Cosmic muck

It was an amazing comic. A man has become a muck-monster, his humanity just a memory, seemingly limited to minor human-interest horror-adventures in a swamp, but somehow a magnet for society’s psychological ills, even attuned to cosmic insights, and eventually limping, looming into the central intersection of ultimate forces … Yeah, it’s great, man, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing was really someth — wait, you’re talking about 1973?

Actions have consequences

After a long and winding road of comic book commentary, we come at last to the character who’s likely to be the final subject in our discussion of vigilantism in comic books during the Seventies and Eighties: the Foolkiller.

STEVE SAYS “KILL THE FOOLS”

I like him anyway

This was my favorite character in the exact mid-1970s, age 12-13. Why? That’s a question that gets more interesting the more I try to answer, and also less and less easy to answer,

The big bad

This is one of the follow-up Cosmic Zap posts trailin’ in the wake of September, certainly related to Cosmic villainy, because we’re talking about metaphysical evil here. Especially the kind who favors red, fire, and underground habitation, and has something to do with death and sin and treachery. I know! It’s Set, from the ancient Egyptian pantheon, right? Uh, no …

That duck, ’nuff said

Where to start? It’s not too surprising that Marvel featured an in-fiction parody character, right? There have been quite a few of them, and in an era of constantly-launched and constantly-canceled comics titles, of complete editorial chaos, of plummeting sales in the obsolete newsstand venue, and badly-stumbling attempts to get superheroes into other media, Howard was a solid hit.

The book that wasn’t there

The earliest issue in my inherited stash

Dr. Strange, the Hulk, Namor, and the Silver Surfer? Someone had some balls to propose a super-group with these characters; if they could ever find a common sphere of activity and a collective identity, that’d be the end of super-heroing and super-villaining for anyone else. But that line-up didn’t last past its own set-up, and settled instead into Strange, Valkyrie, and Nighthawk in a sort-of recap of the early Thomas Avengers, with the Hulk showing up frequently.

No one joins a “cult”

which spells “Jim Jones”

Cult leader supervillains! Can you get any more evil than that? Not in comics, you can’t. But their cults are strangely vague.