Favourite Comics: Amazing Adventures issue 18:

Nearly a half-century on I still consider 1973 to be the year that cemented my destiny in becoming a lifetime comic book fan. It was a year when Marvel in particular was producing comics that were bursting with originality and excitement as many of their writers and artists were reaching the peak of their talents. Amazing Adventures issue 18 featuring War of the Worlds is for me the epitome of this output in creativity. Looking at the excellent John Romita cover with modern eyes you would be forgiven for thinking this looks like some dodgy soft porn comic with the lead character decked out in leather hot pants and thigh length boots. But you have to remember this was 1973, this was the height of the glam rock graze and having a hero looking like he had been ripped from the cover of a David Bowie /Ziggy Stardust album was considered cool.

I purchased this comic on a wet Saturday in a newsagents in my then local town just outside Glasgow. As I recall I only had enough money to purchase one comic that day and my proposed purchase was to be between Amazing Adventures 18 and Iron Man issue 58. To be honest it was a no contest Iron Man was going to win as I had assumed that Amazing Adventures was going to be no more than a mildly entertaining limited series comic book adaption of H G Wells' famous novel, which I had only recently read. Luckily for myself I decided to have a quick peek inside the comic and saw the splash page was by my favorite artist Neal Adams. Sadly Adams couldn't finish the art on this book on time and the art chores for the remaining pages (actually the bulk of the comic) was passed to up and coming superstar Howard Chaykin. Despite this the 11 pages of Adams art are amongst his best ever work for Marvel.

The story itself is of course based on the H.G. Wells novel of the same name but here Roy Thomas pushes the concept further with the return of the Martians and introduces a new hero, Killraven to fight them in the far off distant future of …….....2017 (arghh! remember when the 2000’s felt like a lifetime away in the 1970's?). The story was plotted by Roy Thomas and scripted by Gerry Conway and takes place in New York City, 2018 after the Martians second invasion. In the first Adams drawn pages we see Killraven fighting his way through a subway tunnel and on entering Grand Central station (above) he finds the Keeper, who unleashes a few mutants against him which he easily dispatches. Killraven then throws a sharp piece of machinery and impales the Keeper who thanks him and tells him how he can help overthrow the Martians before dying. As much as I enjoyed this series in the hands of other artists like Herb Trimpe and P G Russell I would have loved to have seen more of Neal Adams version of the character.