THAT COMIC SMELL: 5 Year Anniversary (General Comics Catch Up)

The latest episode is online now.

We use five years of the podcast to meet up (in person!) and discuss comics we've been excited about lately,

From the website:

"Five Years later…
We are still here. This episode is just a general comics chat and catch up but we celebrate our 5 year anniversary and what a time it’s been. We have made so many friends, talked about incredible topics, had a laugh, chatted to amazing creators, had interviews with heroes, went to cons, made a comics together, just generally enjoyed ourselves and so much more.
We will never be even able to begin to thank you all for sticking with us and listening this whole time. It’s been an absolute pleasure and we will keep putting them out as long as it keeps being as fun as it’s been.
If this is your first one then welcome! We have 5 years worth of a back catalogue to catch up on and thanks for joining us now.
We really hope you enjoy this, as much as we enjoy making it.
(P.S. That’s us now on our way to another big moment as well. We’re on the road to 100!)
Follow us on Twitter & Instagram @thatcomicsmell
Get us on…
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and most places you find podcasts.
Pogo (Walt Kelly)
Taxi (Alfonso Font)
Rohner (Alfonso Font)
Houdini: The Handcuff King (Jason Lutes, Nick Bertozzi)
Battle of Britain (Ian Kennedy)
Monsters (Barry Windsor Smith)
Habibi (Craig Thomson)
Terror From The Other Side (Joan Edam)
Blacksad (Juan Díaz Canales, Juanjo Guarnido)
Frank Miller (Jose Joaquín Rodriguez)
Contrapaso (Teresa Valero)
El Eternauta (Hector G Oesterheld, Francisco Solano López)
Albert Oehlen vs History (Griffo, Wendy Gondeln)
Battlestar Galactica (Battleship Galacticon) (Various Marvel)
Crash Site (Nathan Cowdry)
Sea-Diver Vol.1 (Nathan Cowdry)
Bubbles Fanzine
Baron Bean (George Herriman)
George Mayhem (Tony Esmond, Darrel Forpe)
Hobo Mum (Charles Forsman, Max De Radigués)
An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons & Trues Stories (Edited by Ivan Bunetti)
Perfect Example (John Porcellino)
It's a Good Life if you Don't Weaken (Seth)
Love and Rockets Companion (Marc Sobel, Kirsty Valenti)
The Junction (Norm Konyu)
My Hot Date (Noah Van Sciver)
Blammo 1-5 (Noah Van Sciver)
Justice League Tornado's Path (Ed Benes, Brad Meltzer)
Justice League Identity Crisis (Brad Meltzer, Rags Morales)
Sonata (David Hine, Brian Haberlin)
TMNT: The Last Ronin (Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Tom Waltz)
Detective Comics (Mariko Tamaki, Victor Bogdanovic)"

THOSE PEOPLE ARE NOT GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

After having given their biggest characters to Fox and Sony in order to avoid going out of business altogether, Marvel Comics made enough money from their share of the success of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Bryan Singer’s X-Men films to firstly stay alive and then later start up their own movie studio. Against the odds, they somehow had a huge mainstream hit with the character Iron Man, and struck gold with the Avengers movie. Now though, Marvel have pretty much ran out of already popular and famous characters. They are aware of this, and quite cleverly, if cynically, factored it in to the first trailer for the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy...

“Who are you?” 

“Star Lord” 

“Who?”

Then a roll call of the characters as Peter Serafinowicz is told who they are.

I remember Rocket Raccoon from The Hulk’s 20^th anniversary issue, so that’s 1982. He was a bit of a joke character really, with his name a play on the Beatles song. Hulk even complained about him on the cover...

A bit later, there was a lovely looking 4 issue series drawn by Mike Mignola, prior to Hellboy...

Gamora was a terrific character from Jim Starlin’s Warlock series in the mid 70s...

Groot was another one who guest starred in Hulk; in the 1976 Annual drawn by Sal Buscema, to be exact. Groot was originally drawn by Jack Kirby in the old Marvel monster comics. This story had a bunch of old weirdos reappear so the Hulk could smash them to bits one after another. Quite literally in Groot’s case…

Starlord was a good comic by Chris Claremont and John Byrne in the late 70s. Some visceral violent action, shades of Star Wars – “a sith lord” even turns up...

A bit later I bought black and white Star Lord comics aimed at a slighly older audience, with Carmine Infantino drawing a sexy lady called Caryth. Here is her emotional (and topless) death scene...

Star Lord’s costume is completely different in the trailer, I observe.

And wait, why is Star Lord in this film ? Why are any of these people in this movie?
Because I read Guardians of the Galaxy too, and none of these jokers were in there.

The Guardians of the Galaxy were first featured in Marvel Premiere 18 in 1969. I was lucky enough to pick it up in the late 80s for 10p in a second hand bookshop.

It had intriguing concepts . The characters were from different planets in the solar system and so their bodies had grown differently due to their native atmospheric conditions. As well as being a good sci-fi idea, this also gave scope for the characters being distrustful of other “races”.
Then there was poor old (very old) Vance Astro, who had set off on a thousand year space mission in hibernation to the nearest star system, only to find humanity had developed faster than light travel and arrived there hundreds of years before him. They still gave him a hero’s welcome, but he was tortured by the events. And the Badoon were scary villains (I thought the Judoon from Doctor Who owed something to them).

Beautifully drawn by Gene Colan, as you can see above.

I recall the Guardians reappearing to guest in Avengers comics with a few more characters added. 

At some point Marvel must have completely rebooted the Guardians of the Galaxy comic, ditching the original characters, and the movie is based on that.

I feel like I turned up for a Temptations concert and nobody’s left in the band.

COMICS STAMPEDE 3

Well, here he is...

A nice Hulk sheet from Madagascar in 1999.

Artists include Sal Buscema, Steve Ditko, Gary Frank, Ron Garney, Dale Keown, Jack Kirby, Adam Kubert, Marie Severin and Herb Trimpe.

SAL BUSCEMA (HAPPY ANNIVERSARY HULK part 4)

Sal Buscema drew the Hulk comic for ten years from 1975-1985. It was his rendition that was the current one when I was coming up. In a way, I just thought that his Hulk was how the Hulk should properly look in comics. I’m reticent to say his Hulk is the definitive one for me out of deference to Kirby, but I suspect it probably is...

It’s difficult to pick one page of his work. He’s a very good storyteller, effectively building up tension, only to release it when the reader turns the page. Here are two pages from 1981 that just make the reader want to see what happens next:

One of my favourite stories had the Hulk chase a villain called Curtis Jackson across America for months (an eternity in kid time). When it seemed the Hulk had finally caught Jackson, after smashing his helicopter on top of a skyscraper, the criminal managed to get away again at the last second. The Hulk threw one of his biggest tantrums ever, reducing the skyscraper to rubble:

That story appeared in 1979, but I read it in Marvel UK reprints in 1984. Alongside the British weeklies, one would also pick up US originals occasionally, which were invariably years ahead in terms of storyline. In 1983, I picked one up and discovered that the Hulk was now operating with Banner’s intellect intact, which was interesting. He had gotten involved with a new love interest Kate Waynesboro, and set up a research facility for himself. In the story I picked up, he goes into the future in a story riffing off of a Harlan Ellison story:

The intelligent Hulk bit had already been done by Lee and Kirby in the 60s (like most everything in Marvel Comics), but this was the start of a protracted storyline using this gimmick. Indeed, the Hulk has never returned to the straightforward “Banner angry = Hulk” scenario since the early 80s. There is always added psychological baggage now.

Anyway back in 1985, Banner’s intelligence wore away leaving a truly mindless Hulk. Here is the final nail in Banner’s coffin as the Hulk rejects Waynesboro:

Buscema continues to draw the Hulk sporadically, most recently this cover from January this year:



















Buscema drew one panel in 1982 which I think is my favourite portrait of the Hulk. It's the one on the right:

So there you have it, Sal Buscema.

And I guess I really should include the next page from the story I started with...