I feel like there were better issues of this series; darned if I've blogged any, though.

There's a stretch of the series, starting maybe around #20, with Jackson 'Butch' Guice covers, that are sharp and will really get your hopes up, since I don't think they were great issues either. Maybe a Butch cover would've helped here, but maybe not. From 1992, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #37, "Who Killed the Changelings?" Written by Scott Lobdell, pencils by M.C. Wyman, inks by Don Hudson.

I thought this was maybe a fill-in, but it's basically killing time before next issue started "The Cold War of Nick Fury", which we've discussed before: oddly, Lobdell had written a few issues of this, would be out for a second, then back in. Fury is taking new Super-Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Psi-Borg to check out the Changelings, only to find they've all been murdered except for Woodgod. (Who we've also seen before here, I had to update the tag for him!) We see one die: the blue one with the fin on his head, and hey, wasn't he a centaur back in Incredible Hulk #252? Looked like he had people legs there.

The government forces of Trinity Base, had apparently had budget cuts and decided to phase out their animal-man monstrosity studies; and since Nick wasn't currently director of S.H.I.E.L.D. they don't recognize his authority. Fury tries to keep Woodgod from murdering the murderers; probably less out of any moral compunction, than the fear of political blowback on Woodgod. Fury 'kills' Woodgod, and with new director Dum Dum Dugan, swears to shut Trinity Base and its shifty commanders down. Then, Fury takes Woodgod out to the woods and lets him go: Fury knew he was smarter than anyone would've thought, and figured he'd get it together someday. Yeah, all his friends dead and alone in the woods? He'll be fine.

But, for good measure, "The Cold War of Nick Fury" starts here, with a prologue! (Written by Eliot Brown and Bob Sharp, pencils by M.C. Wyman, inks by Don Hudson.) Wrapping up a session in the gym, Fury gets a flash message, to go to Washington D.C. and debrief about O.S.S. and C.I.A. missions, which were years prior. Nick blows it off, not just because he doesn't think it's important, but the Amazing Colossal Man was on cable tonight! The MST3K version premiered just a year prior; there's a not-zero chance Fury was going to watch that! Unfortunately, he gets stopped by government agents, who had the foresight to clear several guns out of Nick's car first. No movie tonight... Read more!

Anyone could talk up the Weapon X feature; no, I gotta deep-dive on Woodgod.

Hmm. I know I read Marvel Comics Presents a fair amount during its seven year, 175 issue run. 90% sure I have the last issue waiting to be blogged during some year's "The End" posts, and I know I read all of "Panther's Quest," which I think was 25 parts! But I don't know if I read all of "Weapon X" as it was serialized; like today's book! From 1991, Marvel Comics Presents #76.

Barry Windsor-Smith's "Weapon X" was the main feature here, taking up the entire front cover: since there were usually four eight-page stories an issue, sometimes another story might be featured or at least mentioned on the cover, but here the only nod was Death's Head in the corner box! This was chapter four, as the Professor, Dr. Cornelius, and Ms. Hines work on conditioning their new weapon; and it gets out of hand as Logan first (to them, anyway) manifests his claws. They can see on their monitors what's in Logan's head, though: namely the Professor, dead as hell.

Next, the penultimate chapter of Shanna the She-Devil's ten-parter, "The Bush of Ghosts," written by Gerald Jones, pencils by Paul Gulacy, inks by Gary Martin. Yeesh, I know Jones was charged with possession of child pornography a couple months back; which means the odds of this one getting reprinted is just about none. Gulacy's art is killer, though.

Then, a Death's Head story! "The Deadliest Game" Written by his creator, Simon Furman, pencils by Bryan Hitch, inks by Mark Farmer. Yay, but it's just a short riff on the old "the Most Dangerous Game," so a little slight. But always nice to see classic DH, yes?

Finally, a Woodgod story...hey, those copyrights don't renew themselves, y'know! "Lonely at the Top," written by Robert Campanella, art by Dave Cockrum! Somewhere in Colorado, Woodgod had genetically engineered other animal-men Changelings like himself; and today we find him breaking up with Dovinia, who is pissed. Still, the snake-in-the-grass lion-man Leoninus sees this as an opportunity--I realize that's a weird metaphor there, but even more oddly, he appears to shop at the same store as Adam Warlock! He's got pretty much the same outfit, except with a little lion instead of the skull! It's kinda cool, actually; I already like Leoninus better than Woodgod, or I would if he wasn't a budding MRA: his whole plot is motivated by striking out with the ladies, so he kidnaps the girls to sell to Roxxon. Dick move, dick; although it does look like maybe Woodgod should have genetically engineered a lion girl, maybe? There's also a creepy scientist digging on Dovinia the deer girl, and now I'm grossed out; even if I want to see our old pal Man-Beast take Leoninus under his wing and teach him proper evil.
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The X-Men fighting the Cactus guy probably would've been more fun.

This was an oddball little story, with some villains that were probably forgotten when they first sppeared, but here goes: on their way home from the desert and teaming-up with Spider-Man in 1976's Marvel Team-Up Annual #1, the X-Men are flying back in their X-shuttle and drop Spidey off to tussle with Woodgod and the Hulk in 1977's Marvel Team-Up #53, conveniently reprinted in 1992's Marvel Tales #262, which features this back-up story with the X-Men versus Sunstroke. "A Case of Sunstroke" Written by Barry Dutter, art by Vince Evans. Sunstroke actually first appeared in 1987's West Coast Avengers #17, as an agent of the alien Dominus, working with Cactus, Gila, and Butte. He was not a breakout character.

This story sticks to the continuity, where Jean Grey had recently become the awesomely powerful Phoenix (sort of) but passed out, a lot. In fact, the story works in continuity very well, but it's not a necessary patch or anything. It's just five pages, which is short enough to not wear out it's welcome. I wouldn't mind if a lot of the upcoming Secret Wars tie-ins were five page shots, for the same reason...
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There was a farm that had a SCREAM, and Woodgod was its name-oh.

OK, that's terrible. But barely after mentioning my surprise at having a comic featuring Woodgod, I get his first two appearances from the quarter box. His debut in Marvel Premiere #31, "Birthday!" is grim, 70's sci-fi: man tampering in God's domain, even with the best of intentions; coupled with man's fear of the unknown, the different, etc. It's not readily apparent that Woodgod's story takes place in the Marvel Universe, at least until his next appearance in Marvel Team-Up #53. That issue is better known for being John Byrne's first work on the X-Men, and there's a kinda sweet two-page spread of Spidey and the X-Men flying home in the (rarely seen since) X-Shuttle, but there's also this:

What is Wolverine doing there, with his fist up by his shoulder, and his claws shorter than his fingers? Well, I've seen Wolvie drawn multiple times with claws far too long to fit in his forearms, so this is at least a pleasant change.

At any rate, the Hulk's showed up at Woodgod's small town of Liberty, New Mexico; shortly after the nerve gas explosion that killed the townspeople and Woodgod's parents. The Hulk decides to claim the pleasantly humanless town for himself, until Woodgod attacks him, still in a rage from his parents' death. Later, the X-Men's Banshee drops Spidey off there, since Peter's acting like a reporter for some reason, and where the "anti-radiation mist" they received the previous issue (Giant-Size Marvel Team-Up #1) protects Spidey from the nerve gas. You know, they should've just said, 'because' and left it at that.

Now that I've run across another batch of Woodgod appearances, I can't stop seeing them: looking up Woodgod at GCD, there were more of them that I had! He appeared in Quasar twice, which is more than I had thought, OK, but he also was in Earth X? Really? More than once? Man, I wasn't going to re-read that one for a while, but it may be coming up...

Maybe I should mention some other series, and see if it magically appears in the quarter boxes now. Like Miracleman. Well, that seems unlikely: even quarter-box condition issues of that would go for a bit. Even though I've seen a lot of scans and recaps and whatnot, I've never read an actual, in hand Miracleman comic. But I do remember seeing the back-issue ads that warned about the issue featuring "graphic depictions of childbirth," and I remember thinking yeah, maybe I'll stick with Solo Avengers or something.

Panels from Marvel Premiere #31, "Birthday!" Conceived and written by Bill Mantlo, pencils by Keith Giffen, inks by Klaus Janson. (God, I can't see Keith Giffen's name with that, without picturing Woodgod with the Justice League International: Woodgod going on and on about death and calling it 'scream,' so Beetle thinks he's just a Courtney Cox fan or something, while Guy keeps riding Woodgod to put on some damn pants.) And Marvel Team-Up #53, "Nightmare in New Mexico!" Written by Bill Mantlo, pencils by John Byrne, inks by Frank Giacoia. I think I have a reprint of the next issue, which somehow ends with Spider-Man getting his ass launched into space, for the next issue with Warlock. All of which is why Spidey is increasingly reluctant to leave New York City...
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Huh, I have a comic with Woodgod. I would not have bet on that.

Actually, that's not quite true: I'm pretty sure I have an old Marvel Team-Up or reprint of same with Woodgod. Possibly drawn by John Byrne, before he was JOHN BYRNE, y'know? Well, we're looking at a different comic, anyway. The Incredible Hulk #252, "The Changelings!" Script by Bill Mantlo, art by Sal Buscema. I should mention up front, I didn't start paying much attention to the Hulk until Byrne's run; and I had for years an unreasonable dislike of Sal Buscema, because I thought he had replaced Walt Simonson on Thor. (It wasn't like Walt was replaced, he stepped down to writing the book instead of writing and drawing.)

The story opens with the Hulk (classic, dumb Hulk) arriving at the hunting cabin of General 'Thunderbolt' Ross, to help his friend Rick Jones; and instead finding a savagely beaten Doc Samson on the floor. The 'changelings' came, took Ross and Hulk's friends Betty, Fred, and Rick; and mopped the floor with Samson. Hulk isn't impressed.

Meanwhile, the satyr-like Woodgod and his people take their captives to their hidden village. Woodgod had set out to capture another changeling, Viperus, but took prisoners when Ross shot one of his men. At the village, Leoninus, who couldn't be more evil if he had a Snydely Whiplash mustache, forments dissent against Woodgod, demanding the humans' execution.

Woodgod recaps his origin for the humans, involving his 'parents,' who were apparently genetic engineers that also happened to have a barn full of nerve gas. Great double major, there. After the normos and his folks died, eventually Woodgod learned to use their equipment to make the Changelings, all of whom have boring names like Neptunus and Goatus. To be fair, they are animals, so it probably is asking too much for them to come up with names on the level of He-Man bad guys.

Even though it's not my favorite run of Hulk, I do have a good pile of Bill Mantlo's run; and I think this shows up more than a couple times: a secret, often abandoned government base; with weird or dangerous experiments that were probably dangerous enough before the locals got wind of them, formed an angry mob, and shot up the place. (Something similar happened in the last Mantlo issue I looked at here.) As a general rule of thumb in fiction, whenever the angry mob card is played, it's an example of ugly humanity falling victim to its worst prejudices and probably hounding an innocent. Conversely, if the townspeople laugh off the trouble as mere superstition, there's something mind-numbingly terrible out there. Buy your torches and rake-things accordingly.

Back on topic: the Hulk makes his way up to the village, and gets attacked by Neptunus, who looks like General Ross playing the Little Mermaid's dad in the school play. Kinda surprised the Hulk didn't kick his fish-ass extra hard, then. When Hulk arrives at the village, the Changelings are human enough to freak the hell out and attack without asking questions.

As the fight brews, Siren--not the one from X-Factor, this one's a topless bird-girl--is distracted by Leoninus, who poisons a healing potion, that Woodgod then gives to the wounded Centauron. Meanwhile, the Hulk learns, mess with the bull, you get the horns. Hopefully the horns, since I don't like the way he's...frankly, mounted the Hulk there.

Hulk gets kicked through a wall, to Fred, Betty, and Rick; all of whom are ungrateful dicks, and tell the Hulk he's just making it worse, that they will be freed when Centauron recovers.

Hulk is already pretty steamed, when Thunderbolt Ross wakes up, dazed, but still denouncing the Hulk as "a vicious, murdering monster." (We won't reopen the debate on whether or not the Hulk has a huge bodycount in his wake, thanks.) By the time man-goat, I mean Woodgod, joins the pantsless animal-man pile-on, the Hulk has had enough of this crap, and stomps off. Screw you guys, I'm going home.

Of course, then things really get out of hand: Centauron dies, Leoninus shows up with his own crew of Changelings, and Betty, Rick, and the rest are good and screwed now.
I suspect Mantlo, creator of Woodgod, had larger story plans for the character, but I'm not sure he ever took off. I do suspect it's just a matter of time before someone dusts him off for his own MAX book or something, at the very least to keep the copyrights alive. And this is like the second or third comic in the last week or two I've blogged without reading the concluding issues; so I may have to do something about that.
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