Random Happenstance

Sure, Rorgg will enslave humanity and suck the juices out of our young, but don't expect him to jump up and down about it.

That is one glum looking alien. From Journey into Mystery #64, "I Dared to Battle... RORGG, King of the Spider-Men!!" Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Dick Ayers. Reprinted in Monster Menace #4.

One of the few good things to come of the 90's comic market was that in their mad rush to put out enough comics to cram each other off of the shelves, a lot of companies put out reprint material. So instead of buying expensive back issues, or holding out for fancy archive editions, or getting the mammoth Essential/Showcase phonebooks; I have piles of random-ass flimsy reprints of EC and Marvel (Timely?) monster nonsense.

Pro: these reprints are still mostly dirt cheap, not super hard to find, and are semi-disposable if you want to introduce someone to disturbing horror or goofy monsters. Con: The print and paper quality is spotty, on occasion seemingly worse than the originals. The Marvel reprints in particular have ads and editorial from the 90's; which can cause uncontrollable crying in lab primates. Good luck trying to get any coherent order out of those reprints, since they aren't chronological or anything. And these 90's reprints still have their original dialog, unlike most of the old reprints today. Well, that's either a plus or a minus for you.


That spider-cop is dope. Not sure who wrote this issue, but I'm pretty sure that's another of those little awesome things Jack Kirby threw in on a whim; like the Silver Surfer. Like Kirby was skimming through the plot for this story, and came to "Rorgg describes his advanced civilization, space travel through webs, fill out a page, etc." and just hopped to the conclusion that advanced societies must as a given have traffic cops. Spider-Cop deserves at least a one-shot, you ask me...

Although it probably doesn't bring new readers into the fold, I like it when an admittedly obscure character like Rorgg rears his mopey, Eeyore-like head again. Later this week we'll take a look at another Rorgg sighting, but I think the days of such 'comebacks' are gone. After all, if Rorgg here attacked the Mighty Avengers, he'd probably be the most sympathetic character in the book.