Favourite comics: Silver Surfer issue 12

A recent survey of favourite childhood memories noted that the most common responses included the endless stretch of lazy summer afternoons, playing with friends, spending time with your family and pets and riding your bicycle through the neighborhood after dark. To that list I have to add the day I purchased Silver Surfer issue 12. I have no idea why the purchase of this comic is so fixed in my mind but I have retained a mental picture of the day I first saw the above cover in a spinner rack in my then local towns newsagent. It was around March 1970 when my 10 year old self entered our local newsagent on my weekly trip to the shops with my family to spend my hard earned pocket money. At this time I was only vaguely aware of the Silver Surfer but I do vividly remember being surprised that he had his own comic so after a quick scan of the pages and seeing the story involved witches and took place just “down the road” in England meant I just had to buy this comic.

Silver Surfer issue 12 ,“Gather, ye Witches” by Stan Lee and John Buscema went on sale in the US in November 1969 and was cover dated January 1970. The story itself revolves around a coven of witches in England who are seeking to prove their power by summoning a creature that is capable of killing the Silver Surfer. They rescue the Abomination from exile, but he refuses to obey the coven's commands as he has his own agenda to wreak havoc on the world. The Silver Surfer attacks the Abomination in a fantastic 7 page battle scene that for me has rarely been bettered in comics, in the hope to stop him from creating anymore destruction. The Abomination initially repels the weakened Surfer, but the Surfer eventually perseveres, using his power cosmic to lull the beast to sleep. He returns the Abomination to the coven and demands that they send him back from where he came from.

I think it would be fair to say that for most comic readers from this time Silver Surfer issue 12 isn’t considered a classic but for myself it has remained one of my all-time favourite comics. Perhaps it was that great 7 page fight scene, the great villain (the Abomination is still my favourite comic book baddie) or the fact that I was taken aback by the melancholy of the Surfer (i.e. he was a bit of a moaning git) or maybe it just links me to those other childhood memories like riding my bicycle through the neighborhood after dark.

Music and Comics: Totally (Curt) Vile and the Death Planet Commandos

In the days before MTV and the internet weekly Music Newspapers were the only way to find information about your favourite bands and the latest releases and reviews. In the 1970’s and early 1980’s‘ the UK produced several excellent weekly Music Newspapers including (to name a few) the Melody Maker , New Musical Express, Record Mirror, Disc and Sounds . Each of these papers largely focused on their own type of music with Melody Maker” being the more arty (pretentious?) of these papers looking at prog rock and jazz ,while Disc and “Record Mirror” concentrated on chart singles. The New Musical Express (NME) championed Punk and Indie Music and Sounds focused mostly on heavy rock. So what has this to do with comics?, well as it happens some of these papers also featured some pretty cool (for the times) comic strips. Amongst my favourites were cartoonist J Edward Oliver’s weekly strips for Disc/ Record Mirror (more on this at a later date) and a strip called “The Stars My Degradation” written and drawn by the then unknown comic creator Alan Moore (under the pseudonym Curt Vile), for the weekly Sounds newspaper from 1980 to 1983.

The Stars My Degradation strip focused on the space adventures of Dempster Dingbunger and was a satirical take on Alfred Bester’s classic “The Stars My Destination” novel (also known as “Tiger, Tiger.”). Moore’s parody featured such characters as Three-Eyes McGurk and his Death Planet Commandos (who originally appeared in the rock magazine “Dark Star”) and the deadly galactic female assassin Laser Eraser. However the stand out character from the strip was Axel Pressbutton, an exceptionally over the top violent cyborg who first appeared in a series of strips written and drawn by Steve Moore (who created the character) under the name of Pedro Hendry in the aforementioned rock music magazine “Dark Star” . Both Laser Eraser and Axel Pressbutton would go on to find commercial success and some notoriety a few years later when they appeared in Warrior magazine (1982) and then in the US in their own title published by Eclipse comics.

While some commentators on the The Stars My Degradation (and his earlier strip for Sounds “ Rosco Moscow”) seem to focus on the counterculture aspects of Moore’s stories, for me they weren’t that deep and although there is no doubt both strips had elements of this with some well-placed and thought out comments on Thatcherism etc, to my mind as a 19 year old just looking for some escapism, it was simply a fun albeit violent and totally OTT strip more akin ( but not on the same level) to an adult version of the work carried out from the anarchic minds of comic book geniuses Ken Reid and Leo Baxendale. To date I don’t think that “The Stars My Degradation” (or “Roscoe Moscow”) have ever been collected which is a shame as they are a fun read and an excellent barometer of the times. Sadly all the weekly music papers mentioned above are no longer published with only the NME surviving as an online version, a pity as these publications were a great vehicle for a different type of comic strip and for nurturing talents like Alan Moore - yet another casualty in the continued decline of printed publications.

Comic Book Memories: Iron Man issue 38 - Food poisoning, angry ladies and Askit powders!

Time has an unsettling habit of creeping up on you in ways that we never thought it would, it teases you with what seems like long days of eternal youth before suddenly hitting you square in the face with a heavy dose of reality and all of a sudden those youthful days of our past are literally a lifetime ago. One such “slap in the face” happened to me recently when I was tidying up some old boxes of comics when I came across Iron Man issue 38. It was one of those Madeleine moments when upon seeing that Sal Buscema cover, I was instantly transported back to when I first purchased the comic which to my mind was only (only!) around 30 year ago. However upon checking the comic in more detail it turned out that the cover was dated June 1971 which meant that it would have gone on sale in the US around March and would have hit our shores in October /November 1971, some 50 years ago!

The memory of picking up this comic is particularly strong to me as in May of that year my family moved into our first bought new house, I had not long started secondary school, and on the day I bought this comic my dad had taken ill with suspected food poisoning from a works lunch. I can’t recall the actual day or the exact month (it was cold so it was probably November) that this happened but I do remember that my dad looked really ill and went to his bed around 7pm. By 8pm he really wasn’t well at all and my mum thought we should phone a doctor. However as we had not long moved into our new house our land line had not yet been installed (this would happen in the next few days) so as many people did back then, my mum and myself made our way to find a telephone box and call the doctor while my brother stayed at home to look after my dad. On the surface this was not as easy a task as it should have been as we were new to the town and the first phone box we came upon had been vandalised. My mum then asked the owner of a local laundrette if we could use his phone to call a doctor and to our surprise he refused. This resulted in two women who were using the laundrette at the time giving him what we would call a severe “Glaswegian dressing down” . One of the ladies then said that we should go to a grocery store a few yards further up the road and use the phone there as “…the owner there was a decent human being, unlike the uncaring *&@~# in this place” - shouted at the top off her voice in an unmistakable Glaswegian brogue aimed at the laundrette owner.

On reaching the grocery store my mum was able to use the phone and call the doctor. While in the store I also remember my mum buying some Askit powders (used for upset stomachs) for my dad in case he needed them. As she purchased the Askit powders I took the time to peruse the well-stocked shop and spied a spinner rack mostly filed with gag and auto magazines, but it also had a US comic - Iron Man issue 38 which I immediately purchased (my first ever Iron Man comic) . We then made our way back home passing the laundrette where the two ladies asked how we got on and wished my dad a speedy recovery. As we made our way home I heard one of the ladies again give the laundrette owner “pelters” (abuse) and remember smiling and thinking only in Glasgow (well Greater Glasgow in this case) would that happen. The doctor arrived at our house a few hours later and my dad made a full recovery in a couple of days.

The Iron Man story itself isn’t that good. It basically revolves around Tony Stark being asked to hire an teenage con called Frankie Majors who was framed by the mysterious gang lord known as Jonah for murder. Tony Stark believes in second chances and gives Frankie Majors a one-month trial period while as Iron Man, he checks into Frankie’s past to verify whether he was really framed or not. Despite the blandness of the story this comic will always hold a special place in my memory, sadly my mum , dad, brother and even that grocers shop are no longer with us but having Iron Man issue 38 to hand briefly reminds me of that particular day even if it is only for a short period of time.

Bring on the Back-ups: The Rose and the Thorn

As a young teenager my comic book purchases were pretty much predicated on a sliding scale based on my interests. At the top of my list was to purchase any comic with superheroes followed by barbarians, science fiction, humour, horror and lastly , and only at a pinch anything related to girls comics (this included Supergirl comics and of course love stories) . One such last ditch comic purchase on a week where there must have been few comics in the spinner racks to my liking was for "Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane" issue 117. As it turned out this was a pretty interesting read, not for the Lois Lane tale, but for the back-up feature The Rose and the Thorn.

I have never hidden my affection for DC comics at this time and in particular there numerous back up tales which regularly featured a host of interesting characters. To be honest, I’m not sure how much I actually enjoyed reading the Rose and the Thorn strips at this time (reading this one with new eyes, its not great) but I do rememebr finding the character utterly fascinating even although I found it unfeasible that a character that had no actual superpowers apart from being athletic and being prolific with a combat daggers and a barbed wire whip , could so easily take down the notorious 100 gang all on her own.

This was actually the second version of the Rose and the thorn character which was created by Robert Khanigher and artist Ross Andru who would draw most of her tales at this time (but not this particular issue). This Rose and Thorn was Rhosyn "Rose" Forrest (these names were really terrible) the daughter of Metropolis police officer Phil Forrest, who was killed by a criminal gang named The 100. When Rose slept her Thorn personality would emerge and stalk the streets as a vigilante, attempting to bring The 100 to justice.

This issue of Loise Lane is cover dated November 1971 so I would have probably picked this up on or around April/May 1972 on one of my many excursion to the local newsagents after school. I suppose as I would have been approaching 13 years of aged around this time this could have explained my interest in this scantily glad thigh length boot wearing female crime fighter. The story itself “ The Ghost with Two Faces “ illustrated by the late great Rich Buckler, is pretty basic as Rose Forrest goes on vacation to the seaside and , as the Thorn, defeats a band of kidnappers but it still must have resonated with me as I remember picking up several Lois Lane comic after this time which featured Rose and the Thorn back up strips. I even tracked down Lois Lane issue 114 where Lois meets Rose and Thorn, a comic I stil have in my collection.

Favourite comics: Defenders Issue 6

What's better than our favourite superhero saving the world? well it has to be multiples of our favourite superheroes saving the world together. As a kid I always loved any comic that featured super teams from the Mighty Crusaders (the first team I can recall) to the Justice League, The Avengers, The Legion of Superheroes, The Fantastic Four, the Guardians of the Galaxy and more. There’s just something special about a super team, something unique in the way the characters interact and develop relationships over time, or maybe it’s just that 13 year old kids just love seeing groups of colourfully costumed characters beating the stuffing out a of a baddie, yeah it’s probably that!

One of my favourite teams at the time was Marvels Defenders which had a rotating line-up from 1972 until 1986, with Dr. Strange and the Hulk usually being constant members along with a number of other mainstay characters that joined and then left the team at various points in the comics run. Although the first issue of the Defenders that I bought was issue 5 (a great fun comic in its own right ) it was with issue 6 “The Dreams of Death” which saw the reintroduction of the Silver Surfer to the group, that it became my favourite comic at the time. Defenders issue 6 was cover dated June 1973 and appeared in the UK around October/November. I still recall the day I visited my local newsagent in the town we stayed in at that time around November and saw a big pile of various US comics neatly stacked on the counter with Defenders issue 6 at the top. I had only purchased issue 5 a few weeks previous to this and loved it so this was a no brainer, I immediately purchased issue 6 and headed home to devour every page (at 13 years old you just didn't read comics). The story itself features the Silver Surfer returning to the Defenders to apologise for the way he acted the last time they were together.

The Surfer finds them being attacked by Cyrus Black and helps defeat him and his henchmen. Black retreats and plans a new attack. During this respite Black discovers that he can make the illusions in his dreams become real and uses this ability to attack the Defenders again this time overpowering them. However, Namor realises that they are in a different reality and convinces Black that none of this is real which causes Black to wake up and realise that his plans have yet again failed.

Future issue of the Defenders would still be good with the legendary cross over storyline between the Defenders and the Avengers and Gerber’s Headmen storyline. But for me the first 15 or so issue were the best of the 152 issues featuring some of Sal Buscema’s best art with fun adventure stories by Steve Englehart.