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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 7, 2014 14:31:23 GMT -5
So I'm back to reviewing the M.U. And I'm averaging one book every two or so days. When FF debuted it was the lone super-hero book amongst a bunch of monster, romance and western books. I made the conscious decision not to do any of those books, for a couple of reasons. One is trying to get ahold of ways to read them, at least legally. The other is lack of interest. That's particularly true of the romance books. Less so for the monster and westerns.
The first real conundrum I'm seeing coming my way is Two-Gun Kid #60. This appears to be the first appearance of an all-new Two-Gun Kid with some serious super-hero trappings.
So...True Believers...do I try to come up with a way to read TGK? Are there other books that aren't traditional super-hero books that I need to look into? I know Millie changes from a romance book to a teen Archie type book in the late 60s.
Weigh in. Let your voices be heard.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on May 7, 2014 14:37:47 GMT -5
I know I've read articles in possibly Alter-Ego or elsewhere that showed the name of a bunch of classic marvel villians were first used in some early 60s western strips.Don't remember specific examples but these western villians reminded one of the old TV show The Wild,Wild West where they combined scientific contraptions of that time to western motifs
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Post by Jasoomian on May 7, 2014 14:48:55 GMT -5
Has Two-Gun Kid ever been written into the MU proper? if so, you should read that entire series first, since it came 100 years before Fantastic four.
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Post by Phil Maurice on May 7, 2014 14:52:06 GMT -5
Has Two-Gun Kid ever been written into the MU proper? if so, you should read that entire series first, since it came 100 years before Fantastic four. That's both funny and cruel. TGK and some other Western heroes joined the MU during the Englehart/Perez Avengers in the 70s.
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2014 15:25:10 GMT -5
Two-Gun was also a regular in Dan Slott's She-Hulk a few years back, & he showed up, IIRC, as a dying old man for the purposes of the framing story for The Marvels Project after that.
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Post by Hoosier X on May 7, 2014 15:35:05 GMT -5
Don't forget Dr. Droom in Amazing Adventures #1 to #6. They brought him back as Dr. Druid in the 1970s and eventually put him in the Avengers.
And Patsy Walker! She eventually appeared in Amazing Adventures (a different series entirely) with The Beast and ended up being Hellcat in Avengers and The Defenders, and I think she married Daimon Hellstrom.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on May 7, 2014 15:40:46 GMT -5
The Agents of Atlas series from a few years back starred a whole bunch of 40s/50s Marvel characters Yellow Claws' Jimmy Woo,Marvel Boy from the 50s,Fin Fang Foom Slam's got a lot of catching up to do-including Maneely's The Black Knight
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 7, 2014 15:40:53 GMT -5
I'm not going to go backward past F.F. #1.
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on May 7, 2014 15:40:56 GMT -5
Patsy Walker also underwent a transformation at the start of the Marvel Age, from an Archie-style teen book to a more serious, soap-opery meoldrama, complete with Patsy's longtime boyfriend Buzz Baxter being shipped to Vietnam and coming back in a wheelchair.
I'm not sure reading these side books is necessary to understand what was happening with Marvel, but the reverse is true - knowing the big picture of what was happening at Marvel is key to understanding why the side books changed like they did.
I think Stan's new devil may care attitude towards comics shows up right away in books other than Fantastic Four. Patsy Walker #99, which came out one month after FF #2 and Tales to Astonish #27, features an early world-building experiment where Linda Carter, Student Nurse makes a guest appearance. This issue also has a downright bizarre story where Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visits America and is so terrified by the amazing optimism and patriotism of Patsy Walker's friends that he flees, despairing of the USSR ever winning the Cold War. The issue really reads a lot like Stan's crazy humor in early FF issues, which was not present in earlier Patsy Walker issues I have read.
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Post by MDG on May 7, 2014 15:43:16 GMT -5
I think it would be interesting to read them in the context of what else Marvel was putting out at the time. But it's your baby.
(I just had a thought that it would be typical for Stan to have a character in Patsy or Millie reading a Marvel comic, but if he did, how would that be explained when they got pulled into the MU?)
When does Sgt Fury start? Did Marvel have any war books going before that?
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on May 7, 2014 15:45:04 GMT -5
I think it would be interesting to read them in the context of what else Marvel was putting out at the time. But it's your baby. (I just had a thought that it would be typical for Stan to have a character in Patsy or Millie reading a Marvel comic, but if he did, how would that be explained when they got pulled into the MU?) When does Sgt Fury start? Did Marvel have any war books going before that? I believe Patsy and Millie both attended Reed and Sue's wedding in FF Annual #3. I don't think there was any explanation given.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on May 7, 2014 15:48:59 GMT -5
I think it would be interesting to read them in the context of what else Marvel was putting out at the time. But it's your baby. (I just had a thought that it would be typical for Stan to have a character in Patsy or Millie reading a Marvel comic, but if he did, how would that be explained when they got pulled into the MU?) When does Sgt Fury start? Did Marvel have any war books going before that? I believe Patsy and Millie both attended Reed and Sue's wedding in FF Annual #3. I don't think there was any explanation given. They had invitations
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Post by Hoosier X on May 7, 2014 15:50:54 GMT -5
I think it would be interesting to read them in the context of what else Marvel was putting out at the time. But it's your baby. (I just had a thought that it would be typical for Stan to have a character in Patsy or Millie reading a Marvel comic, but if he did, how would that be explained when they got pulled into the MU?) When does Sgt Fury start? Did Marvel have any war books going before that? For a time, Marvel flooded the market with war comics, and a few survived the implosion in 1957. There's a comic book called Battle that lasted into the middle of 1960 and has some Kirby and Ditko stories, not to mention Russ Heath and John Severin.
Sgt. Fury started just a few month before Avengers and X-Men, so the middle of 1963, I think.
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2014 16:13:04 GMT -5
And of course there was some crossover, as it were, between Sgt. Fury & the superhero books. Reed Richards the military officer shows up in an early issue of Fury. Pretty sure Ben Grimm, the pilot, did the same later on (more prominently in Capt. Savage, though).
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Post by Cei-U! on May 7, 2014 16:24:09 GMT -5
I think you're perfectly fine skipping the Western and teen titles as none of them interact with the super-hero titles (beyond the Patsy Walker cameo in FF Annual #3) until long after Stan gave up the EIC chair. Sgt. Fury and its spin-offs, however, are far more thoroughly tied to the MU, as Dan notes, and should be included.
Cei-U! I summon my two cents' worth!
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