The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1711: Strange Tales #155, April 1967

A blast from the past, from a Marvel Universe only 6 years old. The lead Nick Fury story is from the classic Jim Steranko era, and it's pretty awesome. I kind of want to read more of this earlier version of Fury, more James Bond than super-spy. He's a lot less jaded than writers treat him now.

But Ms. Severin's contribution to this issue is a Doctor Strange tale, and it's pretty great. The story is a concluding episode to a longer tale, and the Stan Lee script is, as usual with him, a bit stilted. There's just too damned much exposition. But the art has a wonderful Golden Age feel to it. As I read more pre-1955 comics, I'm gaining a much greater appreciation for the style of that era, and also for the influence it casts over comics. While the EC horror comics influence is fairly obvious, sometimes we fail to look for, or perhaps include, influence from the early superhero tales. They were simple and often very quickly produced, but the stylization that seems a staple of the era manages to convey fantastical situations with very little detail. Contemporary comics, to a large extent, are about spectacle, sometimes to the detriment of story. Comics from the 30s and 40s aren't, as the production standards were so much lower. Or rather, the production technology was so much less-sophisticated. This Doctor Strange story is beautiful to look at. I kind of wish the overly-verbose Stan Lee speech bubbles weren't there.

(For example:)

"For, only I possess the knowledge--only I possess the power--only I possess the consummate skill--to withstand so deadly a blow--and summarily repel it!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 134: Strange Tales #171, December 1973

I recently started investigating the Marvel Comics horror titles of the 1970s. Well, when I say recently, within the last 5 years or so. Though I can't claim that the writing is up to a standard that matches what I think is some apotheotic work in current comics, they have a certain style, a certain panache, that makes them thoroughly entertaining to read.

I have to try to turn of the critical voice in my head when I read the highly exploitative titles like Brother Voodoo. It's not so much that it's in any way explicitly racist, but the utilization, and exploitation of Haitian culture into a superhero comic is postcolonially problematic.

Okay, let's leave some of that critical language behind. This tale of zombies in league with A.I.M. is a bit trite, but it does showcase some interesting story telling techniques in the extended flashbacks, the omniscient, but somehow still unreliable, narrative voice. Len Wein, close to the same time he created Swamp Thing, is plumbing the depths of Marvel's horror universe and meshing it quite nicely with the superhero universe. There's no explanation as to why the mad scientists of A.I.M. are working with Baron Samedi, who is, I think, one of the Voodoo Loa that Brother Voodoo is ostensibly "master" of, but in seventies comics, such things were not of paramount importance. What mattered was the nod to the shared universe, and the action. And this comic is full-on action, cover to cover. One has to question why such titles were considered as horror titles when really it's superheroes fighting supernatural supervillains.

Full disclosure: I'm really tired right now, and I'm not sure any of that made sense, but I have to keep up the daily comic, so here it is. I'm going to bed now. See you tomorrow.