This weekend’s escapist superhero post looks at milestones in the original saga of the android Avenger called the Vision, since the Marvel tv series VisionQuest is coming out.
AVENGERS Vol 1 #57 (Oct 1968)
Title: Behold … The Vision
Villain: Ultron-5
NOTE: When Ultron made his earliest appearances, he/it numbered his iterations. After Ultron-7 he stopped numbering and just went by Ultron.
Synopsis: The Avengers’ recurring foe Ultron shows up again, intent on wiping out all human life on Earth. This time he has created an incredibly powerful fellow android called the Vision to help kill the Avengers.
The Vision initially helps Ultron, but his logical android mind lets him reject his creator’s commands. He turns against Ultron, saves the Avengers and seemingly destroys Ultron, but obviously he’ll return as Ultron-6.
NOTE: This cover was a partial salute to the very first appearance of the Golden Age Vision created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (Just like Captain America) in 1940 when Marvel was called Timely Comics. Continue reading
MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS Vol 1 #28 (Feb 1942) 
SPIDER-MAN Vol 1 #68 (Jan 1969) 
That evening the students mount a protest about the way some of them are being thrown out of their housing to make room for the arriving archeologists. The Kingpin and his thugs take advantage of the protest as it rages out of control to break in and steal the priceless tablet.
FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #5 (July 1962)
To save any innocent bystanders from harm, our heroes do so. They meet the armored Dr. Doom, who explains that his experiment which went awry and caused his expulsion long ago left his face scarred, so he now hides it behind a steel mask.
Our heroes don their costumes and as Captain America and Bucky they find Mara’s lair and defeat all her Nazi troops and her booby-traps. Then Cap defeats the countess and her purse’s weaponry – grenades, a gas-gun and a regular gun. 
For newbies to this IP, in 1973 Marvel licensed the use of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu plus other characters from the Fu Manchu tales. Rather than just churn out a Fu Manchu comic book series “the House of Ideas” instead combined it with the Kung Fu craze of the time and created Shang Chi, the son of Fu Manchu.
Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu had its own inimitable style and was largely one of the most innovative comic books of the 1970s and early 1980s. “Largely” is the key word. 
MASTER OF KUNG FU Vol 1 #29 (Jun 1975) 
Our heroes take a seaplane to Velcro’s mansion in a grotto near France’s Gulf of Lions. Reston poses as a buyer of a large amount of heroin who then burns all of his purchase and an enormous amount of the drug dealer’s additional inventory of smack. 
CREATURES ON THE LOOSE Vol 1 #22 (Mar 1973) 
Synopsis: Thongor (at right), as always wielding his father’s god-forged sword Sarkozan, is working as a thief in the city-state of Zangabal. During one caper Thongor comes close to being captured by the authorities but is given shelter by Kaman Thuu, a Priest of the Seven Gods of Zangabal. 
HULK! Vol 1 #11 (Oct 1978) 
INHUMANS Vol 1 #1 (Oct 1975) 
Blastaar flies to Attilan, the Great Refuge and fights his way in past the airborne guards. In the Royal Palace, a long-buried device rises from the lowest depths below Attilan and sits, apparently waiting for a clearly missing component to complete it. Black Bolt and Triton dive into the watery depths below Attilan to see where the machine originated from. 
THOR Vol 1 #225 (July 1974)
Meanwhile, a being called Firelord arrives on Earth and enters Krista’s hospital. People attack Firelord, who injures them, prompting Hercules to fight him.
