This weekend’s light-hearted and escapist superhero blog post looks at the early stories featuring the Femizon called Thundra, who started as a villainess before reforming.
FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #129 (December 1972)
Title: The Frightful Four – Plus One
Villains: The Frightful Four (The Wizard, Sandman, the Trapster and Thundra)
NOTE: This was Thundra’s first appearance.
Synopsis: The Wizard, Sandman and the Trapster are still at large after their recent clash with Spider-Man and the Human Torch in Marvel Team-Up #2. Meanwhile, at the Baxter Building headquarters of the Fantastic Four, the Human Torch drops a bombshell on his teammates – he is quitting the team to go live with his true love Crystal of the Inhuman Royal Family.
Crystal, Johnny Storm’s longtime girlfriend and former member of the Fantastic Four, was forced to move back to the Inhumans’ hidden city of Attilan due to her body’s negative reaction to air pollution in the human world.
After a fierce argument in which Invisible Woman (Johnny’s sister) sides with the Torch, Johnny flies off in the Fantastic Four’s plane to reach Attilan. The arguing is reignited by Agatha Harkness (still in the years BEFORE she tutored the Scarlet Witch) who tells the Fantastic Four that she has urgent business and they must come pick up Reed and Sue’s son Franklin Richards at her Whisper Hill home. Continue reading
SKULL THE SLAYER Vol 1 #1 (August 1975) 
It is not truly the Earth of millions of years ago, because it is anachronistically populated by dinosaurs and primates that were never alive during the same time periods. The only survivors of the plane crash are Scully, a young Native American man named Jeff Turner, an African American physician named Raymond Corey, and Corey’s young research assistant Ann Reynolds. 
BLONDE PHANTOM
ALL SELECT COMICS Vol 1 #11 (September 1946) 
PART FOUR
Synopsis: Adam Warlock has come to after his lapse into unconsciousness caused by the trauma of his Soul Gem’s theft of Kray-Tor’s soul at the end of last issue. He has awakened into a bizarre alternate reality with walkways and small islands of matter floating in an endless sky. Bizarre symbols and designs ornament the skyscape like imagery from an acid trip. 
This weekend’s escapist, lighthearted superhero blog post from Balladeer’s Blog will present the 1970s clash between Marvel’s Adam Warlock, who is coming up in the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie, and the Magus, evil head of a thousand-planet empire. 
PART ONE 
FANTASTIC FOUR #66-67 (Sept & Oct 1967) – Featuring Warlock’s first appearance, albeit under the name “Him.” The Fantastic 4’s mad scientist foes in the Beehive, later called the Enclave, created Him, an immensely powerful life-form, to serve them in their mad schemes. Him, emerging from his cocoon for the first of what will be many times, refuses to be their pawn. The FF survive the encounter with Him, who slaughters some of the scientists and disappears. 
THOR #165-166 (June & July 1969) – Him had been floating in space in his cocoon since leaving the Earth. The cocoon was found by an Earth space probe which brought the cocoon back to a research center on Earth. Him emerged from the cocoon, met and fell in “love” with Thor’s romantic partner Sif and abducted her. Thor furiously fought Him to rescue Sif and defeated Him, who again retreated into his cocoon and floated off into space. 
MARVEL PREMIERE #1-2 (Apr & May 1972), WARLOCK #1-8 (Aug 1972 – October 1973), HULK #176-178 (Jun 1974 – Aug 1974) – This time Him’s cocoon was discovered floating in space by the godlike being called the High Evolutionary. This sometimes hero and sometimes villain added to our hero’s already massive powers by endowing him with a Soul Gem, later ret-conned as one of the Infinity Stones. This was its very FIRST appearance. 
THE AVENGERS Volume One, Number 95 (January 1972) 
The Mandroids seem to have the upper hand on the Avengers, so Senator Craddock, observing the battle from his nearby command post, compliments Nick Fury on the performance of his agents in the Mandroid armor. Fury makes it clear that he’s only helping Craddock (a sleazy Robert Mueller-type abusing his authority) under orders. He also warns the Senator not to celebrate prematurely. 
THE AVENGERS Volume One, Number 92 (September 1971) 
Word has leaked from a Senator named H. Warren Craddock and from the technicians the Avengers swore to confidentiality following last issue’s action. The entire world now knows about how the alien race called the Kree attempted to destroy the Earth. 
Anyway, the Marvel Comics Captain Marvel, who debuted in the 1960s, was an alien Captain of the Kree Starfleet ships sent to conquer the Earth for the Kree Empire. His real name is conveniently Mar-Vell so when he identified himself in his early adventures the media mistook “Captain Mar-Vell” for Captain Marvel, hence his superhero moniker. 
AVENGERS Vol 1 #38 (March 1967) 
AMAZING ADVENTURES Vol 2 #37 (July 1976) 
The cause of the conflict soon becomes clear – Brother Axe is skeptical that Killraven really is THE Killraven, the world-famous scourge of Earth’s alien conquerors. He suspects KR and his band may be fakers trying to bamboozle him or – even worse – undercover human quislings trying to pinpoint the location of Brother Axe’s rebel band so they can betray the band to their alien masters. 
