Articles with the Tag Marv Wolfman

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 48: Essential Spider-Woman Vol. 01

books and books review, Comix
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cover of Essential Spider-Woman Vol. 01


Essential Spider-Woman Vol. 01
Marv Wolfman, Mark Gruenwald, Michael Fleisher, Carmine Infantino and friends
Reprints: Marvel Spotlight #32, Marvel Two-in-One #29-33, Spider-Woman #1-25 (February 1977 – April 1980)
Get this for: quite good for a trademark grab — four stars

Spider-Woman, like fellow late seventies heroes Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk is one of those superheroes who you suspect to have only been created only to safeguard a trademark. This may be a bit too cynical and certainly her solo series was actually quite good, if suffering from some of the usual defects common to series with a female lead. One point that worked in her favour from the start is that she might share her name with Spider-Man, neither her powers nor herself were related to him; she was more than a weak copy of him. She managed a quite respectable run on her series, fifty issues and Essential Spider-Woman Vol. 1 collects half of it, as well as her first appearances in Marvel Spotlight #33 and Marvel Two-in-One #29-33.

Spider-Woman was created by Archie Goodwin and Sal Buscema, but it was Marv Wolfman who guided her through her early days, first in Marvel Two-in-One and the first eight issues of her own title. He makes her into Jessica Drew, a somewhat confused young woman, with barely any knowledge of her own past, which is explained by her having been in suspended animation for years, having almost died from radiation poisoning and been injected with a spider venom serum to save her. For the first two issues of her solo series she still runs around in England, where she was left after having teamed up with the Thing in Marvel Two-in-One, but from the third Wolfman relocates her in L.A., far away enough from other superheroes to not let them crowd her style.

Something a SHIELD agent supporting cast member by the name of Jerry Hunt does enough already, playing the clinging love interest disapproving of Jessica’s activities as Spider-Woman. He sticks around for about sixteen issues, though less and less so even when Wolfman was still writing it. He’s just annoying and dull and like Magnus, the mysterious older magician gentleman also hanging around Jessica, he takes away some of her lustre. Another thing that hampers her appeal in these early issues is how often Spider-Woman has to play the victim: be knocked out, tied up and having to be rescued by others, compared to what male heroes go through. Once Mark Gruenwald and later Michael Fleisher took over, this fortunately happened much less.

Villainwise Spider-Woman has a reasonable rogues gallery here, mainly with brandnew villains like the Brothers Grimm, the Hangman and the Needle, the Gypsy Moth, not to mention Morgain Le Fay, who would become her personal nemesis. Her villains tend to be either somewhat on the grotesque side like the lot I just mentioned, or more mundane gangsters and crooks. The latter start to dominate once Spider-Woman starts her career as a bounty hunter. Few already established villains paid a visit to Spider-Woman, the most important one being Nekra, the old Steve Gerber Daredevil villain, who hoped to use Spider-Woman’s powers for herself.

The stories are fairly simple, with few subplots. Characterisation changes a lot between writers, Marv Wolfman having established her as being sexually alluring to men but hideous to women, which Gruenwald did away with by getting her a special medicine that suppressed the pheremones that supposedly had this effect.

On the art front, the series starts with Carmine Infantino, who’s a long way down from his sixties DC heights, but still a consumate professional. There are a few fillins by Frank Springer and Trevor von Eeden as well, none very good. Sadly the best art is in the last issue presented here, by Steve Leialoha, whose fluid, stylised Michael Goldenesque art style works well with Spider-Woman.

Essential Spider-Woman Vol. 01 is a decent collection of stories, none of which really set the world on fire when first published and with the best of her series yet to come.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 43: Essential Doctor Strange Vol. 03

books and books review, Comix
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cover of Doctor Strange Vol. 03


Essential Doctor Strange Vol. 03
Steve Englehart, Marv Wolfman, Jim Starlin, Frank Brunner, Gene Colan and friends
Reprints: Dr Strange #1-29, Annual 1 and Tomb of Dracula #44-45 (June 1974- June 1978)
Get this for: Englehart and co trying to recapture the Ditko magic — three stars

I think it’s fair to say that every writer on Doctor Strange has tried to get out from under the shadow of Steve Ditko. In the first volume of
Essential Doctor Strange they did not succeed, but perhaps the writers in the third volume will fare better. They’re certainly not the least writers: Steve Englehart, Marv Wolfman, Jim Starlin and Roger Stern all have a go at Doctor Strange here.

Of the writers featured here, Englehart has the best chances. He was after all responsible for getting Dr Strange his own series again, together with Frank Brunner, through their work on Marvel Premiere. He starts strong, introducing Silver Dagger, a Catholic cardinal turned magician hunter, who in the first issue kills Doctor Strange and kidnaps Clea, his lover and disciple. Strange gets better of course, but it takes him five issues to put Silver Dagger away. In the sixth issue Gene Colan returns on the art duties, as do longtime Strange villains Umar and Dormammu in a plot to not only restore the latter one’s powers, but to make him master of Earth. In the end he’s only defeated by the powers of Gaea and every living creature on Earth — including the people reading the story…

The threats only get bigger for poor old Doctor Strange, having to face off against Eternity next for the fate of the Earth, failing to stop the destruction of the world in #12, only for it to be recreated the next issue. Everybody literally died that time, but was reborn a second time, something that would later in the volume be retconned by Marv Wolfman. It’s not the last time the universe is seemingly destroyed only to be recreated again — Wolfman does it as well, as does Jim Starlin in his Creators saga. This is no coincidence, as each writer has their own cosmic epic story to tell and what is more epic than the end of everything and only Doctor Strange remaining to put things right?

Yet lesser threats can work as well, as the crossover with Tomb of Dracula shows. When Strange’s servant Wong is bit and killed by Dracula, Doctor Strange goes looking for revenge only to fall victim to the vampire himself. He manages to escape in his astral body, but still has a hard time getting both himself and Wong cured and fails in destroying Dracula. After that it’s back to the big, existential menaces however, as Doc fights Satan, timetravels through America’s colonial history in honor of the bicentennial and confronts the menace of the Quadriverse and the Creators saga.

Reading this volume in one setting, rather than having read the individual issues spread out over four years, it’s not hard to see some patterns emerging — it’s not just the periodical destruction and recreation of the universe. There’s also the frequent depowering of Doctor Strange, as each writer finds reasons why he cannot use his magic this time. It is of course always difficult to write an almost omnipotent character like Doc Strange, who could end most threats with a handy spell or two. So either the villains need a power up or Strange needs a power down. Personally I feel either is a lazy choice and that’s the difference with the Lee/Ditko Doctor Strange; they didn’t take the easy way out. It takes effort and skill to keep Strange’s powers consistent and not cheat in getting him out of plot holes.

Another common plot device here is seeing Doc Strange being killed only to discover later that he managed to flee his body first in his astral form. I’ve got fewer problems with this, it is one of his established powers after all, but when used to much it can again be a crutch. The same goes for the eye of Agamotto, which is less used here however.

Frank Brunner starts out as the artist here and he’s is well suited to the title, as are his main succesors, Gene Colan, Jim Starlin, Ruby Nebres and Tom Sutton. Each of those artists is on the atmospheric end of the scale rather than the realistic, especially Colan. Lovely work by all of them and gorgeous to look at, even if some of it is hampered by the transition to black and white, as is the case with the P. Craig Russel drawn annual.

Some good tries, but the Ditko Doctor Strange is not equalled here.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 30: Marvel Two-in-One Vol. 2

books and books review, Comix
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cover of Essential Marvel Two-in-One vol 2


Marvel Two-in-One Vol. 2
Marv Wolfman, Roger Slifer, Ron Wilson and friends
Reprints: Marvel Two-in-One #26-52, Annual #2-3 (April 1977 – June 1979)
Get this for: the occasional gems in the mire — two stars

They can’t all be winners. The Essentials phonebooks are a great way to get your hands on large chunks of classic Marvel comics, but you have to accept the occasional dud. Marvel is after all fairly indiscriminating in their approach to the line: everything that might be commercially interesting gets at least one volume and if it sells, more volumes follow. Some of the series collected were never to great to begin with; because these volumes are published in strict chronological order and every series has its up and downs, even good series will have weaker volumes every now and again. In the case of Essential Marvel Two-in-One Vol. 2, the original series was never a priority for the top writers or artists at Marvel, so large stretches of it are mediocre at best.

Marvel Two-in-One, like its companion title Marvel Team-Up suffers from two flaws: it’s format, which requires another guest star each month and the fact that it play’s second fiddle to another series, in this case The Fantastic Four, in Team-up‘s case Amazing Spider-Man. Which means you cannot change the status quo in this series, anything that does change has to be put right in the end and whatever happens in the main title will end up determining events here as well. In general then, coming up with a story that’s “good enough” will do. The same goes for the art: people will buy the issue depending on the guest star anyway, so why knock yourself out? A bit cynical perhaps, but the truth is that Marvel Two-in-One and Marvel Team-Up never helped a writer or artist to make their reputation.

Roughly half the stories in this volume were written by Marv Wolfman, who does try to give some semblance of continuity to the series, with issue 26 to 36 forming one long sequence of stories. The Thing gets involved with SHIELD against Mentallo and the Fixer, mixes it up with Deathlok, then has to fly to England to find an expert to help Deathlok regain his independence, crosses the path of HYDRA and Spider-Woman, tangles with Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, teams up with minor mystic hero Modred, not to mention Nighthawk, then spends two issues cleaning up the plotlines left over from the cancellation of Skull the Slayer, coincidently one Wolfman co-created. This could’ve worked well, but unfortunately it all turned out fairly dreary, things not helped by the cor blimey stow the crows mockney Wolfman insists all English characters speak with.

The next writer up, Roger Slifer, continues Wolfman’s approach to the title with a multi-issue story about the Thing being framed for assault and criminal damage, followed by a two issue teamup with Black Panther and Brother Voodoo against a zombie (pardon, “zuvembi”, zombies not allowed by the Comics Code yet), neither of which are great successes. A curious detail of the second stoy is that it features Idi Amin, then still the dictator of Uganda, as the villain behind the “zuvembi” turned out to be the Ugandan minister of economics who was once a supervillain called Dr. Spectrum (don’t ask). Now cameos by actually existing politicians are nothing new in comics (as witnessed by the appearance by Jimmy Carter — or at least the Impossible Man masquerading as him — in this volume as well) but to have Idi Amin is a bit tasteless.

The remainder of the stories here are less ambitious, just simple one issue teamups and nothing interesting. However, amongst all this dross are a few absolute gems. The first is the second part of the Jim Starlin written and pencilled story from Avengers Annual #7 and Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2, annoyingly incomplete as the first part is omitted, but still great on its own. Then there’s #50, a Byrne special, in which the Thing travels back in time to the days just after the Fantastic Four had formed, to try and cure his past self when it’s no longer possible for himself to be cured. Finally, the very next issue has a Peter Gillis (a very underrated writer), Frank Miller story featuring a bunch of seventies Avengers (Ms. Marvel, Best, Wonderman) as well Nick Fury against the power of the Yellow Claw’s Sky Claw, hijacked by a mad American general wanting to take over the government.

The Byrne, Starlin and Miller issues standout not just for the stories, but especially for their art. For the most part the art here was in the hands of Ron Wilson, who can be best described with “adequate”, or similar artists like Bob Hall or Alan Kupperberg. Having somebody like Byrne or Starlin do an issue is like coming to an oasis in a desert of mediocricy. But the best art this volume is from Frank Miller, who goes for the Steranko look for his story.

So there you have it. Essential Marvel Two-in-One Vol. 2 is a collection with little to recommend itself, save for the three exceptions noted above, unless you’re a huge Thing fan or collect appearances by some of the more obscure heroes seen here.