Redartz: 1975; what a year! Marvel was still putting out the "Giant-Size" issues, as well as Marvel Value Stamps. Atlas Comics were trying to make a go of the comic business. DC was debuting numerous new titles and characters. It was an exciting time to be a comic reader, which leads us to our topic today: the best stories of that fine year.
I've pored over loads of issues, and prodded my memory to recall my favorites. So, as always, this subjective list; based upon a combination of personal preference and historical impact. Your list my vary. Order is random. No deposit, no return. Void where prohibited.
Ok, now that the formalities are complete, on with the countdown:
1. Defenders 33- "Webbed Hands, Warm Heart" by Steve Gerber, Sal Buscema and Jim Mooney. Inspired lunacy from Mr. Gerber with 'musical brains', the Headmen and a very angry baby deer.
2. Detective Comics 457- "There is no Hope in Crime Alley" by Dennis O'Neal and Dick Giordano. A nice closer look at the Batman's origins by a couple of his best storytellers. Oh, and uncredited backgrounds by the great Terry Austin.
3. Warlock 11- "How Strange My Destiny, Pt. 2" by Jim Starlin and Steve Leialoha. Starlin's epic tale continues the exploration of Adam Warlock. Great cast, great art, great story, great comic.
4. Tomb of Dracula 41- "Re-Birth" by Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan and Tom Palmer. Dracula returns, in another fine issue of this fine series. Wolfman, Colan and Palmer just keep it rolling.
5. All-Star Comics 58- "All-Star Super Squad" by Gerry Conway, Ric Estrada and Wally Wood. Power Girl debuts in this engaging revival of the classic DC title.
6. Howard the Duck 1- "Howard the Barbarian" by Steve Gerber, Frank Brunner and Steve Leialoha. A very imaginative,enjoyable first issue, Brunner and Leialoha rock visually. A fun guest appearance by Spidey, and a tower of credit cards.
7. Amazing Adventures 34, "A Death in the Family" by Don McGregor and P. Craig Russell. A dramatic high point in this excellent series. Phenomenal art, as usual.
8. Avengers 142- "Go West, Young Gods" by Steve Englehart, George Perez and Vince Colletta.The Avengers in the old West. Absolutely wonderful. Another Kang war, Immortus, the Brand Corp., Thor and Moondragon on a train, and Hawkeye having way too much fun. How did they pack so much into one issue?
9. Giant-Size X-Men 1- "Second Genesis" by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum.There are better stories of the 'new team', but this classic giant introduces us to the group that became a pillar of the Marvel Universe. Wein and Cockrum get things started with a bang.
10. Giant-Size Man-Thing 4- "The Kid's Night Out" by Steve Gerber, Ed Hannigan and Frank Springer; "Frog Death" by Steve Gerber and Frank Brunner. A personal favorite, with a rather emotion-laden lead story. A bit preachy perhaps,but quite impactful to a shy fourteen year old comic fan. And it's offset by the return of Howard the Duck in a Brunner-illustrated short. Loads of fun, the scene in the cigar store is a blast.
13 comments:
*sniff*-- '75. . . the year Herb Trimpe was replaced by Sal Buscema on THE INCREDIBLE HULK. It was overall an "enh" year on the book, tbh-- but there was one particularly solid issue-- #189. Written as a bit of a parable, with an unusually present narrator, using the Hulk's own speech idioms. A neat job by Len Wein, overplaying the sentimentality, sure-- but I think comics are great at indulging in that & being forgive for it. And this and the previous issue may have been Herb's last impressive outing after several months of uneven efforts-- effective, moody, bittersweet.
Man, that Gerber-- he were ever'where, weren't he?
LOVE that you've got the Defenders up in the #1 slot! I cherish that whole run, but I came to the conclusion a looooong time ago that the whole Headmen (well, and one woman) arc, and the "Bozo" arc that followed, could have been nigh-unreadable if it weren't for Sal B's perfect, straightforward house-style pencils doing the HEAVY lifting of legitimizing it and making it accessible to us "conventional" types. If you read a synopsis of these books, they come across as pure self-indulgent writer gobbledy-gook-- (sorta what Howard the Duck ultimately succumbed to--). But the book totally works, and kept ya goin' from month to month-! One small detail of Gerber's that I loved is that he made it a point for the Headman bad-guys to use their first names in conversation (and had them living in a rented suburban house, IIRC). At the time, there wasn't a lot of this kind of "personalizing" of yer average bad-guy. . . and again, it made these third-raters 'WAY more accessible. (Except for Ruby-- who was about as cartoon-villain-haughty as it's possible to be. It could'a been Moondragon inside that crimson globe. . . )
HB
1975... a year of so many memories for me that I'm realizing "ain't what they used to be".
I have a few "solid" memories:
My first two Spider-Mans: 121 & 123 bought together.
My first Fantastic Four: 160 Akron V Thing on the cover
My first Avengers: 139 Whirlwind puts Jan in the hospital
My first Thor: 239 Thor V Ulrik
My first Conan: 53 The dude had a knife IN HIS BOOT!!! How cool to fight a villain with deadly spiky things in their boots...
Things I'm not so sure of, now:
My first Daredevil: May have been 118!?! I don't know, I don't write things down.
Okay, okay, I know that neither Spider-Man or Daredevil were 1975 but as I peruse Mike's Amazing World Of Comics, I learn several things.
I bought both Marvel Spectacular (Thor reprints) and Marvel Triple Action (Avengers reprints) BEFORE I bought my first issues of their regular titles. (Again, don't know why).
I didn't start buying Marvel's Greatest Comics until AFTER i started buying Fantastic Four's regular title.
A few highlights from the year:
Spider-Man confronts Gwen Stacey... the clone!!! THE CLONE!!!
Marvel Tales: To Prowl No More!!! My introduction to me. TO ME!!! Get out of TOWN!!!
My personal favorite: Werewolf by Night 32-33. His fight, one handed though it was, with the Moon Knight was just soooo coooool......
A quick welcome to Anthony:
The blog can loosely be defined as small concentrations:
Eastern Europe, England, American East Coast, the Great Lakes Area, Gulf Coast and West Coast... mostly. Mostly.
(Spanish songs in Andalucia
The shooting sites in the days of '39
Oh, please, leave the ventana open
Fredrico Lorca is dead and gone
Bullet holes in the cemetery walls
The black cars of the Guardia Civil
Spanish bombs on the Costa Rica
I'm flying in on a DC 10 tonight
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero infinito
yo te acuerda oh mi corazón
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero infinito
yo te acuerda oh mi corazón
Spanish weeks in my disco casino
The freedom fighters died upon the hill
They sang the red flag
They wore the black one
But after they died it was Mockingbird Hill
Back home the buses went up in flashes
The Irish tomb was drenched in blood
Spanish bombs shatter the hotels
My senorita's rose was nipped in the bud
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero infinito
yo te acuerda oh mi corazón
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero infinito
yo te acuerda oh mi corazón
The hillsides ring with "Free the people"
Or can I hear the echo from the days of '39?
With trenches full of poets
The ragged army, fixin' bayonets to fight the other line
Spanish bombs rock the province
I'm hearing music from another time
Spanish bombs on the Costa Brava
I'm flying in on a DC 10 tonight
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero infinito
yo te acuerda oh mi corazón
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero infinito
yo te acuerda oh mi corazón
Spanish songs in Andalucia, Mandolina, oh mi corazon
Spanish songs in Granada, oh mi corazon).
Thanks for your kind welcome, Prowler! Interesting to think about the geographical 'concentrations' of contributors.
Great choices Redartz! My Marvel/DC comics habit began in October 1978. UK reprints were a great way to discover titles from this period, however. I've picked up some of these titles since. If anyone ever plays 'fantasy teams' as opposed to fantasy football, then Giant Sized X-Men comes pretty close for me. Len Wein was great at moving stories along at pace, making him a go-to writer for fill in issues.
And don't forget the very small concentration up here in Canada, Prowler. (I think there are only a couple of us.)
Some great choices again here, Redartz. I can't really quibble with anything you included, so I'll just toss in a few honourable mentions.
Denny O'Neil's Batman run was pretty good ... I especially like 263 (with Riddler) and 266 (with Catwoman). Moench and Gulacy were doing pretty well on Master of Kung Fu as well.
Some sentimental favourites: MTU 38, with Spidey and Beast fighting the Griffin; Amazing 145, 146 (Spidey vs Scorpion); Giant Size Spidey 4 (guest-starring Punisher vs Moses Magnum); Superboy and the LSH 211 (where Element Lad has the chance to get revenge on Roxxas); and 1st Issue Special 8, first appearance of Warlord (and the first two issues of Warlord were pretty good too).
A couple of interesting issues came out that year too: DD 131 (first Bullseye) and JLA 121 (Adam Strange's wedding).
HB, it was worth checking in just for that visual of Ruby Thursday vs. Moondragon ...
I love that the Headmen are here, and completely agree that the Bozo story line was horrid, but 1975 was full of greatness otherwise. Mantis is still an Avenger, Medusa is still with the FF, and Supervillain Team-Up starts.
Also at Marvel, Gamora the deadliest woman in the galaxy appears for the first time as does Starhawk. And over at the X-Men it's a new lineup of heroes, and Moira Mactaggart pops on the scene for the first time as well. But while I still dig The Cold Knight -- Deathlok -- at the time, I can't help but scratch my head at Kid Colt and the Two-Gun Kid. I never really got into cowboy comics, and even Kang couldn't make the old West cool.
I was almost exclusively Marvel, but looking back now those DC Adventure comics covers with the Spectre look great enough to hang on a wall. But other than Power Girl and Phantom Stranger, there isn't much that DC is doing which gets my attention.
And thanks, Mike for bringing up the first appearance of Warlord, that's a big one. I'll offer in return my own 1st Issue Special favorite -- Lady Cop!
Cheers!
HB- I had forgotten that Sal had jumped on the Hulk's bandwagon in '75. It seemed like Trimpe had been on duty forever, and then Sal had such a lengthy stint. Makes one wonder; a book with one long creative stint followed by another long stint. Are there any other titles that had that phenomenon?
Prowl- sounds like 1975 was quite the year for you! And great lyrical choice; can't go wrong with the Clash...
Anthony-Yes, Len Wein gets high marks in my book as well. Oh, and regarding the UK reprints; what was the lag time from original US publication to appearance in the UK edition? Was it several years across the board, or did it vary by character?
Mike W- some fine additions to our list! Among them, that Amazing Spider-man tale in 145-146 just missed my list.
Red (you KNOW you can always suck me in with a Hulk tangent!)- it was Herb for 7 years-- which was probably among the longest penciling tenures at Marvel at the time-- and then Sal for TEN years (10!!!). And I'm thinking two pencilers over 17 years DOES have to be some kind of statistical record. Then there was a terribly unsettled period which included an Al Milgrom stint, and an embarrassingly short, aborted "John Byrne's Gonna Work His Magic" run-- but we did finally come up with a sequence of terrific artists for a few years with Todd McFarlane, Dale Keown, and Cary Frank.
Back in 1975. . .
Doing a bit of nosing around, it looks like it was also a year of throwing EVERYTHING against the wall (since the Horror Craze had just collapsed big-time) and seeing what stuck. DC had a SHERLOCK HOLMES #1. . . that ended there. And wasn't JUSTICE, INC a '75 offering? SKULL THE SLAYER (oy) was '75. CHAMPIONS and INHUMANS both came out in '75. DC's HERCULES title as well-- set in the KAMANDI-verse. --In fact, I remember thinking how odd it was that Hercules was in a DC comic that was right next to Hercules in a Marvel comic on the same spinner rack. (Good ol' public domain!) It was darned hard to keep up, it was---- !
(And Howdy to new-conversationalist ANTHONY-! Well-introduced there, Prowl---)
HB
HB
Howdy to you too Humanbelly!
Redartz, the lag between US publication and UK varied but was typically 2-4 years. This lag shortened in the 1980s as UK reprints had to compete with US titles as they became more widely available. In 1979 Star Wars Weekly featured Captain Marvel, Guardians of the Galaxy and Warlock as back up strips. All that cosmic goodness blew my young mind!
Giant Sized XMen was a game breaking historic issue with the introduction of the new team.
The actual story itself, however, is kinda bad, really acting as nothing more than a Maguffin to bring the new bunch together.
The Warlock storyline, though I was only exposed to through reprints in Fantasy Masterpieces, was so good, weird, dramatic and well-drawn that it stands head and shoulders above the rest.
Yoyo
A banner year for me. My first year of collecting. So just about every story I read was pretty special to me. I was an equal opportunity reader trying out as much DC. Marvel and Atlas (while they existed) as I could.
The GS X-Men was read by me so often the cover practically fell off.
Brave and the Bold #118 has Batman and Wildcat together against The Joker. Really sticks in my head ,probably because a little dog was a major player.
GS Avengers #4 was another I relentlessly read over and over. A lot going on that I came into at the very end of, but the issue did a good job explaining what had proceeded.
Great year!
Like Killraven, I truly loved (and love) GS X-MEN #1. I completely remember buying it during the lunch-break scramble downtown my freshman year of HS. Seeing Wolverine included (previously seen only in The Hulk) clinched it for me. My copy is also read to the point of questionable collect-ability.
But like yoyo, yeah- I recognize a decided dumb-ness to the plot, even by Marvel standards. The art is great, the pacing is pretty good, and the dialog/interplay/characterizations are darned good.
But-- the fact that this incredibly powerful mutant that Cerebro has detected is. . . a sentient island. . . ? Man, that doesn't even work within the very dubious malleability of Marvel's own universe. . . ha! Really, it's little more than an extremely dressed-up version of one of Stan and Jack's ubiquitous Giant Monster stories from the 50's, yeah? (I suppose that comparison's been made before somewhere. . . )
HB
I was pretty much on my way out of “typical “ Superhero Comics by 1975. So I was looking for something different to satiate me. The Kill Raven series grabbed me! So did that issue of giant size X men! I too still have it. I recently re-read it because Marvel is reprinting many of its classic Comics for only one dollar. So I bought it about two months ago as a reprint. It sure beats digging out the long boxes.!
Anthony- thanks for the further info on the UK Marvel editions. Sounds like some very appealing, appropriate back-ups in those Star Wars mags.
Killraven- yes, '75 still had the Giant Size books coming out, and many of them were quite memorable. Of course, over the summer they went all-reprint and presented many vintage tales from the Silver age.
Yoyo and HB- cant' argue with you about the story in GS X-Men. Great art, huge events but the 'living island' was, em, iffy...
Charlie- glad you mentioned the current dollar reprints. Many big stories from unaffordable issues are being represented. A great thing for the next generation of comic readers...
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