Anniversary Countdown #9: Spider-Man 108

Continuing the journey though the Spider-Man stories that introduced me to the character.

L’Uomo Ragno #108 (1974)
Published by: Corno

I can’t get over the fact that Spider-Man had yellow eyes on his mask for all the issues I owned before becoming a regular reader, and yet I always thought of him having white eyes.

Amazing Spider-Man #107 (1974)
by Stan Lee & John Romita

Coloration aside, the original cover is a complete mess when compared to the Corno translation.
The translation only has the actual scene plus the title “The tentacles of death”, but the original is way too busy.

We begin with Spider-Man being trapped by a Spider Slayer robot thanks to his obscure weakness.
I bet you didn’t know that Spider-Man’s kryptonite is ethyl clhoride.

I fail to understand how having an old guy inside the robot makes the robot any more threatening.

This is technically Spider Slayer III, vastly inferior to the previous two versions because it lacks the face of the greatest moustache in comics.

I really don’t like the evolution of Spencer Smythe, the creator of the Spider Slayers.
He stared out as a regular scientist who fell for J. Jonah Jameson’s propaganda and was eventually consumed by revenge… but now he just wants to be a regular criminal.

I completely forgot Gwen Stacy was in this, I was convinced the only comic in this retrospective published before her death was the previous one.

Which is a pity because while it’s a small role, it’s more than just being the damsel in distress.
The best Spider-Man runs are those where the civilian life is more interesting than the superhero stuff, and while we’re past the best part of the Stan Lee run he’s still injecting a lot of character drama.
I cannot, for the life of me, understand people who accuse Stan Lee of never having written anything when the attention to character relationships is a constant whether the regular artist is Ditko or Romita.

Spider-Man eventually manages to break free of his restrains. Somehow remaining completely silent while continuously twisting a metal cable.

See, I told you that having a pilot seat would not make the murder robot any more scaring.

Instead of wasting time taking down Smythe, Spider-Man decides to go after his gang.
Smythe’s gimmick for this storyline was placing hidden cameras all over the city to warn the criminals, but Spider-Man is ahead of them.

And the cops are there in time because Spider-Man warned them…

…without telling them he’s Spider-Man!
Which sounds stupid, but since at this point he’s wanted they probably wouldn’t have trusted his tip if he told them his identity.

Now that the scanners are gone, the criminals no longer trust Smythe.

Which leads Spider-Man free to take on the would-be robbers. Including knocking one with a car’s antenna!

One of the underappreciated strenght of Spider-Man is that you can put him against enemies who stand no chance against him and STILL keep the scene entertaining through creative artwork and witty banter.

Spidey has a rematch with Smythe, but this time he’s ready for it.

Batman gets all the praise for always be prepared for anything and thinking one step beyond everyone else… but the same can be said for Spider-Man.

He then shakes down JJJ to make him promise this is the LAST time he’ll pay Smythe to attack Spider-Man.
And also, he WILL become New York City’s mayor!

Little tangent here: IT WORKS!!!

The next time Smythe shows up is in Amazing Spider-Man #150 where he’s working alone, and then a three-parter in 1979 where he fights both Spider-Man and Jameson.
So that speech really DID convince JJJ to stop employing Smythe!

Smythe eventually dies of radiation poisoning in #192, eventually replaced by his FAR more interesting son in the 80s.

To finish the story: one thing that gets left behind when we get flashbacks to Peter and Gwen’s relationship was that he was VERY jealous of her!

Case in point: Flash Thompson is then taken away by military police because of a subplot, and Peter sees this through the lens of how this affects his relationship with Gwen.

Dude, she’s watching her friend… and in this period YOUR friend as well… being taken away from the authorities, and your first thought is that this means she’s in love with him???
Maybe Gwen dodged a bullet by falling from that bridge!

Historical significance: 2/10
It’s the storyline where Smythe goes nuts for good, but he was already a bit unstable in his previous appearance anyway.

Personal significance: 4/10
I didn’t really care all that much for this one. Smythe is a boring villain and Spider-Man is tied up for most of the story.

Silver Age-ness: 1/10
That is some quick reprogramming for 1972.

Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
We are very close to the end of the Stan Lee run: the last issue he writes is #110, three issues after this one. And you can definitely tell he’s not putting as much energy into it.
The best part are the scenes with Gwen, but she barely gets a page out of this.

Incredibly Hulk #110 (1969)
by Stan Lee & Herb Trimpe

Only the second half of the story is published in this book, but I’ll review the complete story anyway.

Hulk is in the Savage Land, the prehistoric hidden land in Antarctica, when he finds an unconscious Ka-Zar and is attacked by his tiger.

Very few people would have the courage to SPTOK! the Hulk in the attempt to calm him down.
Sorry, did I say courage? I meant stupidity.

I don’t know how much Ka-Zar knows about the Hulk, but considering his goal here is to make him transform back into Bruce Banner… making him angry is having exactly the opposite result!

At least Ka-Zar is right in having to rush things through, because apparently there’s a machine changing the rotation of the Earth (!!!) that is already causing MASSIVE damage.

Said machine is linked to the aliens that created this giant stone-robot-idol-thing called Umbu.

Meanwhile, how is the fight between Ka-Zar and Hulk going?

Yeah that’s about right.

The Swamp Men working for Umbu (I think) capture Ka-Zar after Hulk yeeted him across the Savage Land…

…and then Hulk fights Umbu himself. This is the moment the story started for me.

I’m surprised I don’t remember ANYTHING from this story, it’s a pretty epic fight!

Too bad Hulk is then gassed back into Bruce Banner.

But that plays to his advantage, because Umbu then completely ignores Banner.

Honestly this feels a lot more like a Ka-Zar story than a Hulk story.

Since he typically doesn’t have his own series… he’s had a couple but they don’t last long… Ka-Zar never rises to prominence, but he has his moments.

It’s up to Bruce Banner to save the day, by finding the machine messing with the Earth’s axis and shutting down Umbu.

At the cost of his life, but he’ll get better.

Historical significance: 0/10
Umbu will return in 2011 for a re-match with Ka-Zar and Skar (Hulk’s son and Conan cosplayer).
And while he’s not that impressive in the original story, the cover to that story gives him an AWESOME rendition!!!

Personal significance: 0/10
As mentioned I utterly forgot this one.

Silver Age-ness: 6/10
So I guess all that devastation across the planet caused by the machine went unnoticed by the rest of the Marvel Universe?

Does it stand the test of time? 6/10
It’s extremely rushed, as it’s typical of Hulk stories of this period. Having Banner be the one to save the day is cool and all, but it makes the Hulk redundant considering he’s also upstaged by Ka-Zar at several points.
The quality of the artwork surprised me: Trimpe is infamous for his later work on the series, but he’s good here even if the poses are stiff.
You can DEFINITELY see the impact of the inks, which are by John Severin (brother of the legendary artist Marie Severin).

Incredibly Hulk #111 (1968)
by Stan Lee & Herb Trimpe

Where do you go for the follow-up of a jungle story? To space, of course!

The aliens who unleashed Umbu notice its destruction, and they’re back to Earth. They sure have a distinctive design.

Despite being proclaimed dead Banner’s body is still warm, so Ka-Zar leaves to get some medicine…

…but by the time he’s back (seconds later, so these couldn’t have been very rare herbs) Banner has been kidnapped by aliens.

Specifically, the aliens wanted to retrieve whatever killed Umbu.
So they’re lucky that Ka-Zar left the moment their probe landed: it’s not like they grabbed the nearest person next to Umbu, Banner was inside a mountain when he damaged Umbu!!!

Being dead is barely an inconvenience thanks to the Resuscitator™.

I’m with Rick Jones on this one. Banner might not be indestructible like the Hulk, but even by 1969 he had survived insane stuff.

The aliens have missed the previous issues, so they get a crash course in Hulk history.

Yep. That’s what I think whenever I speculate about what is in Bruce Banner’s mind.
And that would be Saturn, a propeller plane, rollerskates, a grandma, a guy in a uniform, a flag, a vial, a present, a cloud, an eyeball shooting light, Umbu and whatever is behind him.
If that doesn’t describe Bruce Banner, I don’t know what does.

Try fitting THAT image on a ticker tape!

One of the aliens objects that Banner doesn’t deserve to die, but he’s shot down by the head alien and by his master, the Galaxy Master.

And the Galaxy Master is this shapeless blob that wants to end all life in the universe.

And that’s where the story ended for me, with Banner about to be shot into space: only the first half of the story was published in this book.

Which is a pity because it means I missed the HULK SPACE BATTLE!!!

Complete with a whole splash page! Remember we started this story with Hulk fighting a tiger and in the span of two issues we’re already moved to a space army!!!

Hulk then defeats the army…

…and POWERS THROUGH THE ENGINE OF A STARSHIP!!!

This forces the ship to crash on another planet…

…and the story ends with the cliffhanger of the Hulk facing the Galaxy Master.

Spoiler alert: in the next issue, the Hulk defeats Galaxy Master… who is a being of pure energy from another dimention…

…by getting inside the eldritch abomination and SMASHING ITS BRAIN FORM THE INSIDE.

Historical significance: 2/10
This is the introduction of Galaxy Master, an occasional Hulk villain.

Personal significance: 3/10
I remembered the designs of the aliens and little else. But that’s only because I didn’t have the space battle and the awesome last page, where Galaxy Master looks absolutely badass!

Silver Age-ness: 4/10
The aliens were connected to the previous story, sure, but them taking Banner still feels bonkers on the Marvel scale.

Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
If this was any other series I would complain that the Hulk is barely a character in his own series… but that’s kind of how things are in this period with him.
The story is nothing to write home about, but it’s competent enough and it has some nice artwork.

Marvel Premiere #8 (1973)
by Garner Fox & Jim Starlin

I still can’t get my head around the fact that Doctor Strange was the backup feature for Spider-Man for so many years at Corno.

I had no background on Doctor Strange when I read this, but the artwork sure was nice!
I didn’t pay attention to the credits back then, so I had no idea this was the same artist drawing Warlock or Captain Marvel.

Considering the heights reached by this Doctor Strange arc, it’s weird to think the initial threat is a lamp.

So what the heck is going on? The important part is that Doctor Strange and his assistant are helping this blonde woman deal with the fact that she’s the reincarnation of a priestess of an ancient demon, who was just defeated by Strange last issue and has cursed blonde’s house.
And yes, the blonde’s name really is Blondine.

Brief tangent here to set the mood.
This arc borrows HEAVILY from the H.P.Lovecraft mythology. The previous issue was basically the story of Cthulhu with just the demon Dagoth replacing Cthulhu, but as you can see from this extract from that issue this is BLATANTLY also adapting the style of that kind of story.

But it’s also the first story to namedrop Shuma-Gorath, who will essentially become Marvel’s Cthulhu.

But back to the story. After escaping from Blondine’s house, which looks something between a mansion and a castle…

…Doctor Strange then LEVELS THE ENTIRE HOUSE.

Doctor Strange, punching cosmic horrors into the ground and being polite about it since 1963.

Strange then has to move to Stonehenge to stop the next threat, something that makes his assistant and love interest Clea worried.

And that’s all I had of this story, because the book stops at the page where Doctor Strange namedrops all the threats that he’s faced so far and whose names meant nothing to me.

But in the rest of the story, he reaches Stonehenge and reveals its true purpose: it’s to boost the powers of demons.

As good as the artwork is in this… and it’s VERY good… there’s probably some miscommunication with the writer when Doctor Strange says that the demons who just showed up at Stonehenge are “more than he believed possible”.
Because there’s THREE of them.
Admittedly we don’t know how many he though there could be, but it doesn’t sound THAT impressive when JUST THREE show up!!!

Strange, I can cut you some slack for the spells, but even Spider-Man doesn’t talk THIS much during a fight!!!

And then he finishes the fight by unleashing the equivalent of a magic nuke.

It wouldn’t be a Doctor Strange story withouth a visit to the Ditko Dimension, wouldn’t it?

Why is it that whenever I’m reading late 60s or early 70s Doctor Strange without taking drugs I feel like I’m not reading the story as intended?

But if I get this right, this plant-demon-thing is the embodiment of this otherdimensional planet, and when he absorbs Strange’s mind this somehow helps Strange win.

Sounds legit.

Also Doctor Strange is now stuck in this dimension without any way to get back home, and that’s how the issue ends.

Historical significance: 4 /
This issue alone isn’t all that significant, but it’s still worth noting that this storyline certainly would warrant a 10/10. We’ll talk about that next time, in the last time Doctor Strange shows up in the retrospective.

Personal significance: 2 /
I’m a HUGE fan of Shuma-Gorath, but I was surprised to see him namedropped here: when I eventually discovered him (it?), I didn’t remember he was already named here.
Obviously I couldn’t think much of the story itself since there was almost none of it, but the page naming the various Strange enemies made me wonder about who these people were.