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No because they did keep bringing the Elf with a Gun back, even Steve Gerber brought him back one time, and it was always fucking dreadful. Should've ended after Kraft had him run over, perfect ending. But people kept writing in demanding answers just like they did with Scourge.

I used to love Morrison but as I've grown older, outside of New X-Men, I just find things a mixture of quite smug indulgent near-gibberish or surprisingly underwhelming and directionless.

No, nice guess, but I am quite upfront about my fetishes (e.g. Moondragon).

Great mystery. Is it Norman Osborn back from the dead? Is it the clone? Is it George Stacy? Uncle Ben? Nope, just the Jackal... and all the better for it.

Now he draws CyberFrog variant covers.

Big fan of Llyra me. Kurt Busiek made her into a snake woman, blegh. I miss the sexy Llyra who violates men.

After Gene Day, I'm not sure Jim Shooter needs more on his conscience.

Knew you'd get it straight away. You're the only person who read Power Man and Iron Fist every month.

@@SonofNimrodIdiot I’m a big D.W. Griffith fan.

Was he the Richard Rory sort of character that loved the local cinema? Think he was in the old Luke Cage solo comics.

@@SonofNimrodIdiot yes he continued on in PMIF. Imagine if the one-armed pacifist guy from those 70s Cap stories was still a monthly character when Scourge showed up

Well, he was actually in the title only a year earlier when Zemo brainwashed him into putting on Devil-Slayer's costume and beating up Nomad.

In theory, those Avengers annuals are nice. In practice, they're just more of West Coast Avengers. The events of them were never referred to or important to the main team even with them starring in them. Maybe if the readers knew Druid beat Tigra, they would've been onboard for his take-over of the team.

No it’s got to go back to the 60s right. Dr. Strange maybe or the original Captain Atom

Maybe Silver Age Atom when he shrunk down?

Arguably Green Lantern's constructs as far back as the Golden Age...

Oh, Doctor Fate. Probable answer.

Followed Michael Golden on Micronauts.

Is she a member of Dire Straits? I should probably research Dire Straits thoroughly before committing to them having this level of importance in the Marvel Universe.

For me, it was the mystery of there being a Marvel title that Marvel couldn't ever reprint with a Secret Wars II tie-in issue that they also couldn't include in the Secret Wars II omnibus. Then there was Rom's appearance on covers like Avengers #221 or West Coast Avengers #1. Finally when I learnt that Nova's series and stories were resolved in an issue of Rom and that Marvel couldn't even reprint that in the Nova collections (they had to print an issue of What If instead to provide any explanation for how Nova lost his powers). I needed to know all about it and after 10+ years of it being unreprintable, now Marvel can finally reprint it and I can read it all when Vol. 3 is out later this year.

No one has complained or down-voted one yet.

'86. Same time as Squadron Supreme. The two shared an advertisement. Funny how the two are not held up in even the same shade of light.

What flaw is This One recognising or accepting when she decks the entire squad of Avengers in half a page for no reason? What flaw is This One showcasing when she kisses all the male Avengers and they all consider themselves blessed by her touch? What flaw is This One possessing when she is chosen by the Cosmos to be the divine bringer of the next stage of life? Mantis is handed everything. She is given skills and powers that are only convenient to explain that she is better and greater than everyone else. She can beat Thor in a fight because she is such a trained fighter! Why is she FIGHTING THOR in the first place? In Captain Marvel #33, Thanos traps the Avengers out of sync with time but Mantis is unaffected because of her "unique oneness with the timeline". Everyone is in love with her (Swordsman, Vision, Kang, all the male Avengers when she kisses them, later on Silver Surfer too). Where is the appeal in a character with no actually appealing trait but the insistence that she is amazing? How long ago did you read these? There really isn't any heart or warmth to Mantis. She shows up and starts hogging the page-time. All the time Mantis is a star in Avengers - she is not even a member. She is there as Swordsman's guest. Yet almost every single story finds it way back to being about Mantis, Mantis' relationships with the characters, Mantis' backstory or Mantis being the one that wins or is validated. There is no drama with Mantis, because Mantis is only ever faultlessly perfect. Her "homewrecking" with Vision has no consequence, she is never demonised or taking to task for her attempts to seduce him. Wanda might think bad of her in one panel but ultimately Wanda just admits defeat and that she can't possibly compete with Mantis and it makes sense that Vision would be attracted to this perfect Mantis woman. As for Vision, it is presented as a temptation for The Vision which makes no sense, why does he fall in love with Mantis? In Steve Englehart's brain (and this is before it was legally broken) it is because why wouldn't the android who has miraculously developed feelings for one woman not also be obviously instantly tempted by the mysterious Vietnamese prostitute who everyone keeps saying aloud is the greatest fighter or the greatest heroine or the greatest messiah? The most Monica Rambeau gets handed is leadership in the Avengers (which is taken away from her within 5 issues by changing creative teams). There are long story arcs or stretches which barely feature her (there's almost 10 full issues when she is lost in space). Her characters arcs are interwoven into Avengers stories - she is afraid to fight Maelstrom in #250 and overcomes it over the course of the team fighting Maelstrom. The Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, don't stop saving the world to help Monica Rambeau find out who her parents are. In fact, in the 60 issue run she has with the Avengers, there is at most 1 issue that could be called a Monica Rambeau issue - #279. Monica Rambeau didn't hijack the series, she became part of the book for better or worse, whereas Mantis absolutely did take over. And she hijacked Silver Surfer, she was going to hijack West Coast Avengers, she was going to hijack Fantastic Four, she was going to hijack the Daredevil run that never happened. Steve Englehart's insane delusions about his Mantis Epic being "the most reprinted comic in existence" aside, he is and always has been completely irrational when it comes to this character and that is reflected in stories that dwell on her at the expense of everyone else. With Avengers, a team book, it's horrendous. The entire team are shown on-panel to be easily defeated by Mantis, they stop having adventures and instead start listening to lore about Mantis. Even when Englehart has the Avengers' arch-enemy show up, he is there because he wants to marry Mantis. Anything meaningful with the other characters is attached to Mantis or Mantis is paperclipped onto it. Vision and Scarlet Witch's wedding is a huge development for Avengers characters - oh, nevermind, it's kinda just sharing focus with Mantis marrying a tree and oh Kang wants to stop the wedding then afterwards they'll cheer for Mantis and give her official membership as she flies off into the Heavens to become the Celestial Madonna. It is genuine trash, awful comics with no charm. I can talk about all of Roger Stern's run and his stories without ever mentioning Monica Rambeau. You can't do the same for Steve Englehart. You could maybe delicately do a quarter of the run being vague and dancing around the impetus for the story or the resolution, but even that way you would hit a brick wall. Did you ever read Avengers: Celestial Quest? The 2001 miniseries written by Steve Englehart, his "return to Marvel" (short-lived), where he continues his Mantis "Epic"? I'm not even considering that in how bad the original stories are, but that one I at least can laugh at. Very funny. You think Monica Rambeau looks like she has bin-bags under her arms? You know, Mantis looks like she fell head-first through a palm tree after one of her elegant flights into the Heavens crashed and burned when an editor told Steve Englehart to stop writing the character again.

The only time Mantis was not annoyingly written was when Giffen reintroduced her into Marvel Cosmic in his Starlord mini. That and the Abnett/Lanning Guardians series did a lot to make her character more likeable. And I say that as a fan of Englehart's 70s Marvel stuff. Son of Nimrod, I know you don't like modern comics but you should read Al Ewing's Empyre event, because it was a perfect takedown of Englehart's idea of Mantis' son to become Plant Space Jesus.

He's exactly why I avoid modern stuff. Specifically, him. Amazingly, I have pinpointed him as the thing that I don't ever want to have to discuss. I have dismissively named him as simply "the gay guy who wants Storm to peg him" in several videos. Only comic of his I've actually reviewed is the one where he revealed Silver Surfer's surfboard actually is a girl and it has a personality and they talk to each other and all along he hasn't been saying "To me, my board"... but that his surfboard's name is Toamie. Then I saw he pulled the same thing with Cable's arm about a year later - Cable's arm now has it's own personality and it's a girl and it's treat like it always has even though it makes no sense because Cable's arm isn't a bionic arm or robotic limb, it's his actual arm that has scabbed over with techno-organic skin). I think he called it Betty or Bettie or Bette this time. Oh, and the personality of these things is always sarcastic woman who loves chipping away at the male hero and putting him down. The reason I don't engage with comics is because I'd be on for 20 hours listing all the things I do not like about Al Ewing. Legitimately, every single thing he has written, I have a laundry list of things I don't like and things I hate. It's easier and nicer to just avoid his dreck than read his and Dan Slott's crossover sequel to a story from the 70s that I hated to begin with.

Oof. Sorry I mentioned him! No offense.

Yep, he was always the guy doing fill-ins. Almost every time Claremont needed a fill-in during his early X-Men issues, it was Bill Mantlo doing it. A lot of the books he wound up writing were also ones that nobody wanted to write (Champions, Marvel Team-Up, early Spectacular Spider-Man, mid-70s Iron Man, the licensed stuff like Rom, Micronauts, and the less flattering Human Fly). Would have loved to see where he went in the 90s, I wonder what of those characters/titles he'd have ended up writing. Cable, War Machine, Night Thrasher... surely, he'd have done a Nomad fill-in issue at some point.

woof

I don't know what that is. Is it an American thing like Laseriums?

Like in South Park when they had a show at the planetarium that was Laser Kenny Loggins and Laser James Taylor?

Bill Mantlo was a workman (I say that knowing full well you dislike the term). He knew how to put the parts together and sometimes wrote terrible comics which are far outnumbered by his of average or better quality. His reputation was destroyed by terrible blogs by vain comic pros who chose to target him and his contributions to comics because they are insecure and need to insist something else is bad to build themselves up. Mantlo was the perfect patsy - he's someone who can never ever reply or dispute warped versions of events by Jim Shooter or Tom Brevoort that are created to make Mantlo look as unflattering as possible so they can insist that they themselves are better than THAT. Whenever Jim Shooter stepped outside of Mantlo slander to share similar stories about other creators - like when he accused David Anthony Kraft of "ripping off Blue Oyster Cult lyrics" and how the band were so angry about it and were going to sue Marvel were it not for Jim Shooter's charisma and peace-making when he managed to convince them not to pursue litigations... which DAK replied to showing a photograph of him with the band and mentioned how he had always had their blessing from the get-go, how he even credited Eric Bloom in the issues, and how the story was actually original and only used ideas and names from songs. That was the same standard of accusation Shooter's claims of Mantlo stealing other people's scripts from the office and using them as his own or Mantlo ripping off Harlan Ellison so bad that Harln Ellison was going to sue. Mantlo can't reply, so they all stand uncontested. If Shooter went back and started telling his version of the Blue Oyster Cult story now - it would likely be treat the same way and damage Kraft's legacy because he is no longer able to retort and show that Jim Shooter is a fantasist. And it's not just Jim Shooter. Tom Brevoort, Mark Waid, Kurt Busiek, Erik Larsen, Marc Guggenheim - they all tell very similar unflattering stories about Bill Mantlo (which is fascinating considering Busiek was the only one likely to have ever met him). Some of them are even fucking published as introductions to Marvel Masterworks collections of Mantlo material. There's no stories about Mantlo coming from Roger Stern who has a very reliable memory for these things, there's none from John Byrne who is fucking terrible for venting about people, there's none from any number of the artists he worked with. It's always solely the same type of person who does so, the person I abhor, the "Comics Were Crap Until I Fixed It" sort. Mantlo is an easy victim for abuse and that is all he is to them.

You know, I was in agreement that Morph was annoying but over the course of 75 issues of Exiles I stopped hating him. It was the moment when Claremont had him killed off before he took over writing because he didn't want to write him and I felt angry that I realised that Morph had become quite sweet and sympathetic over all these tales.

@@SonofNimrodIdiot Hmmm... okay, maybe I'll try Exiles again...

It was. People still love it. Jeffrey Lewis mentioned it in a song even.

Any idea on the inker? I want to presume it was someone who was often inking Michael Golden.

If they put a giant bear on the cover, people are going to be angry when they get the Omnibus and the bear is only in 2 issues.

You get it!

Really takes you back, dunnit?

WHY DIDN'T I CALL DOCTOR DREDD THE SULTAN OF SWING.

@@SonofNimrodIdiot did this comic inspire brothers in arms?

Beta Ray Bill appears in an issue of Rom later on. He's incorrectly drawn with Mjolnir for the whole thing, drives me mental it does.

Trained fighters and martial artists are driven by rage.

Warren Ellis made Gabriel a drunk heretic.

That New Warriors series sadly never came out in the end so we never even got Snowflake and Safe Space.

I think the inker is important with Perlin. Kim DeMulder later on was a great fit for him. There’s also some great stuff before this one in the Dracula one.

there were only 2 thin lizzy in my neighborhood myself and this guy jamie. whenever we would run into each other we would just talk about thin lizzy, what new albums we had , our favorite songs etc. i played southbound to DEATH!!!

SOMEWHERE IN THIS TOWN...

Oh god, I hate that guy. I don't know him, but I hate him.