Steve Does Comics

It's a case of, "Steve Does Appropriate," today as the feature the internet can't stop talking about returns with a two-in-one edition of its own.

A couple of years back, I bought a job lot of old comics that contained, amongst other things, a sizable run of Marvel Two-In-Ones. Upon perusing them I was surprised to discover that amongst them were two comics I'd totally forgotten I'd ever owned during childhood.

The first featured the Thing being buzzed in the ear to distraction until he starts breaking things - such as street lamps - and lands up in court. Needless to say, New York's only living lawyer Matt Murdock's soon on hand to no doubt fail in his duties.

The other tale features Dr Strange - and possibly the Thing going on holiday. And this is just how forgettable the comic is; because, even though I re-read this tale just two years ago, I still can't remember what happens in it, making it the only comic I've ever owned whose contents I've managed to forget twice.

As I've said before, given my love for the Thing, and how fondly I remember his series, it really is remarkable the difficulty I have recalling any story he's ever appeared in.

Oh well, I don't care. He's orange, he's made of rocks and he says, "It's Clobberin' Time!" a lot. And, when it comes down to it, that's good enough for me.

Hold onto your spinner racks, comics lovers - because it's back; the sensational new feature where I attempt to talk about comics that I don't even remember ever having owned!

Of course, I do now know I once owned those comics, or I wouldn't be able to do this feature. I'd have to call it, "Comics I've Never Ever Owned And Know Nothing About," which'd be a totally different thing and an exercise in futility too developed for even this blog.

But, the point is that, up until I blundered across the covers to the comics in question, during my internet wanderings, I'd totally forgotten I ever had them.

And I have to hand it to Marvel Two-In-One because a sneak preview tells me that three issues of that title fit slap-bang into that category.

This is somewhat odd, as the Thing was arguably my favourite Marvel hero when I was a child.

In fact, so in favour of him was I that I even had a Thing badge, purchased by the magic of mail order from a back cover of Mighty World of Marvel.

First of that guilty trio of Two-In-One issues is #12, in which, I gather from the cover, the Thing and Iron Man team up to tackle Prester John.

The worrying thing is that not only did I have this comic but I'm pretty sure I must've read it again when it was reprinted in Marvel UK's Titans mag, meaning I had at least two copies of the tale in my collection and still forgot it'd ever existed.

Looking at that cover, I seem to recall that Prester John goes mad for some reason and has to be stopped before he can cause all sorts of trouble for mankind. I also seem to recall that, at the time, I wasn't happy about Marvel turning him evil, as I'd always seen him as a good egg and the voice of reason.

I have a feeling Vince Colletta may have been the inker. Other than that, I can say nothing of the contents.

I do feel that, for forgetting all about a tale featuring my favourite hero, I do though deserve a good slap.

But preferably not from Prester John, who I like to think is now fully restored to the niceness of which I'm accustomed.

Something very strange happened in the Autumn of 1975. A number of the comics I'd been getting week-in and week-out for several years disappeared without trace from my local newsagents. The Mighty World of Marvel, The Avengers and Spider-Man Comics Weekly all vanished at around the same time. If not for Planet of the Apes, what would I have had to keep me going? Fortunately, within a few months they were all back. But when Spider-Man Comics Weekly returned, it was in a whole new form.

It had been Titanised.

Like that other Marvel UK comic, Spider-Man's weekly mag was now printed sideways. This was good. Thanks to it allowing them to print two pages of artwork side-by side on every physical page, this meant you got twice as many pages for your money.

So what did you get?

You got trauma.

No sooner had the comic reappeared than this happened; Gwen Stacy died.

Now, I managed to miss the issue where she went but I sure as shooting heck had the next one, in which I discovered that in my absence Gwen had bought it. This was terrible. Gwen was blonde. She wore nice boots. She wore an Alice band. How could they kill such a creature? On top of that, by the end of this issue, the Green Goblin was gone too.

To say this was powerful stuff for a twelve year old would be no matter of hyperbole. Seeing Spider-Man clutching the corpse of his long-time girlfriend was quite the most moving thing I'd ever read in my life. This story and the ones that followed, as Peter Parker tried - and sometimes failed - to come to terms with the death of Gwen Stacy had a potency I'd never seen before in a comic and left an impression on me that remains to this day. I still regard the events of the next couple of years on that strip as the greatest era Spider-Man ever had. One that only dissipated when Ross Andru left the mag and Peter Parker graduated.

Two into one will go. The landscape format that showed us a whole new way of looking at comics.

Nor is the specially produced splash page for the George Tuska Iron Man tale that follows it. Shell-Head's up against The Controller who I think turned up in the pages of Jim Starlin's Captain Marvel. The presence of this tale baffles me. Up until now I was under the impression Marvel UK's Iron Man reprints ended when the comic switched to landscape format. Now I've discovered they didn't. This means I must've read years of Iron Man stories from that point on, with no recall of them at all. Essential Iron Man Vol 3 clearly beckons, as I try to find out what happened in all those tales I've forgotten.

Next it's a Thor adventure as he sets out to tackle Dr Doom after rescuing a protesting girl from a mini-riot. He soon finds out Doom's kidnapped her father in order to get him to build him some missile silos. In the flashback, the girl's clearly aged at least ten years since he was abducted, which implies he's taking an awful long time to build those silos and that Doom blatantly kidnapped the wrong silo scientist. In order to lure Doom out into the open, Don Blake plants a story in the papers that he's developed a cosmetic surgery technique that can cure any disfigurement. This seems rather thoughtless of him, as the hopes of disfigured people the world over will be built up and then cruelly dashed for no good reason. Aww but who cares? It's drawn by John Buscema, so every panel's a thing of simple beauty.

We finish off with a Thing/Black Widow team-up that I assume comes from the pages of Marvel Two-In-One. Much as I love the Thing - and the Black Widow - I'm not convinced Two-In-One was always the greatest comic Marvel produced, and this tale does little to change that. The story's pretty silly, with the Widow at one point whipping off her top to reveal she has the parts for a disruptor cannon attached to her back, hidden in a strip of fake skin. Let's own up, we've all done it. Meanwhile, the Thing spends half the story hauling in a three mile long stretch of cable to stop a bomb going off. As well as the somewhat lame story, the art looks terrible. Either Klaus Janson's inking doesn't suit Bob Brown's pencils or Janson's habitually lavish use of ink suffers unduly from being shrunk to half normal size.

So, was the landscape format a good thing?

Of course it was.

As said before, the great thing about it was you got twice as much story for your money. Where else would you get an entire 20 page Spider-Man story, plus seven to nine pages each of Dr Strange, Iron Man, Thor and the Thing, and a double-page pin-up, all for 9 pence? The downside isn't really the small size of the artwork. Apart from the Thing story, it really doesn't suffer. The main downside is the small size of the letters page which only has room for two letters. As it's clear from one of those letters that the comic's only recently switched to the new format, it would've been nice to see more room for fan reaction to the switch.

There are times when twenty pages seems long enough for a story, and times when it doesn't. This is one of the times when it doesn't. Warned by Reed Richards that seismic disturbances at the South Pole are going to set off a chain of volcanoes whose eruption will destroy the world, Benjamin J Grimm parachutes into the Savage Land and teams up with Ka-Zar, lord of the hidden jungle. They then find themselves up against a would-be super-villain called Volcanus who's going to tap into the power of the erupting volcanoes and turn himself into a being of living flame. Needless to say our heroes soon put a stop to that.

Trouble is they put a very quick stop to that. A stop so quick it makes you wonder if the story was even worth telling at all. In twenty pages there's simply not enough time to establish Volcanus as a major threat - not when the first half of the tale's taken up with the Thing getting to the Savage Land, fighting a pterodactyl, fighting an allosaurus and meeting and swapping notes with Ka-Zar. And so, just as Volcanus leaves no ripples on the lava he ultimately falls into, he leaves no ripples on comic book history. The, "Bad man with a big vehicle invades the Savage Land looking for power/wealth," concept is the standard Ka-Zar plot line and so, on its own, was never going to thrill. That meant it needed an imaginative handling and a memorable villain. It gets neither.

And a dinosaur -- of sorts.

It's a shame, as this is one of the most fondly remembered stories of my childhood and one of the comics I was keenest on getting when I started rebuilding my collection. I mean, on paper - and that's where comic book stories exist - what's not to love about it? It features my favourite pile of talking bricks. It features my favourite lord of the jungle. It features my favourite hidden land that contains dinosaurs.

Unfortunately, it doesn't feature a very interesting story.

To make matters worse, the Thing is completely annoying - spending the first half of the mag cracking an endless stream of unfunny jokes - and the set-piece scene featuring the Thing and Ka-Zar vs an allosaurus is seriously marred by the fact that Ron Wilson's pencils make the allosaurus look more deformed than threatening.

That's not to mention that, at the end of the fight, we get Ka-Zar celebrating, Tarzan-style, at having killed the beast. I don't know, somehow Ka-Zar celebrating killing things doesn't sit right. You sort of feel he should have more respect for dumb animals, even ones that go around trying to eat people.