FOR PART ONE OF BALLADEER’S BLOG’S EXAMINATION OF THIS OLD, OLD MARVEL COMICS STORYLINE CLICK HERE The revisions I would make are scattered throughout the synopsis below.
MARVEL TEAM-UP Vol 1 #45 (May 1976)
Title: Future-Shock
NOTE: Killraven meets the time-traveling Spider-Man in this story. Team-up titles, like Marvel Two-In-One and Marvel Team-Up or DC’s The Brave and the Bold were often considered non-canonical by comic book fans.
The purpose of such team-up books was largely promotional. A superstar of the respective publishing company – Spider-Man for Marvel Team-Up, the Thing for Marvel Two-In-One and Batman for The Brave and the Bold – would star in an often half-assed story. The high-profile character’s fame would, it was hoped, put more eyes on the less popular figure they were being teamed up with and increase that less popular figure’s sales.
Another purpose was to retain copyrights on characters in Marvel or DC’s vast, increasingly overpopulated shared universes. A long unused figure not popular enough to carry their own comic book could be used in a one-shot team-up story, thus satisfying copyright law without the expense of trying to use the superhero in another failed title of their own.
Given Killraven’s forever-struggling sales there’s little doubt this team-up story was done hoping Spider-Man’s fame would boost those sales.
Synopsis: August, 43 years in the future. The story is set in the war-torn No Man’s Land on the outskirts of New York City. This of course makes no sense since Killraven and his Freemen were at this point in America’s Deep South. (KR even refers to recent events so you can’t say this tale is set during the 3 years when Killraven and his rebel group were headquartered on Staten Island.)
Again, this reflects the “who cares about continuity” nature of many such team-up titles.
REVISION: That’s why I would have this story set in Troy, Alabama, with the Freemen still lost and wandering through the biologically mutated jungle which now covers much of the American southeast.
Back to the unrevised story: Spider-Man is using Reed Richards’ copy of Dr Doom’s time machine to leave 1600s Salem, where he and assorted guest-stars had just had an adventure.
Saddened that he could not save the victims of the Salem Witch Trials (well, duh), Spidey morosely tries to return to his own time, only to overshoot his mark and wind up in the New York of Killraven’s future. In that future, Earth is being ruled by its alien conquerors, Martians in the original story but Zetans in my revisions. Continue reading
Richard C Meyer, the indie comic book legend best known for his mercenary superhero team JAWBREAKERS (3 volumes so far) has launched the second volume of his IRON SIGHTS series on Indiegogo.
AMAZING ADVENTURES Vol 2 #34 (January 1976)
Killraven, M’Shulla and Carmilla Frost are using an old, abandoned horse-racing track to race each other on their separate mounts. KR is riding his usual pinkish-red serpent-stallion, while the other two ride similarly chimeric creatures spawned by residue of the bio-warfare agents unleashed 18 years earlier in Earth’s unsuccessful war against the alien invaders.
AMAZING ADVENTURES Vol 2 #32 (September 1975)
Synopsis: Writer Don McGregor and artist Craig Russell are back after Mantlo/ Trimpe’s disastrous fill-in issue last time. It is June, 44 years in the future. Killraven and his Freemen (M’Shulla, Old Skull, Hawk, Carmilla Frost and her creation Grok – Deathlok in my revisions) continue their guerilla campaign against Earth’s alien conquerors.
AMAZING ADVENTURES Vol 2 #33 (November 1975)
AMAZING ADVENTURES Vol 2 #30 (May 1975)
THE WRAITH
AMAZING ADVENTURES Vol 2 #31 (July 1975)
Those pursuers: Atalon – white-shirted human quisling administrator of Death-Birth, the now-destroyed alien fortress where they raised humans like cattle since they eat human flesh – and the Sacrificer, green-clad medical madman who used to prepare those cannibal meals for the aliens, including their favorite delicacy – human infants carved out of their mother’s body shortly before they are due to deliver.
Halloween month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog with a look at the first two volumes of Graveyard Shift, the “monsters as superheroes” sensation drawn by THE Jon Malin and written by Mark Poulton.
Graveyard Shift Volume Two featured the team taking on the reborn menace of Dracula himself and his legions. The first two installments raised six figures each on Indiegogo and it is presumed that the third volume, expected in 2020, will continue that trend.
AMAZING ADVENTURES Vol 2 #29 (March 1975)