This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero blog post from Balladeer’s Blog will look at several consecutive issues of The Incredible Hulk. Previously I examined his first twenty stories in the 1960s.
HULK Vol 1 #150 (April 1972)
Title: Cry Hulk, Cry Havok
Villains: Havok and Polaris
Synopsis: Hulk once again escapes from Hulkbuster Base despite the efforts of General “Thunderbolt” Ross and his troops to prevent it. Ross gets summoned to Washington D.C. to face a Senate committee regarding continued funding of his base.
In Ross’s absence, Major Glenn Talbot is left in charge. Betty Ross, Bruce Banner’s previous romantic interest, convinces Glenn to continue the base’s search for the Hulk in the American desert southwest. Hulk encounters X-Men member Polaris (Lorna Dane). Her green hair confuses Hulk into mistaking her for his love interest Jarella, who recently returned to the Microverse/ Quantum Realm.
NOTE: Thanks to sorcerers on Jarella’s home planet in the Microverse, Hulk was able to retain Bruce Banner’s mind there even when he was the Hulk, so she technically loved both his personae.
Polaris has come westward to convince her teammate Havok (Alex Summers) to return to the X-Men. He had stormed out after injuring Iceman in a fight over Lorna’s affections. Hulk wants her to come with him because he still thinks she is Jarella.
Havok dons his costume and follows after them. Polaris uses her magnetic powers to free herself from the Hulk’s clutches and Havok manages to blast the Hulk with such intense power blasts that the monster is knocked out. Continue reading
This weekend’s light-hearted and escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the Marvel Comics run in which Hercules and Thor fought side by side against assorted menaces. 
THOR Vol 1 #221 (March 1974) 
SILVER SURFER Vol 1 #1 (August 1968) 
LEOPARD GIRL 
Powers: Leopard Girl employed her supernatural “cry of the leopards” to use a small army of leopards to help her fight the forces of evil in Africa. She could interact with the Dark Continent’s ghosts, who saw her as an ally. 
Comment: In her secret identity as “Gwen”, Leopard Girl worked with research scientist Dr. Hans Kreitzer. Her fellow assistant was named Peter, whom she once carried with one arm while swinging through the jungle. 
MARVEL PREMIERE Vol 1 15 (May 1974) 
NOTE: This K’un-Lun is not THE K’un-Lun from Chinese mythology but it uses the same name and many of the inhabitants go by names corresponding to Chinese gods. Yu-Ti is one of them, Lei Kung the Thunderer is another. This K’un-Lun is an enchanted city that appears on Earth only once every ten years before returning to its pocket dimension home for another ten.
FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #58 (January 1967) 
TALES OF SUSPENSE Vol 1 #97 (January 1968) 
Jasper Sitwell, S.H.I.E.L.D. liaison to Stark Industries, tries to revive the fallen hero while a crowd gathers. Iron Man (believed back then to simply be “Tony Stark’s high-tech bodyguard”) has a sleazy cousin named Morgan Stark. Morgan ran up a huge gambling debt with the Maggia (Marvel Comics’ version of the Mafia) and, to save himself from harm at the hands of their thugs, betrays Iron Man into their clutches by transporting the nearly motionless hero to where he told Sitwell that Tony Stark was waiting to repair the armor. 
JOHN CARTER, WARLORD OF MARS Vol 1 #1 (June 1977) 
This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at some of the early stories during the time when Daredevil and the Black Widow were a team, like 
DAREDEVIL & THE BLACK WIDOW Vol 1 #92 (October 1972) 
POWER MAN Vol 1 #48 (December 1977) 
Shades (at right) and Comanche, escaped cons who served time at Seagate Prison with Luke Cage back when he went by his real name Carl Lucas, were sent by Bushmaster to abduct Power Man’s girlfriend Dr. Claire Temple and her colleague Dr. Noah Burstein. They have done so and, per Bushmaster’s orders, they give Luke Cage/ Carl Lucas their boss’s ultimatum. 
They make it clear to Power Man that to gain the release of those two doctors he has been close to for years, he must capture and deliver to Bushmaster one of his foes, private investigator Misty Knight. The villain doesn’t just send Shades and Comanche (at left) to abduct her because Misty’s associates, her investigative partner Colleen Wing and the superhero Iron Fist, stand beside her. 
