It was a longer wait than expected for Star Brand #7, as the series is demoted without notice to bimonthly publication. I say demoted because most of the other books Marvel demoted to bimonthly status at the time turned out to be on their final legs — see Dazzler, The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones, and Star Wars. Roy Thomas steps in to script this issue over Shooter’s plot, and Art Nichols comes on as John Romita Jr.’s inker. Stuck in space, Ken finally notices one star brighter than the rest and realizes it’s the sun. Finding Earth, he goes to his apartment, makes a call, and finds out Deb is in the hospital. Barb finally completely kicks out Ken, who’s finding messages from the Old Man — not dead yet! — demanding back the Star Brand. Ken struggles to find him, eventually using Deb as bait. They have a big rematch and Ken appears to fry him for good — there’s a body this time. Everything settled, he goes back to Deb at the hospital for a happy ending? This was Shooter’s last issue — he’d soon be out as editor in chief at Marvel. Star Brand would enter a kind of creative limbo until issue #11, when John Byrne takes over as writer and artist and begins to completely dismantle everything Shooter built.
Ken struggles to do better. His eye wanders at work, where he gets a shot at a sales job. He goes to meet Duck at Denny’s when the Old Man returns and joins them. He says he’s here to warn Ken and they’ll talk later. At home, Laurie acts out, and Barb tries to seduce Ken. Before he can join her in bed, the Old Man shows up with Duck, who’s now in love with him. Ken thinks he’s bamboozled her somehow. Ken doesn’t believe his ears when the Old Man tells him the Star Brand is a weapon, and Ken’s supposed to use it to decide a battle on the far side of the universe. Barb comes down and doesn’t take well to seeing Debbie. The Old Man releases Deb, who later calls and begs to speak to Ken. Barb tells her off and Ken goes to save her, getting in a big fight with the Old Man that goes into space and ends with Ken melting his face off. Once again, Ken’s lost — he can’t see Earth and so doesn’t know how to get home. Rick Bryant joins the creative team, inking some of the later fight pages. His line’s a bit stronger than Williamson’s, but it’s still a nice looking book. There have been no letters columns to date in this series, which is strange for this era at Marvel. There’s no way to see what other readers think of the book, or to announce any creative changes in the book — of which there soon will be many.
Here’s where Ken Connell tries to do better. It’s his birthday, and Debbie the Duck shows up at his door to surprise him birthday sex. Then she hides out in his car for two hours when his parents and pals (including Barb) throw a surprise birthday bash. Even Ken is getting creeped out by how the Duck lets him use her. He decides to observe the mystery woman and her accomplices, following them back to a student residence. He finds guns in their car, exposes them, and calls the police. He then flies to Libya and destroys a military base all on his own. This sequence is pretty cool — no dialog or captions for two pages, just Ken blowing stuff up. He then tries to make up with Barb, which goes well, and break up with Debbie, which does not. The Duck makes like she’ll kill herself if she can’t see Kenny, so he backs off a bit. He then goes to Barbs and plans to tell her about the Star Brand, but thinks twice after her daughter Laurie acts out again. Again, this reminds me of something that might have been tried — and maybe even work — as a superhero TV series in 1986. But as a comic, even the Romita Jr.-Williamson artwork can’t make this feel dramatic or interesting enough to really work.
John Romita Jr. and Al Williamson return as the art team, which at least gives this issue a nice look. Most of this one is about Ken being a jerk and how he deals with the fallout of being a jerk. Myron elicits a three-page recap of the story so far, then tells Ken the whole story sounds fake. Ken uses his powers to cut corners at work and continues to fool around with Duck — only this time Barb catches him and walks out. Ken mopes and mopes for a few pages until he encounters a strange trio of seemingly super-powered people who use their powers to steal food from a grocery and hide out in the wood. One of them beats up Ken real good, so he goes home to work out and start a journal in a vain attempt to do better.
Alex Saviuk and Vince Colletta step in to draw this third issue, so this issue lacks the slick look of the previous issues. Ken Connell in particular looks less interesting and more convincing as the jerk he is. This issue, he lusts after Barb’s teenage babysitter, then goes on a date with Barb but ditches her before he gets laid to take care of a superhero problem. In the Being a Superhero is Hard Department, Ken goes to the moon and vaporizes a mountain on the dark side like no one is going to notice that. He also rips up a couple of Soviet fighters bombing Afghan troops before heading home to bang Debbie the Duck — again. He also notices a classified ad in the newspaper seeking a meeting with the “Flying Man.” Of course, he walks right into the trap — it’s a woman (hot, of course) who says her boyfriend will hurt her if she doesn’t get some info from him. He takes off, and returns after leaving Barb alone in bed to find her apparently beaten up — but it’s faked. The mystery woman and her pals trick him into using his powers to rip open a car door and deflect bullets. They also see his face. Feeling like a dimwit, he goes home to Debbie the Duck. The formula’s already wearing thin, with little of interest happening this issue to excite anyone to come back for another issue.
Jim Shooter’s concept for the New Universe as a realistic take on superheroes is on full display, exposing its strengths and its flaws. Ken Connell’s heroic journey shows he’s very powerful indeed, but not very smart. He doesn’t need to breathe in space and can survive a nuclear blast, but he needs help to find his way home to Pittsburgh. He also continues to be a creep to both Barb and Debbie the Duck, and runs into an ex-girlfriend who chastises him for fleeing any sort of responsibility. John Romita Jr. and Al Williamson make this all look slick and realistic to the point of being boring. But all this sets up Ken to try to do better by helping get a little boy out of a well — he’s upstaged when Spitfire and the Troubleshooters get the boy out first — and rescuing hostages held on a cruise ship by “Moslem terrorists.” Ken does little to help the hostages, who are rescued by presumably American commandoes, but he does slam the ticking nuke into the ocean floor and somehow muffle the blast without it hurting him or his suit and with no lingering radiation. This is the hardest pill to swallow in this issue — it’s really easy to believe Ken’s a jerk.
Marvel’s New Universe kicks off with this extremely subdued comic about a regular guy in Pittsburgh who rides motorcycles, works in an auto body shop, and is suddenly given the “greatest weapon in the universe.” John Romita Jr. came to this title off of X-Men and gives a kind of quiet dignity to a story that would have worked better in 1986 as a TV series. Al Williamson’s inks are lovely — no surprise there. Ken Connell is a very un-Marvel like character, which is a good thing. He’s also dull and a bit of a creep — he dates a successful woman named Barbie while also dating another woman who appears to have some kind of learning disorder — which is less good. Writer Jim Shooter leaves the big picture for all this overly vague, giving readers few reasons to come back for #2 unless they really want to know if Ken will commit to Barbie.
Cover to Star Trek #18 (Feb. 1982). This is the final issue. Cover art by Joe Brozowski and Terry Austin.
“A Thousand Deaths” (22 pages) Writer: J.M. DeMatteis Pencils: Joe Brozowski Inks: Sal Trapani Letters: Shelly Leferman Editor: Al Milgrom Editor-in-chief: Jim Shooter Cover artist: Brozowski & Terry Austin
Last issues are often unusual. It often seems like the regular crew jumps ship early, leaving the final issue to be cobbled together to be just good enough. And if it’s not? Well, there’s no next issue, no one to fire. That might explain why there’s no colorist credited on this issue — just a blank space in the credits that never got filled in before this went to press.
As I mentioned last issue, production on the upcoming movie sequel Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan began in November 1981. This issue would have hit newsstands just a couple weeks before that, meaning the work on this issue and Marvel’s decision to cancel the series came far in advance of any hint of what was to come.
The cover is better than it needs to be. I like the purple tones and the color holds to show the mental connection between Kirk and Spock.
An odd splash page. It took me a moment to figure out what Kirk was even doing here.
This one starts with Kirk working out on a trampoline, drawn a little more like a superhero than not on the splash page.
Kirk’s workout is interrupted by a call from Spock, who reports a giant mechanical ship has just zipped up to the Enterprise and blocking its way. Of course, it’s 20.6 times the size of Earth, and it promptly sends ethereal probes to the bridge before focusing on Kirk and Spock and transporting them away.
It’s deja V’ger! This looks much harder to draw than it is impressive.
I guess it was easier to rehash these points from Star Trek: The Motion Picture and call it a book end than to work out something more original. It fills the first few pages, at least.
The top panel foreshadows later encounters with the Borg. The rest of the page has decent art, and I quite like this version of Kirk and Spock.
Then it gets silly. Kirk and Spock appear aboard the vessel and meet a large robot who calls himself The Sustainer. (He sounds like he should play guitar in a hair metal band, but he looks like Box from the Logan’s Run movie crossed with the Superman villain Brainiac.)
Meet … The Sustainer!
The Sustainer calls the ship the Solopziz, and announces that one of the two men will die and the other return to the ship. He doesn’t say why, but Kirk and Spock soon find themselves in a holodeck-type experience aboard pirate ships. Of course, they’re set to duel to the death, but Kirk realizes the other pirates are all robots. Kirk and Spock fight them until a mast falls toward Spock. Kirk pushes it out of the way and is killed by the impact.
Pirate chic is a surprisingly good look for Spock.
The Sustainer then reveals he can revive Kirk and does so. A second scenario begins when Spock opens an unguarded door into the inner mechanisms of the ship. Fascinated with the layout, he deduces with logic the structure of the ship, how it works, and where they can find the equivalent of the bridge.
Note to aspiring comics artists: This panel layout does not work.More interesting artwork, this time with a bit of a Klaus Janson vibe. I wonder if he pitched in
But while walking across a narrow gantry, it gives way and Spock falls to his death. Again, the Sustainer revives him, and proceeds to attack the Enterprise, heating its hull to 3,000 degrees.
The Sustainer says this time, one of them will die for sure. No revival. Spock tries to take one for team, using a nerve pinch on Kirk. The captain, however, fights through the effects of the pinch to push Spock out of the way of the killing blow … which never comes.
The Sustainer then explains the reason for all this. The Solopziz people had become intelligent but lost their morality. They had no empathy, so the Sustainer set out to record the feelings of sacrifice Kirk and Spock felt for each other so his people could learn to feel for each other once again.
And with this page, Marvel bids Star Trek au revoir. They reunited in 1996, with results that were not much better.
Having got what he wanted, Kirk and Spock are returned to the Enterprise and the ship goes on its merry way, with Kirk reminding everyone that the human adventure is just beginning.
No letters column again, but there is a pinup page showing Terry Austin’s unpublished cover for Star Trek #2. Oddly, Star Trek is included in the list of Marvel titles you can subscribe to in this issue. Production work is so much quicker today with computers.
I like this cover a lot, but I think the one they chose was a bit more dynamic.
It’s kind of nice to see the bit about Kirk and Spock being willing to die for one another, foreshadowing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But the plot suffered from the silliness and lack of original ideas that plagued the series from the start. Going into the far reaches of space to find haunted houses, gnomes, and pirate ships is pretty dull.
How much of that came down to the restrictions Paramount had on the license is unclear.
While this was the last issue of the comic book, there was one last Marvel Star Trek project under the license. In January 1982, Marvel Illustrated Books published a paperback collection that reprinted issues 11, 12, and 7. The panels were split up and rearranged for the format. The color book ran 160 pages and featured a new cover by Bob Larkin that re-imagined the cover to issue #11. This was a follow up to a similar book published in March 1980 that collected the adaptation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, also in color and including the glossary from Marvel Super Special #15.
Editor Al Milgrom must have taken on this title as he was transitioning away from a staff job. He’d already started Marvel Fanfare, which was a terrific project for its time and that he worked on as a part-time or freelance editor. He later went on to pencil long runs on Avengers and West Coast Avengers, before settling into a predominantly inking role in the 1990s and beyond.
Marvel’s success rate with licensed books was pretty mixed at this point. They started doing them in the 1970s with Conan the Barbarian, which was arguably the most successful of them all. TV and movie licenses such as Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run, The Man from Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica, and Indiana Jones all had pretty short runs. Star Wars, of course, was a huge hit for Marvel, but interest in it petered out only a couple years after Return of the Jedi. The toy-based licensed did OK: Rom, Micronauts, and Transformers all had respectable runs, while G.I. Joe was a runaway hit.
Star Trek was certainly in an odd place at the time this comic series ended. The novels were doing well, but other licensing options had not. The original series was still a hit in syndication, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture had turned a profit despite its bloated budget. But I can’t imagine many expected for kind of comeback Star Trek had after The Wrath of Khan was on the near horizon.
Cover to Star Trek #17 (Dec. 1981). Art by Walter Simonson.
“The Long Night’s Dawn!” (22 pages) Writer: Mike W. Barr Penciler: Ed Hannigan Inkers: Tom Palmer & Dave Simons Letters: Rick Parker & Harry Blumfield Colors: Carl Gafford Editor: Al Milgrom Editor-in-chief: Jim Shooter Cover artist: Walter Simonson
Now, that’s a cover!
And it’s no surprise that it comes from Walter Simonson, one of the great comic book artists of all time. This could have been a fill-in piece or pinup that was looking for a slot and Al Milgrom was wise enough to use it. Since it’s in the poster genre of cover art and could have run with pretty much any issue of Star Trek.
Also, I can’t imagine anyone on the editorial side of things at Marvel enjoyed that front-page ad mucking up the cover layout.
Overall, this is a much better issue. It’s not without its flaws, but it’s a near masterwork of competence compared with the previous issues.
I like this splash page, even though it shows the limitations of comics production in 1981.
The Enterprise has been diverted to the planet Goran IV, where a Federation satellite that had been monitoring its star has fallen into the planet’s atmosphere. It burned up, but its fuel was released and is interacting with the planet’s atmosphere in way that will soon make it toxic to the people living there. They need to run a covert landing party to ensure the antidote they carry will work, though, before deploying it. So Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down in disguise to carry out that part of the mission.
Sorry for the page curve, but this is what they should have done more of in this series. The big panel across the top looks great and the rest of the page is well composed for exposition — and nice to look at. That’s not easy to do.
All of this is classic Trek plot. What makes it work is Barr and Hannigan’s collaboration. The thick exposition is effectively played out over a nicely restrained splash page, and particularly nice double-page splash that brings some of the movie’s widescreen scale to the comic.
By Page 4, the landing part has beamed down to a forest, their arrival observed by a girl who believes them to be angels and follows them into a town that evokes Europe in the late Middle Ages or early Renaissance period.
The latter period is more explicitly evoked when an old man named Gorman bumps into Kirk and Spock, dropping scrolls that show diagrams of the planet’s solar system. The old man grabs the scrolls and runs off.
The detail helps sell this. It’s almost like something you’d see in an issue of Conan the Barbarian.
Then the authorities arrive in the form of Clerics, who serve the Cathedral, and they’re looking for Gorman. Suspicious of Kirk and Spock’s interaction with them, a fight breaks out, and Spock is knocked out. His hood is pulled back to reveal his ears, and he’s declared, of course, a devil.
Faceless villains are impossible to care about, but the reveal of Spock’s ears is nicely staged.
McCoy meanwhile has found a local hospital. He finds one, though he thinks little of it, given that they refuse on religious grounds to relieve the pain. He surreptitiously scans a patient and learns the atmospheric toxin is affecting the population as expected. He tests out the antidote on one patient, and it starts to work immediately — but he’s been caught by the Clerics and taken prisoner.
The Clerics collect all the tools taken from McCoy, Kirk and Spock, and smash them to bits with a hammer. They then discover the little girl has been watching them, and try to catch her. She escapes, grabbing a pile of the wrecked equipment before Gorman helps her escape into the tunnels under the Cathedral.
Gorman and the girl find Kirk and Spock, but can’t unlock the door. They give them the remains of their equipment as it’s all they have.
Back on the Enterprise, they’re nervously awaiting word from the missing landing party, even as the toxins in the air begin to take effect and people start getting ill.
Spock uses a wire from the remains of a communicator to saw through the bolt of their prison door. They try and fail to free McCoy, and escape to find the girl waiting to take them to Gorman.
Spock stays with Gorman to try to signal the ship to use the antidote, admiring the primitive but scientifically useful astronomical equipment in the old man’s lab. The girl takes Kirk to save McCoy, who is scheduled to be tested as a witch at dawn. Spock uses a nerve pinch on Gorman, and sets to work building a device that can contact the Enterprise.
Great example of something the comic can do that the TV show would have a hard time with. I also like the grit in Bones’ face in that last panel.
McCoy is set to be dunked into the river to see if he dies or his sorcery will save him. Once under the water, Kirk swims up to him, cuts him free, and they float down river a ways to get away from the Clerics. They come ashore, and the Clerics come after them after seeing McCoy got away and therefore truly must be a witch.
The toxin really kicks in, and the Clerics as well as Kirk and McCoy start to succumb to its effects.
On the Enterprise, Uhura is surprised to receive a primitive signal from Spock, telling them to drop the antidote into the atmosphere. Scotty makes it so, and the antidote quickly does its job.
Star Trek comics can be cool when they push the visuals in a good way, i.e., they know what it’s supposed to look like and keep that in mind as they exaggerate for effect.
Kirk and McCoy wake at Gorman’s place with the girl and Spock, who explains he was able to use the materials in Gorman’s lab along with wiring from the wrecked equipment to create a crude radio transmitter and order the antidote dropped.
This page looks like something from the first DC run of Star Trek, which was drawn mostly by Tom Sutton and Ricardo Villagran with great consistency and clarity.
McCoy gives the girl, whose name we finally learn is Lori, a little vitamin shot to clear up a muscle ailment that made it hard for her to walk. She’s grateful, and Spock tells Gorman to keep up the good work, and then they beam up to end another issue.
Barr writes a solid story in the Star Trek style, something he’d do with much more fanfare at DC a few years after this issue came out. It’s the equivalent of a standard episode of Star Trek, which other writers have shown is not an easy mark to hit. It also has good logic, not much fat to it, the characters all behave like themselves, and the script has the right tone and avoids going off into Stan Lee territory. (Stan was still the most admired writer at the time — most Marvel writers tried to emulate him in some fashion, at least until Chris Claremont’s X-Men and Frank Miller’s Daredevil grabbed the industry’s imagination and bottom line by the short hairs — and never let go.)
This issue draws on a lot of coincidences, but does it a thousand times more effectively than the previous one. The bit with Gorman as a Galileo analog is very on the nose, but still works reasonably well. Same with the little girl who saves the day, and the many speeches about how this race will, like humans, evolve out of superstition into a logical and scientific understanding of the universe. Maybe the analogous time period isn’t early Renaissance Europe, but 2022 America.
This is much closer to the quality level that was consistently delivered when DC Comics took over the Star Trek license, about three years away from this point. This issue would have gone on sale in August 1981, so it was still a ways out from when filming began on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in November of that year. Perhaps if Marvel had a glimpse of what was coming with Star Trek, they might not have canceled this series.
The art is quite good on this issue, though there’s a clear distinction between the first eight pages, which were inked by Palmer, and the rest of the issue, where Simons gives things a scratchier feeling. Hannigan was a real comic book work horse in the 1980s — what some might call a “jobber,” though I dislike how much that term brushes very talented artists who regularly delivered above-average work. Hannigan’s work wasn’t in the same league as a George Perez, John Byrne, or Neal Adams, but I always find plenty to admire and a solid sense of storytelling in the books he draws.
I remember putting this run together at various points in the 1990s. Whenever I’d run across an issue I needed, I’d pick it up. This ended up being the last issue I needed, and no place I looked had it in stock. It ended up being one of the first comics I ordered from on online retailer, from Mile High Comics, back in 1996 or 1997. Their prices were much more affordable at the time.
Old Town Scottsdale is the kind of place where tourists like to overpay for snakeskin cowboy boots, extra-hot salsa, cheap turquoise jewelry and elaborate Kachina dolls. On the plus side, you can just as easily find some really good tacos and cold Mexican beer.
My family moved Oct. 2, 1986, to Scottsdale, Arizona. We lived in a home in what was then the north edge of town, somewhere between Shea Boulevard and Cactus Road, just west of 92nd Street. My comics collection at the time fit in one long box.
Of course, the first thing I did was consult the phone book for a nearby comics shop, finding several listings but none nearby. The first one I found and the closest was Fog Hollow Comics, located at 3215 E. Thunderbird Road, almost nine miles away. (Thanks to the AZFandom.org folks for recalling its name!) It’s still today an 18 minute drive, without traffic, each way, from our old address. So it wasn’t convenient, but at least it was a place I could make it to once my perception of what’s too far away to drive to adjusted to Arizona standards.
At the time, there were no freeways in the area. Phoenix and Scottsdale were massively spread out areas with nary a two-story building in sight. It was, truly, a city built more for cars to live in than people. And being on the edge of Scottsdale made pretty much everything you wanted to do, aside from going to the grocery, a trip of 10 or more miles on surface streets with lights that never synched up except to ensure you hit every single one in red.
Not the actual car I owned, but a photo of the same model and color. It had the original floor mats, 4-speed manual transmission and ran on regular gas — back when you could still buy such a thing.
Nonetheless, with two younger sisters and two working parents, my drivers license made sure I was kept busy dropping off or picking up somebody around the entire north quarter of Phoenix in a yellow 1972 Volkswagen Super Beetle. Thank god it had a tape player. It did not have AC. That deficit’s seriousness would not make itself fully known, however, until the following spring and summer. Either way, it was a lot of time spent in the car.
At the time, I was buying pretty much only Marvel comics. I knew exactly which ones were coming out each week, thanks to Marvel Age Magazine, and I had them on subscription at Fog Hollow — my first pull file. Money was tight, so I’d calculate the exact cover price minus the discount plus the sales tax to ensure I could pay for my comics before making that drive. More than once I paid for my weekly haul to the penny.
Fog Hollow was located in a strip mall suite and, unlike many comics shops, had large windows on two sides of the space and was therefore bright and open and inviting. There was the usual back-issue bin in the center, with new releases on racks around the edge. Under the back-issue bin, behind a small door, was where the subscriber books were kept.
X-Men #192 (April 1985). Cover art by John Romita Jr. and Dan Green
Power Pack #27 (Dec. 1986). Cover art by Jon Bogdanove and P. Craig Russell.
Two books I bought on my first visit to Fog Hollow Comics that achieved that satisfied feeling collectors get when they fill in gaps in their collections.
I remember on my first visit finding at least two comics that eluded me in Edmonton and really shouldn’t have: X-Men #192 and Power Pack #27. The former I just never could find in any of the back issue bins at the shops I frequented despite being only a couple years old and all the issues around it being easy to find. Power Pack #27 was part of the Mutant Massacre storyline and had sold out instantly in Edmonton, but was still racked in the new comics when I rolled in to Fog Hollow. That made me happy, and I was a steady customer of the shop through the summer of 1987, when it closed.
Not my actual copies, but images of the covers to X-Men #141 (Jan. 1981) and The ‘Nam #1 (Dec. 1986) (2nd Printing) — both of which I acquired at Fog Hollow Comics.
I remember stopping in on Friday afternoons to pick up my books. (New comic-book days on Wednesday were not a thing at that time — at least not one I was aware of.) I’d take home the comics I was reading at the time — from memory, standard Marvel stuff, such as X-Men, The New Mutants, Alpha Flight, The Amazing Spider-Man, Classic X-Men, X-Factor, Marvel Saga, The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, The ‘Nam, Strikeforce: Morituri, Power Pack, some New Universe titles and Cloak & Dagger — and would spend most of the evening after dinner reading, re-reading, admiring and thinking about the new books. I didn’t have anything else to do, really.
Spider-Man vs. Wolverine #1 (Feb. 1987) is one of my all-time favorite comics. Cover art by Mark D. Bright.
Among the cool items I procured at this shop: A copy of X-Men #141 that I scored for a whopping 50 cents in the back-issue bin, and later took to the 1993 San Diego Comic-Con to be signed by both Chris Claremont and John Byrne; a second printing of The ‘Nam #1, as I was completely in love with this series and the great Michael Golden art; Spider-Man vs. Wolverine #1, which was easily one of my most re-read books for the next year; and a copy of the first printing of the Wolverine TPB, collecting the original miniseries by Claremont and Miller, costing me a whopping $4.95, plus Arizona sales tax. (A quick note: I had a tough time adjusting at first to sales tax because there was none in Alberta. There, if it cost 99 cents and you gave them a dollar, you got back a penny. In Arizona, if it cost 99 cents, you had to hand over $1.07.)
Cover to the first printing of the Wolverine trade paperback, which collected the four-issue series by Chris Claremont, Frank Miller and Josef Rubinstein for the first time. Cost me all of $4.95!
Fog Hollow was run by a woman named Susan Putney, whom I later realized wrote a graphic novel for Marvel called Spider-Man: Hooky, that was drawn by no-less-a-great than Bernie Wrightson. When I eventually acquired a copy, I really enjoyed it. I also found a site that referenced a quote from former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, who said he really liked Putney’s work and thought she could be good — but she kind of vanished after Hooky and Shooter himself was out at Marvel around the same time.
Cover to Spider-Man: Hooky, published in 1986. Art by Berni(e) Wrightson.
A little Googling reveals Putney also wrote a science-fiction novel called Against Arcturus that was published in 1972 as a a flip-book paperback with Time Thieves, by no-less-a-great than Dean R. Koontz.
From Google, the flip covers to Against Arcturus and Time Thieves, published in 1972.
I remember she would ring up my sub titles and give me a knowing “good reads,” especially the third week of the month when X-Men, The ‘Nam and Marvel Saga all arrived.
I also remember lusting after the copy of X-Men #94 displayed behind the counter. I recall her mentioning how she’d already sold one to a kid who paid the $100 or so the book cost in cash. You never know what a motivated kid can do.
There was an arcade-style video game in one corner, that played a music loop the staff had memorized and timed down to the second. And I remember one time the staff opening a box from the distributor that included fresh copies of First’s Lone Wolf & Cub reprints. I was not yet smart enough to pick those up, but the staff was sure excited.
Later that summer, I remember coming in to pick up my books one Friday afternoon and Susan was upset, said that the store was closing and subs’ orders had been transferred to another store, called AAA Best Comics, over on North Seventh Street — even farther away from home. It was sad, she was nearly in tears. I said thank you, I had really enjoyed shopping at the store and was sorry to hear it was closing. I didn’t know what else to say — I was only 17 years old.
I proceeded to get into my car, and trek on down to AAA Best Comics, which was a fixture in my life for the next eight years or so.
And I think I may track down a copy of Against Arcturus.
But before that, my next post will feature a detour to the longstanding champion of Phoenix comic-book shops, also sadly no more. Stay tuned.