MARVEL ISSUES: JANUARY 1978

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post here at Balladeer’s Blog looks at every Marvel issue published in January 1978.

SPIDER-MAN Vol 1 #176 (Jan 1978)

Title: He Who Laughs Last …

Villain: Green Goblin III

Synopsis: Peter Parker’s Aunt May has joined the Grey Panthers and has her 987th heart attack at a demonstration. Peter and Mary Jane Watson visit her in the hospital.

Seeing that she is recovering just fine, the pair leave. Peter stops by the office of psychiatrist Dr. Bart Hamilton, who has been treating Peter’s friend Harry Osborn ever since Harry’s drug problems made him become the second Green Goblin. The office has been trashed.

Peter becomes Spider-Man and gets to the apartment that Harry shares with Flash Thompson. He finds Flash unconscious on the floor and the Green Goblin ransacking Harry’s bedroom. Spider-Man attacks the villain, assuming it’s Harry in the costume, but in a few issues it will turn out to be Dr. Hamilton himself, who manipulated his patient Harry Osborn to find his late father Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin costume and weaponry.

For the cliffhanger ending, the hard-pressed Goblin grabs Flash’s unconscious form and throws him out the window, seemingly to his death.

DAREDEVIL Vol 1 #150

Title: Catastrophe

Villain: The Purple Man (Killgrave)

NOTE: This was the first appearance of Marvel’s Paladin. To this day they have not revealed his real name, but he sometimes uses the aliases Paul Dennis and Paul Denning.

Synopsis: In this story, Paladin is hired by one of the victims of Killgrave the Purple Man to capture the villain for him. While tracking him down and fighting with some of Killgrave’s underlings, Paladin clashes with Daredevil, who is also on the trail of his old foe the Purple Man.

The emphasis is on introducing Paladin, so his swashbuckling, purely mercenary personality is highlighted as well as his flirtatious nature with female onlookers to his fight with Daredevil. Plus his Stun Gun and super-strength. The fight ends in a stalemate.

AVENGERS Vol 1 #167

Title: Tomorrow Dies Today

Villains: Korvac and the Porcupine

Avengers Roster: Thor, Wasp, Iron Man, Yellowjacket, Captain America, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Beast and Wonderman II

Guardians of the Galaxy Roster: Vance Astro, Yondu, Charlie-27, Martinex, Starhawk and Nikki 

Synopsis: The Avengers are alerted to the sudden appearance of a huge station orbiting the Earth. Wasp and Yellowjacket are not on hand but the rest of the team fly a quinjet up to the enormous station.

It turns out to be Drydock, the new space-faring headquarters of the Guardians of the Galaxy, whom Thor and Captain America have met previously. NOTE: These are the original G of the G, who freed Earth of the 31st Century from the alien Badoon race.

The Guardians have come back in time on the trail of their powerful foe Korvac, who wants to alter history by killing the young Vance Astro before he can grow up to be put in cryosleep and sent into space. Vance was awakened in the 31st Century and led the Guardians against the Badoon.

Meanwhile, Wasp and Yellowjacket are on hand at Janet Van Dyne/ Wasp’s fashion show of her latest designs. Their old villain the Porcupine attacks, but they defeat him. Suddenly Korvac appears and abducts Karina Walters, a fashion model who is really the daughter of the Avengers foe the Collector.

BLACK PANTHER Vol 1 #7

Title: Song of the Drums

Villain: Jakarra

Synopsis: The Black Panther succeeds in fighting his way out of the long-hidden Samurai City, founded long ago by nine Ronin warriors. He flies in his quinjet back to the fictional African nation of Narobia. Once there he turns over to Queen Zanda the Water of Immortality which he stole from Samurai City for her.

While Zanda and her fellow relic collectors fight over the waters, our hero flies his jet back toward Wakanda. We see that in his absence his evil half-brother General Jakarra has launched a coup and intends to use Wakanda’s vibranium reserves for his own ends.

CAPTAIN MARVEL Vol 1 #54

Title: The Big Bang Theory

Villain: Nitro

Synopsis: Rick Jones continues to pursue a career as a rock singer. Meanwhile, Kree Captain Mar-Vell (Marvel), with his Cosmic Consciousness, becomes aware of the return of his old enemy Nitro.

NOTE: Nitro was an Earth criminal who was genetically altered by the alien Kree race and gained explosive superpowers. Captain Marvel stopped Nitro from stealing an experimental nerve gas and now the villain was back for revenge. 

Our hero once again emerged victorious over Nitro, but repeated encounters with the villain gave Cap the cancer which later killed him in the Death of Captain Marvel storyline.

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #55

Title: The Power Principle Part Three

Villain: The Presence

Defenders Roster: Sub-Mariner, Hulk, Valkyrie, Nighthawk, female Red Guardian and Hellcat

Synopsis: Picking up from the previous issue, the Defenders attack the Soviet villain called the Presence, who has abducted their teammate the female Red Guardian. The Presence has mutated her into a fellow nuclear-powered figure and enthralled her into helping him fight the Defenders.

Our heroes are also trying to thwart the Presence’s plan to make the entire Earth a nuclear-mutated hellscape in which only those chosen by him for transhumanism can survive.

Ultimately, the Red Guardian is able to break free of the villain’s mental control. She then helps her fellow Defenders to defeat the Presence with her new energy powers.

The female Red Guardian remained incredibly powered from this point onward.

THOR Vol 1 #267

Title: Once More to Midgard

Villain: Damocles

Synopsis: With Loki’s latest plan to take over Asgard defeated and Odin restored to the throne, the villain is stripped of his memory and exiled to Earth.

Thor returns to Earth and resumes his (at the time) human alter ego of the lame (as in limping) Donald Blake, MD. Blake resumes working at a free clinic.

Time passes, and one day a new supervillain called Damocles strikes, stealing an experimental cobalt radiation device. Dr. Blake becomes Thor and battles Damocles, who eventually escapes by distracting Thor with a shower of missiles raining down on New York City.

IRON MAN Vol 1 #106

Title: Then There Came a War

Villains: Mordecai Midas and his army

Synopsis: Picking up from the previous issue, Iron Man, Jack of Hearts, Madame Masque, the Wraith, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Jasper Sitwell and the Guardsman raid Midas International, renamed after Iron Man’s old foe Midas did a hostile takeover of Stark International. (Hey, who hasn’t done a hostile takeover of Stark International?) 

Iron Man and his allies launched the raid in a desperate bid to secure proof of Midas’ illegal activity in seizing Tony Stark’s company. A monumental battle breaks out between them, Midas, his army and his mechanoids as well as several Iron Man suits of armor remote controlled by Midas. By the way, that’s Madame Masque that Iron Man is kneeling over on the cover. I covered her previously HERE.

HULK Vol 1 #219

Title: No Man is an Island

Villain: Captain Barracuda

Synopsis: In Europe, the fugitive Bruce Banner awakens from his latest multi-day stint as the Hulk and must pull himself up from homelessness and fears of pursuit.

Eventually, he gets a job as a laborer on a cargo ship crossing the Atlantic for the United States. Back in America Doc Samson (lower right), Nick Fury and General “Thunderbolt” Ross discuss their recent defeat of the Bi-Beast with the help of the Hulk, who was seemingly killed amid the chaos. 

Days go by, and suddenly the ship with Bruce Banner on board is attacked and boarded by the Human Torch and Iceman’s old villain – submarine pirate Captain Barracuda – and his men.

As the pirates plunder the ship wielding their high-tech weaponry, Bruce’s anger turns him into the Hulk. He defeats the captain and his men but they soon clash again on an island where the villains plan to use the advanced weapon they wanted to steal from the ship.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #217

Title: The Search for Steve Rogers 

Villains: The Corporation

Synopsis: Captain America and the Falcon visit the S.H.I.E.L.D. ground installation hidden under a New York City barber shop. Cap asks Nick Fury to provide him with whatever files the government has on him from when he was Steve Rogers, before volunteering for the Super Soldier project that made him Captain America.

Nick obliges and has Cap and Falc fight a skirmish against S.H.I.E.L.D.’s latest project – the Super-Agents. These super-powered agents of Fury and company are Marvel Man (later Quasar), who wears the alien tech wristbands that powered the former hero Marvel Boy from the 1950s; Blue Streak, a man with large, hyper-powered roller skates; the Vamp, a woman whose absorbo-belt let her drain energies from her foes in battle and thus increase her own strength; and the mercenary Texas Twister, who had tornado powers.

The Super-Agents do okay, but they’re raw and inexperienced, except for Texas Twister. Nick wants Cap to sign on as their trainer but he declines and recommends the Falcon, who accepts. Captain America uses the info Fury gave him to research his past as Steve Rogers, while Falc prepares the Super-Agents to fight the organization called the Corporation. (A lesser version of Hydra and A.I.M.)

MS. MARVEL Vol 1 #13

Title: Bedlam in Boston

Villains: Golden-Blade and Sapper

Synopsis: Carol Danvers has begun a romance with her former psychiatrist Michael Barnett since the end of last issue. She takes Michael with her on vacation to Boston so he can meet her parents. 

The lovebirds are with a tour group on the USS Constitution when innocent bystanders come under attack by two aliens called Golden-Blade and Sapper. Carol becomes Ms. Marvel (Michael knows that’s who she is) and ultimately drives off the alien duo for now.

CHAMPIONS Vol 1 #17

Title: The Sentinels Hunt Again

Villains: Sentinels, the Vanisher, Blob, Unus the Untouchable and Lorelei

Champions Roster: Black Widow, Ghost Rider, Hercules, Angel, Iceman and Darkstar 

Synopsis: One day the frequent X-Men villains the Vanisher, the Blob, Unus the Untouchable and Lorelei burst into the Los Angeles headquarters of the Champions. They ask the team to protect them from several of the large, mutant-hunting androids called Sentinels.

Several Sentinels now burst into Champions HQ and after a hard-fought battle all of them are destroyed by the heroes. With the Champions worn out from the fighting, the Vanisher, Blob, Unus and Lorelei drop their ruse and attack our heroes themselves.

The Vanisher does a Villain Rant, explaining that he salvaged the Sentinels he used in this attack from the wreckage of the orbiting station which housed the most recent Sentinels operation against the X-Men – Project Armageddon. 

He then recruited his former mutant allies the Blob and the rest following their escape from Muir Isle. The four of them have never clashed with the new team of X-Men, so they just plan to kill the original X-Men (Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Woman and the Beast) plus Charles Xavier.

Darkstar (above right), a mutant herself (the Presence is her father), rallies the Champions as they defeat and capture the evil mutants. NOTE: Last issue of the series. Readers learned later that after this battle Ghost Rider quit, Darkstar dumped Iceman and defected BACK to the Soviet Union, Iceman then quit the team, too as did Black Widow and Hercules. 

MASTER OF KUNG FU Vol 1 #60

Title: The Phoenix Gambit Part Two

Villains: Dr. Doom and the Prime Mover

Synopsis: Just as they once did with Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D., Dr. Doom and the AI called the Prime Mover use Shang-Chi, Black Jack Tarr, Shang’s love interest Leiko Wu and their fellow agents of Sir Denis Nayland Smith as figurative pieces in an international game of chess.

Doom and the Prime Mover manipulate our heroes in several ways against some of Shang-Chi’s Rogues Gallery of villains, like the woman Pavane, Razor-Fist, Shockwave, Shadow-Stalker, Mordillo-Bots and Shaka Kharn.

Lots of action and a still controversial finale.

NOVA Vol 1 #17

Title: Tidal Wave

Villain: The Yellow Claw

Synopsis: Resolving the cliffhanger ending of the previous issue, Nova uses his powers to save himself and Nick Fury from the Yellow Claw’s death trap. Nova then turns back into Richard Rider and spends some time with his family and his high school friends.

The next day, as Nova, our hero is informed by Nick Fury that S.H.I.E.L.D. has located the base of the Yellow Claw (later changed to the Golden Claw). Nick and Nova lead an assault on that base, and while Fury and his agents engage in a firefight with the Claw’s troops Nova fights his way straight to the villain.

Clad in his body armor, the Claw battles Nova while each passing moment brings New York City closer to destruction from the villain’s Tidal Wave Machine.

MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE Vol 1 #35

Title: Enter – Skull the Slayer

Villains: Villac Umu and his army, plus dinosaurs

Synopsis: The Thing aka Ben Grimm, is serving as a test pilot for an experimental aircraft out of a base in Florida. His flight path takes him into the Bermuda Triangle, where he falls victim to the same kind of vortex that all of the triangle’s other victims have been caught up in over the millenia.

NOTE: In the Skull the Slayer series, the Bermuda Triangle’s pocket dimension was mostly a dinosaur-riddled jungle but with aliens and Earth people of various time periods all winding up trapped there. Skull wore the belt of a dead alien, a belt which gave him a degree of super-strength. 

Through a comic book coincidence, the Thing crash-lands by the City of Gold, where Skull and his friends were imprisoned in the final issue of their canceled series. He is attacked by Incans and their priest Villac Umu’s forces. Ben frees and joins forces with Skull the Slayer, Ann, Jeff and Dr. Corey to utterly rout the villain’s army.

Skull and the others recount their escapades to the Thing. Afterward, Ben offers to fly them all back to the normal world via the vortex that sucked him into the Bermuda Triangle, but they soon realize his experimental craft is too damaged to take off.

In hopes of cannibalizing enough parts from their own crashed plane, Skull and company lead Ben on a quest to return to the remains of the plane that brought them there. Along the way, they battle assorted dinosaurs and this issue ends with the Thing, Skull and the others surrounded by hostile dinosaurs.

FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #190

Title: The Way it Was

Villains: None. Just flashbacks.

Synopsis: Per the previous issue’s cliffhanger, the Fantastic Four are once again disbanding. All readers presumably guessed that they would get back together in a clash with their archenemy Dr. Doom in issue #200.

While Mr. Fantastic has their Baxter Building HQ shut down, the Human Torch goes his own way, and Invisible Woman & Mr. F leave together. The Thing reminisces about highlights of the team’s history with his girlfriend, blind sculptress Alicia Masters.

In the end, the Thing and Alicia sadly leave the Baxter Building, too.

MARVEL TEAM-UP Vol 1 #65

Title: Captain Britain

Villains: Arcade and the Maggia

Synopsis: British grad student Brian Braddock, who is secretly Marvel’s British superhero Captain Britain, travels to America on Thames University business. He is assigned to stay with Empire State University grad student Peter Parker, who is Spider-Man of course.

Peter and Brian get along but their alter egos wind up fighting over New York City due to a misunderstanding. Soon, the two reconcile and discuss their respective careers as heroes.

The assassin Arcade, making his very first appearance, has been paid by Marvel’s Mafia pastiche the Maggia to kill Captain Britain. The assassin captures Cap and Spider-Man to murder them in the cliffhanger ending.

JOHN CARTER, WARLORD OF MARS Vol 1 #8

Title: Flesh May Wither and Stone May Crumble

Villains: The Air Pirates of Mars

NOTE: Marvel had licensed the Edgar Rice Burroughs property John Carter of Mars for this series set during the few-year gap in the very first John Carter novel. 

Synopsis: Amid John Carter’s quest to recover his wife Dejah Thoris from her abductors the Air Pirates of Mars, he gets drawn into a side conflict, like happened so often in the novels.

John learns that the Issus Stone, the theft of which was the main objective of Stara Kan’s pirate raid on the city of Helium a while back, is more powerful than first assumed. It unleashes huge stone monsters which run amok in Helium. 

John’s faithful Green Martian friend Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark, stands at his side to try to save the royal city.

THE ETERNALS Vol 1 #19

Title: The Pyramid of the Winds

Villain: Druig

Synopsis: This was the last issue of Jack Kirby’s lame recycling of his own previous creations like the X-Men, the Inhumans and the New Gods. Although, the recent Eternals movie actually made this comic book series look good by comparison.

Picking up from the previous issue, Ikaris manages to free himself and pursues his cousin Druig into the ancient Pyramid of the Winds beneath the North Pole. Druig wants a weapon contained in the pyramid, a weapon powerful enough to destroy the Celestials who are still sitting in judgment on the Earth.

Druig hopes to save our planet by wiping out the Celestials, but Ikaris believes that the incomprehensible weapon will surely wipe out the Earth, too, if used. Druig activates the weapon but proves incapable of controlling it. Ikaris tries shutting it off but it implodes, wiping out the Pyramid of the Winds and Druig. Ikaris escaped alive. 

THE HUMAN FLY Vol 1 #5

Title: Towering Doom

Villain: Malik

NOTE: The Human Fly was an embellished version of the real-life Rick Rojatt, a Canadian stuntman and daredevil in the mold of Evel Knievel. This comic book series presented Rojatt as his celebrity daredevil self the Human Fly who also had heroic escapades on the side. Think of the fictional exploits of costumed Mexican wrestling heroes like El Santo, Blue Demon, Neutron, etc. 

Synopsis: Our hero is in Quebec to climb between the two newest buildings to be designated the Tallest in the World. Like everything he does, it’s a media event and one of the buildings hosts a group of handicapped children who have figurative front-row seats on the roof for the Human Fly’s latest stunt.

Partway through his high-wire walk between the two skyscrapers, the daredevil’s effort is sabotaged by his long ago mentor, Malik the Aerialist. Malik is jealous of the Human Fly’s fame and not only severs his high wire as he walks between the skyscrapers but sets the top floors of one of the buildings on fire, planning to burn alive with the trapped handicapped children and tv newspeople like Harmony Whyte.

NOTE: Harmony is our hero’s love-hate bickering potential romantic interest.

Using his stuntman skills plus his gadget-laden staff/ billy club (shades of the Holyoke superhero Blaze Baylor) the Human Fly manages to disarm the crazed Malik and save all of the children and other people trapped on the roof of the burning skyscraper. 

The Human Fly’s series had a kind of Expanded Wold Newton feel.