, even if he's a member sometimes.  He's in basically every X-themed cartoon and video game, he was played by Ian McKellen for three movies, and now he's killing Nazis and looking badass doing it in X-Men: First Class.  But before Chris Claremont revitalized him in the late '70s, he had some rough years.  He fought Captain America, and recruited a new highly-generic, albeit charmingly Jack Kirby-y, Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.  He fought the Defenders and turned into a baby.  He was in an incredibly embarrassing episode of the '70s Fantastic Four cartoon, where Reed Richards defeated him with a wooden gun.  Here's a taste:

And there's this, where Magneto's mad at a flunky, and...well, I'll let this panel speak for itself.

(Avengers #47, written by Roy Thomas, art by John Buscema and George Tuska)

Unstable Molecules

While I work up the courage to write more about Nightwatch, here's something I came across and just had to share with you - because I hate you.

"You can call it swinging, Flash.  We're both adults."
(Amazing Spider-Man #335, written by David Michelinie, art by Erik Larsen and Terry Austin)

Where to start? The giant arrow over Flash's junk?  Felicia's animal-print pants that correspond with no actual animal?  Or maybe the fact that they've coordinated their shoes with these fashion travesties?

Gap Fillers: An Incredible Hulk #290 review.

Al Milgrom art.

When you're collecting comic books, especially when you're collecting back issues, you always end up with gaps. There's always one or two issues that escape you. Because of the serial nature of adventure comics, especially super hero comics, this means you end up with unfinished stories.

This is worse when you're younger and don't have a lot of income, or a lot of control over how you get your comics. You end up with stories you never seem to be able to finish. And inevitably the story is the conclusion of a whole bunch of important plot threads and you're left dangling.

Incredible Hulk #290 is one of those issues for me. I had a long run leading up to it, then a bunch of issues after it, but never #290 itself. It took me about 15 years to finally get #290. You can't imagine the anticipation I had when this issue finally arrived in my hands. Here it was, a story I hadn't read that was a conclusion to a long storyline I'd loved and read about 5 million times when I was a kid.

You've all been there. You know what happens next. You read the issue, telling yourself not to expect it to be the greatest thing ever and sure enough... it's not. Usually it's not BAD, it's just that this comic you've been anticipating for years is, well, just another issue in the series. It's not a massive, super special issue. It's not a classic, world-beating story. It's just another comic.

Incredible Hulk #290 is not just another comic.