Bizarre Adventures #28 - Marvel

Oct. 1981 - It's good to be back!

This was one of the mags I picked up at the NY Comic Con a few weeks ago, and I can't believe it's taken me this long to get a hold of it.

I remember seeing this cover (by Bob Larkin) all over other Marvel comics when it came out, and I wondered at the time--what the hell are Elektra, Triton, are some karate-looking guys all doing in the same comic? Is this some new, even more disparate version of The Champions?

The theme, of course, is "Unlikely Heroes" and that's a pretty good way of retrofitting the use of these vastly different characters in a book. Larkin's cover--while having no real connection to any the stories inside--is so unusual, such a grabber, that it ranks as one of his best, IMO. Its kind of like Four Heroes In Search of A Comic.

Anyway, the lead-off story is a solo Elektra tale, written and drawn by Frank Miller, which is a pretty good way to start off any comic. The story has no title, and features everyone's favorite hot-yet-scary (kind of like Madonna) assassin and she is hired to, this time, prevent an assassination.

You know, reading this story for the first time, it reminded me of just how friggin' awesome Frank Miller was in his prime. Yeah, the guy deserves a lot of the criticism thrown at him (Dark Knight Strikes Again, anyone?) but when he really started breaking out, doing his amazing work on Daredevil, he was tops. His storytelling was so inventive and fresh, and it was pages like this that made him as popular as anyone ever has been in comics:

...very few comics artists, of any age, would've had the creative balls to leave that big white space there. Tradition tells you "I've gotta put something there", but no, not Frank. He knew that space makes the sequence work.

Next is "Shadow Hunter" by Doug Moench, Neal Adams, and Larry Hama with inks by Dick Giordano, Terry Austin, Adams, and Dennis Francis. Like the Elektra piece, it takes a master like Neal Adams to get away with a splash page like this:

In other hands, this would look like a cheat, but Neal makes it look cool and menacing and odd and a few other things. The story is about a group of ninja-like commandos and one of them that seems to not be going on. Features the splash page's tiny karate guy crawling into a giant computer and kicking it right in the hard drive.

Next is "Huntsman" by Archie Goodwin, Michael Golden, and Steve Mitchell, a story of a group of post-apocalyptic law enforcers, and the two trainees that learn just how tough and grim the job is:

Looks kinda like Logan's Run, doesn't it? That's because it is Logan's Run--this seventeen-page story was originally done for Marvel's Logan's Run comic book, but that series got canceled before this could run. So it sat in inventory for a few years, until the characters and places were renamed and it got used here. Comic companies never throw anything away.

Next is "Conscience of the King", a Triton solo story, drawn by Wendy Pini no less! Why anyone thought of Triton from the Inhumans for a solo story is a riddle for the ages, but it turns out to be pretty good. Pini's work is fun, and works well with Triton's unusual appearance:

...I dunno, I would've read more of these no problem! Author Mary Jo Duffy's story (about Triton getting involved in stopping some kidnappers) isn't bad, and Triton is a neat protagonist.

Last is a regular BA feature, "Bucky Bizarre" by Steves Skeates and Smallwood. I always have a little difficulty groking these BB stories, but I think they're just meant to be goofy fun, in an irreverent Mad kind of way, so maybe they weren't meant to be thought about too hard.

Like I mentioned above, Marvel was definitely trying to find a justification to put Elektra and Triton in the same comic, but it ended up working pretty well. And the cover just puts it over the top.



During this blog's hiatus, I've been trying to come up with a format that will work for me, in terms of getting fresh content up here, but at a pace that's realistic. I found that to maintain my five days a week pace I was at, I had put up a lot more ads than I had planned, which I didn't like.

So, from this point on, All in Black & White is going to emulate my friend Pierre's excellent Frankensteinia blog format, in that I'll post stuff at no fixed pace, but often enough to be worthy of your attention, something I deeply appreciate and am keen to maintain. There's so many blogs out there that, in my mind, once you build an audience, even if its just a half-dozen people, you owe it to them to try your best. Why else have the blog in the first place?

I hope to write a more long-form pieces, present more artwork from the insides of these mags, and also from now on the covers will be big big BIG, to better show off the frequently superb work by the artists.

So thanks to everybody who read this blog, loves these mags like I do, and please stick around, we've got a lot more fun stuff coming up!