Welcome to Make Ours Marvel, the weekly show where Michael Kaiser and Jon M. Wilson read chronologically through Marvel Comics’ spandex adventures and discuss their thoughts with little to no authority.
In this episode…
- Amazing Spider-Man #36 (Apr 1966)
- The Avengers #27 (May 1966)
- The X-Men #20 (May 1966)
- Daredevil #16 (May 1966)
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Amazing Spider-Man #36: The Looter? More like “The Loser”, amirite? HAH? HAH? Yeah, he was villaining it up, and that’s about it. Nuff said.
The real story is how dumb Peter is! Ohmigod, when a pretty girl invites you to a party, you say “YES!” I mean, come on! Ok wait, I’ll think this thru, Peter doesn’t want to be known as “the brainy guy”, but that’s because he got bullied in school. But this is college, and she said “I *want* you there because you’re smart.” Either Peter is being ultra-paranoid, or more likely, doing something he does best, self-sabotage. So many instances of “the Parker Luck” become “poor choices” under scrutiny, and he just doesn’t see it. I’m just going to shake my head.
The Avengers #27: Is Avengers starting to give us good female characters? Specifically Wanda and Jan. Not sure yet, but I’ll stay hopeful.
The X-Men #20: Blob and Unus dressed as X-Men and pulling off the frame job was remarkably effective and believable. It doesn’t take huge acting talent to pull this off, but Blo-nus are carny guys, and perhaps used to pulling scams on rubes, so this worked really well. Very cool.
Thoughts about Professor X. They keep calling his power telepathy, but maybe it’s closer to ESP, which would give it more flexibility in sensing his environment than strict mind-reading would. But you know, it’s not like science has even defined how telepathy works, so they can do what want. COMICS!
Then there’s Lucifer. More like “Loser-fer!” Amirite? HAH? HAH? Wait, did I do this bit already?
Daredevil #16: For the first page or two, I was thinking “Wasn’t this villain actually Doc Ock in disguise?” until “Oh right, that was Master Planner! And this is Masked Marauder!” Odd for me to get them confused, since their names and M.O.’s are so totally different. Completely. Utterly. Different. Yup. (Narrator: They’re not different.)
The room of Daredevils was very fun, especially the detail that all of their eyes were visible, whereas DD’s mask covers his eyes. Well done, Mr Romita.
With DD being a Spider-Man-like character from the beginning, it’s great to see them together, even for just a big fight scene. And I was shocked to have a cliffhanger end the issue. These misunderstanding-then-team-up situations are usually resolved so quickly, even nowadays. This is remarkably tense. Wow!
And being a numbers guy, I dig that DD guest-starred in Spider-Man #16, and this is DD #16. Marvel: letting nerds nerd it up.
Until next time, or until DD catches Spidey drinking his milk and *doesn’t* get into a fight over it, make mine Make Ours Marvel.