This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the early stories of Marvel’s Firelord.
THOR Vol 1 #225 (July 1974)
Title: The Coming of Firelord
Villain: Firelord
Synopsis: Picking up from the previous issue, Thor and Hercules defeat Thor’s recurring foe the Destroyer. The spirit animating the metal creation returns to the body of Professor Clement Holmes, leaving the Destroyer’s body motionless.
Time passes as Thor hangs out with Hercules and periodically turns into his human form as Donald Blake M.D. In that form he continues to tend to the hospitalized Asgardian woman named Krista, who was injured fighting the Greco-Roman god Pluto a few issues back.
Meanwhile, a being called Firelord arrives on Earth and enters Krista’s hospital. People attack Firelord, who injures them, prompting Hercules to fight him.
Thor joins Hercules in fighting Firelord, who eventually reveals that he is the latest herald of Galactus. He summons that devourer of worlds to Earth. Continue reading
EPISODE SEVEN: JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, DIPLOMAT (Mar 2nd, 1976) – From 1809 t0 1814 John Quincy Adams (David Birney) serves as U.S. Minister to Russia. Showing much more tact than his father, John Quincy charms Tsar Alexander (CHRISTOPHER LLOYD in his television debut!) and manages fairly favorable treatment of the United States by Russia during the Napoleonic Wars. 
SHOCK ARMSTRONG, THE ALL-AMERICAN GHOUL bore a name that was a play on the old radio series Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. Even in 1964 that was an obscure reference, so it’s possible that many fans of this Bad Movie Host were oblivious to the connection. At any rate, from 1964 to 1968 Shock Armstrong hosted Double-Features on Shock Theatre Friday nights at 11:30pm on WTVT out of Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg, Florida. 
Reynolds donned a quasi-Frankenstein Monster mask worked up by the station’s art department and an old University of Tampa Spartans football jersey sporting the number 13. Paul was already in his 30s by 1964 and remembered the old Jack Armstrong radio show, so that inspired his character’s name. 
DISCLOSURE DAY (2026) – Did Steven Spielberg forget what he accomplished with the ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind? How does he think that an elderly alien getting brought out in a wheelchair even compares, let alone equals, the wonder of his earlier film? Maybe if Disclosure Day ended with Richard Dreyfus’s character having returned to Earth and standing there beside the alien, he might have had something noteworthy. 
THE ADAMS CHRONICLES (1976) – This mini-series of 13 50-minute episodes looked at historical giant John Adams and his descendants from the American Revolution up to the 1890s. Michael Tolan narrated 8 episodes. 
EPISODE ONE: JOHN ADAMS, LAWYER (Jan 20th, 1976) – As a young man, John Adams (George Grizzard) suffers setbacks in his career as a lawyer, so he returns to the farm his father left him. His fiery cousin Samuel Adams (W.B. Brydon) tells him he made a mistake and should go back to practicing law. John meets Abigail Smith (Kathryn Walker), daughter of a Reverend (Addison Powell). He marries her and as they raise their children he returns to his career as an attorney. 
Yes, it’s the 16th of June, better known to James Joyce geeks like me as Bloom’s Day. The day is named in honor of Leopold Bloom, the advertising sales rep and Freemason who is one of the major characters in Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The novel also brings along Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of his earlier novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
THE NOSTOI aka THE RETURNS is a neglected epic in the Trojan War cycle. It is attributed to Agias or to Eumelus of Corinth. In the Epic Cycle, The Nostoi comes after 
Susanna M. Salter was born March 2nd, 1860 in Lamira, Ohio. In 1872 she and her family moved to Kansas, settling near Silver Lake. 
THE SHIELD 
Powers: The chemical formula that the Shield rubbed onto his skin followed by bombardment with flouroscopic rays endowed him with super-strength plus invulnerability. The Shield also wore an indestructible costume which encased his torso like a shield.
