Monday, April 20, 2015

Hidden Gems: Marvel Super Action #4

Here's a bit of an oddball comic from Marvel in the late 70s. Right in the middle of a run of Captain America and Avengers reprints, Marvel decided to reach into the Timely/Atlas archives and pull out a couple of old Marvel Boy stories. The character had made a couple of appearances in Fantastic Four and also in What If...? but I don't believe there was any indication that he was being groomed for a series, or else they likely would have featured him in a try-out book such as Marvel Spotlight. Marvel Boy is an interesting character because, much like DC's Captain Comet, he was introduced during that awkward stage between the heyday of the Golden Age superhero and the Silver Age revitalization. The stories themselves are a bit hokey and the dialogue strains the limits of the word balloons, but it is very interesting as a historical artifact, especially the blend of sci-fi, super-heroics and espionage. As a bonus, the book features art by Bill Everett and Russ Heath, so that's not a bad problem to have. If you see this in a bargain bin, snag it as it will give you a taste of that era for a very small investment.

3 comments:

Captain Blog said...

Probably the 'Dreaded Deadline Doom' that we hear so much about. There were no overstock stories to plug in until Shooter initiated that plan when he took over.
Lots of these during this era, if you look around.

What if the Avengers Had Never been? said...

This issue is marked November 1977, and the new Marvel Boy/Man (and future Quasar), Wendell Vaughan, first appeared in Captain America # 217 about two months later, so I presume that is not a coincidence and that this comic was supposed to re-introduce the concept to potential audiences.

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