Tagged: marvel comics
Marvel Comics Holiday: In Between the Pages of the 80s!
I have so many great memories of being a kid back in the eighties. Many of those memories involve my comic books that I took with me everywhere. I’m not going to lie, I was a Marvel Comics kid & easily my favorite superhero was The Incredible Hulk.
The other night I was paging through one of my old beat up comic books and ran across a cool holiday advertisement in between the pages. This brought back a whole bunch of memories of some of these Christmas themed advertisements from yesteryear that I used to see all the time in my favorite comic books.
Here’s a few of them that will bring a little bit of Christmas cheer likely if you’re around my age, oh the sweet memories of being advertised to….
Holiday Comic Cover of the Week: The THING vs Evil Xmas Toys!
We keep getting closer and closer to Christmas this year So of course we have to check out some groovy holiday comic book covers of years gone by! Today we take a look at ‘Marvel Two In One’ number 74 from 1981. It’s a special Christmas issue that of course features The Thing battling the Puppet Master’s evil toys during the during the holidays! This is a sweet cover as well drawn by Frank Springer and it really harkens back to the Golden Age of comics when they were just a damn good time to read!
Creepy Comic Cover of the Week: Marvel’s MISTER HYDE!
I think Marvel’s Mister Hyde is easily one of the creepiest villains in their ranks of baddies! He’s a more fucked up version of the Banner/Hulk dynamic and he even wears a weird ass old school suit and cape like the original literary character. The dude can go head to head with The Incredible Hulk and is one of the loosest cannons in all of Marvel comics! I have always adored the cover of The Amazing Spider-man #232 and think its a certifiably sinister depiction of the villain! Brilliantly drawn by Al Milgrom and John Romita Jr way back in 1982- Hyde is a perfect villain for the Halloween season!
What THE HULK Really Wants: TWINKIES?!!!
I never got to eat a lot of Twinkies as a kid, but don’t get me wrong I really freakin’ wanted to! I can confidently say as well that one of the reasons why I was so damn obsessed with getting my hands on some Twinkies (and hostess fruit pies) was becuz they seemed to be all the rage with my favorite green superhero: The Incredible Hulk! I mean let’s get real here, how could you actually be a kid in the eighties and not be influenced by these amazing little Incredible Hulk hostess adventures?! Plus, It appears to feature classic Hulk artist’s Sal Buscema had quite possibly Herb Trimpe doing the art! If someone knows for sure please correct me, but in the meantime check these out and let your tummy rumble and rage for a damn Twinkle!
Comic Cover of the Week: Barry Windsor Smith’s Post Punk X-men!
Simplicity often times is the best strategy for constructing an amazing comic book cover. Also having the artistic charm and skill of icon Barry Windsor Smith definitely helps too! Well here today I am featuring one of my favorites from Barry, a simple bad ass line-up of everyone’s favorite webhead and the X-men back in the 80s when the characters had a sort of punk rock weirdo mystique to them. Check out Marvel Team Up #150 from 1985, bsck when the X-men still had an edge and life was a bit simpler…
Comic Cover of the Week: Indiana Jones’ Marvel Adventures of the 80s!
So the big news on the Indiana Jones front is that Harrison Ford has officially fianlly started filming the latest installment of the franchise! I’ll admit, I consider ‘Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ a guilty pleasure, but by no means do I consider it a great Indiana Jones film! I’m really hoping that they will get this final installment, with the original actor portraying the iconic 80s hero right this time for one last hurrah. I ‘m always down for some Indiana Jones and even recently went back and revisited some of the 90s ‘Young Indiana Jones’, which isn’t quite as good as I’d hoped it to be. So this now leads me down a new path: the 1980s Marvel comic series ‘The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones’ and here today I’m showcasing one of the series best covers beautifully done by Bret Blevins… I’ve never read an issue of this but this amazing cover certainly has inspired me to!
Marvel Team Up: Spider-man & Chef Boyardee vs Mysterio?!!
So back in 1996 Spidey teamed up with none other than Chef Boyardee for his signature brand pasta that lead him on one wild and crazy 30 second animated adventure!
I love these old commercials when you had stuff like this on tv! Check this out as Spider-man squares off against his classic nemesis Mysterio to protect his pasta!!
Comic Cover of the Week: Wisconsin’s Finest AVENGERS!
I’ve been saying it here literally for years, the MCU is missing the boat on one of their most outrageously hilarious superhero teams: The Great Lakes Avengers! Since the Avengers are still all the rage and essentially dismantled at the moment, it’d be the perfect time for the comedic gold of Wisconsin’s very own superhero team to get a series of their own on Disney Plus. The team was created way back in 1989 by none other than comic icon writer and artist John Byrne and their introduction back then meant a lot to me at the time being a Wisconsinite myself. Essentially a band of misfit z-grade superheroes who decide to start an Avengers team of their own to rep the Midwest, only problem is their crime fighting skills aren’t exactly “Avenger’s level”. Nope the team’s got A LOT of work to do-but none of that’s gonna stop em’ from tryin’ dammit!
Even at one point Hawkeye and Mockingbird attempt to train them, which of course proves to be quite challenging in itself. The team went on to later appear alongside Deadpool and also had a great 4-issue miniseries by Dan Slott that’s a must read. They more recently tried to give them their own monthly book, but it really lost the dark comedy angle and edge of their previous appearances and was cancelled. This great cover by John Byrne shows once again how effective simplicity can be as we got our very first look at the mighty Great Lakes Avengers!~
Comic Cover of the Week: The Thing battles VIRUS X!!!
This week’s comic book cover hits home here as the planet faces the Coronavirus head on. Well back in 1981 The Thing was affected heavily by a deadly one himself called “Virus X”!! Created by the evil giant headed mastermind MODOK it was designed to be hyper-contagious and deadly to the population.
Virus X was so damn deadly, in Marvel Two-in-One #82 the story’s called “The Fatal Effects of Virus X!” MODOK first tested it on group of homeless people he snatched from the streets, and soon set his sights on The Thing to see exactly what it’s effects would be on a superhuman being. As if the Thing hadn’t been through enough already dealing with his monstrous appearance MODOK’S virus mutated him even further! The Thing almost loses his life but luckily his friends Goliath & Captain America are there to give him comfort and kick MODOK’s tiny little ass located on the back of his head!!
Could We Now Get the REAL Defenders from Marvel on the Big Screen?!!
So it seems that the Marvel Netflix shows have run into some problems recently with the cancelation of the Iron Fist and Luke Cage shows as well as the low viewership of the third season of Daredevil. The prospect of a second season of ‘The Defenders’ is certainly not in the cards anymore either. So with that being said could it be possible we just might get the classic comic book incarnation of the iconic team sometime in the near future? This new Netflix version of the team kinda bothered me, using the name when indeed, these characters never banded together in the comics (a couple briefly joined the ranks in the comics at different points in time) at least before this series was announced. It seems possible that a movie version of the team could indeed happen as Marvel Comics is reviving the original characters as The Defenders once again next month! A couple of the characters to complete one of the most classic versions of the team already exist in the Marvel cinematic universe, so banding the Defenders for the big screen would be pretty easy and thrilling as well while being able to add some awesome never before seen characters from to Marvel Cinematic Universe onscreen to the team.
We’ve already got some of the classic members in the movies, Doctor Strange & The Hulk/Banner are all ready to go cinematically. The pairing of these two existing core members for an insane cosmic/multi-dimensional adventure would be most excellent to see materialize on the big screen.
Universal Dork 