This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog finishes examining Marvel Premiere.
MARVEL PREMIERE Vol 1 #41 (Apr 1978)
Title: The Dying Sun
Villains: Jason and the Six
Synopsis: In a timeline outside of Marvel’s main continuity, Earth of the year 3000 A.D. is facing the imminent supernova of our Sun. The news has been kept from the public at large by the Six, a half-dozen power-mad people each of which rules one of the occupied continents. Leading the Six is Jason (no last name ever given).
Jason and the Six have secretly financed a massive spaceship called the Seeker 3000 and selected an elite crew of hundreds to pilot the vessel, themselves and cellular material of thousands of the Six’s friends and family members in order to flee the solar system before the sun goes nova.
They will all seek out a new planet to inhabit, with the thousands of cell samples being used to clone a sufficient genetic pool to start a new civilization. We are told that no previous attempt at a warp-speed vessel has ever worked, so Seeker 3000 is humanity’s last hope.
The crew members we meet in this debut story – 1. Captain Jordan Shaw (right), a decent man appalled at the way the Six have chosen to play God with who gets to escape and who gets left behind to die. He cooperates just so he and his wife can survive, so he bitterly knows he is no better than the oligarchs in the end.
2. Lt. Valida Payton, a black female solar engineer, physicist and Shaw’s second in command. 3. Ensign Ben Payton, Valida’s brother, who is a biologist, terraformist and cloning engineer. 4. Dr. John Running Bear, a Native American, physician, psychiatrist and behavioral scientist.
And 5. Phaedra (left), a mutant with telekinetic and telepathic abilities. She and Earth’s hundreds of other mutants live in prison camps at the Six’s command while their abilities are probed. They are all forced to wear facial tattoos to prevent them hiding their mutant status.
NOTE: Yes, a few years before Chris Claremont & John Byrne nabbed these exact designs for facial tattoos on an imprisoned mutant race in Days of Future Past, this story used them first. Continue reading
MARVEL PREMIERE Vol 1 #31 (Aug 1976) 
Superstitious people in Liberty, NM get covert glimpses of the creature and decide to raid the Pace ranch to destroy Woodgod and any other such “monsters” being created there. David and Ellen are shot to death in the attack but our main character is super-strong and invulnerable, so he survives being shot multiple times.
MARVEL PREMIERE Vol 1 #1 (Apr 1972) 
The High Evolutionary studied his creation from an orbiting headquarters, kept company by 
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