Today is for taboo III: Mess-Factor

This is the third of three posts about Marvel mutantdom in the late 1970s and 1980s; the previous two were Today is for taboo and Today is for taboo II.

I’ll open with perhaps the most rage-inducing comics-geek phrase I can produce: I like Cyclops better than Wolverine.

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Stars and garters

What color is this fur?

Blue and furry! Um … it needs a little discussion.

‘Verse this

Cool! We got it all stretched out up there and we nailed it! Oh wait … why can’t it move? And it seems unable to breathe … and its wrists are bleeding …

It’s the worst thing ever to happen to my experience of Marvel and other superhero comics.

The river

I know why Heraclitus cries

Picture the Marvel I first encountered, as a multi-year pile roughly centered on 1971: comics as physical objects are pure junk product; the brand is known to everyone but beholden to nobody; the Perfect Film & Chemical Corporation (soon renamed Cadence) seeks Hollywood but the actual product is still selling ad space to X-Ray Specs and plastic rats.

Doom’s face

FF #10, Stan & Jack in “postmodern R us”

In the unbelievably awesome Fantastic Four Annual #2, when Victor von Doom puts on his mask for the first time, a minion protests, “But master, it has not completely cooled yet!” and in the from-behind panel when he’s putting it on, vapor rises from the contact point to remind us of how hot it was.

My Doom

There are no paltry “heroes” in this comic book.

In digging around the internet to find out what those pictures in my memory are, I initially thought that my most cherished issue of my original hoard must have been one of the Astonishing Tales stories, by Roy Thomas and Wally Wood, 1971. But no! It was the one-shot prequel to that series, published in Marvel Superheroes! #20, 1969, also by Thomas and with extremely of-the-moment art credits: Frank Giacoia (artist), Larry Lieber (pencils), Vince Colletta (inks).