That thing just ate a dude's heart...still seems pretty harmless? Not feeling it.

Over the years, we've briefly glanced at the other three annuals in the "Lifeform" crossover: Punisher Annual #3, Incredible Hulk Annual #16, and Silver Surfer Annual #3, but I couldn't even recall if I had read the missing second chapter here. And it's got a fifteen page Fatboys story, and I realize why I probably kept my two dollars in my pocket. From 1990, Daredevil Annual #6, all stories written by Gregory Wright.

The Lifeform plot continues, at least tangentially, in all of the stories. In the lead, "Predator," reporter Ben Urich works on the case in his best clipped-delivery narration, while Daredevil tries to stop the mutated and insane George Prufrock. Who is also super-infectious, which seems like it would be more of a hazard to somebody who led with his fists like DD. Prufrock, and later an infected cop, both seem to see a lot of angel-demon hallucination imagery, which is probably always a problem when DD's around. Urich's source was a scientist, that wanted the virus to save himself...somehow; but Prufrock is seemingly killed again. Which just means he'll bubble back up in the next annual. (Art by 2000 AD great Cam Kennedy.)

Next...ugh, the Fatboys. I don't know if somebody thought the world really needed a street version of the Little Rascals, but here we are. I swear they've shown up in 14 annuals by this point and they always suck, hard. One of them claims he could've taken the Lifeform, but skates away screaming with the rest when it lurches out of a dumpster at them. This, and the lead, also feature Jet and Spit, the Wildboys; who only barely beat the Fatboys as my least favorite recurring characters possibly in anything. And there's a junior varsity skate gang in this, the Tunnel Teens, between the youthful shenanigans of the Fatboys and the cliched thuggery of the Wildboys, but they don't seem a match for either. Hate this, hate them. Even Daredevil seems less cool for having to be in this one. (Art by Gary Hartle and Mike DeCarlo.)

Slightly more interesting: Thomas Sutton on "Innocent Bystander?" Daredevil warns a cop not to touch the Lifeform's severed arm, but he gets infected. That's okay, he was a rotten cop--on the take--and a rotten husband, with a wife and a mistress. Both of whom show up in the hospital, as he strokes out screaming about the pit: they're just lucky not to get infected themselves. Sutton's art is great, there's just not enough there to work with.

Lastly, the...not-so-charmingly titled, "Two Schizos," with art by Michael Bair, pits the Lifeform against Typhoid Mary. Both of them have multiple voices in their heads, you see...yeah. The Lifeform opts out of eating Typhoid, since it thinks she's "beaut-i-ful," but she sets him on fire a bit. Only the influence of Mary stops her, which leaves the Lifeform to search for other food.

Well, at least I can confirm I've read this now? That's...yeah.

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No funny songs about this Lifeform...

I was all set to get back to comics, then this particular issue wasn't where I thought it was. Some digging later, and here we are, with Silver Surfer Annual #3, part four of four in the "Lifeform" annual crossover. We've mentioned the Punisher and Hulk chapters in passing, but only barely, and I'm not entirely sure I've read the Daredevil one.

But this issue still manages to fit neatly in with the Silver Surfer's current plotline: the Surfer had just faced Thanos in a final battle, and accidentally killed him. (Not really: this was just prior to Thanos Quest, where the mad Eternal would gather the Infinity Gems, and he needed the Surfer off his back for the moment.) The Surfer returns to earth, which today he was viewing as revisiting his old cell, to tell Captain America about Thanos' demise. It may not have hurt, that artist Ron Lim had a pretty good run on Cap's book about that time as well.

Meanwhile, the titular Lifeform, having continued to mutate since the host was first exposed, takes mercy on another infected and kills him. And then goes nuts. Perpetually hungry, the monster absorbs any life it can get its tentacles on.

At nearby Four Freedoms Plaza, Reed Richards gets a call from Nick Fury: S.H.I.E.L.D. had been keeping tabs on the creature, but just lost contact with the hospital. Mildly irritated, Reed sets out to check it out, and is just starting to realize how bad the situation is when the Surfer joins him. By this point, the monster has gotten into the river, and cleans it of life in short order.

This is one story that you'd want Reed to have brought the rest of the FF, so the Human Torch could kill that thing with fire...

The Lifeform regenerates too fast for the Surfer to damage it without him unleashing enough power to level New York, so he's left with a less pleasant alternative: letting the creature engulf him, the Surfer lifts the creature into space, protected from digestion by his silver skin. Dumping the monster on a planet destroyed by Galactus (it's a quick couple of pages, but you aren't quite sure how long that took) the Surfer plans on destroying it, when it speaks. The original host, George Prufrock, is still in there, still alive, but trapped. Unable to control the creature, or stop it from feeding; Prufrock begs for death.

But the Surfer can not. Even though he just copped to Thanos' death, he couldn't bear even a mercy killing. Prufrock screams that the creature will never die, even there, and he will be trapped for eternity, and the Silver Surfer can only leave him. (This may change from time to time and creative team to creative team, but at this point he was pretty militant about his pacifism.)

A somewhat brutal tale, both made somewhat more and less so by Lim's art: I wouldn't expect a monstrous thing like that from him, which kind of makes it worse for me. I've mentioned before, I love Lim's art, and for a while there he was doing a ton of books. Without having anything to back this up, he always seemed like he delivered clear, solid work, on time. Something to be said for that. "Lifeform-- Termination?" Written by Jim Starlin and Ron Marz, pencils by Ron Lim, inks by Tom Christopher. Read more!

Recent comics, Mel Brooks references, toys I'm not buying; all over the map today:

In case you missed it last week, X-Men: Manifest Destiny: Nightcrawler came out, and I liked it. Now, over at If Destroyed, Still True there's a more objective review, but this issue strongly exceeded my expectations. Well, that's damning with faint praise, since my expectations--based on the solicit for this issue as "Quitting Time"--were pretty damn low. Lower. I was expecting the whole issue to be moping and flashbacks, possibly set to Boys II Men "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday."

Not a pretty mental picture, huh? Fortunately, writer James Asmus skips a lot of that nonsense: Kurt is out the X-door by page four, on his way to Winzeldorf, Germany, to check out the Nightcrawler Museum. It's a good hook, and the rest of the issue doesn't quite rise to that level, it's still fun. And it's not like Nightcrawler gets center stage in the regular X-books ever.

Last week also had the new issue of Deadpool, which has been a little disappointing:

OK, that's not bad, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that's going to be able to work that line into conversation; but the issue feels a bit stalled. Deadpool's seeking revenge on Norman Osborn, who stole Pool's Skrull info, enabling him to kill the Skrull Queen and become America's sweetheart; more importantly, it cost Pool a huge payday from Nick Fury. So, Pool attacks Avengers Tower, which would be a terrible idea even if the building wasn't closed for remodeling, or Norman was actually there, or if Pool wasn't hallucinating something fierce. Wade fights some remote controlled Green Goblin junk and trips out until the Thunderbolts show up, setting up the crossover in Thunderbolts #130.

There's a couple funny bits, yeah, but a sequence with Norman Osborn as a giant stinkyhead...giant while Pool climbs the beanstalk (actually the elevator shaft, not a metaphor for anything...) goes on for too long, and seems to be killing time until the next chapter. Right this second, it doesn't feel like this needed four parts, and I don't know if I'll pick up the Thunderbolts issues. Disappointing, especially since early issues of Deadpool showed more promise. Or at least cheap, funny gags:

Yeah, anytime you can swipe from Young Frankenstein, you should. For example:

(From The Incredible Hulk Annual #16, "Quality of Mercy" Written by Peter David, pencils by Angel Medina, inks by Larry Mahlstedt. Part Three of "Lifeform," but pretty damn entertaining.)

I just wanted to throw those last two out there, since I don't know if I ever mentioned it before, but Young Frankenstein is one of the first movies I can remember ever seeing in the theatre. While I don't think it scared the hell out of me, ala Homer Simpson; I know it was probably many years before I saw it again and fully realized it was actually a comedy. I was pretty little, yeah.

Nightcrawler panel written by James Asmus, art by Jorge Molina and Adrian Syaf with inks by Victor Olazaba and Vicente Cifuentes. I think Molina did the stronger first end of the book.

Deadpool panels from issues #4 and #8, written by Daniel Way, art by Carlo Barberi (#4 only) and Paco Medina, inks by Juan Vlasco. Minus the big hallucination sequence, I really like the art, but it is going to clash something fierce with the Thunderbolts issues.

Two more Deadpool related notes: in anticipation of Pool's big screen debut in Wolverine: Origins, Marvel is starting to grind out a pretty respectable amount of spinoff and one-shots for Pool. And I still don't know if I'm going to front the money for any of them, although some of them could be perfectly fine. Just not sure yet.

Also, Deadpool gets a new figure in the Wolverine: Origins line. There will doubtless be a crappity movie one, but there's a sharp looking comic one in the three-and-three/quarter inch scale. Check out this link from MWC Toys and see for yourself, since I don't think I'm going to drop $8.44 at Wal-Mart for it. If I see it cheaper, maybe. But until then...

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Your Happenstance panel for today:

From Green Lantern Corps #218, "Inside Some Other Skies!" Written by Steve Englehart, guest pencils by Bill Willingham, inks by Mark Farmer. A pretty solid issue, but coming up on the end of the book's run. Even though Hal Jordan only appears on one page, out of uniform in a subplot about being blacklisted as a pilot, within a year he would be the only Green Lantern: apparently, DC decided that being Green Lantern wasn't "special" enough if there were hundreds of them, which I'd say is missing the point of GL.

Flodo Span, the blobbyonethattalks allruntogetherlikethis, hadn't been around but a couple of issues, but was already a favorite of mine. He was an abstract lifeform, whose body was actually generated by the power ring, which makes me think he wasn't alive before the ring. I like to picture the Guardians creating a power ring that spontaneously generates it's own Lantern. Still, Flodo would be killed in the last issue of the series.

Flodo may have fared better than poor Katma, though: she was killed off-panel by Star Sapphire in an early issue of Action Comics Weekly. (#601 or #602, I think.) She deserved better.


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It's mildly annoying that I probably won't read the conclusion...

I feel like I've read three out of four of these, but have no recollection of seeing this one on the racks back in the day. I feel like there was a lot of competition then, though. From 1992, Daredevil Annual #8, "Maxed Out: the System Bytes, part 2" Written by Greg Wright, pencils by M.C. Wyman, inks by Bud LaRosa.

We saw Daredevil Annual #4 (it's really #5!) some time back, part of Atlantis Attacks. Today's book was part of a smaller crossover, with the Punisher, Wonder Man, and the Guardians of the Galaxy. I think the antagonist, the computer virus Ultra-Max, would appear in all four, and Deathlok might appear in maybe the first three. It's not as good as Atlantis Attacks, or the previous year's Von Strucker Gambit. Come to think of it, I don't think I read Daredevil Annual #6, the third part of the "Lifeform" crossover, until just recently: I think I've blogged the other three chapters, at least in part, over the years.

I'm not really getting into this much, partly because it's not great, but also because I wouldn't go back and read any books by the writer of the Wonder Man Annual. Huh, that actually wasn't the conclusion; and I might've read the Guardians one, maybe. One thing this issue does have, though, is the return of Bushwacker--lettered as "Bushwhacker" one panel. It's been a long time since I've read his early appearances: he was killing mutants early on, but here admits to DD he's just doing whatever he has to, to pay the bills. I think his religious zealotry would be downplayed going forward as well, reducing him to a hired gun with that creepy transforming gun-arm.

Also this issue: Daredevil's top ten villains. You can probably guess his top three, but Bullet as number 4? C'mon. The Crippler returns to bring the Wildboys down a peg in "Disturbingly Alike," and another Fatboys short, as the skate kids might be "Growing Up?" I'm sure if the Fatboys returned nowadays, it would be so something horrible could happen to them, and I'm kind of okay with that. Read more!

The Terminus Factor: Captain America Annual #9!

Every so often, I like to blog a series of crossover annuals. Little secret: it's an easy way for me to do several posts at once! We covered Citizen Kang, JLApe, Lifeform was mostly just mentioned in passing...I would love to cover The Evolutionary War or the Atlantis Attacks annuals, since I had those when they came out, but have apparently lost or sold some of them. And I was going to do DC's Ghosts Annuals, but was missing three of the eight. Actually, I can't find the Flash one; I got that whole series from the quarter bins, but may not have even had the Green Lantern or Aquaman ones.

All this preamble, to say we'll be covering The Terminus Factor instead: a five annual 1990 crossover from Marvel, featuring the Avengers versus the giant alien invader. Created by John Byrne, Terminus was an armored monster, a destroyer of worlds, believed dead at the time after destroying the Savage Land in Avengers #257. The Savage Land would get better, but that'd leave Ka-Zar out in the cold for a few years...I want to guess that was part of an editorial push to get rid of or prune down some of the more fantastic elements of the Marvel Universe, since a giant hidden jungle with dinosaurs isn't 'realistic.' Destroying it with a giant alien totally is...

So, we open with Captain America Annual #9, "You Are What You Eat" Written by Roy Thomas and Dann Thomas, pencils by Jim Valentino, inks by Sam de la Rosa. Tony Stark throws Cap into a volcano. OK, actually Cap is serving as anti-sabotage backup, for Dr. Ramona Napier's test voyage of Persephone I, an exploratory capsule. The mission goes awry, when a mysterious egg-shaped object releases a "phosphorescent gunk" and the capsule loses control. Iron Man arrives to assist. (Even if convection probably would've cooked Cap...)

The gunk landed in the river, just in time to infect some fish, for the Georgeville annual trout feast. Cap and Ramona are both a bit seasick from the rough ride in the capsule, but Cap notices Iron Man having a bite, even if he can't see his face. (Tony supposedly wasn't IM at the time; Cap, the Avengers, and everyone else is still pretty sure he is.) They're the only two to avoid infection, and zombification. The townspeople, and Iron Man, go berserk, attacking Cap and each other.


One rips out a power terminal and electrocutes himself, and Cap saves a small boy from the same. Shoving the boy into an ice bucket, Cap fights on, but the boy returns to normal from the cold. Luring the townspeople and Iron Man up to the snowline, Cap then has to take a beating from Iron Man until the cold snaps him back as well. Still, they worry that they haven't seen the last of the gunk, and they haven't. Next week: Iron Man Annual #11!

This chapter felt a little light, just a bit of set-up. Most of the rest of the issue is "A Soldier's Story," a Randall Frenz/Mark Bagley WWII Cap and the Howling Commandos tale featuring the Red Skull and the kidnapped Howard Stark. Often portrayed as a complete monster in flashbacks in Iron Man, he does get a heroic moment here against the Nazis.
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It’s fun when I find an issue that ties into an old post here. It’s less fun when that leads to Holocaust references…from 1991, Namor, the Sub-Mariner Annual #1, “Never Again” Written by Scott Lobdell, pencils by James Fry, inks by Erik Larsen.

This was a chapter of another of Marvel’s crossover annual events; as opposed to an annual crossover event; you know what I mean. By this point, instead of one huge event like Atlantis Attacks or Evolutionary War; Marvel was going with smaller crossovers like Lifeform or the Terminus Factor , or on the lower end of the scale, Citizen Kang. Those first two aren’t Watchmen or anything, but they’re pleasant little page-turners with a basic level of quality that some of these absolutely missed. Possibly because at this point, Marvel was just flooding the market; Fry and Larsen are usually pros, but this didn’t seem up to their usual work and I want to say it might have been rushed?

Anyway, Subterranean Wars was a five-parter, which I’m not positive I’ve read all of, involving Brutus and the Deviants (not my garage band, although that’s a great name) versus the Mole Man, Tyranus, and others. And Namor's story is running at a tangent to the others: he's about to go looking for the Avengers, when he's interrupted by the sudden arrival of Lord Vulko. Er, Vashti; Vulko is Aquaman's supporting character, and I've done this joke before because I've been blogging for forty years.

Vashti is there to warn Namor of the possible genocide of the Moloids, who are being murdered wholesale by the survivors of El Dorado. We mentioned the citizenry of El Dorado just wandering off into Subterranea or whatever; there was no indication there that they were going to go nuts, but it doesn't appear there were a ton of them left, either. I suspect Lobdell needed another underground faction, but not a big-name one like the Lava Men or anything: the people of El Dorado would be just one of seemingly hundreds of hidden races in the Marvel U.

Namor initially seems reluctant to help out the Moloids, since he has his own business going on, but an Invaders flashback that's also a holocaust flashback kinda shames him into it. Namor feels guilty that he didn't get involved in World War II until it threatened his people; and wonders if he could have done more.

Look, I love the Moloids too, but I don't know if that equates, there...in fact, the Moloids were facing "genetic cleansing" during the Evolutionary War as well, in X-Factor Annual #3. Again, vile supposition, but I think some of Marvel's editorial staff at the time wanted a more gritty, "realistic" Marvel Universe; and wanted to do away with fantastic elements like mole people and savage lands. With the help of Stingray (who looks weird in a panel yelling for Namor where you can see his mouth!) Namor saves the Moloids, and leaves the El Dorado soldiers to die in a cave-in, rather than killing them himself.

Also, the Invaders scene reminded me of a similiar yet better one in Garth Ennis and Kilian Plunkett's Unknown Soldier mini-series, where the Soldier does not let the German guards off easily...

Namor had four annuals from his 90’s series, and they weren’t great. The Defenders crossover wasn’t awful, even though I think Namor is mind-controlled all the way through that one; and there was the occasional interesting back-up story, like Namor getting his girl took by Baron Blood. That annual also features a very cheesecake-y back-up by Tom Raney with Spitfire that I love to death; probably my favorite from all Namor's annuals, and he's not in it!
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